“Do I know you?” I ask facetiously. “I can’t really place the accent. Sounds like you’re from somewhere cold and uncivilized. Maybe somewhere in Eastern Europe?”
He glares silently at me.
“Wait, did I fuck your daughter or something?”
He still says nothing.
“Hmm, maybe your Mother?”
I notice that his left eye twitches ever so slightly but then he calms himself and continues standing in front of me in the same position: feet shoulder width apart, hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatsuit jacket, and his beady little eyes trained on me.
I try again.
“Listen, dude, you woke me up from a nap that was just about to get really good, so what do you want? Because I’m going to be honest with you, I’m letting you know now that you’ve made a big fucking mistake grabbing me and the longer you keep me, the worse it’s going to be for you. You don’t even realize the hell you’re about to unleash by kidnapping me.”
“Teach him what we do with talkative ones,” he says to the man in the corner.
Without saying a word, the other guy walks over and suddenly throws three hard jabs into my gut, then strides back across the room and sits down again.
I can barely catch my breath as the main guy opens a door to what I can only assume is a bedroom. He enters it, turns around and smirks at me, then slams the door behind him.
Fuck, that dude hits hard.
After the feeling of nausea passes from being pommeled in the pancreas, I turn my head around to look for the guy. Although he just knocked the wind out of me, he doesn’t seem the type that would be hanging around with a random Russian mobster, or whatever the fuck he is. Minus the lifeless eyes, he looks exactly like one of the many students I see on campus every day and it makes me wonder how he got involved with someone like this. What’s his story?
“You hit hard as hell, man,” I say to him, but he doesn’t respond.
“Do you go to UD? Have I seen you around campus somewhere?”
Nothing.
“Listen, I’m flying blind here, man. Do you know anything about this?” I ask sincerely.
He still doesn’t say a peep, but he does in fact finally respond by nodding his head no.
Damn, this shit actually works. I’m making headway with him, so I keep going.
“You look like you’re my age or maybe a year or two older and you damn sure ain’t from wherever he’s from. I don’t know how you got mixed up in whatever hell this is, but if you let me go, I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
He just stares at me with those dead eyes of his.
“My family has money,” I lower my voice, worried that I might poke the bear in the other room. “No bullshit. Name your price.”
At this point, my head is pounding because I must be coming down from whatever poison they used to knock me out. They’re probably drug dealers or something, but they haven’t thought this kidnapping thing through. They’re not good at it. They don’t seem to be making any demands yet, and I think the old guy went into the bedroom to take a damn nap. This is clearly my window to execute Step Five: if you identify a way to get out, use it.
The quiet guy refuses the money (for some asinine reason) and so I do the only other thing I can think of and that’s trying to work my hands free from the zip ties. I might stand half a chance of fighting my way out of here if I can get loose. If there’s one thing that I’m good at other than fucking, it’s fighting.
My guard dog keeps an eagle eye on me but does nothing as I contort my hands in an attempt to wiggle them free. The sharp edges of the plastic dig into my skin. It hurts like hell, but I just keep focused on how badly it’s going to hurt if one of these assholes decides to shoot me. That is, until the old guy unexpectedly exits the bedroom and catches me trying to free myself.
“You’re wasting energy,” he says, and I still can’t place the accent. My guess is Russian or maybe Ukranian, but that’s only because I don’t know much about Eastern Europe. I think I was asleep for most of that segment of world history in school. “We made them tight for reason.”
“Are you even watching him?” he asks the watch dog.
“Da.”
“Doesn’t seem like it.”
My watch dog unaffectedly shrugs his shoulders as if to say, so what? But I’m sitting here stunned that the guy actually talks and that he has a similar accent to the other man. I didn’t even know black people lived in Russia (or whatever godforsaken country they’re from).
