Opening the door I heard a soft, repeated,scrape thump,scrape thump. Was that numpty trying to get the chain loose from the floor or the wall? Good luck to him, the bolts were meant to hold bulls in place and whilst he had quite the pair of shoulders aminotaur he was not.
A dying bit of sunlight came from one of the windows high up on the wall of the dark basement, just barely showing the old iron bed in the corner and I could see where the noise was coming from.
Davies was doing inverted sit-ups, his knees over the footboard and his upper body was hanging off the end, holding his shoulders from touching the floor. The chain was pulled taut, adding extra stress to his body, but his features were expressionless, almost content. As if he were somewhere secret and safe and not being held captive in a mildewy basement.
Sweat dripped off his face, his hair, soaked through the fine linen of his shirt, the wool of his pants. The air was flooded with the stink of sweat and old booze.
And yet, again, I wondered what it would taste like to lick a bit up? To lap like a cat at his Adam's apple, to brush my lips along his straining forearm so they stung a little with the salt coming from him? My stomach felt warm with desire and the sensation started to work its way downwards.
I shook my head and mentally slapped my cheeks. Even if he were still interested in giving me a ride after a bit of roofying and criminal abduction, my own personal Geneva Convention kept me from feeling ok about taking sexual advantage of an imprisoned person.
Besides which, that bed looked perfectly purgatorial for sleeping, let alone anything fun.
“If you’re done with your workout routine…” I said and before I could finish walking down the last few steps Davies had used his upper body to vault up and onto the bed, sitting cross legged and looking like the cat who’d been in the cream.
“Did you like the show,Margaret?” The tang he added to the name told me he knew it was fake. “I could hear your breathing from here.”
“Who wouldn’t get their knickers wet at the sight of one of the .0001% doing a bit of work for a change?”
“Sure, let's call it that,” he said, knowing better.
Based on the situation in his trousers, he’d enjoyed my heavy breathing as much as I’d enjoyed his sit ups. “You spring back from a hangover quick.”
“Normally even quicker, when I haven’t been doused with a central nervous system depressant.”
“Colour me impressed. Frankie said you wanted to see me.”
“You mean your grandfather.”
“Please, Grandma would never have. She only had it off with Dracula. And maybe the Creature from the Black Lagoon. That once.”
He snorted, and then outright laughed and I worked hard not to join him, when I didn’t he trailed off. “I want my watch.”
“That’s it? You want your watch? Nothing else?”
“Not at the moment, no. Well, if you have a bottle of whiskey, something pot-stilled would be nice but I’m not fussy.”
“I think you’ve had enough for now.”
I waited, and he waited, and then we waited together. I wanted him to ask me what the plan was, he wanted me to volunteer the information.
“Well, scintillating as this has been -”
“You won’t get away with this. I mean, you have for the moment, I concede that. But soon this is all going to go wrong and you and Frankie, and Dracula, and the geese that have been screaming, and whatever animals are producing that fucking stink-”
“That’s the goats, most like-”
“-are all going to be verysorry that you-”
I knew where this was going and I knew it might even be true, “Shut up-”
“-ever met-”
“Here,” I threw the clothes, along with a threadbare washcloth and a scrap of soap I’d found in the worker’s breakroom, at his face. Part of the fabric went straight into his mouth and he sputtered around it. Grandad had perfectly nice linens, and a taste for fancy body wash he had picked up while dating a widow from Dublin, none of which I would waste on my captive. “You stink worse than the goats. And you scream more than the geese.”
I put the sandwich on the floor and slid it towards him, “I hopeyou like ham. And I want to thank you for making it so easy to kidnap you. I wouldn’t have believed how easy, if I hadn’t been there myself. Almost like you were hoping, hell, setting it up for something bad to happen to you. Glad to have been the one to do it you capitalist, earth-killing piece of shit.”
Scooping the sandwich up, he took an enormous bite, swallowing so quickly I thought he would choke. It was gone in moments, and he smiled up at me. “Delicious. I can’t remember the time a girl cooked for me on a first date, let alone took me home to meet her family.”
