“Fuck,” I said under my breath. I hoped the wave of nausea would pass, but I ended up rolling over to my hands and knees and threw up. I couldn’t see anything as the room was pitch black, so I had no idea what I was even throwing up, but it felt like nothing more than fluids.
Where the fuck was I?
“Eli,” I called out into the darkness. Quickly I coughed and swallowed hard a few times to moisten my throat. It was bone dry and very painful to swallow. “Eli! Where are you? I can’t see!”
In silence, I sat on the floor in the dark and thought. I remembered us coming to the party, and then I got sick on the pills that were supposed to relax me. He stayed by me and then was going to take me home. He wanted me to wait inside while he went to get the car.
Did something happen to him when he went out on the street to get his car? Was his car still there? Did he get mugged, or was there an altercation at his car? Was he okay?
“Eli!” I yelled. “Can anyone hear me?”
I had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long I had been there, but a deep worry settled in my stomach over Eli’s safety. What was the name of the guy he was talking to?
“Sebastian! Help!”
I yelled and screamed over and over until my voice was raw, and my throat ached each time I opened my mouth.
“Please be okay, Eli,” I finally whispered. I was so tired and laid down on the floor.
* * *
WasI going to die here? Had the people who hurt Eli just dumped me in this room? The room was really starting to reek from my piss and vomit. I was so thirsty and starting to get hungry.
I pushed myself up off the hard ground and into a sitting position when I heard something metal scraping against a door. Eli?
“Eli!” I tried to scream it, but it only came out as a desperate whisper. I had no voice left from all of my yelling and screaming.
I sat still so that I could hear everything to make up for the loss of sight. A door on the opposite side of the room opened, and people were entering the room. They each had a bright, blinding light on their heads and came toward me.
“Eli!” I tried calling out and stood up.
“He’s gone, little buddy,” one of them said.
“What happened to him?” I asked as loudly as I could while trying to shield my eyes from their painful lights.
I was punched in the face with something harder than a fist and knocked to the ground. Instantly, I could taste blood and felt the warmth of it around my mouth. Suddenly, the four men were on me, punching and kicking me. I fought back until I saw bright blue lights from something in their hands, and then quickly I felt sharp pinching sensations as soon as the lights touched my body. I curled up and tried to protect my head and face. The pinching sensations stopped, but the hands continued to grope and grab at me. I was so out of breath and winded that I didn’t fight.
“Are you done trying to fight us?” one of them said as he reached down to slap my face several times.
“Yes,” I said as loudly as my vocal cords would permit.
They pulled me off the ground by grabbing my wrists, and one of them put a hood over my head. I felt completely exposed being naked and standing upright. I began to yank my arms away from them and got decked in the ribs so hard that it knocked the wind out of me. My knees buckled, but the two men had vise-like grips around my wrists, so my knees hit the hard floor. Their grasps around my wrists only tightened, and then one of the other men grabbed my hair over the fabric of the hood and pulled backward. Hands slapped and punched my chest, neck, and hood-covered face. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to twist away from them.
“Stop fighting, boy! You’re only going to hurt more!” one of them yelled.
One of them delivered a swift punch to my throat that made me stop fighting them. I was going to die here.Where was Eli?
I forced myself to cooperate, and I walked with them while they had my wrists still held tightly in their hands. My ears were ringing from the recent hits and slaps to my head, so the little that I could hear was muffled.
“Tie him up,” instructed Sebastian’s voice.
“Sebastian!” I tried yelling, which earned me more slaps in the head.
With few words spoken, the men lifted me into something. Under my knees I could feel felt; a pool table. My heart pounded as they positioned me on my knees close to the edge so that my feet dangled over one end of the table. For a brief moment, the front of my lower legs were comforted by the padding along the edge of the pool table. The men pulled my arms away from my body, wrapped my wrists in an abrasive rope, and then secured them to the corner pockets of the pool table on either side of me. I was basically a sitting duck for them, curled up, hunched over, and exposed.
“We’ve never had a model,” Sebastian began. “I can definitely see how you could have had a very successful career as one.”
Sebastian’s hand ran down my spine and when he reached my butt crack, I jerked away from his touch. Roughly, he grabbed my hips while two guys punched me on the sides from either direction. While I took punches, through the hood, I could feel a thudding noise on the pool table. It sounded like they were racking up the pool balls.
