Page 49 of Intrepid

Fox threw Gideon against the wall behind him, their dark reflections rollicking across the cement in front of me. “What the fuck did you do, asshole?”

“N-n-n-nothing!”

“I’m not paying you a dime. A single fucking dime!” The stranger’s words sank to the depths of my stomach, where they agitated the disgust already churning there. He’d paid to hurt Eli.

I’d heard of men like him. We’d all been told horrific tales of kids getting swiped off the streets by monsters who found pleasure in the unimaginable.

Up until then, that was all they’d been to me: nothing but bedtime stories parents told their kids to keep them from running the streets.

What’d happen to Eli was no cautionary tale, or imagined. Like the scene in Pinocchio, when the boys realized they’d been lured by a predator, turned into donkeys, and the overwhelming regret of having ignored the warnings. It wasn’t until later that, once I’d watched a hundred times, I realized the meaning behind that scene, the symbolism buried beneath an innocent storyline. I’d only just begun to understand the truths it conveyed.

Monsters did exist. And they did horrible, unimaginable things.

Removing his hat, Fox slammed it to the floor. “That’s bullshit! We did what you asked! We got you the boy!”

“He said my fucking name!” the stranger bellowed back. “He knows who I am, thanks to you fucking idiots! So you can kiss that money goodbye.”

Eli’s shouts died down to a hysterical cry. Not as loud as before, but the undertone of misery crawled along my spine, bringing tears to my own eyes, as I imagined myself trapped inside that box.

Fox removed a gun from his side, it’s shape clear as day in its shadow on the wall, and held it toward the man’s head. “You will pay me. I don’t think you want this getting out.”

The stranger leaned into the gun, the sight of which had me squeezing my eyes shut to keep from watching his chest blown open. At least I’d only have to see the mimicked bits and blood.

“You’d dare threaten me, when your brother’s freedom is on the line? Or yours, for that matter?” The chasing pause encouraged me to open my eyes in disbelief that they hadn’t killed him yet. “How would you like to get roped in as an accomplice? Hmmm? Twenty to life sound appealing to you, Fox?” Another brief pause stirred the tension in my stomach, until Fox shook his head, and the stranger added, “Didn’t think so.”

The stranger jutted his chin and turned away from Fox. Whoever he was, he must’ve had something over him, because instead of shooting him in the back, as I’d have done right then, Fox lowered his gun.

“What am I supposed to do with the kid?” Fox’s question quickened my pulse, and I kept my eyes on the shadowed gun still caught in his hand.

“I don’t give a fuck,” the stranger volleyed back. “You make sure he can’t talk. To anyone.”

My eyes shot toward Eli’s cage, and I scratched at the bindings at my wrists held behind my back, desperate to tear them away and save my friend.

A door slammed somewhere in the house, the crack of it bouncing across my bones, and not a second later, Fox spun around, swinging. He knocked Gideon in the face, creating a spray of faint black rain over his silhouette.

A sharp sting struck my nail as I lodged it beneath the rope and it bent. I lowered my bound hands to the metal on the floor, scraping my wrists across the steel prongs of the bedsprings, the squeals hardly carrying over the thumps of their fighting.

“You fucking piece of shit! You forgot to secure the goddamn headphones!”

“I’m s-s-s-s-sorry!”

Fire licked my skin where the metal gouged my flesh. I didn’t care, though. I had to get free. As I sawed away at the rope, I kept my eyes locked on the two of them through the hole in the door.

“You’re gonna be sorry.” Grabbing him by his shirt, Fox pulled him to a stand. “But first, you’re going to get him out of that fucking cage and get him as high as a fucking kite. Give him some alcohol, too. Not too much. Don’t need the little prick bleeding out.”

Pausing mid-saw, I froze at Fox’s words.

“W-w-w-w-why?” The Pawn’s question echoed the words bouncing inside my own head.

“You don’t ask why. You just do it.” Fox stormed off, rubbing his nape, and the way Gideon stared into the room toward Eli’s box shot bullets of terror straight to my gut.

* * *

When we were ten years old, Eli and I had gotten our hands on a bootlegged copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some kid down the street had stolen it from a video store, and Eli’d paid him a pack of his mom’s smokes to borrow it. We’d watched it at our buddy’s house after his mom took her Xanax and passed out. Not the old, outdated version, the newer one.

The fucked up version.

I was terrified. I’d never seen gore like that before, and such little regard for human life. First time I’d realized the world was full of psychopaths. From that point on, I’d become almost addicted to those movies—the gorier the better—and by the time I’d turned twelve, I could pretty much stomach anything the horror genre threw at me.