He held up the bitten sandwich and the bottle of water. Jack seesawed them up and down in his hands as if he was comparing their weights.
Jack said, “More sandwich, please or more water, please?”
Gia said, “Water.”
Jack tilted his head. “Please?”
A swell of anger rose up from her gut into her chest as she stared between the shitty chicken sandwich and the generic water bottle labeled: “Great Value”. She took a couple of deep breaths through her flaring nostrils as she fought down the anger the way she had fought back against her gag reflex.
You can go seven days without water, but it isn’t pretty, she thought.
Gia looked away from him toward the light through the windshield.
She whispered. “Please.”
He tilted the water up and she accepted more. She swallowed it down and stared at him. He smiled and swirled the bottle. She opened her mouth and he brought it up to give her another swallow.
He set the water down and lifted the sandwich again. “Bite.”
Gia frowned, but then took another bite of the chicken sandwich. She swallowed it down dry and took a couple more sips of water as he offered them to her. She was tempted to spit one of the mouthfuls back into his face, but she didn’t want each sip to be her last.
Jack capped the bottle and held up the sandwich. “Want a little more? You have a busy day today, Gia.”
“What is he going to do to me in this van?” She thought. She felt her stomach knot up, but it had nothing to do with the sandwich. She shook her head.
“What are you going to do with me now that we’re here?”
Jack tilted his head and squinted. He looked down and closed what was left of the sandwich back into the plastic clamshell.
“Here?” He shook his head. “We’re nowhere. We are barely halfway to where we are going. We’re probably still another fourteen or fifteen hours from there.”
Gia blinked. “Where the hell are you taking me?”
“Home. Just like you wanted.”
“My home is … where are we now?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shrugged and looked toward the windshield. “Texacalo or some shit.”
“We’re in Texas?”
“I think we crossed into Oklahoma before we stopped.”
***
There was a noise behind him and Jack turned his head. Gia had heard it too. It was a voice or something maybe just outside the van.
Gia again thought about screaming for help.
He stood up.
She said, “What did you mean halfway there? Where are we going?”
“Shut up before I have to tape your mouth.”
As he stepped away, Gia saw another girl sitting against the wall of the van across from her and Gia gasped. The girl’s ankles were tapped in front of her by one strip of tape. Her hands were behind her back and she had a strip of tape over her mouth.
She must not have behaved, Gia thought and squinted her blurry eyes. I know her.
She was wearing blue jeans, a black shirt, and a pony tail like Gia. Gia’s eyes went wide.
Jack said, “Oh, Gia, meet Susan. Susan, Gia Sorah.”
Gia said, “Uber … but, she left. How?”
Jack clicked his tongue. “She decided to come see what was going on at exactly the wrong time.”
“Doesn’t make sense.” Gia shook her head. Her words began to rise in volume. “She’s been in here the whole time? Where are you taking us?”
“I warned you, Gia.”
He pulled out a strip of tape and tore it off. She tried to turn her head, but he grabbed her chin under her jaw and turned her head back forward. She started gathering her saliva to spit on him, but then he slapped the tape over her lips and smoothed it down on the sides.
Jack leaned in and kissed her over the strip of tape. He whispered. “I really am more sorry about this than you could possibly know. If there was any other way …”
Susan started grunting and struggling behind him.
Jack turned his head and growled. “Okay. That’s enough.”
He lifted up the bag and Gia started shaking her head and grunting “no” behind the tape. He pulled the bag over her head and she smelled the stale odor of piss all over again.
The van started, the radio blared country music, and they were rolling. At first, she felt dirt road under the wheels and then pavement again.
Gia slumped to the side and rested her head on the rise for the wheel well. The vibration blurred her view of the grid pattern in the light from the windshield through the material of the bag. It drowned out the terrible music. Every bump sent a shot through her skull and a pounding headache returned.
Susan was here because of Gia. That meant no one was going to track Susan down to find out what happened to Gia. Maybe Susan had people in her life that loved her and would look for her. Maybe they would find Gia by accident that way.
Tears stung her eyes as she let her head be bumped against the metal well with each imperfection in the road. She stayed slumped against the metal over the wheel and waited for her consciousness to push away from her body again.
***
Chapter 9:
Here’s How It Works
He stopped for gas four times and twice to pee on the side of the road. Each time he stopped for gas, he lifted up the bag enough to show her mouth. He pulled back the tape and gave her a few swallows of water. He wiped her mouth with his sleeve and re-taped her lips before pulling the bag back down. She had to wet herself again having no way of telling him that she needed to go and knowing he probably didn’t care. She was starving, but was afraid to eat knowing that Jack had no intention of giving her bathroom breaks.
She awoke to him pulling her legs out sliding her away from the wall of the van. She felt the knife go up through the tape with one rough cut. He pulled the tape away from her skin on her ankles and she groaned behind the tape over her mouth at the raw pain on her skin.
He pulled her up and forward by her shoulder where he unhooked the clip from her tapped wrists. She heard the metal bang against the side of the van as he let it go.
Jack took hold of her armpit and hauled her up to her feet. She wanted to ask where they were going and what he was going to do to her, but her mouth was still taped inside the bag over her head.
Her legs refused the support her weight and folded out from under her. Her knees thumped against the floor of the van.
“Stand up, Gia. Damn.”
She tried to grunt a response, but wasn’t sure he understood that she had been taped down for two solid days.
He pulled her up again and she fought to move her legs to walk. She made a couple of steps, but as soon as he relaxed his support, she fell to her side with a thud that drove the wind out of her. Gia heaved for air through her nostrils.
Jack said, “I’m not carrying you. You two can either walk or get dragged.”
Gia thought about Susan again and wondered if she were being pulled along too.
Jack open the back doors and Gia heard crickets that sounded insanely loud to her in one continuous warble of noise. She did not realize how long it had been since she had really heard crickets from living in Los Angeles.
Jack took hold of her arm and pulled her along the floor of the van and over the bumper onto the dirt road outside where she landed hard. She skinned her elbow on the landing and one of her knees even through her jeans.
“Stand up and walk, Gia.”
She pulled her legs up feeling the pain build in the small of her back. A cramp grew in one of her hips and traveled down her leg. She tried to push up with one of her elbows with her arms taped behind her back, but failed.
Jack pulled her up to her feet again and she managed to keep her legs under her this time. He pulled her along and she walked blindly with him. He slammed the van doors as they passed.
Her legs were numb and her feet tingled with painful needles of returning circulation. She couldn’t feel muc
h of anything below the waist other than the pain in her feet, but she forced herself to keep walking.
Cold air attacked her skin that was still damp from a mix of sweat and partially dried urine. She shivered adding to the pain of her stressed muscles that were screaming out from the effects of her confinement.
***
She heard a door slam against a wall in front of her. The cricket sound changed as Jack led her inside and she felt the hard, slippery floor under her feet. The air inside smelled stale and laced with dust. As her nose burned and she fought the urge to sneeze with her mouth taped, she smelled an undertone of oil which reminded her of the shed where her father stored the tractor mower and the edgers along with other equipment. It did not have the pungent hint of mowed grass she was used to smelling with the dirty oil.
The door gave a hollow slam behind her and the crickets were muffled although their shrill twitters could still be heard through the walls of wherever Jack had her. She suspected the crickets would be able to hear her screams, but she wasn’t sure anyone else would.
He shuffled her sideways and her shoulder met the wall. Her bicep just under the sleeve of her black tee shirt rested against the rough seam two strips of fake wood paneling on the wall. The material buckled in about a half inch and back out again from her weight. It reminded her of the finish work done in basements that were completed in the seventies and then never updated again.
A stiff light switch gave a loud crack and a light blazed on outlining the shape of a doorway in front of her through the bag. Jack pulled her along. She saw the shape of two figures enter the light in shadowy silhouette ahead of her. Susan was with them.
One of the shapes dropped down to the floor in the bright room. Gia started to let her knees bend, but Jack pulled her back. She could not feel his breath through the bag, but she heard his voice close and low next to her ear.
“This is how it works, Gia,” he said. “Nothing is going to happen to you as long as you do everything I say exactly as I say. Nod your head, if you understand.”
The ends of his sentences echoed like they were in a room with hard tile.
It took her a beat to remember how to work her neck. She bobbed her head up and down enough for him to see the motion even with the bag over her head. The motion made her head throb and spin once she stopped. She hoped he did not make her do it much more.
She could tell where his head was by the sound of his voice. She wanted to drive her skull into the bridge of his nose. One of the stuntmen on one of Gia’s early movies had told her about the physics of headbutts when he was teaching her how to fake one for the camera. Both heads would hurt from the impact, but the head that was stationary would hurt more and take more damage than the head in motion. The ideal point of impact for the attacker was where the side of the head began to curve up toward the scalp. That spot would deliver the most result and damage to all sorts of vulnerable spots on the opponent’s head and face. It was sort of throwing the head sideways and using the weight of the body to drive into and through the target. Gia would not jerk the impact back at the last moment the way she had for the camera.
Gia wanted to help get Susan free and she wanted to hurt Jack, but she didn’t want to change Jack’s mind about hurting her now instead of later. She was broken and exhausted. He had used a knife to cut the tape on her ankles and probably still had it. She couldn’t see what was going on and did not know what situation Susan was in on the floor either.
Now wasn’t the time.
Jack said, “Good. You are going to take a shower and wash the stink and filth off of you. After you are done, Susan is going to shower. You are not going to be left alone, but I’m not going to try anything because you are not going to try anything. If you decide to get sneaky or fighty, I hurt Susan while you watch. If she tries anything stupid, you get hurt. So, you are both going to be smart, you are going to take your turns taking showers, you are going to take five minutes each, and then we are going to settle in for the night since it is after midnight. I’m cutting the tape on your hands and then I’m uncovering you face. Nothing stupid, remember. Susan is counting on you to be smart.”
Gia waited in the silence that followed his last echoing word. The crickets tried their best to scream through the walls at them. Gia wondered if she should nod again even though he hadn’t asked her to. What if nodding when he didn’t ask actually made him angry?
The knife blade felt cold up between the backs of her wrists in her bonds. She sucked air in through her nose. He pulled the edge and snapped the tape. She tried to work her hands free of the tape, but her arms would not cooperate.
He peeled the tape away from her skin and she whimpered at the pain. Her arms came around at her sides and her shoulders ached with a blistering arthritic pain. She let out a long, deep groan inside her throat.
He pulled the bag off in one motion and the light stabbed into her eyes and skull. She squeezed them shut, but then forced them back open watering no longer wanting to be in the darkness.
***
The walls of the bathroom were grimy and scared through the aqua tile to the plaster underneath. The mirror was smeared with white streaks and spots. The sink was stained with what looked like three shades of beige paint.
Susan sat on the floor with her mouth taped and her hands behind her back. Her ankles weren’t taped anymore. She had a strip of tape over her mouth still. She was leaning against the wall between a toilet bowl full of blue water and a bathtub with no curtain. The rings for the shower curtain still hung from the rod above in clumps.
Jack took hold of the tape on Gia’s mouth and ripped it off. One side pulled up easily, but the other side hurt her cheek. She worked her jaw open and closed.
“I’m sorry about this, Susan,” Gia croaked.
Susan blinked several times and looked away.
Jack said, “Turn on the water and let it run. The pipes are old, so it will take a moment to get all the muck and rust out of the shower water.”
Gia swallowed. “Where are we?”
Jack closed the toilet seat and sat down on it with his knee next to Susan’s head. She turned her head away from Jack. He was still holding the black handle of a dangerous looking silver bladed knife in both hands.
Gia turned and looked through the doorway toward the rest of the building. The pitted concrete floor was painted burgundy-red. There were streaks of old, dry carpet glue over the surface, but she could not make out anything else from the light spilling out of the bathroom.
This is where I’m going to die, Gia thought. Maybe I can just make him do it to me now instead of letting him enjoy torturing me first.
“I know what you are thinking,” Jack said. “If you run, Susan pays first and then I will chase you down. Don’t do that to her, Gia. It’s your fault we are all here.”
“Fuck you, Jack.”
“Maybe, but now it is time for a shower. Do as you are told, so that Susan doesn’t have to pay for your stupidity.”
You don’t know what I’m thinking at all, Jack, she thought. When I run, it will be right at you and I will hurt you as much as I can.
She held onto the wall to keep her balance and leaned in over the tub to turn the water on. The handle screeched louder than the crickets. The pipes knocked like a hammer inside the walls. The water dribbled from the corroded showerhead at first and then sprayed out into the tub looking like mud. The pipes whistled in an uneven, tuneless note. Despite the appearance of the water, she felt the mist of it bouncing up off the base of the tub and she closed her eyes.
“Get your clothes off,” he said. “We’re throwing those out and getting clean ones.”
Gia hesitated.
“This is what I’m telling you to do, Gia, and this is what is going to happen either the easy way or the hard way.”
Gia took a deep breath and fought her shirt up over head despite the screaming pain in her shoulders from the crime of lifting her arms that high. She dropped the shirt on the floor and whi
mpered. Gia had to hold the corner of the wall to keep her balance through the weakness from the pain and the dizziness as she stared down.
“Keep going,” Jack said. “I don’t want to be up all night.”
Gia gritted her teeth and saw red spots in the corner of her vision. “I’m going as fast as I fucking can. You had me taped up in the back of a van for two days. I barely have eaten anything. I’m sure I’m dehydrated. I’m covered in my own half-dried piss. If you don’t want to be up all night, don’t kidnap women and drive them all the way across the country, asshole.”
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