by Mitch Goth
“Well, this sucks,” Cera said with a sigh as she observed the dank and empty room she and Cady had been deposited into.
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Cady agreed, her voice high and uneven.
“‘The understatement of the year’ is the understatement of the year.”
The room they’d been left in was floor to ceiling concrete, with the exception of a few thin and barred windows near the ceiling. Water ran silently through cracks in the walls and coated the floor in a paper-thin layer of moisture, which produced an inescapable and rather pungent odor. A single naked bulb hung low from the ceiling and produced very little light. The only pieces of furniture in the room were two rusty folding chairs that had been set up next to each other in the middle of the floor. Cera wasted no time sitting down in one. It creaked heavily under her.
“You’re being kind of nonchalant about this,” Cady observed her lounging friend and she paced around and kicked up minute amounts of water.
“What good will panicking do?” Cera wondered in response.
“I’m not saying panic, I’m saying show some concern.”
“I am showing concern, I’m contemplating our escape.”
“Our escape? How the hell do you expect to do that?”
“There’s two windows,” Cera pointed behind her to the two dusted up slits in the wall.
“They’re thin, not to mention barred,” Cady pointed out, pacing faster.
“You’re going to let a little piece of circular iron stop you?”
“I don’t think I have a choice, the iron is stronger than me.”
“But you’re smarter than it, as far as I know anyway.”
“This isn’t the appropriate time to be a sasshole, Cera.”
“Sasshole?”
“A sassy asshole, you’re being one.”
“I don’t think this is the appropriate time to be calling people sassholes, Cady.”
“Well what do you want me to do? I have no clue where we are, or how we’re going to get out of here. All I know for sure is that you’re being a total sasshole.”
“If I may make up for my sasshole attitude, I may be able to ease your stress over our location.”
“Really? How?” Cady stopped pacing and looked skeptically at her friend.
“Think about it,” Cera got up from her seat and wandered over to one of the windows, “we didn’t drive for very long at all. My guess is that we’re still in town,” she stood on her toes and peered through the window. “And, although I can’t see shit out of this window, I can guess based on the building we’re in that we’re somewhere in the industrial district. You know, down downtown.”
“Great, we know where we are…kind of,” Cady shrugged anxiously, “now how do we get out of here.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” a voice came from the direction of the door.
They both spun around to see three men standing in front of the now opened door. The man in front was considerably taller and older looking than the other two. He had a thick but short black beard that matched his greasy looking head and sinkhole eyes. The two behind him were identical looking, obviously twins. Their hair was the exact same short curly style; they were the same height and even dressed in the exact same dark, almost formal looking clothes. The only difference between them was one of them wore a thin pair of glasses. All three of them had equally dark skin, and Cera quickly noticed this.
“Middle Eastern terrorists?” she scoffed, taking a small step towards them. “Way to break the stereotype guys.”
The bearded man cocked his head Cady’s way.
“Who is she?” he said in a deep accent as he pointed a short, thick finger at Cera.
“I don’t know,” Cady gave a nervous smile and backed towards a corner.
“Okay, I’m going to cut the shit,” the bearded man took a step into the room and one of the twins shut the door. “First off, these two,” he pointed a finger at the twins, “they were born and raised in Canada, I’m the only Middle Eastern born man here, you racists. Hell, even I spent a good amount of my childhood in Montreal.”
“Don’t lump me in with her,” Cady nodded towards Cera and backed further away.
“Grow some balls, traitor,” Cera said, glaring at Cady.
“Sasshole,” Cady replied.
“Secondly,” the bearded man spoke much louder in order to overpower the girls’ conversation, “I am looking for one person, and one person only. Either of you give that person up, I will set you free.”
“You know,” Cera responded spitefully, “my memory is a little cloudy when it comes to people named, ‘that person’. Are you sure they didn’t go by any other name?”
“I’m sure they do,” the bearded man replied, thoroughly agitated, “but what ever it is, I don’t know it.”
“So how the hell are we supposed to know who you’re talking about?” Cera questioned, matching his agitation.
“We’re looking for a person with a very particular skill-set, someone who would no doubt stand out in a crowd. We have been searching for three years for this person, and that search has brought us to you and your group of friends.”
“Alright,” Cera sighed, “it’s not like I don’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about. But I don’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about.”
At that, the bearded man pulled a small pistol from his pocket and pressed it against Cera’s head. Cera was unmoved.
“The assassin!” the bearded man demanded, cocking the hammer. “We are looking for the assassin that has been our government!”
Almost immediately, Cera bent over in uproariously laughter.
“An assassin?” she exclaimed through her fit.
“It’s not funny! Our government is in turmoil because of this person!”
Cera simply went on with her hilarity. Cady even snickered quietly from the dark side of the room she’d hidden herself away in.
“And what government might that be?” Cera wondered.
“The great Republic of Syria,” the bearded man replied, stone faced.
“Really,” Cera looked beyond him at the two men standing by the door, “not Canada, huh?”
“I have no time for your games! Tell me what you know!”
“Well,” Cera began, getting as close as she possibly could to the tall, bulky man before her, “I know that your breath smells like the diaper of an eighty-eight year old man with an addiction to Indian food, other than that, I don’t know very much about what’s going on here.”
Even the twins by the door began chuckling at this.
The bearded man spun around to face them, “Shut up!” he demanded. When they did not heed his direction, he stormed over to them, spraying water across the room with each stomp. “What was so fucking funny about that?”
The spectacled twin spoke up, still laughing, “I don’t know, it just was.”
The bearded man bolted from the room, screaming obscenities in many languages as he did. The door shook the tough foundation of the room on its forceful closure.
“Sorry about Hosni, he can get a little worked up sometimes,” the man with the glasses spoke again.
“He means well,” the other twin added.
“Does his gun mean well too?” Cady asked, emerging from the shadows.
“That’s just him getting worked up.”
“So who are you people?” Cera inquired.
“We are the Homsi’s,” the spectacled twin approached her. “That fine man you just spoke to was Hosni, my twin brother is Adnan,” he gestured to his sibling, who gave a small bow, “and I’m Josh.”
“Hosni, Adnan and…Josh,” Cera summed up with a slow nod of understanding.
Josh extended a hand to her with a smile.
“I’m not sure I understand what’s happening here,” Cady remarked.
“Hosni explained it well,” Adnan replied. “We’re looking for an assassin.”
“Well you’re looking in
the wrong place.”
“I hate to argue, but three years of constant searching has led to you five people.”
“I guess that means you guys fucked up a long way down the line,” Cera smirked.
“Doubtful,” Josh shook his head. “We made sure we were right, we’re looking for one of you. We’re sure of it.”
“What did we ever do to you?” Cady questioned.
“One of you killed dozens of Syrian government officials, and we will not stop until that person is brought to justice for the destruction of our great nation.”
“You’re Canadians!”
“We’re proud of our heritage.”
Just then, Hosni burst back into the room.
“What the fuck are you two still doing in here? Get out here!” he boomed before disappearing once again.
Josh turned back to the two of them and shrugged, “Cady, Cera, it’s been nice talking to you.”
“How do you know our names?” Cera asked before they had a chance to leave.
“Like I said, we made sure we were right about the conclusion of our search. We were thorough in our research. We know all your names. Cady, Cera, Taylor, Mike and Nate if I’m not mistaken.”
“You’re not,” Cady shook her head in shock.
“I figured,” Josh smiled again before he and his brother departed and locked the door behind them.
-
Down the hall from the room, Hosni addressed his brothers. His yells had turned to whispers to ensure neither of the girls could listen in.
“Now I don’t have to tell you how dire this situation is for our country. If the assassin gets away, democracy wins. If democracy wins, we die,” he explained.
“Dying would really complicate things for me,” Josh added.
“The point is,” Hosni continued, “the assassin could be any one of them. You two need to go back out there and find the other three. Kill them or bring them back here, whichever most suits your desire.”
“Why don’t we just call them with the phones we took from the other two?” Adnan wondered.
“We broke them, remember,” Josh recalled.
“Why did we do that?”
“If I remember right, we didn’t.”
“That’s right, Hosni did,” Adnan recalled.
“Why did he do that?”
“Who knows, Hosni does a lot of questionable things.”
“If only he had someone who thought just like him, but could keep him from doing stupid things like that.”
“Like a twin?”
“Exactly like a twin.”
“Hey!” Hosni yelped at them, “quit your conspiring bullshit, you know I hate it when you do that. Get yourselves on the road.”
Their conspiring came to an abrupt end. They both gave Hosni an identical smile and started off towards the exit in a gait that mirrored that of the other.
5
