The Dysfunctional Honeymoon

by Hadena James

  “It’s the stress of the situation. It’s hard to think clearly so your mind latches onto little details. I have discovered I become a trivia master when I am stressed out.”

  “That really isn’t helpful,” Alex shook her head again.

  “Well, I’m out of helpful.”

  Alex looked around the room. Her eyes fell on a pile of blankets. She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yep, I think those are our beds,” I commented catching her stare.

  “It’s almost dark.”

  “So?”

  “So if we are going to escape, night would be the best time to do it.”

  “And we are going to go where, exactly?”

  “Anywhere but here,” Alex responded. “Give me your razorblade.”

  I handed her the tiny blade. She took it and began scraping at the window. The plaster began to chip and sliver away from the window.

  “Who sets iron bars in a plaster wall?” I asked incredulously.

  “The person that built this building,” Alex said. “It seems like most of it was retrofitted or just plain cobbled together. People do not build buildings like this. The few doors that exist, seem to open the wrong direction. The iron bars are meant to deter wildlife, vagrants and the casual criminal. It wasn’t meant to be a prison. I’m guessing this room has been used to hold something like a prisoner before, but…” She stopped talking.

  She scraped at the window for a while longer. The sun had set when it finally broke off in her fingers. She let out a yelp and swore as she tossed the blade remains to the floor.

  “Here, try this,” I handed her a set of keys.

  “You’ve had these the entire time?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Sometimes,” she shook her head. The plaster chipped away in larger chunks and pieces. In almost no time, Alex had made a large hole revealing the studs and window frame. I smiled at her progress.

  Then I frowned. Outside the window was jungle. I didn’t have a compass or the ability to navigate without one. I was positive Alex didn’t either. And with us not knowing where we were, it was a crap shoot at best.

  “You’re frowning. You are starting to get frown lines, your mother is going to force you to get botox if you continue,” Alex said as she pulled at a piece of wood.

  “I was just wondering how good you were at catching and cooking lizard,” I told her.

  “I don’t...” She shook her head at me again. “Come help me pull.”

  “Sure,” I joined her on the two by four.

  Together we tugged and when the joist gave, it crashed down loud enough that it would have woken the dead. I expected zombies to come out of the jungle. Instead, men came in the doorway and they had guns.

  “Obviously, you two need to be separated,” one of the henchmen said with a thick accent and broken, mispronounced English. Two men grabbed me, two more grabbed Alex, and we were hoisted to our feet and carried from the room. I was shoved into a slightly smaller room that was a bathroom at one time. The door slammed and locked behind me.

  The toilet had been removed, but the bathtub was still there. Along with several years worth of dirt and calcium build up around the plumbing fixtures. I certainly wasn’t crawling into that thing. And now my skills would really be put to the test, Alex and I were separated. I couldn’t leave without her.

  Thursday

  At some point, I fell asleep. I know because I woke up on the floor of the destroyed bathroom with light coming through the small bathroom window. As I looked at it for the first time, I realized there were no bars, just glass on the window.

  The window was a set of panes that opened like French doors. I peeked over the edge of the window. I was on the second floor, but there appeared to be a balcony under the window. For the first time, I wondered if I was in the ruins of a hotel or motel.

  Unfortunately, the window was set a little high for me to do much more than stick my head out of it. The bathroom didn’t really hold anything that I could stand on. I backed up and ran at the window. The first time, I jumped too late and hit the wall instead. I lay on the floor for a second.

  Something scurried near me. I rolled my head to the side and saw an armadillo come out of something that might have been a linen closet at one time. I don’t know how I managed the second attempt. One minute, I was looking at the armadillo, the next I was sitting safely in the window frame wondering if they could climb walls.

  I climbed out the window and onto the balcony. For several seconds, I just stood there, staring at my shoes. They were covered in plaster dust, I was sure it hadn’t been there before I had seen the armadillo.

  My heart was still racing. I had to wait for it to stop thundering in my ears before I could start the search for Alex. As it slowed and became softer, I congratulated myself on my escape from the armadillo. He could have easily given me tuberculosis or some other nasty disease. They probably carried jungle rot too.

  The balcony ran the entire length of this part of the building and then circled around into an unknown area. It seemed to be intact. I bounced on it a little to test it. It held so I began creeping along. I peeked in the windows I passed, searching for Alex. It took a couple of windows, but I finally found her in a room with iron bars on the window. I frowned at them and called to Alex.

  “How did you get out?” She looked at me.

  “No bars on my window, just glass. I was in a bathroom. Can you get out of here?”

  “This wall seems sturdier. Just go, Nadine.”

  “I am so not wandering around the jungle by myself. Who will catch and cook the lizards?”

  “You are obsessed with lizards,” Alex sighed. “I wish you would just go.”

  “Think about what they will do to you if I escape and you don’t,” I told her.

  “There is that.”

  “Now, help me come up with a plan to get you out.”

  “What are you standing on?”

  “A balcony. It wraps this entire side. I think we are in a hotel that went to ruin.”

  “That explains all the rooms.”

  “I don’t think that matters, I think we need to get out of here first, then we’ll discuss the architecture of the place where we were being held.”

  I tugged on the bars, they didn’t budge. Alex did better than me. She lay down on floor and kicked one of the bars. It snapped from its frame, flew past me, and hit the railing. I heard the railing protest, but stay attached. The metal bar flipped over the railing and clatter to the dirt below. Luckily, it wasn’t as noisy as a joist breaking.

  “Can you wiggle out?” I asked her.

  “Between the bars? Probably not, there are these things called boobs that are going to be in the way.”

  “Try it anyway.”

  “Nadine, I’m not going to fit. I don’t think you would fit.”

  To prove her wrong, I began climbing in through the bars. She was right, I didn’t fit. My body lodged in place, my feet dangling, my breasts caught, effectively trapping me.

  “Told you so,” Alex said.

  “Push me back out or something.”

  “I’ll just kick another bar, with your weight on it, it should snap easier,” she said.

  “And when you miss and put your shoe through my skull?”

  “I’m not going to miss.”

  “I have about as much faith in this as you did about me dislocating your thumb. And it’s the lizard, I’m bloated from it. It and the cheese sandwiches have made me retain water.”

  “Well, I don’t think I can push you back out and I didn’t mean to sound like I was commenting on your weight, more like your girth and I don’t believe, even for a second, you are bloated from cheese sandwiches and roasted lizard. More likely, it’s the bottles of water you guzzled yesterday along with the Fanta soda.”

  She braced herself on the floor again and kicked. I felt her sneaker tear the skin from my back as it streaked down my body and hit the bar. The bar gave some and it was easier to breath.


  “That really fucking hurt,” I said after a minute.

  “The bar didn’t snap out.”

  “It did get looser, maybe if I wiggle and you push or pull on the bar, it will break.”

  “Your back is bleeding.”

  “Probably because you scraped all my skin off. I told you that you wouldn’t hit it solidly.”

  “But I didn’t kick you in the head.”

  “There is that,” I parroted her earlier phrasing.

  Together we tried to move the bar. It wasn’t working. It moved, but didn’t give. We both stopped after a while, panting from our efforts.

  “If we don’t get blown up, my side is going to have a very serious bruise on it. This stupid iron frame is digging into me.”

  “When you don’t call, maybe Zeke will realize we have been kidnapped and send in the cavalry.”

  “Or he’ll think I forgot and blow the place up.”

  “Or that. What if we tried the other bar?”

  “You are not kicking me again.”

  “Got any Crisco or butter?”

  “Damn fresh out of both. However, until the taxi blew up I had about eighty different types of lubricant. It would seem that glassware you don’t cook with requires its own special concoction.”

  “Don’t get snippy, I told you we wouldn’t fit through the bars. You’re the one that decided to prove me wrong.”

  “If we get out of this, I’m having breast reduction surgery.”

  “Do you think it will be necessary? I mean, it isn’t like you are going to try one of these stunts again.”

  “I feel like the kid that slides his head into the railing of the stairwell and gets it stuck.”

  “Can you try to leverage yourself out with your feet?”

  “My feet no longer reach the balcony.”

  “Oh, well,” she grabbed both my arms and started pulling. The bar behind me suddenly broke and we tumbled into the room in a heap. The iron bar came with me, stabbing me in the arm and Alex in the leg. We both swore loudly.

  I looked at her leg, “it isn’t bad. More of a flesh wound than anything else.”

  “Yours too,” she said examining my arm. “I think you might have dislocated your shoulder though.”

  “That would explain why it feels like my arm weighs a ton.”

  “Want me to put it back in?”

  “You are not a medical doctor and I don’t believe you’ve had much experience with such things. So no,” I told her.

  “Good news, I think we can get out the window now.”

  “Great, we’re the Abbott and Costello of prison breaks.”

  “I get to be Abbott.”

  “Another weight joke. You’re going to give me a complex. I swear it’s the lizard.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Alex wriggled through the window. I followed; my feet hit the balcony with a soft thump. The balcony moaned and groaned under our combined weight before pitching to the side. Something snapped below us with a thunderous sound and we were suddenly on the ground, on our backs, gasping for air. Everything hurt, even my singed eyelashes.

  “Can you move?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Alex answered. I rolled my head to the side to look at her. She had part of a railing post sticking through her arm.

  “You got lucky, a few inches the other way and it would have gone through your body.”

  “If I had been lucky, it wouldn’t be in me at all.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “I think I’m in shock, because it doesn’t hurt as much as it should.”

  As she spoke, men with guns began to surround us. I was getting pretty tired of them. They went to grab me.

  “So help me god, if you touch me, I will gouge out your eyes and put a hex on you,” I swore at them. They backed up a little.

  “You are injured?” The drug lord asked.

  “Injured doesn’t even cover it,” I told him. “For the record, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job at this. You lock us in this escapable death trap. Where we manage to both almost escape and almost die. What kind of sense does that make? Dead hostages are not going to give you information. Neither are escaped hostages.”

  “Nadine?” Alex said my name softly.

  “Not now Alex,” I turned my attention back to the drug lord. “Furthermore, you give us cheese sandwiches and Fanta for supper. That’s not very civilized and your goon pushed it in with his foot, not very sanitary. I am getting a caffeine headache because I need caffeine. As in soda with caffeine; Coca Cola, Mountain Dew, something like that. Without it, when you go to interrogate me for information, I’m just going to throw up because your voice is going to be like nails pounding into my skull. She’s going to be just as useless as me, because she is also a caffeine addict. You’re just lucky our friend Kenzie isn’t with us, she’s a smoker and a caffeine addict. She’d be extra bitchy. I’m bruised, battered, bleeding and I think I dislocated my hip in the fall. You should have taken precautions, shored up the balcony or something.”

  “Nadine!” Alex said my name more urgently. I turned to look at her, “I don’t think he understands you.”

  “What?” I looked back at him. He was smiling. She was right, he couldn’t understand anything I was saying.

  “Great, I get the Cartel King that can’t speak English,” I sighed and looked at his men. “But some of them understand me.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Because when I said I’d gouge out their eyes if they touched me, they didn’t grab me.”

  “Good point.”

  “I really do think my hip is dislocated,” I told her.

  “Yeah, I would agree with that. Does it hurt?”

  “I think I’m like you, in shock. It should hurt, but it doesn’t seem to be sending tidal waves of pain in either direction, just a dull ache.”

  The drug lord began speaking rapidly in Spanish. The men didn’t move. One of them began speaking back. His words were just as fast, but possibly a little high pitched. They began shouting for someone.

  Anthony walked around the corner of the building. He held a machine gun of some sort and a cigarette. He also had a moustache. I looked twice to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. I was sure it was Anthony though.

  He spoke Spanish without the accent. Alex gave him a quick glance, closed her mouth and attempted to keep it closed while not staring at him. I understood and tried to do the same.

  “Does it hurt?” He finally asked us.

  “Um, yeah,” I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “They speak English but not well. The word ‘hex’ is what made them back off earlier,” he whisper to me with a wink.

  Suddenly, Anthony’s unique skill set came to mind. He had been an assassin in a former life, before joining up with my family. He had been hired once by the Russian Mob to kill me, I had been twelve at the time. It was literally the job that melted his heart. He couldn’t kill a twelve-year-old. Instead he became my body guard, my friend and now my employee. He was what had kept Daniels’ Security together over the years. I was the pretty face, he was the recruiter.

  “You’re both pretty busted up, I don’t think we can move you,” he said standing. He spoke to the others in Spanish. They all looked at us gravely.

  “My arm is starting to hurt,” Alex said.

  “Shock must be wearing off,” I responded.

  “Or replaced,” she gave a quick glance at Anthony. I was with her on that.

  “I’m a little irritated that we are going to be saved by the cavalry instead of our own ingenuity.”

  “I wasn’t looking forward to hanging out in the jungle and catching lizards. I’m going to bleed to death while we wait on them to figure out what to do.”

  “No you won’t, you’ve pretty much stopped bleeding. As long as the post is in, you’re good. The blood has clotted around it and stopped the bleeding. When they take it out, you’re going to bleed like a stuck pig.”

>   “How’s your hip?”

  “It doesn’t feel right. My shoulder doesn’t either. I think I have a concussion. My head bounced off the balcony floorboards pretty hard when it collapsed. However, I still think I’m better off than you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see, eventually.”

  “That’s ominous.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  Anthony finally turned to us, “they are bringing you a doctor, probably at gunpoint, to decide if you can be moved or not. I’m going to stay with you until someone returns.”

  “And we are just supposed to lie here until then?” I frowned at him.

  “Yep, do you need anything?”

  “Aspirin and soda.”

  “Alex?” Anthony asked.

  There was a sudden flurry of Spanish issued from the lips of the henchmen and the drug lord.

  “Oops,” Anthony stood, turned and pulled the trigger on his machine gun. Nothing happened.

  “Oh my god!” Alex shouted.

  “We are sitting ducks!” I shouted back.

  Together we began trying to move our damaged bodies away from the gun play. More shots came from the woods. Anthony tucked, rolled and found cover. We did not. We continued to use whatever working body parts we had to scoot along the busted balcony. Alex was dragging part of the railing with her. The drug lord and henchmen seemed to have Anthony’s playbook. They all took cover and began firing.

  “This isn’t working!” Alex yelled.

  “I know, but I can’t think of anything better to do. I don’t have a gun!”

  Someone grabbed hold of me and jerked me to my feet. The pain was immediate and overwhelming, I vomited. The guy holding me stiffened, twitched, his grab getting stronger, then began to slump. As he fell, I fell with him. He landed on top of both of us.

  “There’s a dead guy on us,” Alex said.

  “At least we are not in any immediate danger,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. My hip throbbed now, shooting pain through my entire body.

  “How do you figure?”

  “If they shoot at us, they’ll hit the dead guy,” I said.

  There was the sound of an explosion. The floor we had been held on exploded in a shower of plaster, wood and metal. Alex and I huddled together under the dead guy.