Stephen shook his head, sweat dripping down his face. He tried to cut the engine, but Louise grabbed his hand and guided it between her legs, under her skirt.
“Let’s fuck,” she said.
“What, right here?”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously. Come on. Let’s do it right now.”
Stephen laughed, then stopped when she didn’t laugh with him. He looked around through the windows and shook his head. “No way. There’s too many people here. The maintenance guy is right there mowing.”
“So what?” She pushed his hand harder against her crotch. “Let’s give him a show.”
“Uh . . .” He closed his eyes and bit his tongue, lifting the edge of her panties up and rubbing her. A baby cried in a car nearby and he yanked his arm free. Ahead of them, they spotted Billy climbing up the apartment’s fire escape. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry. Let’s just go inside where it’s private.”
“You pussy.”
“I guess I am.” He killed the engine and got out of the car. Halfway across the parking lot, they both froze, cappuccinos in hand, at the sound of something loud banging inside a car’s trunk. It sounded like fists.
“Holy shit,” Louise said, pressing her ear against the trunk. “I think someone’s in here.”
“Do you recognize this car?” Stephen asked.
“No. You?”
He shook his head.
“Help!” a voice shouted from inside the trunk. “Somebody please help us!”
Louise jumped back, gasping. “Shit, there really is someone in there.” She leaned forward, over the trunk. “Hey! Whoever you are. Hold on a second. We’ll bust you out.”
She grabbed Stephen’s hand and pulled him toward the apartment. “Where are we going?” he asked. “We need to call the police.”
“Let’s get the trunk opened first.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, maybe get like a knife and jimmy the lock or something.”
“Would that work?”
“I don’t know. It happened in a movie once, so I guess it’s possible.”
They burst into Nick’s apartment and discovered Eliza sitting on the sofa, crying. She screamed at their sudden entrance, which caused them both to scream as well.
“What’s wrong?” Eliza said.
“You won’t believe this,” Louise said, “but there’s somebody locked in someone’s trunk out there.” She pointed behind her with her thumb.
“We gotta call the police,” Stephen said.
Eliza jumped up and blocked Louise from progressing through the living room. “Uh, you may want to hold off on that.”
Louise raised her brow, half-smiling. There was something about the look in Eliza’s eyes that told her everything she needed to know. Today was going to be one of the best days of her life. “And why should we hold off?” she asked, playing stupid.
And Eliza told them.
And Louise laughed long and hard until her stomach hurt. “Are you fucking serious, dude?”
Eliza nodded. “They’re outside right now, locked in the trunk.”
“Holy shitballs.”
“Why the hell did you bring them to Nick’s apartment?” Stephen asked, scratching the back of his head. “That wasn’t the smartest idea.”
“Oh shut the fuck up, party killer,” Louise said. “This is awesome.”
“Where is Nick, anyway?” Eliza scanned the living room again to reconfirm she hadn’t overlooked his sleeping body.
Louise shrugged. “He was gone when we woke up.”
“Dude probably went to Sergio’s,” Stephen said. “Who knows. Has anybody called him?”
“Billy has his phone. I guess Nick threw it at the bartender last night.”
Louise nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” She paused. “Wait, what’s stopping them from calling the police in the trunk? Don’t they have phones?”
“Nah, Billy actually thought about that,” Eliza said. “He took their phones and crushed them.”
“How gangsta.”
“All right, well, you guys gotta get out of here,” Stephen said.
“Where are we supposed to go?” Eliza asked.
“You have an apartment. Take him there.”
“But my apartment is on the sixth floor of my building, and the elevator is out. You guys are on the ground floor. Come on.”
Stephen laughed. “Are you seriously suggesting bringing them in here?”
Eliza shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Dude, this isn’t even your apartment.”
“And it’s yours?”
Louise sighed and waved her hands up, a drop of her cappuccino splashing through the mouth hole. “Will everybody stop acting like a bunch of pussies? Let’s just get these people out of the trunk before they fuckin’ die in there.”
They were quiet for a moment. Outside, the lawn mower continued its genocidal assault on grass.
“Okay,” Stephen said. “How are we going to get them inside? They aren’t tied up or anything, right? So we could open the trunk, but what stops them from jumping out and attacking us? What prevents them from running away?”
Louise set down her cappuccino and ran to the kitchen. She returned with a steak knife. “We could threaten them.”
Eliza nodded. “Yeah, that’d work.”
Stephen laughed, but more out of stress than humor. “I’m dating a wannabe psychopath.”
“I don’t understand the problem,” Louise said.
“How many knives do we have?” Eliza asked. “You can’t stab two people at once.”
Louise laughed. “Kind of like knocking out two birds with one stone. Two hostages with one dull steak knife.”
Eliza just stared at her.
“You know what would really work, though?” Louise smiled. “A gun.”
“Nobody has a fucking gun, Louise,” Stephen said. “Jesus fucking Christ. We operate a small press, not a fucking hitman-for-hire business.”
Louise’s face lit up and she pointed at him, excited. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“You beautiful genius!” she said, and rushed to the back room. She returned with a leftover promo crucifix from The Cumming of Christ. One of the black ones.
“What are you gonna do with that?” Stephen asked. “Stimulate them until they cooperate?”
“No, asshole.” Louise held the dildo crucifix close to her side, shielding the majority of the object with the sleeve of her jacket, letting only the head stick out. “Jesus fucking Christ indeed!”
“Uh.”
“It looks like a gun, doesn’t it?”
Stephen laughed. “No, not at all.”
Eliza nodded. “I dig it.”
Louise looked down at the mattress across the room. “What if we threw some pillow cases over their heads when we lead them in? That way they can’t really see anything.”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “I think it would look like we were about to execute them. People might freak out.” He brushed the blinds aside and peeked through the window. “The maintenance guy is out there on his riding lawnmower. He’ll see us.”
“That guy sold me pot last week. I doubt he gives a shit,” Louise said.
“This is a little more serious than selling pot.”
“Ah, fuck this,” Louise said, and stomped out of the apartment. Eliza and Stephen stayed behind a moment, giving each other a confused look, then followed her outside. She’d already found the trunk release button and popped it open and was dragging one of the hostages out and dropping him onto the cement. She held the dildo crucifix at her side and aimed it at the other guy in the trunk.
“Get the fuck out of the trunk, don’t think I won’t explode your faces with bullets, ‘cause I totally will.”
“Holy shit,” Stephen said.
The other guy scrambled out of the trunk, lifting his hands. “Please don’t shoot.”
Harlan Anderson slowly climbed to his feet, also holding his hands up.
“What the hell do you guys want?”
“We want you to turn around and walk into the building. Apartment number twenty-three. Move your asses.”
“And if we refuse?” Harlan asked.
“Then . . . uh.” Louise paused, thought for a moment. “Look, dude, just get in the fuckin’ apartment before shit gets ugly.”
Harlan sighed, then he and the other hostage turned around and moved toward the apartment entrance. Stephen stared at his girlfriend, holding the knife she’d given him. She was waving at the maintenance man, who waved back at them, as if telling them to have a good day. Stephen couldn’t resist laughing. It was the laugh of a man losing his grasp on reality.
“What’s so funny?” Louise asked.
“You sound like you’re in a movie.”
“Maybe I am.”
“This ain’t Hollywood, babe,” Stephen said.
“You’re right. This is much more fun.”
15. THE UNIVERSE FATTENS & WE CAN NO LONGER SUPPORT ITS WEIGHT
On the way home, Nick stopped at the coffee shop. Despite not finding his phone, it didn’t change the fact that he was still starving. His apartment was a lost cause. There weren’t even enough sofa crumbs for the mice to survive on.
An eReader greeted him outside the coffee shop, abandoned on the sidewalk. He picked it up and inspected the screen. It wasn’t cracked or damaged in any apparent way. What kind of maniac just leaves a perfectly fine eReader on the sidewalk? He turned it on and found himself looking at an e-copy of a book he’d recently published: The Cumming of Christ by Sergio Placid.
Nick stared at it for a long time, not sure how to react. He laid it back down on the sidewalk and slowly backed away, entering the coffee shop. He typically didn’t frequent coffee shops, as they were often occupied by writers trying to shove half-finished manuscripts down his throat. All the local unpublished authors knew Nick from various conventions, and they were all lining up to tell him about the Great American Tentacle Novel already written inside their heads, they just needed to sit down and type it out.
The barista smiled as he approached the counter. “Hey, Nick.”
“Hi, Lucy.”
He smiled back, although his mind was still on the eReader. If he didn’t at least smile back to her there was a good chance she would poison his order. A few years ago, they’d gone out for a couple of weeks. She also wanted to be a writer. She’d showed her one of his short stories and he’d told her it wasn’t very good. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say. He wasn’t going to lie. She’d asked for his honest opinion, as a small press publisher. So he’d given it to her. The relationship ended with her slamming a rollerblade into his scrotum. He still had the scar.
“You hear from Billy today?”
“Nah,” Nick said. “We all went out to Nightscapes last night. Sergio was doing a reading. We got separated, no idea what happened to him. Why?”
Lucy’s smile widened, like she had a juicy secret to spill. “Well, he came in here earlier this morning.”
“Okay, and?”
“He was tweaking big time.”
“What else is new.”
“He attacked somebody.”
“What?”
The woman in line behind Nick cleared her throat loudly. They ignored her.
“He jumped this dude outside the shop. I don’t know who he is. But he must’ve pissed Billy off because that guy was vicious.”
“Whoa.”
“But that ain’t all.”
“What do you mean?”
The woman behind them cleared her throat again, dragging it out. Nick turned around and asked if she wanted a cough drop. She quieted down.
Lucy continued. “So, get this, okay? When Billy was beating on that dude, some other dude stopped his car to help, and Billy started kicking his ass, too.”
“Jesus.”
“I know, right?”
“I wonder what he was on.”
“Well, he’d just bought a lemon pound cake.”
“I mean drugs.”
“Oh, right. Duh. But, okay, get this crazy shit.” Lucy leaned forward on the counter, pushing her boobs together. Nick was momentarily distracted. Maybe her short story hadn’t been so bad, after all. “When Billy finished beating them, he threw ’em both in the driver’s trunk and drove off.”
“What?”
“He straight up kidnapped them.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know! The cops were here and everything. One of them even asked for my number. Like, as if, right?”
“Did they catch Billy?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Shit.”
“I know. Where do you think he’d take them?”
Nick bit his lip. “Probably my place.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.”
“What did you tell the cops?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I said I didn’t recognize either of them.”
“What about the guy Billy jumped?”
“Nah, dude. I mean, he comes in sometimes and fucks around on his iPad or whatever, but I don’t know him or anything.”
“All right. Thanks. I’ll find Billy, try to straighten this shit out.”
“No problem.” She thought for a moment, then said, “So, I’ve been working on this new story . . .”
“I’ll have a scone, please.”
16. KIDNAPPERS & HOSTAGES
Harlan and his trunk companion were pushed into the apartment. The man who’d attacked them outside the coffee shop was mysteriously absent, which was fortunate. The man was a psychopath and every second they spent separated was a second Harlan could avoid breaking out into an anxiety attack. He looked around the apartment and grimaced. He didn’t care if they were kidnappers. They could have at least tidied up a little before snatching him. “This place is a pigsty.”
“Ah, it’s not too bad,” Lewis said. “It beats my trunk.”
“Quit kissing the kidnappers’ asses.”
“Yeah,” one of the women said, sipping from a gas station coffee cup. “We know this place is trashed. What’s your name, anyway?”
“L-Lewis.”
“Well, Lewis, you don’t need to lie. We aren’t going to let you go because of compliments.”
“Well, what will make you let us go?”
“Hmm. We don’t know yet.”
The other woman, the one who’d opened the trunk an hour or so ago and looked at them, then freaked out and closed it again, sat at the edge of the couch, staring at her hands. Her body was shaking. Maybe she was in shock. He didn’t know why she was acting like a victim. She wasn’t the one fucking kidnapped. She wasn’t the one who’d been attacked on the street and stuffed into a trunk. She wasn’t the one who’d lost her eReader in the middle of the street. Some homeless person had probably found it by now and bartered it for crack cocaine.
“Why are we even here?” Harlan asked, almost in a growl. “Why did that asshole jump me? Do you guys think I have money? Because, oh my God, that’d be hilarious.”
“And, really,” Lewis said, “there’s no reason at all you’d want me. It’s him you want. I have nothing to do with any of . . . whatever this is about.”
Harlan sneered at him. “Dick.”
Lewis exhaled. “This isn’t my fight.”
But Harlan was no longer listening to Lewis. His attention was stolen, refocused on the many stacks of books piled along the walls of the living room. Books everywhere. Books he recognized. Books he regularly reviewed on his blog.
“Why . . . why do you have so many BILF Publishing books?” He knelt down and traced his finger along the cover of Nick Twig’s The Trampoline Incident. Possibly one of the worst books he’d ever read in his life. Talk about pretentious trash.
“What’s a BILF?” Lewis asked.
“It stands for ‘Books I’d Like to Fuck’,” the male kidnapper sai
d.
“That’s, uh . . . that’s an interesting name.”
Harlan still couldn’t process what he was seeing. “But, why . . .?”
The woman drinking coffee set the cup down and stepped forward, smiling and lifting her arm up and revealing the true identity of the dildo crucifix. “SERGIO PLACID’S THE CUMMING OF CHRIST” could clearly be read across the horizontal sex toy.
Harlan gasped and stepped back, dropping The Trampoline Incident. “No . . .”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He turned to the other hostage, the one named Lewis. “Run! These people are going to fucking kill us! Help! Help!”
Harlan sprinted toward the door.
Behind him, the woman who’d been drinking coffee shouted, “Halt!” Then something bashed into the back of his skull and he fell forward, slamming his face into the bottom of the door. He turned around and sat against the door, holding the dildo crucifix in his lap. He thought he saw a drop of his blood on one of its tips. The fucking thing was deadly.
Lewis looked at Harlan, then at the steak knife in the male kidnapper’s hand, and opted to sit down on the couch. “I think the apartment is perfectly fine.”
“Take off your belt,” the dildo crucifix thrower said.
The male kidnapper cleared his throat. “What the fuck, Louise?”
She rolled her eyes. “Shut up, doofus.” She nodded at Lewis. “Come on, off with it.” She looked down at Harlan, still groaning on the floor. “You too, dickwad.”
***
Louise and Eliza tied the hostages’ arms behind their backs while Stephen paced around the living room. Once in a while he’d look at the knife in his hand and gasp, then continue pacing.
A car started up. Stephen stepped outside just in time to see Lewis’s vehicle speed out of the parking lot. “I think Billy just took off.”
“Of course he did,” Eliza said, still on the couch next to Lewis. She had managed to finally stop shaking, but her skin was still pale and sickly. “Like he’d ever clean up one of his own messes.”
“Can somebody please explain why this is happening?” Lewis asked. “I’m so confused.”
“Sure,” Harlan said, looking more pissed off than afraid. “These psychopaths run a small press. They publish these weird little bizarro books. And, on my book review blog, I’ve given some negative criticism of some of their books. And now, I guess, they must want some kind of revenge, because God forbid they ever actually learn how to write.” He looked at Louise. “That about sum it up?”
How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers Page 5
