by Ryan Horvath
Calvin felt his temperature rise and his heart accelerate. Sweat started to form on his skin and he knew the first injection Dr. Andrews gave him was starting to take effect. He felt arousal rising and as he glanced down at himself he saw he was indeed succumbing to the effects of the drug. He fought to keep in control of himself. Think about something else! his mind warned. A veggie sandwich. That brown shit that some baseball players spit out of their mouths in the middle of the field. An overweight grandmother with her two front teeth missing. A pear shaped middle-aged man with a hairy back and wearing cut off shorts mowing his lawn. As much as he tried to imagine these things, his erection continued to grow. In less than a minute he was at full attention.
“Very good,” Miedo said looking between Calvin’s legs. He hissed and stepped close with snake-like speed and slammed the needle into Calvin’s arm again causing the young man to cry out. He paused and studied Calvin.
Calvin felt the second larger dose of Dr. Andrews’s drug move quickly through his veins and arteries. In seconds, he felt like putty, though his mind, as promised, remained fully aware of what was happening. Between his legs was anything but putty however.
“Alright,” Miedo said and clapped his hands together. “This ought to be fun!” He grabbed a ski mask off the table and pulled it over his head. The he picked up a gun, a Sig Sauer he’d owned for years. Miedo stepped to Calvin and said, “Now, Heather has no idea what’s about to happen to her. I can’t wait to see this.”
Calvin tried to speak, to spout more hatred at Dr. Andrews, but all that escaped him were groans.
Miedo stepped to the table Calvin was bound to and pushed a button. The restraints around his wrists and ankles came open with a clank. Calvin shakily stepped forward. Miedo helped stabilize Calvin and then proceeded to guide him over to Heather. He felt Calvin offer feeble attempts of resistance so Miedo shoved the barrel of his pistol into Calvin’s mouth, eliciting mouse-like squeaks, tears, and fear-filled wild eyes from the teenager. The gun in the boy’s mouth would add to the scene. When they were inches from Heather, Miedo checked to see that his first injection was still working. It was. Calvin was still turgid and now producing fluid. This made Miedo smile wildly. With a nearby remote control he switched on the cameras. He lined Calvin up with Heather and took pride that all of his measuring had worked properly. He had her suspended at the perfect height.
With the gun in the young man’s mouth, he forced the endowed Calvin into the unsuspecting Heather.
She screamed and resisted. Calvin groaned with anger and flared eyes of rage. He tried to reach for the gun, pull the trigger himself and end his life and this unthinkable situation, but his body was Dr. Andrews’s puppet.
And Miedo didn’t stop. He had a video to make.
~*~0~0~*~
When Miedo was satisfied he had enough footage, he returned Calvin to his table and re-secured him. The boy’s eyes looked haunted but Miedo didn’t care. He forced another injection into Calvin and the teen fell into his nightmare sleep.
Miedo looked back to Heather, who stopped moving a few moments before he finished Calvin’s assault on her. Miedo strolled over to her and felt for a pulse. He found an ever so faint one so, Miedo hoped he’d get to do this again.
Giddy, he left both of his captives in their degraded states and quickly gathered the memory cards from the cameras. He took them to his computer and downloaded all the footage. He spent the next ninety minutes splicing together a video which he then uploaded onto Calvin’s phone, which he’d been careful to deactivate the GPS on. He left his space and drove ten miles away. He used Calvin’s phone and, though he knew it probably would get pulled from the site pretty quickly, he uploaded the video to YouTube. Enough people would get to see it. After, he used Calvin’s phone and sent the video to five individual people. The detective, Terry. The medical examiner, Holly. Calvin’s best friend, Walt. The drunk ex-cop, Chad. And Mr. Star.
Mr. Star wasn’t going to be happy. Not one bit.
But Miedo was.
He smiled broadly, threw the phone to the ground, and smashed it with a heavy foot. He sauntered back to his car. His smile never left his face.
~~14~~
Tim Rock turned off the water for the shower. He placed a forearm against the warm tile and pressed his forehead to it while he let the last of the water sluice off of him. He tried to stare at the tile but his eyes, as they usually did since kick-ball day, were drawn to the part of himself he’d once been so proud of.
The doctor he saw after the hateful incident Tim referred to as kick-ball day told Tim that if he’d gotten medical attention sooner, there might have been a good chance to undo the damage, but since Heather left him alone and unconscious after her attack, Tim never had a chance at recovering his manhood. As such, he would spend the rest of his natural life sitting on the can to pee with a guiding hand; and of course, he’d never have sex again.
For a while after kick-ball day, Tim couldn’t figure out what happened to make Heather react so violently the last time they were together. But then one day a man called into the pharmacy where Tim worked part time. Tim had an advanced degree in pharmacological science but, since leaving college a few years back, he’d been unsuccessful, like so many other college graduates, at finding an available career in his field of study. He blamed it on his youth and found part-time work in a small but busy pharmacy on the northwest edge of Minneapolis. To supplement that income, he got a job at the nearby high school leading a few gym classes each week and coaching their mediocre football team.
In the cooling shower stall, as he looked at his wrecked manhood and reached for a towel, he silently cursed himself once again, for ever taking that job at the school. Had he not… if he just stuck with the pharmacy and lived off his inheritance, he never would have met Heather and therefore never would have been subjected to kick-ball day.
But that day, when the doctor, the psychiatrist who Tim never met and knew nothing about, came into the pharmacy, Tim knew his life was changed forever. At the time, he couldn’t figure out if it was for the better or worse. By the time he got dressed and downstairs in his more-than-modest house this evening, he would know. And it would definitely be for the worse.
~*~0~0~*~
It was a relatively slow Wednesday evening at the pharmacy and Tim was doing busy work along the store’s aisles of merchandise straightening products and pulling them to the front edge of the shelves. He was tired from the day; his fucking groin ached in the loose boxer shorts he was forced to wear nowadays; and he was ready to put his feet up with a strong whiskey and water and try to forget that he was barely thirty and already impotent.
A moment later, he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Phone call, Tim,” a voice said from behind him. He turned and saw the short and portly cashier named Wanda.
“Thanks,” Tim replied and moved toward the back of the store where he usually took his calls. There, he picked up the phone, activated the extension, and said, “Yes? This is Tim.”
“Coach… Rock… Star,” the voice said on the other line. Tim didn’t recognize it. Only the kids at school called him that and this voice sounded far more mature.
“Yeah. Who is this?” he said with furrowed brows.
“You know, coach? There are a lot of people who would really frown upon the fact that you fucked and carried on a long-term relationship with one of the students at your school. One of the underage girls. The school board. The rest of the faculty. The girl’s parents. Not to mention the good old state police,” the voice returned.
Tim instantly felt icy shivers scurry down his spine but under his arms and above his lip, a quick sweat formed. “How… how… how…,” he stammered.
“Relax, Tim,” the caller said. “I’m not going to turn you in.”
Those words pulled some of the weight off Tim’s shoulders, but not all of it.
“I know what she did to you. How she emasculated you with one swift kick,” the voice said into his ear. “Someday, y
ou’ll have to show it to me. I like seeing… oddities almost as much as I like…”
“What do you want?” Tim interrupted. He was embarrassed and irritated.
“Well… I don’t want anything. But I bet you want something. So I was thinking a collaboration of sorts,” the voice replied.
And Tim listened. He clutched the phone so hard that his knuckles went white. The man on the phone knew everything about that day… about kick-ball day. Heather apparently believed Tim had raped her. That’s why she assaulted him. And somehow, though he couldn’t remember ever completing an orgasm inside of her, she’d gotten pregnant with a baby she believed to be Tim’s and promptly aborted it. Tim listened with growing anger and intrigue about everything else that was transpiring with Heather. Whoever this man on the other end of the phone line was, he knew Heather quite well. And she had the audacity to blame Tim for everything. As Tim recalled, Heather was more than willing to get tied up that time. By his own admission, he couldn’t recall much after they started having sex that day until he woke up on the floor in a puddle of vomit and broken below the navel. But she had ruined him for the rest of his life and she was telling this stranger it was the other way around; that Tim caused her to develop a quartet of ridiculous phobias and set her own a path of self-loathing because of him. When the speaker on the phone was through, Tim was furious. His face was flush and hot. His underarms were soaked and his heart flooded blood into all of his extremities except the one he most wanted it to go into. And he was blind. Blinded with rage.
“Really nasty stuff she’s been saying about Coach Rock Star, isn’t it?” the caller said then. Tim was so angry, he didn’t catch the mocking and goading tone.
“I’ll … kill… her,” Tim slowly orated.
“Aw, now, where would be the fun in that?” the voice said. “Wouldn’t it be better to see her broken? Like you?”
“I… I’m not broken,” Time contradicted. Even he didn’t believe his own words.
Laughter came through the phone. “No. You’ve got brains, plenty of money, your good looks,” the voice confirmed.
“So what do you want?” Tim repeated.
“What do you want?” the voice returned.
“I want… I want to see her torn apart. Plowed into by an army so she can never use her man-trap again. Ruined. Like she ruined me.” The stark conviction was in his voice even though, somewhere deep inside, he still loved Heather. “Will you help me?”
“Say the word, Coach Rock Star,” the voice prompted.
“I’ve got cash, whatever you need. And I can get drugs, stuff to sedate her,” Tim turned and his eyes darted across the various shelves of prescription drugs at his disposal.
“This is just great,” the voice responded. Tim couldn’t see the speaker but the speaker was smiling almost ear to ear and his upper body swayed back and forth.
“She’s gonna pay for what she did to me. And I’m gonna be there to savor every exquisite moment of it,” Tim added.
“It should be no other way,” the voice agreed. Tim also couldn’t see it but the speaker, Miedo, was recording this conversation. He’d practically scripted it and was ecstatic with how well it was going. He already had his first piece of evidence against dumb-revenge-driven Tim Rock and obtaining it had been like taking candy from a baby. Miedo switched off the tape recorder and said, “Now tell me about some of the drugs. I have an interest in…”
And Tim talked. He was powerless against it. He was so angry and hurt by what Heather was saying he did that he lost all sense of right and wrong. He talked at length until long after Wanda locked the doors, turned off the lights in the store, and waved good night to him. When the conversation was finished, he found he would be supplying this stranger with money and dangerous powerful drugs, and he believed it was all his idea.
~*~0~0~*~
Tim walked out of the bathroom attached to his large master bedroom. He had his damp towel wrapped around his neck and headed for his dresser. As he opened a drawer and was greeted with boring old boxer shorts instead of the fashionable hip-briefs he used to wear, he noticed his phone was flashing indicating a message. He pulled out a pair of the shorts, stepped into them, tucked his deformed organ behind the fabric, and secured them around his waist. He then picked up his phone.
He’d received a video message and it was from a number he didn’t recognize. He clicked the message.
The video showed him something he’d paid a lot of money for; something he’d risked his career and freedom for; something he was supposed to get to witness firsthand and participate in. Miedo had forced the football player on Heather ahead of schedule. He began watching with stunned curiosity but it quickly transitioned into outright fury. This wasn’t what Tim paid and waited for. While Tim watched the video a second time and his ire escalated, he didn’t see the small red dot that appeared on his back just above the waist of his boxer shorts. It was joined by a second and then a third. The three dots moved together and converged on his spinal column.
He was startled by a loud booming sound from outside. It took him a moment to deduce someone was using a megaphone. Realization dawned on him as he reasoned what Miedo had done. Tim had been set up. Used. And now he was in real trouble.
“THIS IS THE MINNEAPOILS POLICE DEPARTMENT!!” the voice thundered. Tim whirled around and saw the three red dots reassemble just over his sternum. “WE HAVE THE HOUSE SURROUNDED! COME OUT PEACEFULLY OR WE WILL COME IN FORCEFULLY! YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO COMPLY.”
Tim’s mind raced. He looked again at the three red dots. He was young and fast. Could he outrun them? He had a safe way out of the house through a hidden wall panel in the basement. Could he get there before the police reached him? Should he surrender? If he surrendered, he had nothing. He had no evidence against Miedo or that the man even existed. He had no way to clear himself. All he had was a paper trail of unaccounted-for money, a considerable amount of missing inventory from the pharmacy, and a video on his phone of a kidnapped girl being savagely raped by an unwitting boy with a gun in his mouth; and for all anyone knew, Tim was the other man holding the gun and wearing the mask. Sweat coated his body undoing the cleanliness he’d gotten from the shower. He couldn’t have more than two or three seconds until his front and back doors were broken into.
He bolted for the basement.
A split second later, bullets blasted into the bedroom.
Yeah, I’m seriously fucked he thought as he ran for the basement door.
Shouts and loud crashes flooded into the house in the wake of the bullets.
~*~0~0~*~
Miedo watched with surprised pleasure as Mr. Star decided to run rather than be taken into custody. Miedo wasn’t sure which avenue the trapped rat would choose when the police descended on him but he didn’t care much. They would find enough of Heather’s DNA in Mr. Star’s house to make them believe the coach/pharmacist had indeed kidnapped and probably killed the girl. Miedo would be free to continue pushing the limits of her phobias. And Calvin’s. He pressed a button, sending a feedback signal into the cameras in Mr. Star’s house, blowing their circuitry and making them untraceable.
He glanced at where Heather hung. She’d groaned a few times since she’d been violated for the camera but she didn’t appear to be conscious. He shifted his eyes to Calvin. The boy was clearly in the throes of a night terror that Miedo’s special drugs induced. His face scrunched repeatedly and his arms constantly moved in their restraints as if the boy wanted to protect himself or fight back.
Miedo smiled and shook back and forth. He couldn’t be happier with how his game was going.
~~15~~
“Walt,” Holly said. “You need to try to calm down.” She could see the boy’s initial tears and sadness had escalated into rage. As she thought about it, she knew she was pretty damn pissed herself. She was in the back seat of the speeding car sitting a little sideways with a hand on Walt’s shoulder. One of her lesser phobias was touching other living humans, but it was cont
rollable and she was able to make tactile contact with other people when the time was right or she really needed to. And Walt sure looked like he needed it.
“Why would someone do something like this?!” Walt fired.
Holly also wondered that, but she didn’t immediately have an answer. Instead, she mentioned there were crazy, bad-wired, ill-thinking, fucked-in-the-head people all over out there in a world overrun by more than seven-point-three billion inhabitants. Even if only one percent of the population fell into this category, that was still a mind staggering seventy-three million vile souls alive today. And she knew the percentage of people walking the Earth today with a disturbing mental illness of some kind was probably greater than one percent. “It has to happen somewhere,” Holly offered. “Man’s violent nature is a cycle that never ends and never stops looking for a new place to call home.”
“That sounds about right,” Chad muttered in agreement from the front passenger seat as Terry rocketed them through another red light.
“This time, it’s reared its ugly head here,” Holly said. “In our little metropolis.”
“That’s bullshit! Why would someone use Calvin for something like this?” Walt said in frustration. “He’s… like… the nicest guy there is.”
“Maybe it’s because of the fact he’s so nice,” Chad said. “Someone didn’t like that.”
“Well, I’m gonna be kicking someone’s ass into the afterlife for this,” Walt said boldly. He held his phone up and waggled it in the air. The message light blinked rapidly, but Walt stopped checking his messages after he received the forty-fifth one, all from other kids at his school in a span of about five minutes. “All the people who saw that video… Even if we get Cal out of wherever he is, how’s he going to recover from this? How’s he ever going to have a normal life after this? Especially with his phobias…”
Neither Holly nor Chad had an answer for this, and Terry was listening intensely into his phone as he expertly navigated them south on University Avenue back toward the interstate loop that encircled the Twin Cities.
