“Doesn’t that seem a little odd to you, Mr. Jackson?” His lips pulled into a frown, making the deep lines on his face pucker even deeper.
“Not really. Most bands have security in place. Having Oliver show up only made me think my parents were trying to run my life from the sidelines.” The old man’s eyes twinkled when I’d said parents, and I silently cursed myself for bringing it up.
“Parents…? Who would your father be?” he asked.
He didn’t know? My mind skipped over all my options as I realized I had no other choice than to play his game. “My father?”
He nodded, circling his hand for me to finish my sentence.
“My father is Mr. Jackson,” I said, giving him my own sort of ‘got ya’ smile.
The electricity poured through me longer that time, taking me to a point where blackness threatened to pull me under and not let me go.
My chest heaved, and I gasped when another bucket of water was tossed at my face.
“Well, as much as I’d love to keep chatting with you, I must be off. I’ve had word from the field that a certain person of interest is looking for her son and has made herself a very open target. I’ll give her my best for you, shall I, Mr. Jackson?”
I lunged at my bindings, halting only inches from my starting point, and slammed to a stop. The chair under me creaked in warning as it threatened to buckle. Above me, the lights went out, leaving me stewing with the information the old man had said before he left. There was no way my mom would put herself on display so openly when dealing with a terrorist, or even a group of thugs like the ones who played a real life game of operation with me.
The air around me stunk of burning hair and skin. The more I thought about it, the queasier I got, until I vomited nothing but bile over the side of the chair.
If and when I got free, I’d make not only the old man pay, but the knife wielder too.
IT HAD BEEN A LITTLE over two weeks since the Jared BBQ in the basement. When the old man returned, he had me brought down from the room I’d been moved to the day after the torture session. It had been as if he’d changed tactics and left me to die of boredom instead of by his own hand—or rather his thugs. Whatever the case, I was glad he’d returned so that I could try to find out about my mom.
“Ah, Mr. Jackson, so glad to see you whole and hearty. I trust you’ve been eating well?”
I just nodded along with his greeting.
The knife wielder stepped in as if he’d read where my thoughts headed and jerked me over to the seat across the desk from the old man. Clamping his hand on my shoulder, he pushed me into the chair and moved over to the door, taking his place for our meeting.
“I have to say, Mr. Jackson, you do come by your stubborn streak quite honestly.” He tossed his head with a laugh and shook his finger at me.
The man before me wasn’t just an evil bastard; he was a psychotic evil bastard.
“Before we have lunch brought in, I thought you should know that I was quite successful in my efforts to find your mother. She, unfortunately, wasn’t able to accompany me back here… or well, anywhere. She is quite, how do you say it…? Dead.” His hand waved as if batting away what he’d said as he continued, unaware that a hive of bees had swarmed my hearing.
“…and after a time, it will pass. Why, I remember my own mother fondly after all these years. She was a delicate Parisian flower, so much like your own mother.” He coughed as if clearing his throat when he saw the look of confusion that had crossed my face.
My mother was no delicate flower, and it made me wonder just what sort of game he was playing. Could he have lied all along? There was only one way to find out. “She… she had the thickest southern accent. Syrupy, like molasses or honey…” I let my voice cut off, as if the thoughts had overwhelmed me.
“Yes, she did try to use that weapon against me, but a man such as myself cannot afford to allow such a beautiful southern belle to distract me from what needs to be done.”
He was a big, fat, old liar, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from calling him out on it. Tears pooled in my eyes and trickled down my face. Blood welled against my tongue and I swallowed it, choking on the taste.
The old man bowed his head, hiding the sudden smirk that raised his lips. “I do offer you my condolences, Mr. Jackson. It is a pity to lose one’s mother so suddenly. I hope this shows you that our time together is no longer what you might call a ‘game’. You have information, information your mother died protecting. Don’t let yourself fall to the same outcome.”
A metal cart rolled in, clattering past me as the gunman who’d rode in the back of the truck with me uncovered two dishes. The old man took his time cleaning off his desk, and then gestured for the dishes to be laid out before shooing both men away.
There was no way to get out of eating. The old man not only tucked into his plate with a gusto, but he’d also poured us drinks from a decanter behind his desk. With his back to me, I couldn’t tell if he’d slipped anything into the amber liquid or not. That didn’t stop me from holding the glass up for inspection when he’d handed it over.
“Oh surely, you wouldn’t think I’d drug such a fine year as that!” He chuckled, taking the glass from my hand and sipping it.
I waited for a good ten minutes before I lifted the glass to my own lips and swallowed. He smiled and lifted his fork in salute. “You should try the fish. It’s succulent.”
My stomach rumbled in response. I decided to eat so that I could keep my strength up for my escape, because there was no way in hell I planned on staying with the crazy old man any longer than I had to.
I’d made it halfway through my plate when my fork became too heavy for me to lift. It hadn’t been the damn whisky… it had been the food.
“Figured it out, did you?” the old man hooted with laughter.
“You’re a real bastard,” I said, fully in control of my ability to speak.
“I’ve been told. So, here’s the part where you tell me everything I want to know, and I’ll decide if I’m going to kill you or toss you in the cellar for safekeeping. I do hold with the safekeeping. I find having a living hostage tends to make the other party much more compliant.”
WHATEVER THE OLD BASTARD GAVE me loosened my lips. Everything he asked me, I gave him an honest answer to. He had all the cards so to speak and was quite pleased with the hand he’d been dealt. He had names of operatives. He knew the location of Cole Enterprise. He even knew about Murphy. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop the inquisition he’d put me through. What I didn’t know was what he planned to do with me.
I found out not long after when the knife wielder came in, snatched me out of my chair, and guided me down to the cellar, past the chair I’d been tied to, and into a cell.
He shoved me in, slamming the door behind him. The metal clang sounded final, as if my fate had been sealed to a caged box. My knees buckled under me, and I toppled over, unable to stand upright any longer.
I blinked against the white dots that danced along my vision as I assessed my surroundings. Along the far wall of my cell was a straw-filled mattress. Across from that was a makeshift metal toilet bowl with an opening that went to some sort of piping below. My cell butted up against the rough, lime rock-encrusted wall. Water dripped endlessly from both the sides and the top, covering the wall in a patchwork of mold.
THREE DAYS LATER, THE OLD man was back. I was hauled into the chair, undergoing electroshock therapy again. His questions had changed, as well as his temperament. Gone were the cultured sentences and witty replies. He was a madman bent on doing whatever it took to gather information from me.
“The dark doesn’t suit you. Give me the answers I seek, and you can go back to your room.”
“My room? Does that mean you’re putting me on a plane and sending me home?” My scream bounced off the walls and deafened me.
“I will be back. And when I come back, you better have the security codes I need to get into the undergroun
d tunnels of Cole Enterprise,” the old man said as he grabbed a fist full of my hair, hissing his warning in my ear.
True to his word, he was back four days later, bringing along with him a silver case that he popped open, keeping the contents a mystery to me. Before he asked me about the security codes again, he injected a thick, greenish-looking fluid into my neck that made my eyes roll back and my neck arch.
“Don’t worry. It won’t kill you. You’ll only wish you were dead. The good news is that I have a quick fix for the pain you’re in. All I need are the security codes, and I’ll take the pain away.”
“I don’t know… oh God, I don’t know any security codes. I’ve never seen anything punched in… not in the tunnels anyway.”
“Electronic passes then?” he asked.
I couldn’t open my eyes to look at him. I had no way of knowing what would come next. Would he kill me? Would he take away the pain like he’d offered? “Yes. I think so…” The words punched past my lips as my spine arched further forward, trying its hardest to bend me in half the wrong way. The truth was that I couldn’t remember. Had my mom punched in a code and used her fingerprint, or had she scanned a card and punched in a code? I honestly couldn’t remember.
“That won’t do at all,” he replied with a heavy air of disappointment. “And I so hate seeing you this way.”
He left me then, left me sitting in the chair, unable to do anything but hope that my body didn’t snap in half.
The pain had become intolerable. My screams and pleading fell on deaf ears. I’d surely been left for dead, and then the most blissful thing of all happened. I passed out when the pain became too much to handle.
AFTER I’D COME TO FROM the last round of the old man’s question-and-torture session, he never came back down the stairs. I only saw a small boy, no older than ten, who brought me a plate of food twice a day, along with a tin cup with water.
The old man had said he liked the idea of ‘safekeeping’. I wasn’t so sure about the safe part, but the keeping he had under control. At least I knew my mom was safe, and I could only hope the old man was chasing his own ass with the information I’d been forced to give him.
The air around me was hot, damp, and hard to breathe, as if I’d been stuck inside a sauna and left to broil. It sapped me of any sort of strength I could try and muster.
Most days, I closed my eyes and allowed my memories to play out. The Six and Murphy kept me company, if only in my subconscious. My hands would curl as if holding them like that would make Stella appear. I’d close my eyes and strum my fingers against her strings, feeling the vibration of the wood as I played. I ached to hold Murphy in my arms and kiss the softness of her lips while tracing my finger along the silkiness of her skin.
Every so often, a door above would be left open, and it would carry in a hot breeze that stirred up stagnant air, which molded itself around me. On those days, I pictured myself sitting on the bank of the Hole, an ice-cold bottle of water with beads of sweat rolling down it beside me as I cast my fishing pole out over the water.
You never knew what memory would mean the most, until that was all you had left to keep you company.
A HOT BREEZE BLEW IN from above, and I closed my eyes. It was the summer of our eleventh grade year. The guys and I had decided we’d spend the day trying to out-fish one another.
Ace chuckled as he held his pole in between his knees and pulled the hook out of the fish’s mouth. “Maybe if you use the other end, you’ll catch more.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, well, keep catching the small ones. I’m holding out for one bigger than yours.”
Mark, Josh, and Eli hooted with laughter. Clearly, their thoughts had turned to the gutter with the remarks about whose fish was biggest. I shook my head and reeled my line in, re-baited it, and cast out over the water again. I’d get the biggest fish out there just to shut them up. Then they’d see whose was the biggest. My line snagged against the bottom, or so I’d thought, until my pole bent forward and the line jerked. I’d crowed about it for the next couple of days, rubbing in the fact that I’d caught the monster Catfish of the Hole. I’d kept on and on until Ace grabbed me by the shirtfront, shaking me so hard that my teeth rattled. “I swear to God, Jared…”
“Jared… Jared… Damn it, wake up.”
I swatted at Ace to release me, but just like any dream when you were trying to fight your way free, or were running from someone, it felt like slow motion. Like you were fighting air.
Something beeped, a small chirp, but it was nothing I’d heard in the entire time I’d been in my cell. I listened intently, using every bit of energy I had left to crack my eyes open.
Someone was in my cell with me. I struggled to move away, but my arms were heavy. My legs weak. Giving up, I closed my eyes in defeat.
“Jared, we have to get out of here. Can you stand up?”
Ace’s voice again. It was nice to hear it, even if I’d brought it forth to block out the sound of a language I didn’t understand from the man who stood over me.
The chirping noise happened again.
Material shifted, and I was lifted off the ground and slung over his shoulder. All I could think of was that they’d finally remembered to kill me.
THE COLD RUSH OF FLUID spreading through my arm felt icy in the contrast of the broiling heat I’d endured for so long. Maybe they were filling my veins with the same stuff death row inmates got. The stuff that stopped their hearts. I didn’t have it in me to care much. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to go. Some people talked of life journeys as if they were earmarked pages of a book to signal the finality of where they left off. Maybe this was my tattered bend, my ending.
The slide of cool fingertips pressed against the side of my neck as voices around me spoke in low tones back and forth. I wanted badly to open my eyes, but the searing light above blinded me. My head pounded just from the light seeping in through my eyelids.
My nose curled from the sharp scent of whatever they rubbed against my skin. It started at the top of my left shoulder, leaving a cool, refreshing path all the way down to my fingers.
The sounds around me, humming in my ears, made me hear things I wanted to hear, instead of what was really happening around me. Two months was a long time to be alone and, at some point, a sort of disconnect had happened for me. I’d rather have lived in the past, in my memories, than face the fact that I’d been left on my own.
At first, I’d held out hope that at any moment, someone would come running down the stairs and rip the cell door from its hinges. We’d make a run for it to safety, and I’d return home with one hell of a story.
My eyelid was pried open and then stabbed with a light so bright that I gasped, fighting to turn my head away.
“He’s responding to light. No major injuries, other than dehydration and the drugs in his system. Lift him up and get him on the truck. We need to move.”
I floated on a thin stretch of material that molded around my back, hearing for the first time words I understood. All I could think was that they finally brought in someone I could understand, and I was too weak to talk to them. My chest rattled with the faint remains of my humor.
I was lifted further still, slid inside another darkened space and, for the first time, I was able to open my eyes slightly and take in my surroundings. Dark green paneled walls made of a heavy canvas kept the light to a minimum. My fingers stretched out where the canvas met metal, and I slipped my finger along the seam and pushed the material up. Daylight flooded in, burning my eyes. I hissed and snatched my hand away.
Beside me, someone cleared their throat. “You’re probably gonna need a pair of really dark sunglasses for a while until your eyes adjust.”
A female voice, one I’d never heard before, and it made me wonder if they’d switched tactics on me, thinking I’d talk to her. I licked my dry lips, leaving no hint of moisture behind, blinking rapidly to clear the spots from my eyes.
“Here.” A bottle of water, with a
makeshift straw, hovered in my line of vision. “Small sips or you’ll make yourself sick.”
The water was probably drugged too, I thought as I turned my head away from her and closed my eyes. The truck dipped, swaying from side to side as someone else climbed inside and kicked the metal bed. The truck rolled forward as the guy sat down.
“Has he drank anything yet?”
“No, I think he’s still confused.”
I snorted.
“Don’t be a dickhead, Jared. You need hydration,” he paused as he leaned forward and lifted my T-shirt between his fingertips, “and a damn bath.”
His voice triggered something inside of me. My throat constricted and my eyes felt hot, as if they wanted to shed tears but couldn’t.
I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there in my need to detach myself from the situation. I’d had only memories and, somehow, my subconscious knew I needed more. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to wake up from it.
The cool sensation spread from my arms to my legs and along my chest, feeling like a river had been poured into me, filling me from the inside. Maybe I was dying and this was God’s way of giving me a way to pass on peacefully.
“Jared! Open your mouth,” the Ace impostor said as he pushed something between my lips.
A trickle of cold water flooded my mouth and instinct took over as I pulled several large swallows of cool water along my sandpaper tongue and down the desert of my throat.
The straw was pulled back, and I reached out with a shaky arm to bring it to my mouth again.
“Open your eyes, Jared. Look at me.”
I refused to do it. Not because I didn’t want to see Ace, but because I was afraid to break the carefully constructed illusion I’d managed to build and not see him when my eyes opened.
“No.” The word passed my lips like chewed-up gravel.
End Note Page 25
