Dysfunctional Affair

by James, Hadena

  “What else is there to know about you?” Zeke ushered me from the bedroom.

  “I speak Russian and German. But that’s about it. I’m not that interesting.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I need to run to the store, I’m low on dog food.”

  Zeke nodded, following me into the garage. We drove in silence to the grocery store.

  “Stay here, lock the doors and watch for me.” Zeke jumped out, clicking the lock switch. I parked the car and waited. And waited. And waited. I checked the clock on the dash, twenty minutes and he still wasn’t out. I called his cell number.

  “Where are you?” I asked as he answered.

  “Sorry, I got distracted. I’ll be out in a few minutes.” At least he sounded embarrassed. I got out the car, stretching my legs.

  Chapter Four

  “Ah, good you’re awake.” A deep voice floated to me through the dark. I struggled to open my eyes.

  “Well, if that’s what you want to call it.” My voice was soft, my throat scratchy. I thought back to what had happened. I’d been walking to my car and…and something. It was there, just around the edge of my memory. I tried to rub my eyes, but my arms wouldn’t move.

  “Ms. Daniels, I’m going to make myself very clear. You have information I want. Now we can do it the easy way, you answer my questions and I’ll kill you quick or we can do it the hard way, I torture the information out of you.” I still couldn’t see the speaker, my eyelids felt glued to my cheeks.

  “That’s really lame. You should have rehearsed it before saying it.” I muttered. My throat was starting to feel better. The heavy scratchy feeling was retreating. I really needed a drink. “May I have a drink of water?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s a really cheesy way to put it. You could have said something more original like ‘tell me what I want to know or I’ll slowly cut away chunks of your hair.’ I don’t know, just something more original.” It was stupid to argue with him, but I couldn’t really do anything else at the moment. “Water?”

  “I don’t think you are in a position to make jokes, Ms. Daniels.” He was at least nice enough to put something to my lips. I drank it down. It was warm and definitely water. I hated water; it had a funny metallic taste to it.

  “And haven’t you ever heard torture isn’t a very good way to get information.” I continued after he’d pulled the glass away. “Under torture, you can get people to confess to just about anything, rarely is the information correct. It’s much more effective to schmooze a person, kiss a bit of ass, be their friend.”

  “Ms. Daniels, you are about to have the worst day of your life, maybe you should take it more seriously.”

  “Actually, the worst day of my life was June 20, 1992. I don’t think torture and death can top even that day.” I briefly wondered if I was dreaming as the words drifted from me. “See, that day, my first serious boyfriend dumped me, then I went to my best friend’s house for comfort, but I was speeding and got pulled over. The ticket was almost $300! Anyway, I get there, she wasn’t there, so I let myself in to wait for her and some dumb ass thinks I broke in. The same officer that wrote the ticket, responded to the breaking and entering call. We had to track down my friend and wait for her to show up before someone would believe that I had permission to be there. We went out for lunch, because food is comforting. I got food poisoning. On my way home, I pulled over to throw up and some idiot smashes into my car while I’m yakking in the grassy ditch. I get home, my parents think I’ve been drinking and ground me for two weeks. Then as I’m walking up the stairs to my bedroom I lose my balance, fall all the way to the bottom, broke my arm and dislocated my knee. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was my 18th birthday. I was leaving for college in two months, it should have been a really happy day, but no. Oh no, I can’t have good birthdays. I haven’t had a good…”

  “Shut up! Do you always ramble when you’re scared?”

  “I’m not scared, I’m not even nervous at this point. I figure if you torture and kill me, my friends will have a nice big wake for me and it still won’t have been the worst day of my life. Besides, if you kill me, I can come back and haunt you. That could be fun.”

  “My God!” He mumbled.

  “What can I say, I’m an optimist.” I tried to shrug and couldn’t. “My dogs will probably miss me. But I can come visit them as a ghost too.”

  “I’m going to duct tape your mouth until you start taking this seriously.”

  “Fine, but it will be hard for me to answer your questions if my mouth is duct taped. I could probably mumble through it, but it wouldn’t be coherent. Once, when I was a kid, I started playing with my dad’s handcuffs and cuffed my ankle to the water meter outside. It was raining, freezing cold and there I was, couldn’t move. It took three hours before someone came to unlock me. I thought I was going to die of hypothermia and exposure.”

  “Your father is a cop?”

  “No, he was a detective, until he died. He took a shotgun blast to the chest while in a gas station. He went in to buy a lottery ticket. Some junkie walked into to rob the place. When he saw my father’s gun he just started shooting. Ironically, the ticket was a winner. My mom collected the life insurance, the winning lottery money and his pension. What makes it even more ironic is that my mom was just about to leave him because he was a real asshole. Instead of a divorce, she got 84 million dollars. I thought it was a nice consolation prize for putting up with his shit for all those years. She bought a house, new car and retired. She’s still living quite well off the proceeds of that. She even used part of it to put me through college. Some people are just lucky. Mom has always been that way…”

  “You’re babbling again.”

  My eyelids finally loosened and opened. Not far, just far enough to see some light and shadows. Definitely an improvement over my previous state. Slowly they adjusted to the light. I could see the man who had been talking. He stood about six feet from me, looking indecisive.

  “Sorry, I just like to talk. My friends all bitch that I either talk too much or not enough. I’m shy in big groups of people. I tend to sit like a fly on the wall, just listening. But one on one, I can hold up my end of any conversation, and the other persons. I’ve…”

  “Not another monologue.”

  “Oh, monologue, that’s a big word. That’s the other thing they complain about. No one actually talks like that. Well, no one but me. I’m always using big words that others have to look…”

  “I am supposed to do the talking.”

  “That’s another lame line,” I muttered. “Fine with me. What would you like to talk about?” There was a method to my madness. A tracking device was hidden in my shoe. If I distracted him long enough, I wouldn’t be tortured and I really didn’t want to be tortured. Plus, a person did have trouble torturing you, if they thought you were human.

  He skulked over to me and pushed my head down. I stared at my knees and his shoes. My knees were kind of bloody and I wondered if it was mine. I didn’t feel hurt, but I was also pretty high on adrenaline.

  “Your shoes aren’t laced the same.” I commented. Better to stare at his shoes than the blood.

  “What?!?” The exasperation came through in his voice.

  “Your shoes, they are laced different. It looks funny.”

  “Why does it matter how I lace my shoes?”

  “Well, if you laced your shoes the exact same way it would show that you cared about your shoes. See, my shoes are laced exactly the same, left lace over right all the way up. They have the same length sti…”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re insane.”

  “That’s technically a legal definition, not a mental health definition. I might have a personality disorder or two, but I am clearly not stark raving mad. I’m…”

  “Shut up!” He hit me on the side of my head. For a few seconds pretty lights exploded in my skull and it throbbed, then everything cleared again. “Jesus Christ, how did I get stuck with you?”

&nb
sp; “Hey, you picked…”

  “It was rhetorical!” He sighed. “I want some information. Will you please give it to me without a fight?”

  “I don’t know, I mean I don’t know what information you want. How do you even know I have the info…”

  “Shut up.”

  “How am I supposed to answer your questions if you keep telling me to shut up? Is this the first time you’ve interrogated someone? If not, I think you’re in the wrong line of business. I mean, if I was going to interrogate someone, this is not the way I’d go about it. Maybe you should go rehearse what you want to as…” He hit me again. It hurt, but then so did being tackled by six Great Danes, I survived that every day, a couple of punches to the face was easy.

  “All right, Ms. Daniels, I’m going to ask you some questions. I want to answer in short, brief answers and you aren’t going to deviate. If you deviate, I’m going to continue to hurt you. If I think you’re lying I’m going to hurt you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but I make no promises to stay on topic. The side-effect of a disorganized mind.”

  “Do you know a woman named Amanda Reed?”

  “Yes.” I responded flatly. Actually, I didn’t really think so, but the name sounded somewhat familiar. Besides, I doubted “no” was the answer he wanted. The cavalry was pretty slow today, I hoped they showed up soon.

  “Did you help her disappear?”

  “Yes.” Yes, seemed to be a pretty good answer, he didn’t hit me. Everyone liked hearing the word yes.

  “Where did you send her?”

  For a second the wheels in my head turned, trying to find a city.

  “Bogotá, Colombia.” It popped out before I could stop it. Why I would relocate someone to the cocaine capital of the world was beyond even my imagination.

  It was obviously beyond my captor’s too, he frowned at me. His eyebrows drawing together, his forehead wrinkling. He stared, puzzled for a moment.

  “You sent her to Bogotá?”

  “Yep.” Might as well go with it now. Had I seen a movie or TV show about Bogotá recently? I couldn’t remember, but I was going to go with yes, it was a pretty safe answer.

  “Why Bogotá?”

  “Would anyone ever think to look for her there?” Of course not, I wouldn’t think to send anyone there either.

  “Kidnappings, drug lords, corrupt government officials, it’s a writhing haven for crime. Why would someone look for a relocationee in Colombia? It probably has a higher crime rate than Miami and Detroit put together. And let me tell you…” Pain exploded in my arm as he hit it with something.

  It didn’t feel like a fist. For a moment I wondered what it was, then I remembered I was stalling for time.

  “Hey, I’m answering your questions, you can stop doing that. Excuse me if sometimes I get a little side tracked, I have a lot of useless information floating around creating disorganized thoughts.”

  “Ms. Daniels, do you think this is some kind of joke?”

  “Not really. I imagine you’re pretty serious about your desire to find Amanda and kill me as necessary. That doesn’t mean we have to be uncivilized about it. I’m telling you what I know and you’re just being an asshole. It makes me want to be less cooperative, especially since you’ve already told me I’m going to die.”

  “Fine, Ms. Daniels,” he said through clenched teeth. “Why Bogotá?”

  “I’ve already told you. Because no one would think to look for her there.” I shook my head.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why would I lie?” I met his gaze. He had very pretty brown eyes, it was too bad he was obviously a couple cards short of a full deck.

  “All women lie, why do they do that?”

  “I think it’s too get more presents. See, if you lie…” Pain exploded in my thigh, this time I had seen the glint of metal. “Excuse me, are you stabbing me?”

  “What?” The question seemed to take him off guard. I looked at the new spot of pain. Sure enough, it was starting to turn my blue jeans darker in that area.

  “Did you just stab me? Well, imagine that. You aren’t just an asshole, you’re a bastard too. I’m wearing one of my favorite shirts and you are poking holes in it. I had considered being buried in this shirt, but that’s not going to happen now. Oh no, because you had to get knife happy. The blood can be cleaned up, but the holes cannot be repaired in time for my funeral. That just irritates the hell out of me…”

  “You’re going to die anyway, why are you complaining?”

  “Because you could have at least left my favorite shirt alone. I’m not walking around, stabbing holes in your favorite shirts, now am I? So I helped your wife hide. She probably ran away because you started making holes in her favorite shirts too. I have never…” This time he didn’t stab me, he just hit the area already wounded. It should have hurt like hell, but it was only a minor annoyance. I was running on pure adrenaline now, the pain would come when it stopped flowing, but not before then.

  “Oh yeah, that’s obviously working.” I rolled my eyes, making sure he noticed.

  “What are you mouthing about now?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I think you are the one that is clearly insane. I mean let’s just take a moment to think about this. You’ve now stabbed me two times and punched me a couple of more. All I’m really doing is bleeding onto the floor. It doesn’t seem to be eliciting any useful information from me. I will eventually pass out from blood loss and then you’ll be right back at square one. Boy, you really are new at this. And what makes it worse is that you are clueless as to how ineffective it really is. Go ahead, stab me. You can stab me all day long and it’s not going to do a bit of good. I have had far worse injuries. Hell, someone once carved a word on my chest. I’ve been shot, beaten, stabbed, attacked by a tiger and hit by a car. That little bitty knife in my limbs is like getting a shot at the doctor’s office…”

  “Shut up.” He tossed the knife across the room. I was thankful it was gone, maybe I could survive now.

  “How the hell did you get attacked by a tiger?”

  “Long story and I don’t want to bore you with the details.” I fought not to smile.

  His frustration was evident. While my situation still sucked, at least it was looking better. If I could just stay alive long enough, I would be saved.

  “That would probably be the most interesting thing you’ve said all day.” He sat back down, facing me. I would have preferred him up, pacing the room, clawing at the walls, but I’d take what I could get.

  “Actually, it’s not that interesting. I was attacked by a tiger. He got a good chunk of meat from my leg, I had physical therapy for two years and a couple of really nasty scars, but otherwise, it was just like any other day.” Even the attack hadn’t been that extraordinary. He was hungry, I looked like lunch. No harm, no foul. I never hold anything against large predators, they’re just doing what instinct tells them.

  “Fine, what would make you loosen your tongue?”

  “I don’t know, maybe if you knew one of my phobias and used that against me. Unfortunately, I’m not afraid of pain or death, so those are not effective. If you had asked me this earlier, we wouldn’t have had to ruin my favorite shirt.”

  “And I guess you’re just going to tell me what you’re afraid of?” He rubbed a hand down his face. It was a gesture I was used to, people did it all the time to me.

  “No, but if you had done a little research before you kidnapped me, it would have helped. For example, my fears are pretty easy to discover. Just ask someone. Hell, even the press knows what I’m afraid of, I’m sure it’s been printed someplace. And you would have known that I hire mercs, S.E.A.L.S and Rangers.”

  “What do your employees have to do with me?”

  “Are you having a bad day or are you really this dense?” I shook my head. “They train for years on how to handle the stress of captivity and torture, not to mention how to deal with pain. You think I didn’t pick up a few tips? Of cours
e I did. My goodness, I wouldn’t be very good at securely hiding people, if I didn’t know how to handle pain, I’d crack the first time someone threatened to cause me pain. I mean, come on, you think you’re the only person who has ever considered kidnapping me.”

  “It’s a miracle someone hasn’t killed you before now. You are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.” His eyes were wide and his face was a mixture of fear, hatred, frustration and disbelief.

  “Well, it’s not from lack of trying. I mean, I didn’t shoot myself and I certainly didn’t throw myself in front of the car. That really hurt.”

  “And the tiger?” He nearly groaned.

  “That may have been my own fault.” May have been was the understatement of the year. I spent three months working at a wildlife rescue center when I was in my teens, I would have stayed longer, but I antagonized the tiger. My boss really frowned on that.

  “I should have kidnapped someone else.”

  “Probably.”

  “She’s not in Bogotá.”

  “I don’t even know who she is, to be honest. But yes seemed like the answer you wanted.” I tried to shrug and really couldn’t. The knots binding my wrists were loosening though. If I worked a little harder, I could probably get free.

  “You are…”

  “Tedious?” I volunteered. Above me I heard a noise, instinct brought my head up to look at the ceiling. “Do you have pets?”

  “No,” he responded suspiciously. He looked up at the ceiling.

  “Is your house haunted?”

  “No,” he was still trying to follow my gaze.

  “Then I think you have mice.” I looked back down at him.

  “What?”

  “I think you have mice. I can hear them moving above my head, sounds like they are in the ceiling. I bet I’m right under your kitchen.”

  “Do you have super hearing now?” He looked disdainful.

  “No, I just hear really, really well.” I heard the noise again, a slight shuffling sound. It sounded almost like someone dragging their feet gently across the floor. Maybe the cavalry had finally decided to put in an appearance. If it wasn’t, I was going to bitch for weeks about how slow they were.