Games Boys Play (24 page)

“No,” he whispered as he was jerked away from the metal wall.

“Take everything out.”

A hand shoved him toward it.

On his knees, he pushed the lid up again and looked inside. The spinning blue light made a mishmash of the contents. He reached in and aimed for the thing that was thumping against the walls. Something furry brushed his hand. He closed his fingers around it and lifted it out: a battery-operated dog ball with a fake weasel attached to it. He dropped it on the van floor, where it went on rolling and tipping and bumping, knocking against the side of his knee.

Bending back into the case, he gathered a fistful of rope. A roll of duct tape. A portable speaker with a cord trailing from it. When he had that almost to the opening of the box, the cord pulled taut. At the other end he found an old MP3 player, and while he was closing his hand around that, the speaker, now close to his ear, emitted the sound of a man calling for help through a gag.

How fucking gullible he was.

But then, he’d wanted to be gullible.

“Hands behind your back,” the clown said, bumping him as he reached for the rope.

His head swam, a calm euphoria layering over apprehension and spent adrenaline. The rope slipped around his wrists. It tugged and pulled and tightened. He flexed and curled his fingers as the clown ran the rope between his wrists, around the coils he’d already made, tightening them even more. He felt the knots being tied, up out of reach. When the clown let go, he tried to pull one hand out, then the other.

“Get in the box.”

In the box. In a van. Nowhere near home.

Fear sucked all his spit away.

He shook his head.

“Jack be nimble.” The clown closed his grip around Brian’s elbow. “Jack be quick. Or his friend’s going to find himself the butt of a nasty trick.”

Instead of yanking him up, the clown shoved his mask against Brian’s ear. “Have you ever been Tasered in the gonads, Jack?” The clown’s chest pressed against his backside, pinning his arms. “What do you think that feels like?” The voice was like a tickle down the side of his neck. “You know…I’ll tell you what—why don’t we make a call and put it on speaker and get just a
taste
of what it sounds like when someone gets Tasered in the gonads.”

He closed his eyes.

All he could smell was painted latex rubber.

“You up for that, Jack? Or maybe you’d rather just get in the box and try not to think about it. I can go either way, so I’ll leave it up to you.”

He released Brian’s arm and backed away. “I’ll count to ten. And if you’re not sitting in the box by the time I get there, I’ll get out my phone. Or…fuck that. I’ll just start dialing now, and if you’re in the trunk before the other end picks up, I’ll hang up. Ready?
Go
.”

Brian kept his eyes closed. He twisted one of his wrists, making a fist, feeling the circle of rope dig against his tendons. He was leery of getting in the box—there was a vast gap between fantasizing about being locked in a closed space and actually doing it. But also he was thinking of the video Dylan wouldn’t show him the rest of the other night, wondering if this was his chance to see more.

He listened to the faraway sound of ringing coming from the clown’s phone; he hadn’t put it on speaker yet.

“Hey. Yeah,” the clown said. “Let’s do that thing. Give me about half a minute. I’ve got to get situated.”

Rustling came from behind him. The bump of another body against his. And then he could see the glow from the phone’s screen somewhere just beyond the side of his head. He started to turn toward it, but a hand in his hair pushed his head away and down.

He heard noises from the phone—suddenly they got louder and clearer as the speaker was activated. He couldn’t make out what they were, though, until the screaming started.

It felt like getting punched in the stomach.

He gasped, his muscles tensing. One scream would hardly finish before another filled the van, ripping out over top of the calliope music, tearing at his guts. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. Turned his head trying to get away from it. The screams kept going. The warm, smooth glass of the phone pushed against his ear, and his skull became filled with sobs. No more screams, just racking sobs. The clown’s hand in his hair held his head down against the lip of the case, the metal digging against his skull, the phone pushed hard against his ear.

Then the sobs went silent.

The phone was gone, the hand was gone, and he sagged against the box, gasping and realizing for the first time that he was making little noises, pained whines at the back of his throat.

“Wanna do it again?”

Another wordless sound broke free.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

He shook his head, his forehead still pressed against the road case.

“Get in the fucking box.”

He felt like he had to take a piss, badly. He felt like he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

He felt like he wanted to be hit again.

What he didn’t want to do was listen to another recording of Dylan screaming like he was having his insides pulled out.

“Are you getting in the box?” the clown asked.

He nodded. He pulled away from the box, then had to get his feet under him. He couldn’t stand all the way up; the ceiling was only four or so feet high. Hunkered over with his wrists behind him, he shifted his weight to one foot and lifted the other high enough to step in.

A hand at his thigh helped keep him steady.

He switched his weight to his inside foot so he could pull the other foot up and over.

Slowly he sank to his knees.

The spinning blue light shut off. Then the clown was looming over the side of the box, a shadow in the shadows, pushing the back of his neck down. “Over you go.”

Brian bent forward, bringing his stomach against his thighs, shifting backward so his boots touched the wall behind him, making room for his head.

A deeper darkness and an edgy panic slid over him as the clown brought the lid down. Its underside was low enough to lie against his elbows.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out
. Every breath was a struggle between his chest and his thighs. Between calm and panic.

The calliope music cut off abruptly.
That
was a relief. Another sound started up, a rumble he felt as much as heard, and then the case shuddered softly as the van pulled away from the curb.

The feeling of having to piss hadn’t gone away. Being folded over his bladder wasn’t helping.

The road case was already becoming hot, and they were only just turning at the intersection he’d been waiting for Dylan at.

He moved around as best he could, searching for a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one.

The van hit a pothole. His shoulders bumped against the lid. The van turned again, and he slid an inch or two inside the box. The box, at least, wasn’t sliding around, the locked wheels and rubberized floor keeping it relatively stable, though he wouldn’t want it tested with a sudden hard brake.

His phone was in his jacket pocket. He wondered what his chances were of getting ahold of it. He made that his new goal, fumbling, bumping, and straining in the dark, his shirt starting to soak through with sweat. The van picked up speed, then more speed. Were they on the interstate?

A droplet of sweat hung from the tip of his nose. He blew toward it, but it didn’t fall free.
Great.

His thoughts drifted, one minute wondering where the hell this was all going; the next indulging in fantasies of being pulled out of the case and having his jeans opened and yanked down; and the next daydreaming about finding the calliope that had recorded the song that was still chinkling through his head, so he could smash it to bits with a sledgehammer, over and over until his arms ached and he couldn’t catch his breath.

In the box, he breathed slowly, carefully. He hadn’t expected to be in there for so long. He’d wasted air at the beginning. What if he ran out before they got wherever they were going?

The van downshifted.

He leaned through a long, deep curve, and then they were idling, probably at a traffic light. The road they were on turned out to be studded with them: stop, drive, stop, go. He wiggled his fingers, trying to cool them off, trying to cool
something
off. Sweat dripped from his forehead. If this went on long enough, he was going to drown in it.

Had that ever happened to anyone?

Then they were driving endlessly again, no stops, gentle curves, the occasional hill that bumped him against the side of the case. Then a big turn, gravel under the tires. Slowing, slowing more, idling for a second before reversing, turning, pulling backward.

Finally they stopped, and the engine cut off.

The van shook as the driver’s side door slammed shut.

Brian strained to hear what might be going on outside the van.

After a few minutes, the back doors opened. He heard the plywood being moved out of the way. Heard the scrape of metal bumping and sliding—a ramp? The van dipped with the weight of someone climbing into the back. The road case shifted a little as its wheels were unlocked. Then it was rolling, turning, taking Brian toward the back of the van ass first. In a second, as the road case dipped backward, he was suddenly glad he wasn’t headfirst—gravity pulled him against the down end of the case. The other way around, all his weight would have been on his neck.

The blackness inside the case became somewhat less black. In the position he was in, he couldn’t get a good look around at where the light was coming in, but turning his head slightly, he was able to make out the shape of his shoulder.

He was expecting the wheels to hit gravel, given the way the van felt rolling in, but they connected with a smooth surface. He was rolled a short ways from the ramp and stopped.

The ramp clattered back up into the van, the doors banged shut, and then another door, scraping down metal tracks, was rolled closed.

Were they in a garage?

The case spun halfway around. He braced himself as best he could, pushing up against the lid.

The latches popped.

Light slatted in as the lid started to open, and Brian sat up as quickly as a jack-in-the-box, sucking in fresh, cool air.

“Oh, the drama,” the clown said. “It’s not like you were suffocating in there with the airholes.”

Chest heaving, he looked around. A metal stall, longer than it was wide, and it was just wide enough that the van might have fit. The floor was concrete, the ceiling metal with fluorescent tube lights. Metal braces ran up one of the walls, four or five feet apart, and across the ceiling. Those were the least troubling aspects of the room.

“Come on. Up you go.” The clown caught him by the elbow.

It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get him to his feet, though his knees ached as he straightened them. He was grateful for the clown’s grasp as he stepped awkwardly over the sides of the case.

A heavy chain had been locked around one of the wall braces, heavier than the one that had locked him to his bed—a chain he still had, having stashed it, along with the locks and key, in his duffel bag, and he wasn’t giving it back unless Dylan actually asked for it.

The loose end of the chain lay in a coil beside a bare, padded camping mattress, which was pushed into the far corner of the storage unit. Beside the mattress sat two bottles of water and a widemouthed opaque jug.

The clown led him toward the chain and had him sit on the edge of the mattress. He pulled off Brian’s right boot and sock and wound the heavy chain around his ankle twice before locking it in place, leaving less than a foot of slack between his ankle and the support beam.

Brian tilted his head, looking at his trapped ankle.

His need to piss fought with the low-grade horniness that the sight and weight of the chain brought out.

The clown had come around behind him, was tugging at his wrists as he untied the ropes, and then the rope was sliding away. He pulled his arms in front of him and moved them around, working out the stiffness.

He felt a tug at his jacket and realized the clown was trying to pull it off him. He let it slip away. It felt good to be out of the box; being out of his hot jacket was a bonus. The clown dropped Brian’s boot in the road case, tossed the jacket over the side, and shoved the box toward the door. The box bumped against it and stopped.

The clown hooked a water bottle with two fingers and held it out to him.

He checked the seal. Satisfied that it hadn’t been opened before, he cracked it and gulped a third of the bottle down. Then he capped it and dropped back on the stiff mattress, the most comfortable he’d been in, what, thirty, forty minutes? When had he crawled into the van? What time was it now?

“Get out of your shirt too. It’s soaked, and I can’t have you catching pneumonia.” The clown held out a hand, waiting for it.

Brian sat up enough to strip it off and toss it toward him before flopping back down, water bottle against his slippery stomach.

The clown tossed a towel at him. He sat up again and wiped off: face, chest, back of his neck, hair.

“Better?” The clown held his hand out for the towel.

Brian forked it over. “I’ve gotta piss.”

“That’s what the jug’s for. Hand me your belt.”

“I don’t have to piss that bad yet.”

“Yeah, hand me your belt anyway.”

“Or else?”

“Don’t push me. It’s fucking late, and I’ve still got a lot of shit to do. Hand me your belt, or else I’ll get out my phone and tell my associate to slit your friend’s throat and dump him in the river.”

A cold snake slipped through his guts. That wasn’t fun playtime.

The clown opened and closed his fingers, waiting for the belt.

Scowling, Brian unbuckled it, slipped it from its loops, and threw it at him.

The clown let it fly by his arm, then walked over and scooped it from the floor. “Anyway. Welcome to your new temporary home.” He swept an arm out to the side, and Brian realized he had car keys in his other hand, like he was ready to go.

“Did you find a buyer?”

“I did!”

“Bully for fucking you.” Brian flopped back down on the mattress.