Housebroken

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015

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To the Bake and his lovely wife. Thank you for asking if after years of writing screenplays, I had ever considered writing a novel. Hopefully, at some point, you’ll ask if I’ve ever considered becoming a millionaire.

Much love.

Shallow breaths. The tiny whine of a fly’s wings.

Alighting on a thin black metal bar, the fly zipped up and out only to return, this time settling on an elbow pressed flush against the gridded wire squares. If Blake could have moved his arm even the smallest of degrees to keep those eyelash legs from tickling against his skin, he would have—even a touch as small as a fly’s was a reminder of all he had lost.

His throat was dry, like swallowing chalk. At least he had accomplished what he had set out to, his screaming not meant for the ears of some random rescuer but an act of self-flagellation, the barbs of his own tongue sharper than any sword or whip.

Visions of what could be and what may have already been swirled through his head, though they were far from the only nightmares keeping Blake from sleep. His body was doubled over, head tucked between knees that had been raised to his chest, his back torqued in a sickly unnatural curve. His shoulders were stretched so far forward as to cause tiny tears in the sockets, his bare feet pressed flat against the tiny black bars. Purple spiderwebs of pain radiated up toward calf muscles so taut they fired in constant spasms. Swollen gridded squares of flesh were embedded across his almost-naked body. He wondered when the latticed skin might simply drop off, like Play-Doh being shoved through a child’s strainer.

There was little of Blake Crochet that wasn’t pressed against some part of the cage that held him bound in his own kitchen, the cage that just a week ago had been used to crate train their dog, Conrad.

A week ago, Conrad had still been alive.

The worst part of his confinement wasn’t the contusions forming on almost every muscle or the complete and utter lack of sleep. It wasn’t the claustrophobia that hit after the first hour or the maddening numbness that followed. It wasn’t even the painful few minutes of entering the cage one limb at a time, that feeling of trying to hammer a square peg through a round hole, knowing you wouldn’t fit and that whatever didn’t would soon no longer be a part of you. No, the worst part—the absolute worst—was not knowing what was taking place beyond those small and impenetrable bars.

Hot tears dropped from Blake’s eyes, tears he couldn’t wipe away had he wanted to.

His wife and son were gone.

Lost . . . 
Taken
.

And for the first time in Blake’s forty-two years of finding solutions where none were present, he couldn’t think of a single way out.

It was like watching traffic, waiting at an intersection for that break you could pull out into, and when no break came, you just waited for a gap, half a car length of leeway or a driver testing his abilities to tweet or Facebook while behind the wheel. Only there were no gaps. The traffic running bumper-to-bumper never broke, and without the hint of a solution, the spark of an idea, Blake was no different than the fly tooling through the air, moving without purpose, moving only because it could.

At the moment, Blake couldn’t even do that.

His only choice was to see the experiment through. The
pwoject
. To the very end.

If there was a chance, a single wild card in that deck of possibilities that could allow them to walk away unscathed, maybe not ahead—definitely not ahead—but at least alive and intact,
as a family
 . . . well, it was worth betting all he had. The irony was watching the chips teeter from black to red, red to black, completely dependent on whether the House played by the rules. And from what Blake knew about the fiery man running the show, he didn’t like his odds.

He had helped fund an app once for both the Apple and Android markets that had made millions before it was shut down based on that simple concept. Spin the wheel, and place your bet. Better than anyone, he knew the awful reality: the House always wins.

If Blake could have bowed his head to weep further, he would have.

Blake Crochet finished the e-mail on his Cyborg XT phone while descending the cathedral-like ebony stairs. One of the benefits of communication in the digital age was that the recipient would never see the fury with which he pushed the tiny send button or notice the sweat stains beneath his armpits or have a clue how many times he had revised the phrasings of his e-mail, a sentence at a time, prior to sending it off into the cloud—a cloud that was forecasting thunder and precipitous storms.

Even more fortuitous, considering the recipient was his wife.

A dizzying display of refracted light danced across the adjacent wall, the glittery effect as mesmerizing as the house they had so recently moved into. Glancing at the overbearing chandelier along his descent, Blake was reminded of a bulbous rose bush that had grown too fast and thick, beauty transforming into monstrosity.

He had used similar analogies with some of the businesses he consulted with. The very act of pruning a rose bush, cutting, trimming, and destroying what otherwise looked healthy, was the only way to keep the plant from self-destruction. Most chieftains of commerce understood, much more succinctly than Blake’s wife, that growth is often achieved through a perceived step backward. As to his and Jenna’s relationship, mere steps in reverse had led to a full retreat in a direction from which no return was in sight.

Entering the foyer, he put off thoughts of Jenna, navigating through the web of e-mails and video messages that required his attention. Immediacy was a currency his network of C-level executives had come to depend upon. Exclusivity, on the other hand, was not.

His newest employer, a tech firm involved with predictive artificial intelligence interfacing, had commissioned the move from West Virginia to the sun-ensconced coast of California. And while from a business standpoint the timing had been perfect, no software had been needed to predict the challenges the move had created with the family.

Blake spoke into the blinking plastic tumor that had grown over his left ear and was only removed for showers and sex. He even kept the Bluetooth earpiece in place while sleeping. The DreameX app, which he had cofinanced, monitored both heart rate and REM, creating a constantly shifting cadence of sound and waves that enabled a truer, deeper slumber. The app required the  earpiece, and Blake required the app in order to drift off. It was better than any sleeping pill.

“I want a full report on ScanneX. Move whatever mountains you need to in the next forty-eight so we can finalize A/B testing. Press release goes out Friday. Remember, cite
undisclosed
backers. I’ll have JT in our corner by next week.”

Blake counted the full three seconds it would take to translate his words, recording his message from English to Mandarin and sending out the appropriate text.

He suddenly stopped midstride. His left bare foot sunk into something that did not feel like Indonesian Makassar wood. He looked down.

Dog crap.

He could still see the moist bubbles waiting to break on the surface, pushing up between his toes. Definitely fresh.

“Damnit, Conrad!” A soft blip announced translation had begun on this new message. “No! Ah, shit.”

He flipped the kill switch on the phone, shutting down all applications at once. China could wait.

Stepping with the heel of his left foot, Blake crossed through the family room over to the kitchen island, an expansive marble-topped counter brought in from Italy. The kitchen could have been transported straight from the pages of a magazine—fridge, ovens, and dishwasher camouflaged behind dark Persian cupboards, chrome pots, pans, and gadgets on the counters, shinier than if they’d just come out of a box.

Blake jumped onto the counter and bathed his foot in scalding water and liquid soap, hopping back down with a grunt. “Conrad!”

The jangling of her collar sounded as she darted from the room.

Stupid dog.

He marched over to the back kitchen door. There she was, cowering in her crate.

A sleek black Labrador, Conrad had been a part of the family for three years. She was the quintessential dog—gentle and loving, playful but not needy, and so protective of Adam, who had decided when she was a puppy that he wanted her to be a boy. Blake had suggested Connie, but Adam had been insistent. The cross-gendered name stuck and was always a point of conversation on trips to the vet.

It hadn’t been a question whether Conrad would accompany the family to their new home; what Blake hadn’t counted on was the dog reverting back to her puppy stage. After two days of wet spots on the brand new carpet and strategically placed turds on the hardwood, Blake had once again purchased a doggy cage. Crate training all over again.

Blake yanked on Conrad’s collar, pulling her from the crate and dragging her back into the foyer. He forced her face into what was left on the floor, tapping her on the nose gently.

“Help me out here, Connie. Potty outside.”

Jing Jong.

The doorbell echoed, reverberating in the air like the ringing of a church bell. Jenna must have forgotten her keys on her morning run.

“Hold on,” he shouted. Blake wasn’t in the right frame of mind to handle the confrontation his wife would carry in with her, but he had little choice. He tapped Conrad’s behind as she skittered off into the family room. Brown semiliquid tracks trailed behind every rise of her back paws where she had stepped in her own feces.

It was settled—he’d let Jenna clean it up.

That did cause him to laugh out loud.

Jing Jong
.

“Coming!”

Blake slid the deadbolt back and turned the knob. As he opened the door, he took a quick step back, startled by the young man standing so close he was almost inside their house. Mid to late twenties with pumpkin-orange hair and a smile too big for his face, he seemed completely unaware of the shock he had caused.