Chapter 5 #2
“It’s okay, guys, I got this,” Felix says.
Startled, I look over at him. “You grabbed something when you put Copper in?”
“I sure did,” he says, whipping his bag off his head just as Lane does. It kind of looks like Antonio is the only one interested in keeping the bag on. Like… they didn’t tape it over our heads; does he think if he doesn’t remove it, he won’t have to face reality?
Felix gives me a grin and a wink, and I realize with relief that I shouldn’t have even worried. Felix will get us free, and then when they open the door again, I’ll get us out of this.
Simple as that.
“A part of me feels like I should apologize for getting you guys caught up in this, but another part reminds me that I told you not to get out of the vehicle,” I say.
Felix doesn’t seem the least bit concerned. “It’s fine. Just a minor detour. Now Brigs, come here, baby. Come, piggy, piggy.”
I hesitate as I wonder what he needs the pig for.
“Do you need me to get over to you? Did you get a knife or something?” I ask, prepared to bounce my chair over to him.
“Not quite,” he says as he rocks his chair a bit. I assume he’s rocking to get to me, but instead, he tries to pivot it toward the pig.
All the while, Antonio is still wearing the bag on his head.
Lane somehow still has his sunglasses on.
And Brigs is off scouting out a fun place to take a nap.
“Briggy, baby. Come, come. Come to papa.”
“Felix… what did you get out of the car? You said you grabbed something to save us… what exactly did you grab?” I ask, concern replacing the momentary relief I’d felt.
“Shhhh, I have to concentrate,” he says. “Briggy… pig, pig.”
Brigs wanders over before trotting right past Felix’s legs and coming over to see what I’m up to. He sniffs me with his wiggling snout and then wanders off again.
“FUCK. Brigs, get your ass over here,” Felix yowls as he tries scooting toward the pig.
“Lane… please… do you understand why he needs the pig?” I ask.
Lane is quiet for a long moment. “You have to trust the process,” he says before jerking the chair all around.
Clearly, he doesn’t trust the process and has decided he’s going to break himself free.
“What the fuck kind of tape is this?” he asks before he teeters and crashes to the ground with an “oof.” Brigs hurries over to see what he has going on as Felix leans forward and nearly squishes the pig when he falls to the ground.
“Brigs, here,” Felix calls desperately. “Come, come. Show everyone how smart you are. And why you should be a huge part of this family. And why we can never get rid of you!”
Brigs hesitates, and for a minute, I think we all question if the pig is going to do something phenomenal before he just lies right down next to Lane with a big sigh.
And Antonio still has the bag on his head.
I decide to scratch relying on Felix and try my hand at something. “Lane, what if you roll this way? I’ll see if I can get the tape on your wrists with mine.”
Felix tries rolling into the pig, which proves to be rather hard when the legs of his chair are splayed out in a way that prohibits it. If I wasn’t confident I was about to die, I might have allowed myself a chuckle at the way Felix is floundering.
The hero pig in question is fast asleep at this point—I think he enjoys movement as much as Felix does, and the trek through the trees has wiped him out.
The pig is now in the way, and I’m struggling to even reach Lane as I try to jump my chair over to him.
Antonio has obviously pulled forth some ancient mediation technique and left this world to become one with his bag.
The door opens and we all freeze in different stages of suffering. I look over at the guy who enters and watch as he scrutinizes all of us. Antonio probably gets a gold star for being the best prisoner.
He isn’t part of the original four, but those four do join him as he walks over with an air of power… and confusion. But really… who is not confused when dealing with us?
The man exudes confidence while he examines each of us with dark eyes.
He has dark hair and a goatee that he had to have spent too much time shaping perfectly.
He comes over and rights Felix and then struggles to right Lane before nearly falling on him when righting him proves to be too much work. The other guys rush over to help.
“Where is the drop-off?” he asks.
“Where is what?” Felix asks.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he snaps.
“You’ve got the wrong guys,” Lane says. “Who the fuck do you think we are? We pulled over to take our pets for a walk and you just straight up abduct us? What the hell do you have going on here?”
“If you’re not going to tell me what I want, this is going to get a whole lot harder,” he snarls.
“You have the wrong people,” I say. “It’s clear you were waiting for someone, and if I were you, I’d head back out there because whoever you were waiting for isn’t us.”
He walks up to me and grabs me by the front of my shirt, jerking me forward as he looks down at me. “The only words I want out of your mouth are answers. I ask a question and you answer. Do you understand?”
I just stare at him, and he hits me hard enough it stings. I can taste blood from where my teeth cut into my lip.
“I asked if you understood!” he yells.
“There’s no reason to speak to you when you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” I say. “Do we fucking look like we’re involved in whatever this bullshit is? You really think we’re trying to sneak up on you with a fucking pig?”
He hits me again. This time it’s hard enough to teeter my chair and I crash to the ground, painfully pinning my arm between the chair and the floor. “I see that your ears don’t work. Do we want to try this again? Where the fuck is it?”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” I respond, which results in a solid kick to the stomach. It’s hard enough it knocks the wind right out of me.
“Come on now, we really don’t know,” Felix says. “Please stop hitting him.”
The man pulls out the Post-it note and sticks it right to Felix’s forehead. “Oh yeah, definitely didn’t come here on purpose.”
Well shit.
“Our friends told us it was a good hiking spot!” Felix exclaims.
“On private property?”
Felix shakes his head. “They didn’t know, obviously. And we didn’t know! Brigs, attack!”
Brigs kicks a little in his sleep. Evidently, we should have taken Copper with us and tossed Brigs in the van.
“Shut the fuck up or I will beat you until you remember,” he screams at Felix.
Lane, who doubtlessly is afraid for Felix’s well-being, is enraged. “Do not fucking touch him.”
The man walks over and hits Lane across the face, which causes Lane’s sunglasses to go flying. The man hesitates as he seems to realize that Lane is blind. Then he looks over at the guys who brought us into the room.
The four guys are also staring at Lane, and even though they’re not saying a single thing, I can tell they’re starting to wonder if maybe the crew that includes a blind guy and a pig really might not be who they’re looking for.
Without another word, they all leave the room.
“Ooh, you snarled so sexily that they fled,” Felix says, like that could possibly be the reason they fucked off, and not that they’re concerned they really did just abduct some random people out for a stroll. “Way to go, my sexy beast.”
“The question now is will they let us go now that we know about this place?” Antonio cries, finally joining the party but still not removing his hood. “They’re going to murder us.”
“Well, you haven’t seen any of their faces so you should be safe,” I tease.
“You guys don’t have hoods on?” he asks like he’s never once thought to shake it off. It’s not like it’s cinched around the neck.
Felix throws himself onto the ground and successfully rolls into Brigs, who is having the nap of his life. “You okay, Cal? You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“Did you see how when Mr. Goatee smacked Lane it didn’t even hurt Lane because his face is so rock hard?” Felix asks, which has to be the weirdest jab at me.
“I… see that,” I respond.
“With a single smack, the energy flew right out of that man,” Felix says, sounding proud.
“I think it was because he noticed Lane was blind and started second-guessing himself.”
“I’m sure that’s not it,” Felix says as he boots the pig awake.
Why he thinks this pig will fix anything, I’m not sure until I see Brigs’s nose going as fast as it can.
He locks on to Felix’s bound hands and begins trying to root under the tape.
When he realizes he can’t get his snout under there, I watch him start tearing at the tape with his teeth while Felix smirks at me.
It’s very much a “Suck it” look. “You doubted my pig.”
“And you wonder why. What do you have in your hands?”
“I was trying to get like a knife or anything to help, but the only thing I managed to get… was an Oreo,” he says as Brigs begins pawing at Felix and ripping at the tape.
There is so much determination in that macro pig to get that single Oreo that I start to question if we really could train him to eliminate the enemy by simply tossing Oreos at them.
“Voilà!” Felix exclaims, waving his hands around while Brigs munches away, pleased with himself. “I would like an apology, Cal , for doubting my micro pig.”
“You never explained what you were trying to do. Instead, you just rolled around while he took a nap.”
“He had to gain some energy to break us out of this hell, obviously .”
“ Obviously , I missed that,” I say, watching Felix start working on his ankles as Brigs realizes he’s done with his Oreo and would like another. He then roots under Felix like he’s convinced there’s more under the man.
“Ha… hahaha… Brigs, baby, stop,” he says when Brigs begins pushing him across the floor.
“Honey bunny, I only got you one Oreo.” He’s got the pig in a headlock now.
Brigs starts squealing up a storm, highly displeased that he is not being showered in Oreos.
I’m confident he’d put Felix back in his binds, he’s so mad.
“Didn’t we feed you this morning?”
“Sure did,” I confirm. “In the parking lot of the diner. He ate all of his food and then tried eating Copper’s.”
The one plus side to Brigs is that he has as much stamina as Felix, so he quickly tires of that and sprawls out.
“They do say pets look like their owners,” I mutter.
Felix’s eyes narrow. “What was that?”
“You both would murder for a cookie and then fall asleep mid murder because it was too much work.”
“I’m kicking your ass when I reach you,” he threatens as he hurriedly undoes his ankles before looking for who to help next.
“Get Cal,” Lane says, as if reading his mind.
“Okay, but I won’t leave you behind, my love! Don’t think this means I love him now. Please don’t be jealous.”
Lane seems confused, but I’m not even sure how he could be. Does he not live with Felix? “No part of me was.”
“Don’t ever fret. I would push Cal down a hill if it meant seeing your shining face instead of the back of his head,” Felix says.
“So it’s not even an ‘If I get to see you for one last moment’ thing, it’s just because you don’t want to see my head?” I ask.
“Correct.”
I look over to Antonio for his thoughts on this, but he’s still chilling in his bag. Like is he taking a nap ? Have he and the pig become brethren in this?
Felix hurries over to me and starts unwinding my wrists. I think he takes special joy when it rips some arm hair out. Then he’s off to help Lane.
“I feel unsure whether I should even release Antonio. I’m beginning to wonder if he’s having a blast over there,” Felix says.
“I’m going to kick your tiny ass if you don’t free me,” Antonio snarls.
“So feisty,” Felix says as he rushes over and does so.
I pick up the chair I was in, and since it’s plastic with metal legs, I hand it to Lane. “Break that, please. I want to be able to wield the legs.”
He gives it one good whack and the thing submits, practically falling apart in his hands.
“Sexy man,” Felix says as I watch the chair massacre.
“What’s our plan?” Lane asks, holding the chair legs. Since the four legs are made up of two long pieces of metal, he pulls one free and then, like it’s nothing at all, he bends it into a straight pole and hands it to me.
“Uh… thank you,” I say while I watch him bend the other. How the hell did he struggle to tear the tape if he can just bend metal this way and that? Must have just been the angle his arms were or something. I decide it’s best not to question it.
Felix freezes. “Someone’s coming. Plan?”
“Does it look like we have a plan?” Antonio cries, finally free of his bag prison.
I’m not even given time to get into position.
The door opens and I swing the bar hard and fast, slamming it into the head of the person opening the door.
Another rushes me, surprised but recovering impressively quickly.
He tries to dodge the first hit but doesn’t see me reach for his gun as the second hit puts him to his knees.
I jerk the gun up and aim it right between the eyes of the third guy and realize that he’s reacted just as fast. His very own gun is pointed right at me, hand on the trigger, eyes focused as we’re left in a standoff.
And of course the man behind that gun is the one and only Grayson.
Fuck.