9
ANDY
“I know you’re back there.”
Andy wanted the words to come out tough, unfazed by his situation, which was clearly dire, but instead, they came out an octave too high.
Some voice he possessed back when he was a child, nothing like his fifteen-year-old voice.
Nothing like the voice he’d honed after two years of living on the streets.
Oddly, he’d been in worse situations. There was that guy in Poughkeepsie.
The one who hit him in the head with a hammer moments after he climbed into the guy’s car, a rusty Volkswagen littered with take-out trash and empty soda cans.
That man had handcuffed him while he was unconscious, wrestled him into the cluttered back seat of the car, and done things to Andy he would never speak of aloud.
Two and a half hours of hell in an alley behind a shuttered Texaco station under a sodium streetlight that made this godawful hum the entire time.
When he’d finished, the man had simply pushed Andy from the car and driven off.
While it was a rough night, listening to that hum while every inch of his body ached, it was arguably better than being dead.
And on that particular night, Andy was certain that was how things would end.
The man had even slipped an extra two hundred in the pocket of Andy’s jeans.
He’d found it the following morning when he located his jeans in a rumpled heap next to the station’s abandoned trash cans.
Andy was a survivor.
He’d always been a survivor.
He wasn’t about to allow the twisted kink of some John to rattle him. At least this one hadn’t undressed him. Best he could tell, not a button had been touched. He was still wearing his shoes.
“You drugged me,” Andy managed. His tongue felt thick. “That wasn’t part of the deal.” He jerked up on the ropes securing his arms. “Neither is this. Either you untie me and let me go, or we need to renegotiate my fee.”
He did the math in his head.
Fifty for a blow job was one thing; that was over in five minutes.
How long had he been here? An hour? Two?
He didn’t know where here even was, so there was transport time.
The time needed to get back. The time between for this guy to get his rocks off.
“I usually charge $500 for the night.” He threw the number out there even though it was baseless.
He’d never spent the full night with a John and had no idea what he should charge.
$500 seemed right, though. “I need the cash upfront, or whatever this is needs to end.”
Behind him came the soft shuffle of feet.
Had the man stepped closer or stepped back? Andy wasn’t sure. He’d stopped moving, but he could still hear him breathing. Sounded closer.
“I could do $450,” Andy told him when the silence became unbearable. “But no lower than that, and only if you tell me what you have in mind.”
Behind him, a throat cleared. “The specimen has been responsive for twelve minutes and appears to be in a growing state of agitation.”
This was followed by a soft click. More shuffling.
Under the bowl on the table at his side, the rabbit’s head jerked up at the sound of the new voice. Its nose twitched. It went back to sniffing the glass.
Had it grown more frantic?
No.
That was Andy’s imagination.
It was a damn rabbit.
“Heart rate is eighty-nine. BP is 137 over 80; high for a specimen of this age and physical condition. This may be due to poor diet or subpar living conditions. Maybe a combination of both.”
The man spoke in this low, calm tone. Under different circumstances, Andy would consider it soothing. Right now, it was anything but. Goosebumps jumped from Andy’s skin at the sound of it. He felt as if a dead hand had found his spine and ran an index finger up the length of it.
“Heart rate is now ninety-three.”
Another soft click.
“Are we playing doctor now? Is that it? You gonna take my temperature, too? Play hide the thermometer?” Andy let out a nervous chuckle at this, meant to emphasize his joke, but it only came out sounding desperate.
“I have no interest in your temperature at this time.”
Was the temperature in the room rising?
A drip of sweat fell from Andy’s brow and trickled its way down the side of his face to the corner of his mouth.
He licked it—more of an involuntary thing than a conscious thought—and his tongue came away salty.
His thirst only increased. “Listen, man, I don’t know what this is, but you’ve got the wrong guy.
If you want someone to role-play, I can give you a few names, but it’s never been my thing.
I won’t be any good at it. I’d hate to disappoint you.
You seem like the kind of guy who knows what he wants. ”
The cuff on Andy’s arm grew tight again, held for a moment, then released with a low rush of air.
“BP is 141 over 83. Heart rate is ninety-three. Both rising.”
Andy jerked hard on the ropes. “Come on, man! Cut the shit!”
The overhead lights switched on. Fluorescents.
The old tube kind typically found in offices and department stores.
Andy pinched his eyes shut against the sudden onslaught of harsh light, then eased them open slowly.
They filled with tears. He wanted to wipe them away, but couldn’t.
The lights gave off a soft buzz not unlike the streetlamp in Poughkeepsie, and Andy tried not to think about that.
Through his moist vision, he got a better look at the room.
The walls were covered in light green patterned wallpaper with thin vertical stripes of yellow spaced every few inches.
Several prints hung in glossy black frames.
Landscapes. Mountains. Lakes. Nothing special.
There were two windows, both with blinds drawn.
No light inched around the edges, none at all, and as Andy narrowed his gaze, focused, he realized this wasn’t because it was dark outside—it was because the glass behind the blinds had been painted black.
A brown leather couch filled one wall. A large wooden desk backed against another.
Directly across from the chair in which Andy was tied was another chair, this one plush leather.
The table with the rabbit sat between them, slightly to the side.
With the lights, the rabbit had taken the opportunity to look around too, as if, like Andy, it was seeing this space for the first time. Contemplating the unfortunate events that brought it here.
A throat cleared.
Footsteps.
Moving away, then drawing closer.
A hand reached around from behind Andy and set a battery-powered drill on the table next to the bowl with the rabbit. A yellow and black DeWalt with a drill bit maybe a quarter inch wide and three inches long. It shimmered under the overhead lights.
The rabbit inched to the opposite side of its bowl. It didn’t like the drill. Andy didn’t either.
“What the hell is that for?”
He saw him then, the John. Blond hair. Oily, slicked back, making his forehead appear much larger than it probably was.
He wore an argyle sweater and tan pants.
Brown loafers. As he rounded the table and settled into the plush leather chair, he retrieved a notepad and pen from the desk and rested them on his knee.
He removed a pair of glasses from his breast pocket, wiped the lenses with the hem of his sweater, and placed them on the bridge of his nose.
Then he produced a microcassette recorder, pressed record, and set that on the table next to the drill.
He stared at Andy for a long time, gently tapping the pen against the corner of the notepad. When he finally spoke, there was a calmness to his voice as unsettling as salt near an open wound. “Shall we begin?”