20. Milo
Author’s Note:
Glitter. That’s all I have to say. IYKYK.
MILO
I woke up to the sound of Ethel grumbling. “Motherfucking, cock-sucking, rubbish bin fuckers.”
I felt groggy and confused. The last time she’d been this fired up, she’d ended up glitter-bombing the next door neighbor (long story, but he really deserved it).
“Damn snot-eating, drooling, hind-brain imbeciles,” she cursed.
“Ethel?” I asked. I felt… odd. A little muffled and still tired, which wasn’t like me. I felt like I could barely pry my eyes open, and I really just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.
“Milo! Thank goodness. Those sons of amoebas didn’t even provide you with medical care!”
I felt her hands gently smoothing over my forehead, and I finally opened my eyes.
“Oh,” I muttered, because we were not at the retirement home. Nope. We were in a gray walled room, and I was on a bed. It was sparsely decorated and small, and it looked similar to a dorm room. Ethel was sitting on the bed next to me, where I was laid out.
“What happened?” I asked, because this whole thing made no sense to me.
“Those shit-eating fuckheads hit my car. That’s what happened,” she muttered, obviously still disgruntled.
“But you’re okay?” Because really, that was more important than the car.
“I’m fine. I got jostled around a bit, and I’ll have a few bruises to show for it all, but you took the brunt of it. Milo, I know I’ve told you to use your head, but I didn’t mean to help you stop. Really, hands are much better for that.”
I vaguely recalled an accident, and pain in my head, and then… nothing. “Where’s Rowan?” I asked, because if I was in an accident I knew he’d want to be here.
Ethel scoffed. “I’m sure he’ll be along to rescue us shortly.
He seems like the type. Not that we aren’t perfectly capable of rescuing ourselves.
But a little piece of advice, Milo—sometimes the person you love needs to feel needed.
Sometimes we can do things for ourselves but we have to let them do it for us.
It makes them feel good. Everybody wants to be needed. ”
Not that I didn’t appreciate Ethel’s love-life advice, but… “Why do we need to be rescued?”
Ethel sighed and looked at me. “Milo, dearheart, keep up. The neo-Nazis took us hostage, and now we’re locked in a room in their compound.” Ethel said this like it was obvious, duh, and of course I should have known this.
“Why would the neo-Nazis kidnap us? We didn’t do anything with them yet.”
Ethel looked at her nails at this. That did not bode well.
“Ethel… what did you do?” I asked.
“Well, I was digging around and maybe hacked into their system, and maybe they’re totally doing something illegal to be moving that kind of money.”
“So they tracked you down through that?” I asked.
Ethel looked at her nails again. Well, fuck. “Ethel?”
“So they may have made some really racist and homophobic posts on their social media, so I might have sent them a dildo. Using their own credit card I hacked so they paid for it.”
“A dildo?” I asked.
“Well, maybe it was a few boxes of dildos. And some rainbow glitter. I specifically asked the clerk to sprinkle it inside.”
I groaned and closed my eyes. The dildos were probably easily blown off, depending on how sensitive the group was. But the rainbow glitter? Glitter got everywhere. You’d be finding it for weeks afterwards. Glitter was a call to war.
“How did they track you from the purchase if you used their card?” I asked.
Ethel looked guilty and didn’t answer.
I picked my aching head up and looked at her. “Ethel?”
“Well, my order was probably pretty memorable. I sent monster cocks, and tentacle cocks, and rainbow cocks, and did you know there’s a dildo that actually inserts eggs—”
“Ethel! Focus! How’d they find you?”
“I maybe ordered some dildos to be sent to the retirement home, too,” Ethel admitted.
I groaned, letting my head fall back down against the pillow. (At least my kidnappers had given me a pillow.)
“But really, can you imagine that old prude Grace opening up a tentacle dildo? Probably the most fun she’s had in decades.”
“Ethel, if you cannot hack responsibly, I’m going to take away your computer privileges.”
Ethel didn’t look the least bit fazed at that. My head was still pounding, but at any moment I would get up and rescue us. Although, giving Rowan the opportunity to rescue us did sound lovely, too. I bet there would be some great rescue sex afterwards.
Still, I didn’t think it would be useful to just hang around as captives, waiting to see what heinous things the neo-Nazis might do to us.
“What did our captors say or do so far?” I asked.
Ethel shrugged. “They ruined my car, for starters. Then they took us both—I was a bit muddled, and you were unconscious, so I didn’t catch much of what they said or anything. They put us in this room, and that’s been it so far.”
I sat up in bed with a groan, giving myself a moment for the room to stop spinning.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and Ethel stood up, giving me her hand.
I managed to stand, but once I was standing, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself.
The world got a little less dizzying as I stood there, though, so I supposed that was a plus.
I took stock of the room. There really wasn’t much here.
The bed was on what looked like a cheap metal frame.
There were some possibilities there, although it would be a pain in the ass to take apart the frame in order to use it as any type of weapon.
It would probably be loud, too. The dresser looked basic and pretty cheap—probably a big box store purchase.
I didn’t think I could use that for much.
There wasn’t a television or anything else in the room.
Not even a mirror, although I would’ve hated breaking one.
I wasn’t very superstitious, but the not breaking mirrors thing was one rule I followed.
There was a window, but when I made my way over to it I saw we were up on the third floor.
I could probably manage to get down, but Ethel couldn’t, and there was no way I was leaving her behind.
There were no neighbors and no road facing the window, so calling for help wouldn’t do anything but annoy our captors.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Ethel said.
I turned around to find her sitting on the bed and looking down at her hands. I went and sat next to her. I hated seeing her downtrodden.
“Don’t worry—if Rowan doesn’t rescue us in a timely manner, I’ll rescue us. This is just part of a normal day,” I joked.
She looked at me, her face serious. “That’s what I mean, Milo. I’m sorry I got you into all of this. Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t been around, you would have a perfectly normal life as a banker or a college professor or something.”
I scoffed. Who wanted to be a banker or college professor when you could be a problem solver?
“No, Milo—seriously. After Anabelle died…” she trailed off.
“After Aunt Anabelle died, we were both destroyed. If it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think I could have made my way out of the grief and depression I was in. You saved me, Ethel. You and the whole crew. You guys bring light and joy into my life. God, that sounds so corny, but it’s true.”
“But I should have encouraged you to do something better with your life,” she argued.
“Better than helping people? Better than saving animals? Better than saving people? I don’t think there is a better job.”
She grabbed onto my hand, and I knew she wasn’t going to let this go. I sighed. I guessed it was time for unburdening my soul. Oh boy. Hopefully our captors would let us have our moment before they came barging in.
“Ethel, I love you. I love how you support me and help me and guide me to problems to solve. Even if you hadn’t, I would still do what I do, and I would still be what I am.
You and Aunt Anabelle both taught me right from wrong, and you taught me to care about injustice in the world.
It wasn’t your fault I started doing something about it.
Hell, if you want to blame anyone, blame Aunt Anabelle. ”
Ethel gasped. “Why would you blame your aunt? She didn’t encourage you to do this with your life.”
I smiled, squeezing her hand. “Only she did. I killed my first person by accident, and it was Aunt Anabelle who made me see how my actions weren’t bad.
He deserved to die. I was already solving problems, along with working a million different jobs, when Aunt Anabelle died.
Her leaving me all that money let me become a professional problem solver.
So, without her, I wouldn’t be here. And I don’t regret a single moment of it. ”
Ethel laughed wetly. “You really did work a million different jobs. Just long enough to set things straight before you quit and moved onto the next one.”
I shrugged. “I guess even then I was problem solving.”
“I love you, too, you know. In every way that counts, you’re mine, Milo. I don’t think I’ve ever really said that, but I want you to know.”
I smiled and hugged her. “You and Aunt Anabelle were the most important people in my life. You guys raised me and gave me a home, and I love you both.” I paused, leaning back to sniff and wipe my eyes a bit. “Now, no more of these heart-to-heart moments. No one is going to die.”
“Well…” Ethel said, wiping her own eyes and smiling.
“Okay, neither of us is going to die,” I amended. Because more than likely, there would be some bloodshed before we were through here.
Being kidnapped was boring. They don’t ever tell you that in the movies or the books.
It’s really a lot of sitting around, and it sucks.
Our captors didn’t even give us a television, for fuck’s sake.
I’d examined the dresser and the bed frame, but we could hear noise from around us, so I didn’t want to be too loud in taking apart the bed.
I did take out one of the dresser drawers and set it on top of the dresser.
I figured I could grab it and hit someone if I really needed to.
Otherwise… it was just waiting. We had played a dozen rounds of twenty questions, we’d gossipped about everyone we knew, and we’d even tried playing “I spy,” only it was hard when there was barely anything in the room.
When the door creaked open, I was ready to start singing praises, just because it wasn’t so damn boring anymore.
Two big, muscled, tattooed, bald guys walked into the room carrying a chair, and someone outside the room shut the door behind them.
The one guy sat in the chair backwards, leaning onto the back of it.
The other guy stood behind him and looked menacing, his hand loosely holding a gun.
They apparently watched too many movies, because it was typical villain behavior.
“Does your mother know you kidnap old ladies?” Ethel asked.
I thought about face-palming myself, but Ethel was gonna be Ethel.
“Excuse me?” the one sitting in the chair asked.
“Well, at least someone taught you good manners. Now, I’m very thankful that you pulled us from our burning vehicle, but we really need to get home to our family before they start worrying. Keeping us here would be kidnapping, and I’m sure a nice young man like you wouldn’t do that.”
I looked at Ethel in disbelief. The two big guys were also staring at her, completely at a loss for words. I totally understood what she was going for, but I didn’t think it would work. You didn’t walk into a room with a gun unless you were planning on threatening someone.
The guy stared at Ethel for another moment, and then he looked at me. “Who hired you?”
I placed my hand on my chest and looked innocently at him, raising my eyebrows in a “Who, me?” face. I actually kind of was surprised. “No one hired me. I don’t know what you mean.”
The guy with the gun grunted and mumbled, “Fed,” under his breath.
Ohhhh—they thought I was with some federal agency. Shit. Should I go along with it, or would that make it worse?
“We are not federal agents. How absurd,” Ethel answered.
Well, I guess we weren’t gonna pretend to be feds. Thanks, Ethel.
The guy directed his attention to Ethel. “Where did you get the information to send us those… packages,” he said, his lip curling on the last word.
“You didn’t like the dildos?” Ethel asked innocently. I closed my eyes. We were totally going to die.
The guy with the gun growled, and as I looked at him, I thought I saw some glitter sparkling on the left side of his neck, right above the swastika tattoo.
Yup, definitely going to die.
“We can do this—” the seated man started, but Ethel cut him off.
“—the easy way or the hard way. Really, is there a guidebook for villains that you’re following, because that line is so trite.”
At this point, I did put my head in my hands, because I was totally going to have to take both these guys out, avoid getting shot, and avoid Ethel getting hurt in the process as well. Shit.
As I sat there, though, I heard a scream from somewhere in the distance, then another one. I lifted my head up, smiling.
“I think Rowan’s here,” I said. I heard a screeching yell loud enough to make everyone cover their ears and duck, and when it was done, I added, “And I think he brought backup.”