How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers (13 page)

They stood above his body for a moment, staring at his ass. It was mesmerizing, like a shooting star fueled by flatulence.

“Well,” Nick said. “That was anticlimactic.”

“Do you think he’s dead?” Stephen asked.

“Probably.”

“I think he’s still breathing,” Louise said.

Blood began pooling under his head.

“We should probably call an ambulance,” Nick said.

Stephen shook his head. “Why? The hospital isn’t that far. Let’s just drive him.”

“I don’t want that piece of shit in my car.”

“Dude,” Stephen said, “he’s bleeding out the skull. Cut him some slack.”

Nick sighed. “Ugh. You fucking owe me, man.”

Stephen smiled. “I knew you had a soul.”

“You can drag him into the backseat, though. Because I’m not touching his lardass.”

They were barely out of the parking lot when Louise’s cell rang. It was Eliza.

“What up, girl?” Louise said.

“Uh, you guys need to get back to the apartment. Now.”

“Okay, sure, give us a few. We gotta drop Jared off at the hospital.”

“Fuck that,” Eliza said. “Get your asses back to the apartment.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sergio’s dead.”

28. THE COCKS IN THE CLOSET

Eliza hated using
Nick’s laptop. Pubic hairs were always lodged into the keyboard. She’d told him before that he sucked at cleaning up post-masturbation, and he’d just giggle and tell her to write him a post-apocalyptic book about sex addicts.

Sergio had already emailed them the sequel to
The Cumming of Christ.
She took one look at the title and started laughing, which was definitely a good sign. She browsed through the manuscript, reading a few lines here and there, getting a sense of the general plot. It sounded just as ridiculous as the original book. Classic Sergio.

The cover idea for
Cunnilingus is Close to Godliness
came almost instantly. She started up Photoshop and got to work. She tried not to think about the fact that there were two men tied up in the closet, but it was difficult, especially when they began pounding on the door and screaming through the duct tape. She ignored them for a little while and continued working.

The screaming progressed. It grew louder and more desperate. Could the neighbors hear? Shit, that was all she needed. Cops knocking on the door because of a noise complaint. What a pathetic way to get caught.

She opened the closet. Only one of the hostages was screaming—Harlan. The other hostage, Lewis, was grabbing Harlan’s cock with all his might. He’d turned around so he could latch on with his hands still tied behind his back.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eliza said, and tried to pull Lewis off him. But he was quicker than she expected. He released his grip on Harlan’s cock and smashed his face into hers. She stepped back a few feet and tripped over some books on the floor. Fucking Nick, she told him he ought to clean this place up once in a while.

Eliza tried to stand up, but Lewis jumped on top of her, leaving her lightheaded and gasping for air. He did this with his hands still tied behind his back. Who
was
this guy? Before she could defend herself, he was standing above her and kicking her ribs. Then he stomped on her face and she passed out.

She woke up with her arms and legs tied behind her back, like a goddamn hog. Harlan was next to her, bloody. Her face throbbed. It felt wet and deformed. Maybe he’d broken her nose, kicked it straight into her brain.

Lewis was sitting on the floor a few feet away, out of breath. In one hand he held a knife and in the other he held a beer.

“That man had been lying,” he said. “He did too have beer.”

“What are you even still doing here?” Eliza asked. “Why haven’t you run away?”

Lewis sipped the beer, looked at her, contemplating the question, then took another sip. “My car is missing. I don’t intend to leave until I retrieve it.”

“Have you called the police?”

He shook his head. “It’s not them I have business with.”

“My brother.”

“If your brother is the man who kidnapped me and stole my car, then yes.”

“I think you broke my nose.”

“And soon I will remove your head from your shoulders.”

They stared, daring the other to speak. Neither did, except for Harlan, who screamed through his duct tape. As if reminded of something, Lewis tossed the empty beer bottle to the floor and stood up. He found the roll of duct tape by the sofa and crouched down next to Eliza, then wrapped it around her mouth.

“I know it isn’t much,” he said, “but at least it’ll slightly dampen the sound of your screams. And believe me, you will be screaming quite a bit here in a few minutes. You and that buffoon I’ve spent all day locked up with.”

Eliza tried to curse at him but it all came out as nonsense through the duct tape.

“They always scream,” he said. “And I don’t blame them. Decapitation is a hell of a way to go out, especially when it’s all slow and drawn out.”

Eliza’s eyes widened with terror. She wanted to kick Nick in the balls for leaving her here alone. Then she wanted to strangle her brother for kidnapping a goddamn psychopath. A part of her was still hopeful, though. She wasn’t dead yet. Maybe the guy was just bluffing. He didn’t
sound
like he was bluffing, but who really knew. Plus, in the movies, whenever the bad guy gave a long speech about how he was going to kill the protagonist, he almost never had a chance to follow through with it. That’s why horror monsters like Michael Myers always got their shit taken care of. No talking. No dumb speeches. Any second now, help would arrive. Or he’d slip up and offer an opportunity for her to bash his brains in with something.

“First, though,” he said, standing up, “I would like another beer.”

Lewis walked into the kitchen just as the front door opened and Sergio entered the apartment, obviously ready to save the day.
See?
That’s why you didn’t give big speeches before you murdered somebody. Fucking amateur.

Sergio stood in the doorway, staring at her, and she tried screaming for him to turn around and run away, to call the cops before her hostage—wait, who was the hostage now?—decapitated everybody. But he just stood there like an idiot until Lewis returned to the living room and drove a knife through his throat.

She was reminded of the way a hose might spurt water from the side of the tubing if a hole was poked into it. Only instead of a tube, she was staring at a neck, and instead of water . . .

29. BIZARRO SORROWS

After his reading
, Sergio decided to stay up and ride the energy high. He sat in his apartment with his laptop and wrote. Various horror movies played in the background. He’d pay attention to a scene here and there, but he was mainly absorbed in his writing. He was pretty drunk, but alcohol had never really made him tired. It woke him up. Gave him the creative spark that helped pay his rent.

He walked home from Nightscapes and immediately started writing a new novel. Or maybe it would be a novella. He didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was he had a killer idea for a story and he would write it until the story ended, then he’d send it to his publisher, and maybe he’d make a couple hundred bucks in royalties in six months or so. Or maybe he’d make nothing.

The book, obviously inspired from last night’s events, was about a zombie outbreak during a public book reading. It was fast paced and bloody as hell. And, like most of his books, it took place in the span of one day. The best stories—especially suspenseful stories—took place in short bouts of time. Books that went on for years and years were boring as hell. If the story was supposed to continue past a couple of days, then he’d just write a sequel.

By that afternoon, Sergio had already written fifteen thousand words. Most writers wouldn’t have even started their outlines by then. But most writers were assholes. A lot of people Sergio knew weren’t even real writers. They just liked to pretend. They talked plenty of talk on Facebook and offered recycled writing advice on their blogs, but they never actually wrote anything worth reading. Some of them didn’t even write at all. They just talked about it.

That was the difference between Sergio and most of the people in the small press scene—Sergio actually did his job. What other small press author was consistently putting out solid material? Hell, the year was barely halfway over and he already had nearly twelve books released. Twelve books
this
year. Total? Shit, last time he counted, he was almost to sixty.

Meanwhile, everybody else was on Facebook, talking about writer’s block and boasting over pathetic word count goals. Fuck word count and
especially
fuck writer’s block. Writer’s block did not exist. It was just an excuse to be lazy.

If you wanted to be a writer, you couldn’t afford to be lazy. You had to be like Sergio and treat it like any other job. It was when you started acting like it was different from normal jobs that things started going south. If you treated writing like a typical nine to five, then you would get the work done. But if you acted like you were a special snowflake who was better than everybody else, then you weren’t gonna get shit done. If you worked at Walmart, you couldn’t sit around and wait for inspiration to kick in. You either stocked the shelves or your ass was canned. Sergio held the same philosophy about writing. He knew he wasn’t special. Nobody was special. People who thought they were special were actually just assholes.

When he was first starting out and still spoiled like everybody else, he had a certain mantra he’d repeat every day before writing. After so long, his words finally stuck, and now he was actually getting shit done.

You are not special.

You do not deserve leniency.

You are an employee of the mind. You wanted to work, well here’s your chance to work. Now work.

You are no different than the kid who flips burgers at McDonald’s.

You are the garbage man outside your house.

You are the person scraping road kill off the side of the highway.

You do not get a speed-pass to skip ahead in line. There is nothing remarkable about you that differentiates you from any other soul out there trying to make a dollar.

You are a person with a job to do. You either do your job, or you’re fired. You sit around, fucking off, complaining enough, then they’ll just find someone else to do it.

You don’t feel like writing? Too bad. Do you think the waitress down the block feels like busting her ass, listening to your problems, only for a two dollar tip? No, but she does it anyway. Why? Because she has a job to do. She wants to get paid. Your worries are pathetic in her eyes. She doesn’t sit around and wait for something to inspire her to refill your coffee.

Every second you aren’t writing is another second you’re wasting on the clock. What are you even doing here?

You may not have a spatula or a box cutter, but you do have a pen, you do have a keyboard. Your tools may be different, but it doesn’t change the fact that your shift isn’t even close to over.

So either piss off or do your fucking job.

So that’s what Sergio did. His fucking job.

Well, he
was
doing his job. Now he wanted to sleep. But something had come up. Nick needed him over at his apartment right away. They were putting the sequel to
The Cumming of Christ
up for pre-order already, which was strange, since the first book only came out a few months ago. His publisher hadn’t sounded like his normal self. Something was wrong. Maybe he owed somebody money, and he was being threatened. Sergio considered the possibility, then wondered if maybe he could turn that idea into a novella. He would call it
Bizarro Sorrows.

Sergio got dressed, gathered his laptop and USB stick in his messenger bag, and walked across town to his publisher’s apartment. He didn’t have a car. Cars were for people who had places to be. The only place Sergio needed to be was at home, writing. Or at his uncle’s cabin, also writing. Except when his publisher randomly demanded his presence. But such times were rare. And besides, Sergio didn’t mind walking. Walking was good for you. It was the best way to brainstorm future books.

If
The Cumming of Christ
continued to be such a success, then the sequel,
Cunnilingus is Close to Godliness,
would be a hit. His fans would demand a third one. He certainly had ideas. Hell, the way his buzz was going lately, he could continue this series for the rest of his life. Writing sleazy stories about Jesus just came naturally to him.

It was weird, how word-of-mouth moved for
The Cumming of Christ.
When it was first released, it got shared around on Facebook and Twitter like it usually did. A few laughs here and there. It moved up the ranks on Amazon. The same as his other books. Nothing too special, but still decent for a small press weird fiction author. But then, almost two months after its release, there was an article hitting all the usual news websites. A high school English teacher in Washington had been fired for assigning
The Cumming of Christ
as required reading for his students. The news story went viral, and soon
The Cumming of Christ
was in the top one hundred of most sold books on Amazon. Well, for a few hours at least, and then a James Patterson book knocked it back out. But still, Sergio’s book was selling. The article was being shared even today. More copies were being moved. He had no idea who this teacher was, but he pretty much saved Sergio’s life. He couldn’t wait until that first royalty statement. It already tasted sweet and delicious.

Sergio eventually made it across town, still thinking about turning
The Cumming of Christ
into a trilogy. Nick’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, but the apartment was unlocked.

Inside, Eliza was on the floor, hogtied. Next to her was another man, also hogtied. Their faces cried blood.

Sergio stood in the doorway, frozen. A guy walked out of the kitchen, into the living room, smiling. He held a knife.

“I haven’t seen you yet,” the man said.