At least he thinks he’s awake. He can see only blackness, and he can still hear one of the sirens, and the ocean continues to cram into his mouth.
No, not the ocean. Something soft. Material. It has been packed in tight, soaking up his saliva and tickling the back of his throat. It makes him want to throw up, but he can’t open his mouth to spit out the material, his lips won’t part, and he knows that if he does puke he will probably drown in his own vomit.
He tries to focus on something else. The song.
It’s called I Feel Love, and the siren’s name is Donna Summer.
Why is his head filled with that pulsing music?
He tries bringing his hands to his ears, but his arms won’t move. Something is holding them back; they’re stretched above his head in a surrender pose. He tugs harder, with no success, and then he strains, his muscles taut, but all he can feel is something biting into his wrists.
He turns his attention to his legs, attempting to draw them up towards his chest, but again he feels the resistance.
Parker realises he is tied up. His arms and legs are bound. He has been gagged, and music is being played to him over headphones.
He twists his head from side to side. No, not headphones. Smaller. Earbuds. And he can’t seem to shake them loose.
He stares into the blackness, worried that his sense of sight has somehow been turned off too. He lifts his head and scans as much of his surroundings as he can. To his right is a large rectangle of dark grey. He realises it’s a curtained-off window.
The support beneath him is soft, cushioning his body.
I’m on a bed, he thinks. This is a bedroom. My own? I don’t think so. Mine’s not this dark.
He searches his memory. The last thing he recalls is getting down from a stool in the kitchen, just before the world was switched off.
And before that?
He was talking to Franklin. Trying to end whatever that weird setup was between them. Franklin had the laptop and they were drinking tea and then Parker began to feel a little woozy, and then…
The tea!
Was there something in the tea?
Surely not. How could Franklin—
I turned my back, he thinks. I went to fetch the biscuits. In those few seconds he could easily have—
No. That’s crazy. That’s nuts. Why would he spike my tea?
I mean, it happens. You hear about such things. But it’s mainly done to girls in bars and nightclubs, right? Date rape drugs, and so on. Surely Franklin doesn’t intend to—
Oh, shit! Is that what this is? A sex thing? Is this guy planning to rape me?
Or what if it’s worse? What if he’s a violent psychopath? What if he’s another Jeffery Dahmer, and he’s planning to cut me up and store my head in his fridge? I mean, Jesus, what the fuck is going on here? What the hell have I got myself into?
Panic overwhelms him then. He tries yelling, but it feels as though it can’t push past whatever is in his mouth, so he yanks on his bindings again and again, and then he begins to buck on the bed, arching his back as much as he can – which isn’t easy when your limbs are splayed – and then slamming it down into the mattress. He twists and he turns and he pulls and he bounces for all he’s worth, hoping that some part of the bed will eventually give way and that he will be able to escape.
He stops when light blinds him.
He screws his eyes up tight, and then blinks furiously while they adjust.
This is definitely not his bedroom.
But it’s not a basement or some kind of weird sex den, either. No chains hanging from the ceiling or semi-naked men wearing leather thongs and carrying whips. It’s just a regular bedroom, with wardrobes and bedside cabinets and a dressing table and a mirror and floral wallpaper.
Oh, and Franklin B Goodman.
Who is now standing next to the bed, looking inquisitively down at Parker as though he’s surprised he’s making such a fuss.
Parker tries yelling at him, but again all he manages to produce are muffled sounds. He turns his head to examine his arms and legs. As he suspected, they are tied to the rails at the top and foot of the bed. A white cable stretches from his earbuds to a laptop sitting on the cabinet to his left.
Driven by fury, he goes into a frenzy of motion again as he fights against his restraints. Staring with wild eyes at Franklin, the veins bulging in his temples, he screams an obscenity-laden list of all the things that he’s planning to do to his captor when he breaks free. Even though he knows they are stifled in his own mouth, the act itself makes him feel he still has some semblance of control.
Franklin says something back to him, but he can’t hear it over the music.
And then Franklin slowly reaches out a hand towards Parker’s face. Parker does his best to twist away from his touch, but there is no escape. He wonders what the man is going to do to him.
What Franklin does is to pull and rip.
His head still muddled by whatever was used to drug him, Parker thinks at first that a strip of flesh has been peeled from his face. But then he sees the length of duct tape in Franklin’s hand. When Franklin repeats the act on the other side of his face, he is less afraid.
Franklin removes the earbuds that were being held in place by the tape. He says, ‘Sorry, I forgot you couldn’t hear me. I was telling you that you should stop before you get hurt. And by that, I don’t mean that you’ll hurt yourself. I mean that I will have to hurt you.’
The warning is delivered in such a matter-of-fact way that, at first, Parker doesn’t absorb it. But then he looks into Franklin’s steely eyes and realises it’s not an idle threat. It is guaranteed to involve extreme pain.
Parker settles his body, tries to calm his breathing. He tells himself there is no point expending all his energy fruitlessly. There may come a point when he needs as much of it as he can summon to fight this man.
‘That’s better,’ Franklin says. ‘I don’t like noise. Which explains this…’ He taps Parker’s mouth, and Parker realises that there is tape there too, preventing him from expelling whatever is in there. ‘But you still managed to make quite a racket. The light fitting downstairs was actually rattling. I can’t have that. I was trying to concentrate on a film. Kramer versus Kramer. Have you seen it? It’s one of my favourites. Before you so rudely interrupted, I’d just got to the scene where Dustin Hoffman loses his temper when he’s trying to make French toast for his son. I don’t think you should ever show that much negative emotion in front of your child, do you? Not that it stopped my parents. I don’t think they should ever have had kids. You might think it strange of me to say that, because obviously it would rule out my own existence, but there you have it: that’s what I think.’
