Now would be a good time for a joke about disco.
But my damn jaw hurts too much.
…
Snap out of it, Bobby!
Fight back, damn it!
He could hear Kopec opening the front door on the wood stove. Bob yanked at the wrist restraints, pulling his arms apart as far as he could, the rough cloth burning his skin, wrists threatening to break as he yanked them away from one another.
The bandana popped over his knuckles and fell to the ground. He tried to use his core, strengthened by years of sit-ups and crunches, to bend upwards, to reach the hook and rope. But after just a few minutes suspended, his muscles were already weary, fatigued. He slumped back to a hanging position.
“Figure maybe I’ll brand my initials over your heart,” Vern said from across the room, his back to his captive. “Then maybe I’ll heat her up again… before I shove her up your ass.”
The syringe. Bob reached for his jeans pocket. He patted at it frantically.
The pocket was empty.
Shit. Must’ve fallen out. On the way in, or…
He craned his neck around, the swelling in his face pounding from the extra blood flow. The syringe was nowhere in front of him, or left, or…
He looked to his right. The syringe wasn’t on the ground there, either. But twenty feet away, Vern was taking the poker out of the coals. “She’s getting there!” he announced with way too much glee. “Gon’ give her another minute.”
He plunged it back into the open fire, using an old pot warmer with his left hand to push the stove door mostly closed.
Bob tried to lift his head enough to trace their path back to the door. There was no sign of the syringe. He tilted his head back, trying to sway enough to see behind him.
There.
It was less than a foot behind him. He kicked with both feet, trying to get the hook swinging on the rope, his downward weight making it hard to get any momentum.
His fingertips brushed at the syringe, unable to quite reach it.
A metallic squeak of hinges to the right suggested Vern had opened the stove door again. “Thar! She looks fine, just fine.”
Bob kicked frantically, the rope sliding slightly on the hook’s thick steel curve. He reached back with all his might, fingertips brushing the syringe but going past it, feeling the tiny object shift forward slightly, but unable to grasp it.
“What you doing?” Vern said. “HEY!” Feet dragged dirt as he made his way back over. “You’re earning this, son,” he said, reaching in with the poker even as Bob tried to swing back again.
His two fingers found the syringe. He pulled it in towards his palm as the hook slung him towards his captor. The poker pressed against the skin on his side, and searing pain flooded his tensed body.
Fight it! He reached up with the syringe, pulling the cap off with his teeth.
“BURN, YOU LIL’ BITCH!” Vern leaned in again, skin sizzling as he held the hot iron to Bob’s side, Bob reaching up in the same moment, jabbing the hypodermic needle into Vern’s thigh.
“SUM’BITCH!” Vern grabbed at the syringe, pulling it out of his leg as he skipped backwards a few feet. “What…? What’d you just do?”
“Let me down… or you’ll die never knowing,” Bob croaked.
“You dirty sum’bitch…” Vern lurched forward again.
“Ah!” Bob held up one hand, palm out. “I ain’t kidding. You… you want an antidote… you better get me down from here, real quick; clock’s… clock’s ticking.”
At least my jaw’s not broken. Hurts like hell, though, Bob thought.
“Dirty…” Vern was clearly having trouble overcoming his rage. But his survival instinct was gradually kicking in. He looked down and saw the syringe in the dirt. “You stuck me with something.”
He ran over to the hoist button and slammed a palm onto it, lowering Bob to the ground. He unhooked his feet. “Okay. Talk. What you shoot me with?”
Bob ignored the fire in his sides as he rolled up onto his backside. “Feet,” he said, nodding to the rope.
“Huh.” Vern walked over to the oven and threw the poker down on its cooktop, metal clanging on metal. Then he strode a few feet to his left to the work bench and picked up a pistol. “You try anything funny, I’ll shoot you dead.”
“Feet,” Bob repeated.
Vern crouched down at Bob’s feet. He reached down to his own waist and drew a knife from a sheath. He cut through the four coils of rope.
It fell away. He stood up quickly, keeping distance between them. “Talk, or so help me, I’ll kill you,” Vern said.
“That was shellfish toxin. A former torturer from Laos was going to use it on me. I kept it, but diluted it. His version would’ve made me suffocate slowly. Paralyze my lungs. The version I gave you… he claimed it works in less than a minute, but like I said, I diluted it.”
Vern’s expression shifted from angry to deadpan, as if he hadn’t quite processed the information. “What you mean, shut d—”
He dropped the pistol.
“Shee-it.” He stared down at it. He couldn’t hold the arm up, instinctually trying to support it with his left. “Dang.” His knees began to buckle and he fell to a half crouch. “You sum… sum…”
