Page 13

Chapter Seven

Donny leaves not long after we finish eating, but the rest of the family hangs around for a bit to talk and exchange mostly embarrassing stories that I’d sworn my parents to secrecy about. Clearly, we need to have a talk that explains what the dictionary definition of “secret” is.

Lance and I are the last ones out of the restaurant, the rest of the family having headed out, probably assuming they’ll see enough of us tomorrow at the wedding… that is, if I don’t run off first.

“So did the butterfly ninjas tear open your abdomen with their wee butcher knives?” he asks.

“Maybe not today but they will tomorrow. You just wait and see. I’ll be your husband by then, so you’ll get all of my assets. You’ll be able to take over my bakery. Rename it something weird.”

“Ooh, what’ll I call it? Let’s see?—”

“Sir!” our waitress says as she rushes out. “You left this box on the table.”

I turn to look because I don’t remember having a box at the table. I’m about to say so when I see “Lance and Owen, you better open this” written on top.

“Oh. Thank you,” I say as I take it. It looks just like the boxes I use to put pies in at work, which is strange. Was someone in the family just reusing one of the boxes? Or did they not like the pie or something and didn’t feel like saying it to my face?

I open the box before snapping it back shut, deciding I shall just leave it here. “Wrong Lance and Owen,” I announce because this is definitely not the thrill I was looking for on a Friday evening the day before my wedding to the man of my dreams.

“What is it?” Lance asks as he tries to pry the box from my hands. When he finally accomplishes it, he flips it open and looks in at it uncertainly.

Inside the box is a single key taped to the bottom. Above it is sloppily written 425 North State Street. Come. Or else. Donny’s die

“Is… is that written in blood?” Lance asks.

“Donny’s going to die,” I realize.

“What?”

“It’s a fucking death threat, Lance. Come or else Donny dies .”

He stares at it for a long moment. “I understand that might… be what it says, but it might not be what we have to do… it could be a prank.”

I raise an eyebrow, unsure how he could see the blood-coated box as a prank . “Lance, Donny’s going to die.”

Lance rocks back on his heels. “Oh god… we’re going to have to save his life, aren’t we? Are we capable of saving someone’s life?”

“I… I don’t know. They probably want money, and I don’t have much spare money but…” I open the car door and grab my favorite knife—I didn’t trust my baby with Wanda for nearly two weeks and thought bringing it home with me would be best. Little did I know that I would need it to survive this day. “We’re going to fucking try.”

“What if you call him first just to… you know, make sure he really is in need of our help,” Lance suggests.

“Okay. Right,” I say as I hold the knife out to him. He nervously looks down at it, like he’s not sure he wants to be the chosen one for the grave act of stabbing Donny’s abductor. I don’t get why he thinks I should be the one. He looks better suited for the part. “Come on, you look so sexy when you hold a knife.”

“Thank… you?” he asks, but it gets him to take it.

I put the phone on speaker as it rings… and rings… and rings. Just when I’m giving up hope, I hear Donny only to realize it’s his voicemail.

“Wassup, this is your man Donny. I can’t get to the phone right now, which means I’m busy… keeping your mom busy, that is.”

“ Beeep .”

I look at Lance. Lance looks at me. “I mean, the world’s probably better off without him, right?” I ask.

“Very much a better place,” he says with a smile as we toss the box like some cold-hearted litterers and get into the vehicle.

Lance starts up the car and the headlights flash onto that box… the box just staring at us. “He did help a lot today.”

“And while he threatened our lives and our cat… he never actually tried killing us. It’s the thought that counts,” I say.

“Yeah… that doesn’t really make sense, Owen. He thought about killing us.”

“Oh… right. Are we going to be murdered before we’re married?”

“I guess it’d be better than being murdered after we’re married. We’d save the money and our parents could use it to toss our ashes into the sea,” he says.

“They could mix them together so we could forever be just like entwined with each other.”

“This is getting weird.”

“Has it ever not been weird?” I ask curiously. Honestly, I’m not sure of the answer to this. I would like to say that bringing Donny into our lives brought forth the weirdness, but life in general has been quite strange. I’m positive Lance is the one who has caused all the strangeness in our lives, not me.

By mutual agreement, we open our doors and approach the box. After a few moments of just staring down at it, Lance finally breaks and reaches to pick it up.

“Okay… so it looks like a key to maybe a locker. Do you think it’ll have a ransom note inside? How much are we willing to spend to get Donny back?” Lance asks as he hurries me back to the car.

I debate this question as he starts to drive. “I don’t know… I like him, but he’s also the reason we’re in this position. Maybe a thousand dollars?”

Lance glances over at me. “This is a human life we’re talking about.”

I shrug. “Okay. What do you think?”

“At least two thousand, I guess.”

We’re both silent for a good full minute just listening to the directions the GPS is giving us.

“Are we horrible people?” I whisper.

Lance nods without hesitation. “I think we are.”

“No one needs to know. I mean… if we don’t pay it… maybe they won’t tell him how cheap we are.”

“Maybe. But let’s wait and see what they even want first, alright? Maybe we’re going to prove to be amazing people. We are risking our lives and didn’t toss the threat and key in the trash, just in the parking lot before grudgingly going back for it,” Lance says.

I smile at him since he’s quite right. “You’re so smart. Hell, there might even be a puppy in the locker.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure someone’s just going to put a little puppy in a locker for us. Yeahhhhh. Sure. A living puppy at that.”

“Right?” I say.

“Ha hahaha.”

“Ha ha!”

“God, we’re going crazy,” Lance says. “Did you bring a second knife?”

“To our thank-you dinner? No… no, I didn’t think I’d need to stab anyone, so I just have the one. But there has to be another weapon in here.” I climb into the back seat and start shuffling things around. “There’s an ice scraper. And I also took those self-defense classes after the last time.”

“You went to the free class one time and never went again,” Lance reminds me.

“I learned everything I needed to know.”

“You literally forgot the move in the ten minutes between the class and our house. Remember, you were trying to show me and it was basically just ten minutes of ‘I think this is right.’”

“It’s muscle memory that only comes forth in the moment of danger,” I assure him as I drop the seat and crawl into the trunk where there’s some cake support dowels. “We’re good!”

“We have another weapon?” Lance asks in surprise.

“We sure do,” I say as I climb into the front seat with two dowels in one hand and an ice scraper in the other.

“We’re going to get murdered,” he realizes as he parks the car.

“Maybe. But we’ll die together like Romeo and Juliet,” I say comfortingly.

“Lovely.”

He takes the ice scraper and knife and gets out of the vehicle to wait for me. I decide to dual wield the dowels as I shimmy my way toward the door of a large building full of storage units.

“Should we walk back-to-back?” I ask.

“You think they’re going to come from the rear?”

“They might and you’re the only one I want to come toward my rear,” I inform him.

“That’s… romantic.” He doesn’t sound overly sure about this.

“Thanks.”

We follow the numbers down to the unit that was written on the box and face the storage container.

“What if he’s inside and they’ve like… removed his body from his head?” I whisper.

“Then we won’t have to pay anything,” Lance says.

“True,” I murmur as I pull the key out of my pocket and work it into the lock. When it finally turns, I pull it free and tear open the door before assuming a fighting position.

The room is completely, one hundred percent empty.

“They want us both to go inside so they can close the door, trapping us and then dicing us into little pieces that will be easier to carry out in garbage bags.”

“But there has to be something in here, right?” Lance struts right in like he’s got a death wish.

“I’ll protect you,” I say as I stand in the hallway and look right and left, dowels at the ready.

“Why here if there’s nothing?”

That’s when I hear footsteps.

“Lance, someone’s coming.”

“Someone for us?”

“I don’t know. What do we do? Should we hide? Should we run? Come on, let’s… go, please?”

“I see a paper! It’s taped to the ceiling… what the hell. Come here, can you lift me or I’ll lift you?”

“Okay but then they’ll close us in. It’s a ploy!”

“We’ll be quick,” he assures me.

Nervously, I dart in. “At least we’ll die together,” I declare as I step onto his folded hands. He hoists me up, but the lift is jarring, so I’m thrown forward, smashing my dick right into his face. He teeters as he does some kind of ass grab while the noise of someone coming gets louder.

“I can’t see. Is it them?” he asks as I grab onto his face that’s currently buried in my groin as a little old lady using a cane walks by. She grabs her chest with a “Dear Jesus,” stops and stares at us for a long moment, then hurries on by muttering something like “Randy-ass kids these days.”

Snatching the paper, I ooze down Lance’s body and hurry out the door.

“It’s another address,” I say as I show him while on the go. I might enjoy my dick in Lance’s face any other day of the week but not this day. No. This day is for saving lives, and lives we’re going to save… maybe… if it’s cheap enough and not too life-threatening.

“Seriously? Still nothing else? No threat or information or anything?”

“Just another address.”

We hurry back to the car while I put the new address in the GPS.

“Should we stop for better weapons?” I ask.

“Do we have time?”

“I don’t know… they didn’t put a time limit on it.”

“Let’s just… go and see what kind of place it is.”

“Deal.”

We drive to the new location, which looks to be a club of some sort. Where we’re supposed to go when we arrive, I’m not sure, but we both get out.

“It’s probably mafia run,” I whisper. “Do you think we can take the knife?”

“Probably not unless we want to be arrested.”

“True, true…”

Lance tightly grips the ice scraper. “At least there will be people to hear our screams.”

“Not with this bass,” I say, feeling it in my bones before we even reach the door. The guy at the door checks our IDs, then looks at the ice scraper and dowels oddly before nodding.

“No weird stuff. Got it?” he asks.

“Yes, sir!”

Lance hurries me inside where I stop suddenly.

“This isn’t a club,” I realize as a very exposed woman gyrates on a pole and another catches my eyes while smiling. “I think I just got eye-fucked by a woman, Lance.”

“You didn’t get eye-fucked. Come on.”

I catch the eyes of another woman who eye-fucks me just as hard.

“Lance, it’s happening again.”

He cups his hands around my eyes like I’m a horse needing blinders. “Don’t look at them.”

“Where do we go?”

A woman saunters up to us and smiles. “You’re looking for nirvana, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” I ask.

“Right this way,” she says as she takes my hand in hers and yanks me away from Lance.

“Lance! Lance! I’m being abducted,” I cry as Busty McGee pushes me through an open doorway into a room with a U-shaped bench seat and no way out. “I don’t like nirvana. Please?—”

Lance nearly slams into me as he’s shoved in behind me.

“You think you’re going to leave so soon?” a gravelly voice asks.

Lance, my knight in shining armor, turns around with the ice scraper at the ready. “You are going to…”

He trails off as he gets one look at a burly man who is easily six-seven, making Lance appear tiny and me feel like an ant. The man is taking up the whole doorway as we realize it’s just us… and him.

I lean into Lance. “This is it. This is where we die.”

“They wouldn’t kill us here. There’d be too many eyewitnesses,” Lance assures me.

I can’t let this man take my Lance. Nope. I can’t. Only I am allowed to touch his exquisite body.

Pushing Lance behind me, I step up to the man and twirl my dowels. He’s like a mother-fucking ogre that oddly smells nice. It’s throwing me a bit and makes me stumble when I start to threaten him into backing off.

“Only I shall peruse my fiancé’s body!” I declare.

“How cute,” he says as he plucks both of my weapons out of my hands and gives me a shove back. I fall into Lance who is pushed down into the seat, leaving me sprawled on his lap as the man steps into his space.

I can’t take this lying down. I’ll have to fight… I’ll?—

The man puts his foot up on the seat next to us in some ultimate dominating move.

“Or I could sit right here,” I decide like it was my idea.

His bulge is eye-to-eye with me now. I can’t stop looking at the thing; it’s a motherfucking monster. It’s like there are two people facing us now, Hulk and Hulk Jr., and I’m pretty sure I’m about to look right in the eye of the tiger.

The man grabs his shirt and I watch in pure wonder as he tears it free from his hairy chest, grabs my chin in his hand and goes, “You’ve been bad, haven’t you?”

This is it. This is where I show my dominance and protect Lance with my whole being, even if I’m crushed in the process. And the way to do that is by giving this man an earful. “Please rip Lance’s shirt off too,” I blurt out.

Shit. No! That’s not what I meant! That’s not what I needed! Well… maybe I need it, but I shouldn’t have asked for it. Then again… I do want to enjoy Lance’s body one last time before I submit to my death.

The man unbuttons his pants and I watch in awe as he drops them, revealing a thong that barely hides Hulk Jr. who is much more like a Hulk Sr.

“Oh. My. God,” I breathe.

Lance shoves my head out of the way to get a good look at what has left me breathless as the man spins around and starts shaking his ass. Lance slips his fingers into my hair and yanks my head back.

“Is he… giving us a lap dance?” he whispers.

“No, I’ve seen this before. It’s a power move. He’s trying to get us to drop our concentration… oh my god, it’s huge. It’s a motherfucking trunk,” I whisper back.

“Is it legal to have something like that?” Lance asks as the man flops his dick around inches from my face.

“Stay… focused… Lance, we can’t get…”

As the man spins around, I see something white sticking out of his thong. “Lance, there’s another note.”

“We’re… getting a death threat tucked between someone’s ass cheeks?” Lance asks, rightfully confused.

“He probably had nowhere else to tuck it and I already told you, it’s a distraction tactic…”

“Grab it,” Lance says.

“Dear god no, you grab it. His fucking anaconda will bite me.”

Lance tentatively reaches out, plucks the note out and unfolds it. “It’s another address.”

“Is this a freaking scavenger hunt?” I ask.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Lance says as he pushes me to my feet but since the man’s so close, I end up kind of body smashing into Hulk. My face collides with the fur patch on his body and as I’m pressed in far too close, I feel the bulge… and boy do I feel it .

Slowly… ever so slowly, I look up and my eyes connect with his.

“You gotta pay to touch,” he says.

I smack Lance until I find his wallet and pull out a crisp one-dollar bill before tucking it into his thong. Clearly, the beast isn’t sated as I look down into the wallet again. “Where the hell is your money?”

“I never carry cash!” Lance hisses.

Grudgingly, I pull out my own wallet and realize quite quickly that I also never carry cash as I shake a penny and a twenty-five-dollar gift card out. The man’s not holding his hands out, so I don’t even know where to put it.

“Well… um…” I slip them right into the top of his thong but don’t let go as the man moves, causing the thong to stretch a little as I try not to peek inside. I don’t try super hard but there was a minor effort not to.

The man smiles, pats my head, and waves to the door, but I’ve locked eyes with the anaconda and don’t know what to do now.

Lance literally picks me up and carries me out of the room bridal style.

“Lance, I saw it,” I say.

“I saw that.”

I smack his arm as he races past the pole lady. “Lance, it was huge.”

“I realize that.”

“It was a motherfucking trunk,” I say as he continues to carry me. I’ve kind of just wrapped my arms and legs around him at this point as he hurries me out.

“How much was on that gift card?” he asks.

“Not enough for that,” I whisper. The man steps out of the room and gives me a little wave. “Lance, he’s waving at me.”

“Wave back.”

“I forgot my weapons!” I cry.

“You’re not going back for them. Just wave.”

I give the man a wave in a “Thank you for not killing me” kind of way as I’m pulled through the door and back out into the night. “So… if neither of us have any money on us, and I just gave away our last dollar… how are we going to pay for Donny’s life?”

“We’ll write them a check.”

“Ah… right. I didn’t bring my checkbook.”

“Neither did I.”

“I guess we could use like… PayPal or something but there’d probably be a fee.”

“Is he worth the fee?” Lance wonders.

“I don’t really think so. Do you think we should just call it a night? Go home and snuggle a little? Maybe watch some horrible TV to help us forget we’re the ones who left Donny to die?”

“Maybe… What the hell?” Lance says, and I turn my head to look as I feel a droplet of rain on my face.

“Where’d you park?” I ask, still gripping tightly onto him.

“Right here…” He pats his pants down. “Someone stole our car. My keys are missing.”

“Are you serious?” I ask. “My fucking knife was in there!”

“I don’t think you should worry about your knife .”

“It was my favorite knife!”

“They stole… our car .”

“My knife! How am I going to stab Donny after we save him now?” I ask as I drop down and realize that I never saw what the next note said. I take it from Lance and read it out loud. “‘Ride that pony to 42 Bricker Lane. You better hurry.’”

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asks.

“It simply means we’re going to die,” I decipher.

“I don’t think so… oh my god.”

“What?” I ask as his eyes lock on to something. “What, Lance… don’t make me look.”

He turns me, forcing me to look at the row of rentable bikes waiting nearby.

“They want to make a fool of us but joke’s on them. I’m going to ride the Hulk there,” I say as I head back for the door to ask Hulk and Hulk Sr. if they’d give me a ride.

“Don’t go back in there!” Lance says. “Come on. You can ride with me.”

“I only want to ride on you, never with you,” I whisper as he drags me after him.