• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He got back in the front seat and started driving again.

I waited a few minutes and then tried calling out a few muffled questions. He hadn’t put the gag back in, so I thought I could be heard from under my blanket. I asked if he expected to get a ransom for me and if so from whom. I suppose I was nervous enough to seem casual as I told him that none of my friends or relatives have any money and that I’m of little or no monetary value to the world at large. By that point I wasn’t truly fearing for my life anymore. He told me to shut up and that he wouldn’t hurt me as long as I didn’t try any funny stuff. He said it just like that: Don’t try any funny stuff. As if reading from a bad script. I asked him if I could call my neighbor to feed my cats. He ignored me and when I asked again, he said no.

Eventually I just lay there, under the blanket, trying to stay calm. I managed to lull myself into a sort of dark reverie that was akin to sleep. I woke up when the car’s motion changed and we came to a stop. I had a throbbing headache and a dry mouth. My captor came and helped me out of the backseat. We were in the country. There were pine trees and snow. The air was cold and clean smelling and I could hear what sounded like a little stream running nearby. Ahead, there was a small white one-story house, and about a hundred yards back a little wooden cabin. As the guy told me to walk toward the cabin, the dog trotted at his side. It was almost bucolic seeming for a moment. Then my captor pulled some keys from his pocket, unlocked the padlock on the cabin door, and nudged me inside. It was just one big, dirty room and the floor felt unstable. There was nothing in it other than a sagging cardboard box and a chair with a broken back. An odor of mold and dust thickened the air.

“I need to pee,” I told my captor. This seemed to alarm him. He’d apparently never been here before either. He joined me in looking around the little room and discovering that there was no toilet in evidence. The cabin had two windows that overlooked the stream. I could hear it rushing out there and the sound was making matters worse.

“We’ll see about that when you tell me where to find the jockey.”

“I told you, I know about as much as you do. The last time I saw him he was walking into the racing secretary’s office at Aqueduct. Which I assume is far from here. Where exactly are we?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” the guy said, looking around nervously, as if there might be a sign announcing our location.

“Okay, so don’t tell me, but the fact remains, I have got to go to the bathroom.”

“All right,” he said, “I’ll find something.” He turned and went back outside. I was planning to make a run for it when I heard him padlock the door. I stood there, cold and scared, my hands throbbing from the rope. The dog was still in the room with me. We stared at each other. He was a cute dog. Mostly white. Shaggy hair. Some kind of mutt.

He panted a little.

I started eyeing the windows. They didn’t seem particularly secure and I was figuring I could kick them out pretty easily but, before I’d had time to get any further with this plan, my captor was back.

“Here,” he said, setting a bucket on the floor.

“Great,” I smirked. I had the sense that he felt bad about it, that, in spite of the fact that he was doing fairly unpleasant things to me, his heart wasn’t exactly in it. He untied my hands and I rubbed my wrists.

“I’m gonna leave so you can use that in privacy,” he said, motioning to the bucket, “and then I’m gonna be boarding up these windows.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated.

He called to his dog, then went back out. I heard him locking me in. I stood hesitating, not particularly keen on peeing into a bucket. It seemed I had no choice though. I pulled my pants down and squatted. It was a relief.

I’d barely rezipped my pants when the guy appeared outside the biggest window. He had a giant piece of plywood that he fitted over its exterior. Pretty soon he was pounding nails into the wall, imprisoning me.