Saddled, chapter 20 (Patreon)

John whined with pain. He tried to hold it in and deny these assholes any sort of satisfaction, but he was losing that battle. His arms had been tied behind his back too tightly and too long. Muscle cramps rippled up his arms and back, making him white out as he struggled to breathe. He heard someone come in the storage closet where he laid on a cot, but he didn’t have the energy to both breathe and pay attention to whatever these fuckers wanted.

“This him?” a new man asked. Deep voice. Weird East Coast accent. John was lying stomach down on the military style cot, so he supposed the guy couldn’t see enough of him to know for sure.

“Yeah. He wouldn’t say shit on camera, though.”

“Take the gag out. I can’t talk to him like that.”

John started to pull one knee under him so he could try to sit up, but another spasm caught him and he pressed his forehead to the rough canvass of the cot and grunted through the worst of it. Other than passing out a few times, he hadn’t slept at all during the night and the effort of not screaming made him dizzy.

Someone pulled on the gag, untying it, and John weakly pushed it out of his mouth. His tongue and throat hurt so bad that he dreaded having to swallow, assuming he could even get enough spit together to try.

“Mr. Michaud, I don’t know that you understand the situation you’re in,” this new guy said.

John forced his eyes open, and a crust had formed between his eyelashes. He blinked several times before he could see much. “Yeah, I get it,” he said. They were going to kill him as soon as he said what they wanted, but if he didn’t say what they wanted, they were going to torture him. Clear as day. John was still putting his faith in Elena, in part because he didn’t have any other choice. He tried to lick his lips, and he tasted coppery blood.

“Then all you have to do is tell the truth.” The new guy dragged a chair across the concrete floor and sat in front of John. He was a light-skinned black man with a shaved head. He had on sneakers, but they were the sort people paid too damn money for. John had more than one teenager on his boat squeal about how shoes like that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, which usually resulted in John throwing any fish they caught on the kid’s feet. His guy’s jeans told the same story. They were worn white in places and torn, but not in any place that old jeans tore naturally. Usually the thighs, knees, or cuffs wore out first, but this had threadbare spots on the thighs. This guy might look rough, but he smelled of money.

“Fuck you,” John said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. Even that made his throat hurt so much that he had to fight down the urge to cough. His back muscles would not thank him if he tried.

The man leaned back. “Get Mr. Michaud some water,” boss man ordered. Footsteps hurried away, but John just let his eyes fall closed. If the boss was here letting John see him, then any hope was pretty much gone. Whoever Elena or Davidson had pissed off might be willing to burn a few thugs, but if John saw the boss, they had no intentions of letting him go.

The smart play would be to give this guy whatever he wanted and take a quick death, but John hadn’t lived his life looking for easy. His father always told him that taking the easy path was the quickest way to damnation. You started looking for easy all the time. That certainly seemed to describe Kevin and his damn drugs, that’s for sure. So if John was going out, he was going to make these bastards pay in any way he could.

Another spasm rippled through John’s back and he turned his head to the cot and shivered as his body rebelled against the bindings. “What’s wrong? White, get in here,” boss man yelled.

John gasped as the spasm pulled his shoulder back more. A hand touched his arm, and John screamed in pain. His humiliation at allowing his kidnappers to see his pain vanished under the raw agony.

“Cut him loose. Damn it, you weren’t supposed to hurt him.” Boss man sounded a little breathless and panicked. The irony was delicious.

“We didn’t hurt him.”

“Clearly you did, you idiot. I should pop you.”

“We haven’t hurt a hair on his head.” Someone touched John’s shoulder, and all he could do was close his eyes and pant through the pain. If these guys didn’t understand what tying a person up too tightly would do, John had been kidnapped by morons.

“Here. Have some water,” lead goon, White, said.

John opened his eyes and looked at the plastic glass White held out. He wanted it more than anything, but he didn’t have the strength in his arms to reach for it.

“I thought you were a practical man. Don’t be so fucking stubborn that you hurt yourself,” boss man ordered him.

For a second, John could only grit his teeth and rein in his temper. Then he said, “My arms are too sore and cramped to reach for it.”

“Oh.” The boss man was clearly the mayor and first citizen of stupid. “Get him a straw,” he ordered White.

“Where am I supposed to find a straw around here?”

“How the fuck do I know? Just find one.”

White’s expression had turned absolutely murderous, but he left, supposedly in search of a straw. John wasn’t going to hold his breath. So now he got to stare at the glass of water boss man had put on the floor, which was a new form of torture.

Boss man crouched down next to John’s cot. While John wanted to scoot away, he didn’t have the strength or the room. “Let’s talk about Davidson.” John stared at him without answering.

“He doesn’t care about you. You’re a toy, an amusement. He’ll get sick of you and throw you out like he has ever other assistant from that place.”

John knew that, and as long as he got the bulk of the treatment money from his mother, he didn’t much care. But this guy was talking to John like was some starry-eyed teen who didn’t know the difference between love and prostitution. John was only good at one of those things. Every lover he’d ever had ran the other way after a few weeks or months, or in one remarkable case, half a year. There were days John wondered if he didn’t suffer adult autism since every woman he’d ever let into his life accused him of being emotionally distant, strange, and weird. The words obsessive-compulsive and anal-retentive had also come up a few times. Since John had hit middle age without finding anyone willing to put up with his shit, he figured that boat had sailed. But boss man was never going to get any of that out of John, so John just kept staring.

Boss man sighed. “You’re a professional, and your time has value. What will it cost to have you admit your relationship with Clive Davidson on video?”

“Fuck off,” John whispered hoarsely. 

Boss man shot to his feet. “You fucking loser. I’m offering to make a deal, and you’re fucking playing games with me? What the fuck gives you the right? Huh? Huh?” Boss man poked John’s exposed back, triggering another wave of pain as John’s body protested. “Who the fuck are you? You’re a whore. A second rate whore who sells his body to the highest bidder. What the fuck gives you the right to say I’m not good enough to bid?”

John tried to chuckle, but the sound came out more like a strangled gargle. “You wanna bid? Call Elena.” John struggled to pull his knees under him. His back protested but at least it wasn’t incapacitated like his arms. Still hurt.

“That whore thinks she’s so powerful. She thinks she’s sitting on top of the world, but she not. She just one more fucking bitch who’s going to learn what happens when you piss off the wrong people. That cunt will regret fucking with me.”

John put that in the column for “insane.” If this idiot went after Elena, she was going to shred him. While John didn’t know her background, she had dropped enough hints to make him think she had the ability and connections to chew this idiot up and spit him out. Rumor around the agency was that her father had been a big wig in the mob who had trained her to take over, but the others wouldn’t accept her because she was a woman.

That might be true or it might be a story Elena herself circulated to keep certain people in check. He didn’t know. He did know that she was gleefully vicious when pissed, and this guy was about to find that out.

John got his body turned and awkwardly sat on the edge of the cot.

“Name your fucking price. Do you have any idea who I am? What I can do for you?” Boss man demanded. John figured the only thing he wanted was to get out of this alive, and that offer wasn’t on the table, which left him free to promise the sun, moon and stars. 

John coughed and then closed his eyes as the pain rolled through him. Through force of will he straightened up and put his feet on the cold concrete floor. “I have no idea who you are, and I don’t care. I work for Elena.”

“You work for whoever pays for that broken down old ass. I don’t know why Davidson would even pay to stick his pathetic dick in your ass.”

John shrugged. “You’re insane. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

For a minute, the boss man could only stand there clenching his fists. John expected to get beaten within an inch of his life, but when the boss finally cracked, all he did was scream and kick the water glass so it slammed into the wall and water sprayed out across the floor and soaked into the concrete to make a dark, abstract pattern. The loss of that water was like waving a red flag in front of John. Fuck this guy. Fuck him and his dumb ass people. 

John leaned back and brought both his legs up. Instead of scrambling back to escape the small space, the boss just stared down at John with a confused look. With muscles formed over thirty years of keeping his balance on a rolling deck, John kicked out. He landed both his feet in the boss’s stomach. The man’s arms flew out to the sides and his back crashed into the edge of the door frame before he collapsed to his knees and started heaving up a sizeable breakfast. 

John lurched to his feet, but the boss man finally grew a brain cell and stumbled into the main room and slammed the door. Now John was locked in the dark closet with no water and a pile of rancid smelling vomit.

Still worth it.

Slowly, his arms still aching, John sank down onto the cot.

“Any time now, Elena,” he whispered aloud despite his pained throat.

Chapter 21: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-19951417 

Chapter 22: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20049839 

Chapter 23: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20094108 

Chapter 24: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20174290 

Chapter 25: https://www.patreon.com/posts/saddled-chapter-20210420