Page 4 of Filthy Little Fix
The smellof garlic and tomato sauce hangs in the aisle. Torture. The neighborhood supermarket is always a battle, and today the aroma of frozen lasagna, the same one I ate last week and the week before, is particularly unbearable. My stomach rumbles. It's boredom. Begging for something.
The fluorescent lights hum. The constant noise mixes with the shuffle of shopping carts and the murmur of voices. Women with their apathetic husbands, children whining for candy. All so predictable. The shelves are organized in perfect rows, each product in its place, waiting to be consumed. I grab the usual lasagna, a package of generic cookies, and a cheap energy drink. The highlight of my Saturday night.
At the checkout, the purple-haired lady who's always there smiles. Her smile is tired and never genuine. She asks if I found everything. I answer with a monosyllabic "yes." She wishes me a good weekend. I wish for death.
The automatic door opens with a hiss. The streets are emptier now that it's cold; shadows stretch long under flickering streetlights, silent and forlorn. Just the sound of passing carsand, in the distance, the siren of an ambulance. The routine. The same old shit.
I put the groceries in my backpack, the familiar weight of the lasagna and the energy drink. I step onto the gloomy sidewalk, quiet and cold beneath my feet. The street lights flicker at irregular intervals, in lapses of consciousness. Like me, thinking about nothing. Wishing for something.
That's when the black car appeared. No fanfare. No squealing tires. Just... there. A dark SUV with tinted windows. It pulled up beside me. There was no one around. The street was strangely silent.
The passenger door opens. The man emerging from the car is large, immovable, his face set in a stone mask that leaves no room for mercy. He doesn't say a word. He just looks at me. His eyes are impassive, empty like a killer's, but somehow familiar, like someone who wouldn't hesitate to end you.
My backpack is ripped from my hand before I can even register the movement. The energy drink rolls out, bouncing on the sidewalk before coming to a stop. There's no time to think. His hand clamps onto my arm with an iron grip. The second large man pulls me into the car, and before I can resist, a cold bag is thrown over my head.
The two men pull me into the car. There's no screaming or resistance, just an electric shock that runs through my body as the adrenaline bubbles up. The dull thud of my head against the car's ceiling. The smell of new leather and disinfectant. And then, the shove into the back seat. I know better than to struggle, to fight men who could kill anything with a pulse with their bare hands, because every hour of my life has been spent in front of a blue-light-emitting screen, corroding my vision bit by bit, in a body fueled by chemicals that will probably kill me before I'm thirty. I wouldn't know how to land a punch on anything or anyone.
The door slams shut. My wrists cinched tight with plastic zip ties.
My breathing starts to quicken. Something I haven't felt in a long time—a nervous tingle, the only adrenaline my medication can't block. The smell of new leather gets stronger. And then, a faint scent of cigar smoke, and someone talking on the phone.
"We got him, boss."
The car lurches forward. I can feel the movement, the sway on an uneven, bumpy road. My bound hands start to sweat. My heart hammers against my chest, a drumbeat echoing in my ears.
This is it.
This is what gets me out of the boredom.
The smellof new leather grows stronger. The cigar smoke, once subtle, is now a persistent echo. My head still throbs from slamming into the car ceiling—a welcome distraction. The world is a grainy black screen with a bag over my head. I feel the rough ridges of the plastic zip ties digging into my skin, snug but not cutting the circulation. They don't want to hurt me. Not yet.
I wonder who they are. I've made a lot of enemies in this short life. I do good work, though it's rarely appreciated, especially since it mostly involves leaking private information and breaking into secured networks. Whoever this is, they're the first, and that's a surprise I wanted. I've been expecting this moment, almost from the start. Constantly. It's late, sure—but better late than never. Better than sitting in that shitty chair fixing Chad's broken code.
The car keeps moving beneath me. The turns get sharper, and the asphalt grows rougher. I feel the vehicle climb a steepramp, then take a hard right. The sound of the tires changes from a constant hum to a muffled drag, like we're driving over gravel or packed dirt. Familiar territory—rural farms and abandoned warehouses for anyone who's been near those places. Cliché. Effective.
The car comes to an abrupt halt. Silence crashes in—thick, total. No distant honks, no engines passing by. Just my own breathing, suddenly too loud. The door on my side opens, and the night's cold hits me, denser than street cold, tinged with mold and concrete. Basement air.
A strong hand grabs my arm—the same that pulled me into the car—and yanks me out. The soles of my worn shoes meet uneven ground—first gravel, then asphalt beneath my feet.
I hear a big, heavy door creak open. Metal. An iron gate. The sound echoes in the damp, heavy interior—metallic and oppressive. Smells like mildew and rusted metal—old blood. A possibility my routine-numbed mind finds intriguing.
I'm dragged forward. My feet scrape the ground. A door opens, then shuts behind me. Then another. And another. Each one locking with a dry click, that same locking sound over and over. Each click another layer of isolation. A maze of doors and darkness.
The ground beneath me changes again—smooth concrete now. I can hear the echo of my own steps. Theirs too. That echo says: large space. It's empty. A warehouse, definitely. Or a storage facility. The adrenaline I felt in the car settles now into a low hum, a slow burn of anticipation. This is what I want. What I chase. What makes me feel something.
Suddenly, I'm shoved. I hit the ground—my hip slams into the concrete, knocking the air out of me. My hands, tied behind my back, absorb part of the fall, but my elbow hits hard. That'll bruise, no doubt. But ignoring pain is an old trick. I ignore it. I ignore the electric jolt up my spine.
The zip ties around my wrists hold. The blindfold stays put. And it's cold.
Footsteps move away. No voices. No whispers. Just that fading sound until it's gone. That silence—I haven't heard it since I left the hum of the office lights and Chad's miserable sighs.
I'm alone. Somewhere. In the dark.
My muscles are still tense, but not from fear. It's a different kind of tension. Aware. Ready. My mind's already mapping the space, guessing dimensions, temperature, possibilities. Not for escape—I'm not the panicking type. I'm the pattern-seeking type. Even in the dark.
How much time passes? Minutes? Hours? I can't tell. No natural light, no outside sounds. I breathe deep, trying to catch more details. More smells. A warmth begins to bloom low in my stomach, strange and stubborn. My body reacting to the floor, the adrenaline—and that. That familiar tingling my meds try to smother, that still flares up sometimes at the first sign of pain.
It's a warehouse. Big. Empty. And I'm on the floor.
