Page 57 of Archer
“Still not a doctor,” she said, shaking her head but squeezed my hand. “Good luck, okay?”
Wrench came behind her and I walked away, though I still saw him kiss her cheek and say, “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, okay?”
“You’d better,” she said. “Please, be safe.”
I watched them share a gentle kiss before Wrench opened the van door for her to hide in while she waited. So much fear filled me, growing more terrified that Rose wouldn’t even make it into the van.
I snapped up and interrupted the gang’s idle chit-chat, making a distracted game plan that no one could settle on. Not wanting to waste another second, I said, “Come on. Let’s go save them.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rose
Steadily dripping water was the only thing I heard when my eyes opened. There wasn’t a single light source in my surroundings, not even through a crack in a wall or underneath a door—if there was even a door. Unable to move, partially from pain, but also from the ropes that tied me tightly to what felt like a wide, sturdy, cold pillar of some sort. The ropes around me were fastened so tightly that they left me suspended, my feet dangling freely in the air. Blind to my surroundings, my stomach fluttered like I was on an amusement park ride. For all I knew, I could have been hanging a hundred feet above the ground, ready to fall to my death.
Even though I couldn’t see anything, there was something familiar about the place. It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t make anything out, but I recognized something. Twitching my nose, a familiar, cozy, almost nostalgic smell filled my senses. The aroma stimulated my tongue without anything touching it, but it was such a distinct flavor I couldn’t mistake it anymore.
I was in the bakery.
Trembling, I had no idea where I could be in the bakery that’d be so dark and also had a leaky pipe. Our bathrooms and kitchen had way too much natural light to make this dark, even if in the middle of the night. The moonlight and streetlamps always kept it a little aglow. Mouth parched and limbs trembling against the surface I was hanging from, I stammered a couple of times, trying to speak, but nothing came out. Coughing gently, as much as the ropes would let me, I cleared my throat enough to say, “Hello?”
As soon as I said it, I heard the relatively deafening sound of a match striking against its matchbook. A shrill scream jumped from my mouth when the small fire ignited only a foot away from me, illuminating a rotten, graying grin. Thrashing in the ropes, trying to escape the ember only inches away from my lips, I clamped my mouth shut when the flame was tossed in an arch to the ground. Back in the darkness, I was shaking uncontrollably, knowing I wasn’t alone in the dark.
Just when I thought I figured out where the man holding the match was, I yelped and threw myself around in the ropes as five matches ignited, the same as before in the middle, and four in all corners.
Losing all inhibitions, I thrashed as much as I could and began screaming everything that came to my mind. “What the fuck are you doing? Who the fuck are you? Let me go! Fuck you!” I could have gone forever, screaming obscenities until I lost my voice, terrified that I was getting sacrificed for some ritual or something.
That was, until someone in the corner burst out laughing. Shortly after, all the presences in the room began laughing hysterically, and I could recognize one laugh as the twiggy rodent, Slink, who helped kidnap me. Confused, I tried to just stay calm and remember what happened. The last thing I remembered was getting thrown into an old rust-colored truck before having my face covered with a cloth. Then, I woke up tied to something in the dark.
All of them still howling with laughter, I heard Slink say, “Great idea, Ghost, you fuckin’ weirdo, that was perfect.”
An unfamiliar voice came from behind me saying, “Yeah, thought so too. I think we should freak them all out like that. Did you hear that scream? God, that was great. You owe me for that idea.”
What the fuck is going on?
“All right, All right.” The man with the vile smile directly in front of me said to the room. “Let’s get some lights on. I can’t handle not seeing shit. Gives me a headache.”
Still in the dark, the other guy who kidnapped me, Cash, said, “Do you get headaches when you sleep then?”
“Shut up, Cash. Go get the lights,” the rotten-toothed man said. They chatted in a casual manner that almost seemed as if I were getting pranked or something. Were these guys all just old friends hanging out and I was the wrong guy? Maybe my dad wasn’t even related to this and he was at home, sound asleep?
“Oh, there’s the switch,” Cash said and flicked on the light.
Far more horrid and shrill that when the matches sparked up, I screamed, shouted, wiggling in the ropes with tears free-falling from my eyes.
“Dad.” I sobbed when I saw my dad lying unconscious. Maybe even dead, on his work desk. Normally, his face was skinny and gaunt, but right then it was swelled to twice its size, a disfigured mess. Dark purple bruises covered his puffed-out cheekbones, melded with his eyelids. He looked like he was made of memory foam rather than flesh.
The most unsettling detail of all, however, was that I discovered the dripping noise wasn’t from leaky plumbing. Rather, it was from a deep gash cut into my dad’s forehead leading behind his skull. A steady, thickplopof blood pattered on the ground, a small pool growing to a fatal size.
“No!” I screamed with as much fierceness as I could muster. “What have you done to him?”
When I saw the huge, menacing men smile with what appeared to be glee at my distress, the fire inside me burned out. Lowering my head so I didn’t have to see my dad in his last breaths, I gave an anguished, drawn-out cry.
“No… Dad…”
“Look at her, Ray,” Someone said to the rotten-toothed man who seemed to be in charge, finally naming him. It was a bald man in the corner near the door that I didn’t recognize who spoke up. He walked closer to me, but I didn’t want to look into his eyes. “You sure we have to do her in so soon? Think she’d be a nice little toy to have around.”
“Fuck you!” I screamed back before I knew the words were going to come out. Quickly, I regretted it when Ray’s bony knuckles smashed me across my face, knocking my vision out for a second. A ringing shot through my ears, dazing me as blinked to regain focus.
