What Happened to Lori

by J. A. Konrath

 

  Kadir smiled. “You think you’re so clever, Presley. You sweet talk the guys, and they fall all over themselves for you. Well, we’re going to see how clever that sweet little mouth really is.”

  GRIM ○ 8:51am

 

  Grim searched Fabler’s face, waiting for the punchline to this sick joke.

  Fabler appeared shaken. Haunted. Close to tears.

  “Aliens are real.” Doruk had gone back to the refrigerator, hunting for more food. “They show them on TV all the time. The pyramids? Aliens. Who controls all the banks? Aliens. Who’s responsible for earthquakes and volcanos blowing up? Aliens. You say a flying saucer took your wife. I believe you.”

  Fabler squinted at Doruk. “I didn’t say it was flying. It just appeared. Then vanished.”

  “That why you got that big dug-up circle on your lawn outside?”

  Fabler nodded, then lowered his head again.

  “Huh. I thought maybe it was a bear or something. You know how dogs dig up the lawn? I thought maybe a bear did it. But a UFO, that makes sense too.”

  Grim scooted his chair closer to Fabler, searching his friend’s face. “You’re really saying that aliens took Lori.”

  “I don’t know who took her. I’m telling you what happened.”

  “Aliens with thirty arms.”

  “That’s what happened, Grim. You wanted to know. I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. I don’t even believe it. Know what it’s been like, living with this in my head? Questioning my own sanity? Trying to make sense of it?”

  “And you actually believe that’s what happened.”

  “That is what happened. Look at me. I’m telling the goddamn truth.”

  Grim closed his eyes.

 
 

  Grim tried to find some closure in that fact, and realized, oddly, he could.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Grim gripped his quads and squeezed some circulation back into his legs. Doruk had bound his hands to his thighs, palms down, with enough duct tape to hold down a wild bull. No way to pull it off or break it.

 
 

  Grim reached up a bit higher, feeling his pocket.

 
 
 

  Grim tried to get his hand inside his pocket, but the tape clung on too tight.

  Then he tried to scratch at the penny, through the denim.

 

  “What are you doin’?”

  Grim’s head snapped up, looking at Doruk. “What?”

  “You playing with yourself?”

  “I got an itch.”

  “Oh. Want me to scratch it for you?”

  “No.” “Thanks. I got it.”

  “Itches are the worst. I mean, not as bad as your wife being abducted by aliens, but I hate itches.”

  “Do you think that maybe you should check on Kadir and Presley?”

  “Why?”

  “They’ve been gone a while. Maybe they left with the money.”

  “Naw. Kadir wouldn’t do that. Uncle Alpay would hunt him down and nail his hands to his skull. I seen it done. It’s awful, but pretty funny. Guy is screaming and he’s like my hands are nailed to my head! Should make a TV show like that.”

  “Do you trust Kadir? Maybe he knows you’ll tell Uncle Alpay about the gold, and he’s going to try to kill you.”

  “Kadir? Kill me? He don’t have the balls.” Doruk’s eyes widened, and he chuckled. “He really don’t have the balls.”

  Doruk stuck his head back into the fridge, and Grim went back to trying to free the penny.

  Fabler, too, was preoccupied doing something.

 
 

  That’s when they heard the scream.

  Coming from the secret room.

  KADIR ○ 8:51am

  Presley knelt at his feet, her hands on Kadir’s fly, and he was tickled by how hard she tried to mask her disgust.

  Sex since the orchiectomy had consistently been a clumsy, painful, ugly thing. Not worth the trouble, the orgasms a pale imitation of what they’d been when Kadir still had his balls. But every so often, with the right girl, Kadir got more pleasure from watching her revulsion than the actual sex.

 

  Kadir couldn’t guess what her plan was.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  He scratched his face for the hundredth time , and then gave Presley a tap on the head with the barrel of the Ruger.

  “Unzip my fly.”

  Presley hesitated.

 
 
 

  “I thought we had this unspoken thing. What did you call it? Romantic tension.” Kadir dragged the barrel of the Ruger over her forehead, brushing her bangs from her eyes. “I can see the tension on your face right now, Presley.”

  She tugged down his zipper.

  “Good. Now reach in there. Pull it out.”

  Another hesitation.

 
 
 

  “If you don’t want to do this for me, Presley, maybe you’ll do it for… Brooklyn.”

  PRESLEY ○ 8:52am

  Presley’s whole body went cold.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Her r
esolve ice-cold, Presley reached through Kadir’s fly, dug her hand over the top of his whitey-tighties, and pulled him out.

 

  Kadir’s penis matched the rest of him; lumpy, mottled, asymmetric, and sort of squished onto itself. In his flaccid state, he had no real shaft. Just a bulbous, purplish head that reminded Presley of a rotten plum.

  And his balls looked… wrong.

  Unnaturally large, and hanging at an odd angle.

  Tight curls of greying hair surrounded the whole unpleasant package, much of it shiny with sweat.

 

  “You like it?”

 

  Presley went for truthful. “I’ve never seen its equal.”

  “Now put the syringe in the vial of Quadmix, take out one cc. That’s to the first line. You gotta inject air into the bottle first.”

  Grateful to look away from Kadir’s sorry excuse for manhood, Presley stuck the needle through the rubber stopper and pressed the plunger, then drew it back.

  “Remember to tap the needle so there’s no air.”

 

  She drew in an additional three ccs of air, removed the needle, seized Kadir by the scrotum, and jammed the needle into his right testicle, filling it with one quarter Quadmix and three-quarters air.

  Then Presley reached up, anticipating his reaction, tracking the revolver to yank it away.

  But Kadir didn’t react at all. No flinch. No scream. No pushing her away.

  “You think I use Quadmix for fun? I had cancer. My balls are plastic, you dumb whore.”

  “Is your dick plastic?”

  Presley reached up, grabbed his tiny pecker by the head, and yanked on it with her full weight, trying to tear it off his body.

  Kadir screamed falsetto, pitching forward, and Presley went for his weapon. But as he fell, Kadir landed on top of her, knocking Presley to the side, and he stretched out his gun hand to keep it away. They wrestled for it, Presley grabbing his wrist, Kadir pulling her hair, and then Doruk through the door.

  “Hey. Stop it.”

  Then Presley found herself being lifted up by the back of her shirt and thrown into the corner of the room, against a boxed computer printer. She smacked onto the hardwood floor, blinked away the stars, and then snatched up the heavy box and chucked it at Doruk, hitting his knees.

  It bounced off, and Doruk frowned.

  Kadir came up with the gun, his face red with rage, spit flecking out of his mouth as he pointed it Presley’s way.

  Doruk descended upon Kadir, snatching the weapon, shoving him to the other side of the room, knocking Kadir onto his ass.

  “Easy, Kadir. You got time for that later.”

  “Give me my gun, you dumb son of a—”

  Doruk pointed the gun at Kadir, shutting him up. “Take that needle out of your nuts and put your prick away. I spent the last four weeks sitting in a car with you, Kadir. I want to go home. You can do whatever you want to with Presley… after we waste the guys and pack up the money.”

 
 
 

  Doruk pointed the gun at Presley’s head. “Where’s the gold?”

  She gestured. “It’s under the floorboards.”

  “Show me. And go slow. Kadir wants you for himself, so I don’t want to kill you. But I can shoot your legs. We can find out if that funny Star Wars outfit stops a .357.”

  Presley still ached from Fabler’s .45 rounds to the chest, and her chest contained a trauma plate for extra protection. Doruk’s magnum round might not penetrate the leg armor, but it could snap a bone via blunt force trauma.

  “I’ll do whatever you want. Don’t shoot me.”

  “That’s up to you. Now open it up.”

  Presley shooed away a housefly and stuck her finger in the hole in the floorboard.

  THE WATCHER ○ August 26, 2017 ○ 8:51+am

  There is so much happening on the monitors.

  So much drama.

  So much conflict.

  And it is about to get much more intense.

  03… 02… 01…

  The Watcher flips the switch.

  “Hello, Redhead Number 63. It is time.”

  FABLER ○ 8:51am

  The scream from the other room didn’t sound female. Must have been Kadir.

 

  “You two don’t do nothing funny.” Doruk walked out of the kitchen.

  Fabler immediately hiked down his pants.

  “He said not to do anything funny, and you’re trying to get naked again. Unbelievable. What are you gonna do, piss on them?”

 

  “I learned two valuable things in prison, Grim. Patience. And how to hide contraband.”

  “What are you talking about?” Grim narrowed his eyes. “Are you reaching up your own ass?”

  “My prison purse.”

  “Prison purse?” Grim made a Mr. Yuck face. “Keistering? You actually keistered something? In your rectum?”

  “No, it’s in my throat. But this is the only way I can reach it.”

  “What do you have up your ass, Fabler? Do I even want to know?”

  “Lock picks. I put them in a condom and stuck them up there.”

  “And this is an everyday thing with you?”

  “I don’t want to be caught without the picks when they show up again.”

  “They? The aliens? Jesus, Fabler, you’re a real piece of work. That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. And crazy. You’re crazy.”

  Fabler squeezed his sphincter muscles and managed to snag the end of the prophylactic. “We do what we have to do.”

  “Honestly, if you get free, leave me here. I don’t want you touching me until you wash your hands.”

  “They’re going to kill us, Grim. And you’re worried about getting a little fecal matter on you? If you didn’t slightly resemble your sister, I’d swear you’re adopted. You’re that stupid.”

  Fabler tugged on the latex, but it stretched rather than pulled free.

 

  “Do you know how mentally ill you are, Fabler? Do you understand that this is some kind of paranoid, schizophrenic shit? Literally? You’ve got this whole delusion in your head, some imagined scenario that never happened, and you’ve actually been training for it. Alien body armor. Making Presley run around in welding goggles. Backwards! And you’ve been sticking things up your ass every day for years. Some shrink is going to write a book about you.”

  Fabler relaxed his shoulders, which had begun to cramp. “Lori wasn’t the only one taken, Grim. I’ve been researching this. You saw all those pictures of redheads, hanging on the walls in the secret room? All red hair and blue eyes. All missing women. With some, there were reports. Blinding light. Weird noises. A huge saucer.”

  “You’re saying that mars needs redheads?”

  “You’re an idiot, Grim. You’ve always been an idiot, since we were kids.”

  “Says the guy tugging lock picks out of his ass.”

  Fabler growled through clenched teeth. “At least I’m trying to do something.”

  Grim looked over Fabler’s shoulder at the hallway, then lowered his voice. “Jesus, Fabler, keep it down.”

  Fabler ignored the condom for a moment. “They come back, Grim.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The greys. I’ve been following this for almost three years. Some of the women they took, the greys came back to their houses, years later, and took their sisters.
Or daughters. Within a few weeks of the original abduction, to the day. I hired Presley because I wanted to lure them back here.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “What have you been doing since two thousand and fourteen? Other than getting drunk? I’ve been planning. This whole time, I’ve been planning.”

  “You’re no longer in touch with reality, Fabler. Look at yourself. Look how you’ve been living.”

  “At least I’ve got a plan. What the hell do you have?”

  “For your information, I also have a plan.”

  “What’s your plan, Grim? To break into my house, torture me, kill me, then lead a couple of mob guys here, making sure I’m handcuffed first so I can’t fight back? If so, congrats. Mission accomplished.”

  “I can get out of this duct tape, if you shut up and let me focus.”

  “Focus on what?”

  “I’ve got something in my pocket.”

  “A knife?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What? A razor blade? A lighter?”

  Grim stayed silent.

  His ever-present green housefly cruised silently past. “Tell me what it is.”

  “No.”

  “I just told you everything.”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you, if you stop raising your voice.”

  “Fine.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise you.”

  Grim inhaled big, then blew it out slow. “Okay. It’s… a penny.”

  “You’re going to free yourself and save us with a penny?!”

  Grim’s eyes bugged out. “You promised you’d stop yelling.”

  “Are you drunk right now? Did I miss that somehow?”

  “I’m not drunk. It’s an elongated penny.”

  “You mean one of those stupid smushed pennies you carried around when we were kids?”

  “They aren’t stupid.”

  “They’re stupid. And you’re stupid.”

  “Okay, ass boy, we’ll see who gets free first.”

  Fabler returned to the unpleasant task of retrieving the condom, hooking a finger around the latex.

 
 
 

  “I think this can work. I can work the penny through a seam in the pocket. Maybe.”