Ensnared

by I N Foggarty

  “Nice of you to be so generous, Dylan,” Natalie chipped in as she slid into the back seats. “You can buy mine too.” Matt laughed again and climbed into the front passenger door.

  “Fine, but I pick where we go.”

  Matt barely had time to fasten his seatbelt before Dylan had put the car into drive and sped out of the parking bay. Leaving the parking lot in a haze of burnt rubber Matt hastily sent a text to Janine to get her to tell their mom where he had gone.

  ##

  That evening the three friends ate burgers, fries and onion rings at a burger bar of Dylan’s choosing. Their designated driver had then whisked them back to his place where they somehow managed to make it up to his room without encountering the batty old housekeeper. Safely barricaded behind sturdy wood doors, the three of them had quickly finished off a piece of homework they had due for their maths teacher. Afterwards, they spent the evening talking about almost everything and Dylan even managed to talk them both into playing one of his more social friendly games. He still managed to win every round. Eventually, as the evening wore on, the conversation inevitably turned towards the aftermath of lunchtime’s battle.

  “…so she more or less hung up the phone and told me to fuck off,” Matt said, bringing his half of the story to a close. “By the sounds of it, it was her boss telling her she had to come into work early.”

  “If it were me I would have told him to shove it,” Dylan replied as he drained the last drop of soda from a can and tossed it directly into a wicker trash can on the other side of the room. “Ten points to me.”

  “I don’t think she can,” Matt countered. “I mean this is Anna we’re talking about. She wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing if she had any other choice.”

  “Well if she keeps ditching school like that she’ll be lucky to graduate, let alone make it into college,” Natalie added disapprovingly.

  Her words were reminiscent of the last ones he himself had said to Anna, coupled with her reply. ‘You think I’m going to college?’ Matt heard her say in his head. What had she meant by that? A year ago Anna’s grades would have ranked her amongst the top twenty-five percent in their year, probably higher. The only blemish on her record had been a few disciplinary issues that typically involved her beating someone up. Though she had never expressed any interest in college Matt had just assumed that she would be going, just like everyone else who had the grades. Had this always been her plan, or had things changed over the course of the past year? Matt made a mental note to ask her about it on Friday night.

  “So are you going to Raymond’s party?” It was Natalie who asked the question. He could have put money on one of them bringing the subject up at some point during the course of the evening.

  “I can’t I’m going over to Anna’s that night, remember?”

  “Are you going to be there all night?” the girl enquired.

  “Yeah,” Matt replied slightly more firmly than he had intended. “We haven’t really spent a lot of time together over the past few months and after I blew her off last weekend…” He turned to stare at Dylan. “… I kinda feel like I owe her.”

  “Doesn’t she work on Fridays?” Matt recognised the pseudo-inquisitive tone Dylan used instantly. He knew fine well Anna worked on a Friday, which meant he no doubt had another one of his ‘suggestions’. Still, Matt needed him to reveal the trap before he could disarm it.

  “Until nine this Friday.”

  “Then it’s settled.” Matt turned to look at Natalie. So she too was in on this. “Raymond’s party won’t kick off properly until about seven. You can go for a couple of hours then go meet Anna.”

  Nice idea Matt thought, looking between the grin’s that had spread on both Natalie and Dylan’s faces. They must have both cooked that idea up while they were waiting for him. Granted in principal it was sound. However, he doubted either of them had considered the logistics of the situation. No bus or metro route existed within a fifteen-minute walk from Raymond’s that would take him anywhere near Anna’s and it would take him almost an hour to walk it. In addition to that, he also needed to find a reputable Chinese takeout somewhere in the vicinity of his girlfriend’s apartment, which meant he’d probably need to leave the party before he even got there. The answer most definitely needed to be… “sorry guys. If I go to Raymond’s for seven I’d have to leave straight away to make it over to Anna’s for nine. Besides, I have some things I need to do beforehand.”

  “Aww man come on,” Dylan moaned at him. “This party’s gonna rock.”

  “Sorry, Dude, I’ve made up my mind. I’m sure there’ll be other parties before the end of the semester.”

  For a moment, it looked like Natalie had something else to say, but Dylan hastily cut in front of her. “Ok, Dude, if that’s what you wanna do. I’ll drink a beer for you.” That ended the matter.

  An hour later and the trio spectacularly managed to avoid Mrs Mardle for the second time. However, Matt couldn’t see Dylan’s luck holding out for a third time when he returned. He said his goodbyes to his friends and retrieved his hockey stuff from the trunk of the black Mustang, positive that he had felt a drop of rain splash on his head as he made his way into the house. He ignored it.

  Once inside he said his pleasantries to his parents and younger sister on passing by the living room en-route upstairs. Called replies to their questions “where have you been,” “what did you do” and “did you have a good time.” The last one had definitely been his father. He smiled on reaching the top of the stairs it had been a fun evening he mused as he set about getting ready for bed. In fact, it had been exactly what he needed. Not only had he enjoyed himself but hopefully put to bed the subject of Raymond’s party in the process. An apology to Anna tomorrow and with a bit of luck, everyone might start to get along. As he got into bed and turned out the lights he could just make out a blue flash somewhere outside his window. The predicted thunderstorm had apparently begun, and luckily lightning didn’t strike in the same place twice. He was probably safe.

  He rolled over and had fallen asleep before the rumbling really picked up the pace.

  Thunder breaks

  The ominous thud of large raindrops bursting against the boarded-up windows was the only noise to be heard inside the office of Sergio Gutierrez. The day had grown old and the rain, though it had not long started, heavier. A blue flash lit up the room for the briefest of moments; a distant thunderclap sounded soon after. Atop his desk, the office owner’s thick arms were sprawled out, a half-empty bottle of clear spirits in his hand. To say he were drunk would be akin to saying that the rain was a mild drizzle. Yet even in his intoxicated state, Sergio did not lack the capacity to think… or to feel.

  Where was that no good hijo de puta, he cursed. Hauling himself up, he took a swig from the bottle, then crashed back down in time with the next beat of thunder. He had called Ramone hours ago, only to get some bullshit about him not getting to a barbeque in time and that Maria would butcher him if he were not home when she got in. Needless to say, Sergio had not taken kindly to his summons being ignored.

  The bastard had the audacity to fuck up the deal, lose some of his merchandise, get Paulo and Mikey killed and not even have the decency to report it himself. No… he would not stand for such insubordination. In the end, he had given Ramone an ultimatum, come in or get the fuck out. He had a good mind to bust a cap in the man’s head when he inevitably walked through the door. The only problem being, that at present, he would just as likely miss and hit his own head. Maybe he’d just crack his skull open with the bottle, once he had emptied it of course.

  As if on cue, a shadow filled the space behind the filthy glass panel of the office door. Without even a knock it swung open, Sergio hastily sat upright in his chair. “What time do you fucking call this!” Gutierrez barked. The smell of tobacco filled his nostrils and Ramone slammed the door shut. “I call you hours ago and tell you to get your fucking ass in here and only now do you show up.” He took another drink and sl
ammed the bottle down atop the woodwork. The rage reignited in him and ignoring his previous misgivings, he moved to open his top desk drawer. “I should bu...”

  “Point that fucking gun at me and I walk out of here.” Sergio’s hand froze on the drawer handle. No one made demands of him in his own office.

  “You do not tell me what I do in my office!” The gun remained in the drawer. “Or has your stupidity gone beyond insulting Madre’s?” Even in the dim light, he could see the hard expressionless look on Ramone’s face. This apparent total lack of remorse only fuelled his anger. When the man failed to explain himself Sergio went on the offensive. “Or are you that stupid that you fly off the handle at a simple joke, get two men killed, lose a third of MY merchandise and blow not just one sale but all future sales to one of MY best customers!”

  “I DID NO SUCH THING! YOUR IDIOT PAUL…”

  “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” Sergio hammered both fists onto the desk with enough force that a lesser piece of carpentry would surely have cracked. “Pirelli was one of my best customers and now he won’t even take my calls! I have men I cannot pay and stock with no one to SELL THEM TOO!”

  “That deal went south because your idiots didn’t do their jobs properly. At least two of those bitches were not properly broken. One of them did a runner, got gunned down by Pirelli’s men and then Paul thinks he can still sell her! He insulted Pirelli’s Madre, not me!” If the anger and rage that radiated from the two men could have been bottled it would have fetched a hefty price as a chilli substitute.

  “And I am supposed to believe you over every other person that I spoke to? You, the man with the track record of making my big deals BLOW UP!”

  “THAT WAS NOT MY FAULT!”

  “I DECIDE WHOSE FAULT IT WAS!” He paused for breath and a drink. “Not only did you fuck up the sale but you let a fucking bitch escape! What am I supposed to do if she makes it to the cops and can give them something concrete on us… on you!”

  “How can you blame me for Tanya’s piss heads using my name without a care?” Ramone’s face seethed, though Sergio did not care. If the bitch knew Ramone’s name and relayed it to the cops it could make life uncomfortable for him and everyone else by association. He sincerely doubted there was a single person in Los sin techo that had a clean record in the state. They’d all been busted for one thing or another over the years. In the end, it wouldn’t matter who had screwed up, at least not in the eyes of the cops. He had only two options. Cut Ramone ‘loose’ or have him lay low for a week or so.

  “Since you are mi amigo, I will give you one last chance. You need to lay low for a time and I have just the job for you.”

  “Fuck you and your job.” Ramones words were filled with disgust and venom. In a fit of rage, Sergio hurled the bottle, contents and all at the man’s head. He watched as Ramone sidestepped and it shattered against the door frame. Gutierrez roared at the act of defiance and wrenched the top desk drawer open. Seizing his desert eagle he hauled it from the drawer, raised it up and pulled the trigger. The room flashed blue once more and the gun fired with a sound worthy of the light show.

  Temples throbbing Sergio stared down the smoking barrel at the newly formed crack in the door glass. Ramone had gone and his shot had missed. Heart hammering he struggled to regain control of his breathing. “RUN YOU BASTARD, AND DON’T COME BACK,” he yelled, dropping the firearm back into the drawer. It landed with a dull thud and he slammed the compartment shut with his fist.

  People were ungrateful bastard’s he thought bitterly as he crossed the room to stare out of one of the larger gaps in the window boards. It didn’t take long for a dark-clad figure to burst out of the front door and storm off into the rain. He’d wager all he owned that Ramone would not be the only cunt being soaked that evening.

  When it rains

  It had taken Anna the best part of an hour to make to from Woodlake to her branch of Lunar DVD Rental. With the extra weight of her guitar, her pace had been slowed somewhat, and the lights at the crosswalks did her no favours. Had she not been so possessive of the instrument she may have considered a quick detour and left it in the school music room. Ideally, she would have taken it home first, but that would have taken her in the opposite direction from the store. Nevertheless, she had arrived with just enough time to dash into the back-room and change into her work clothes, and, more importantly, ensure her guitar wouldn’t go walkabout while she was unable to keep an eye on it. She had locked it in the cleaner’s cupboard and taken the only key.

  When she finally emerged behind the counter Jason had greeted her with a smarmy, “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Richards.” Henceforth she had tried to spend most of her shift away from the counter and Jason. Granted it wasn’t hard to do. Her boss preferred to sit on his ass and make the other staff do the work; lazy bastard. However, it suited Anna just fine. As the evening rolled on customers became fewer and so did the jobs that needed to be done a safe distance from the plague-infested rat-man. By nine o’clock, an hour from closing time they ran out.

  Her head still aching from earlier Anna placed the last empty display back on the shelf. As the door buzzer grated on her for the umpteenth time, the room fell silent. She was the last human left in the building; rat-men didn’t count after all. Taking her time Anna wandered slowly up the rows of empty DVD cases until she reached the counter. Jason had his spot covered nose buried in a film magazine and hadn’t seen or heard her coming. Well, at least this would be worth a laugh she thought. Silently she placed her hands on the surface of the counter and vaulted over it. Moving cleanly through the air Anna landed on the hollowed out floor behind the counter with a satisfyingly loud THUD.

  “Arghhh,” Jason exclaimed, his magazine flying above his head as he almost toppled off his chair.

  “You’re lucky I wasn’t an armed robber or you’d probably be dead by now,” Anna said in amusement, a wicked grin flashing across her face, eyes flickering slightly.

  “Don’t scare me like that, Richards!” the rat-man yelped. He scurried about the floor in search of his magazine.

  “You’re not seriously telling me you got scared by a girl now are you? A big man like you?” In truth, her boss was smaller than her, with a wiry frame that looked like it had never heard the concept of physical exercise. Very good for getting in and out of the sewer grates, though.

  “Sometimes I wonder whether God just forgot to give you balls at birth and will FedEx them to you when he has a spare moment.”

  “I’d send them back.” She sat down in the vacant chair furthest from him. “My ball sacks already full.”

  Unfortunately, her brief moment of fun had passed. Now she would have to spend the best part of an hour listening to the rat-man prattle on about fifty different things she had absolutely no interest in; most of them film related. Though she disliked Jason he at least knew his stuff when it came to movies; he was almost obsessed with them. Now jabbering on about the next instalment of some stupid sci-fi series, Anna began to wonder whether his unhealthy interest came naturally, or as a by-product of having worked in a DVD store since ‘the glory days of VCR’, as he often put it. Surely it must have been the former. She had never been one for TV or films in the past, but after almost two years of stocking and renting them out, she felt even less keen on them.

  “….so with Helen leaving in a month, I’ll be looking for a new assistant manager.” Anna was lucky to have heard the words, her mind had started to play her favourite record from memory. “Or at least a temporary one until I find the right candidate to take the job full time.” He gave her a toothy smile that made her want to vomit. She could read the man easier than the magazine he clutched in his small furry hands and she did not like the lusty glint in his beady eyes one bit. He was about to offer her the job, but in a similar manner to Dylan, Jason never did anything for nothing.

  She decided to play it cool, on the off chance she found his fee acceptable. “I’m sure someone will turn up sooner or later.”


  “Maybe they already have. Could be you, Richards.” The offer came as expected, now to deduce the catch.

  “I’m already working more hours than I really should. I’m only supposed to be part time, remember,” she replied calmly. Better to err on the side of caution until she had a better idea of exactly what he wanted from her.

  “Like I said I’m willing to offer the job on a temporary basis until I find the right candidate to take it full time,” Jason repeated, emphasising the temporary part. “Holidays are coming up. Plenty of time for the budding college student to earn that much needed extra cash.”

  Anna’s heart sank at the mention of college. The words she had said to Matt only hours prior drifted through her mind in an almost haunting manner, ‘You think I’m going to college?’. While the comment had been born of anger, their existed a sad reality to it that she had not fully accepted. Compounded by the thought of taking orders from Jason for the rest of her days. Besides, there had to be a catch. This was being nice, and rats didn’t do nice without something nice in return.

  “Why don’t you think about it?” the rat-man said when she didn’t respond. “If you’re interested, we could perhaps have dinner on Sunday and discuss it further.”

  And there it came, Anna realised, as he smiled at her in a way that would have made any ordinary teenage girl run a mile. A dinner proposal, hidden amidst the guise of a job offer. She knew the man too well. Dinner was code for date. She would stake her guitar on it, and she would be willing to bet the other that one of the veiled conditions of this ‘job offer’ would be that it involved more ‘dinners’. On processing this information she began to feel outraged. She had figured Jason for a pervert when her work clothes had first arrived and were mysteriously a size smaller than she had ordered. Though the normally baggy black cargo pants hadn’t been that much of an issue; and were even less of one now. The black and red polo shirts had been too tight around her chest for her liking and had fallen short of her pants by a good inch. A complaint had been met with a wily smile from the rat-man and a statement claiming he could do nothing about it and that she would just have to make do. She could not afford to pay for new shirts so she had taken to wearing a black vest underneath, much to the man’s disappointment.