by Andrew Post
One foot in front of the other, he told himself. You got this. You got this, Mike. You’re not going to let one bad night keep you from seeing family. You got places to be, people to see. This ain’t nothing, bro. Just a bad night. That’s all.
He came up over the next hill and there it was, his car, right where he left it. Mike blinded himself with the steam from a laugh, he couldn’t help it, he was so relieved. He could get gassed up again, get back on the road, get to his grandmother’s house, help her put up the Christmas tree, spike his eggnog, and this whole night could be something he could tell his friends about, that time he almost got Buffalo Billed on his way to his granny’s place.
Over the hill and dodging the creepos to Grandmother’s house we—
Another semitruck came trundling past, its high beams making something on the other side of the four-lane flash. Mike paused and peered across, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the resettling dark. And there it was, that car. He couldn’t be sure if it was the same exact one, since in the dark it was hard to tell its color, but it certainly had the same shape.
He had come back, knowing Mike would have to too if he was going to get his car.
Mike glanced ahead to make sure no cars were coming, stepped out onto the interstate and ran the rest of the distance, swinging the weight of the gas can to propel him forward.
Struggling with his hands so cold and numb, he cut himself trying to get the gas cap open. He spilled some of the fuel trying to jam the nozzle in. He glanced over at the car across the interstate, glad for the dividing line of the snow-mounded median and those four lanes, but it wasn’t exactly a far distance and the trucks going by were so infrequent that it wasn’t like it’d keep him on his side for very long, if he decided to come have another word with Mike. He couldn’t tell if the creepy guy was in there, but he assumed he was. He still felt watched.
When the last dregs of gas were in his car’s tank, Mike tossed the can into the back seat and started to get in. A horn blew and he crushed himself against the side of his car as another semitruck came. There had probably been more than enough room but he didn’t want to take any chances, not now, not when he was this close to getting away from here.
And when the semitruck had blown past, splashing him with slush and bits of road salt stinging the side of his face, he looked across at the car parked – and saw, in the fading light of the semitruck, that the vehicle was indeed that same pale purple and there was also no one sitting in it.
Mike scrambled inside his car, tried to find the right key.
A flash of orange light from the woods. The passenger-side window exploded. Broken glass sprayed in, going everywhere. Mike did not know the scream he made, at first, had come from him. It sounded more like an injured animal. He dropped the keys. Couldn’t find them among the broken glass. Cutting his hands. Everything was hard and sharp, but it was all glass, no keys. But he seemed to be bleeding far too much for just cutting his fingers on broken glass. His shoulder felt hot. His whole arm was wet. When another truck tore past, he could see by its headlights the blood coming out of his sleeve, pouring out, like from a faucet – and he could also see the broad silhouette of a man inside the tree line, making his way toward the car.
Darkness fell again and the man vanished with it but Mike could hear heavy footsteps crunching through the snow, coming closer. Easily heard with there being no window on that side anymore. He’s going to shoot me again. Find the keys. Mike ran his hands around the floorboard, only coming up with more broken glass, no keys, no keys.
He looked over and gasped.
Only his shape, made distinct against the white snow behind him. The man lifted an arm and set the barrel of a gun on the rim of the broken window and rested it there and didn’t say anything for what felt like a very long time. Mike might’ve begged him not to shoot him again, to not kill him, to just let him go, but like in a nightmare, nothing felt like it was really happening, he might’ve just thought those things.
“Did I hit you?”
Mike couldn’t catch his breath. “What?”
“Did I hit you?”
Again, Mike couldn’t be sure if he’d actually said yes or only thought it.
“Get out of the car.” A metallic click. “I’m not going to ask you twice.”
Mike couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
The gun resting on the rim of the window shirked a few degrees to the right, off of Mike, and the car filled with noise. The driver-side window shattered and sprayed out across the interstate on the other side.
Mike was deaf. He’d seen the man’s face for only a brief moment when the gun had gone off, and he did not seem to be the same man who had offered him a ride. He was different. There was no life in his eyes. Nothing at all. His mouth moved but Mike couldn’t hear what he said.
The man withdrew his gun from the window and started to come around to the other side. Mike laid on the horn but past his ruined ears couldn’t be sure it was making any sound. The driver-side door was ripped open. One of those giant hands grabbed him by the coat collar and dragged him out of the car as if he weighed nothing. His coat was leaking puffs of cotton that were stained red. The warm wetness was now trickling down his side, turning the snow at his feet red too.
Mike looked at these things with a certainty he would soon be dead, marveling at such small events, things he never imagined he’d see, how this would be how his life would fold up and be over. He had woken up this morning thinking about a girl he knew in college who he never got up the courage to ask out even though he liked her very much and she, too, seemed to like him. He thought about her again, now, and what she might be doing right this moment and if he had asked her out and if they had gotten married how instead of trying to go to his grandmother’s house he might be at home in bed with her instead, safe and warm and unharmed, never having had to be in this place and meet this man and know this pain and be so starkly confronted by the idea that his life, within minutes, would be over.
Decisions.
He was being pulled along by his coat, and his legs moved all on their own. One foot in front of the other. He realized the man was leading him to his car and though he was in pain and he was afraid, he twisted and screamed and kicked at the man. But, again, it was like a nightmare; the man’s grip on his coat didn’t loosen, he didn’t seem to hear him or care what kind of noise he was making.
The man opened the door to the back of his car. It was dark inside.
Though it was excruciating to lift his wounded arm over his head, he did and slid out of the bottom of his coat. For an entire half second, he was free. He ran. Got a whole ten strides, maybe. A flash behind him and his shadow appeared on the ground ahead, drawn long-limbed and alien. Only briefly. Dark again. His left leg felt like it’d been ripped free of his body and he fell hard.
Lifted screaming and deaf and bleeding. Dragged across the slush and gravel this time and thrown inside the car. Hard enough he smacked his head on the window on the other side, cracked its glass. The door shut, with force. Mike looked at the front passenger seat and thought about how he occupied that earlier tonight, a different person than he was now. Stupid, trusting, but far more alive than he was now.
Decisions.
Mike looked down at his leg and regretted it at once. Inside the giant hole in his calf, he could see the bone. There was so much blood.
The man got in the front and pulled the door closed and turned on the dome light and struggled to turn around to look back at Mike in the back seat. Mike had not been mistaken when he thought the man had nothing in his eyes. It remained true, as he looked back at Mike bleeding on his back seat, assessing him like he was nothing more than an inanimate object. His mouth moved but Mike could still not hear anything.
The man seemed to understand and raised his voice. Sounding like he was underwater, Mike heard, “How often do you have unprote
cted sex?”
“Please, please don’t do this to me, mister, I—”
“Do you use intravenous drugs? If so, have you ever shared a needle with someone?”
“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please.”
He’d remember feeling the car shake, the engine turning on, then the dome light being turned off and then the darkness continuing to build and every dulled sound growing quickly quieter and then a silent, painless nothingness.
* * *
The escape within himself, and the peace it offered, was far too fleeting.
The keening of some machine, like an air compressor. The smell of antiseptics, like a hospital. And a very bright light shining in his face.
The pain in his arm and the pain in his leg waking on a short delay – but once they caught up to him, he could hold back a scream. He could hear again. The machine near his head was so loud. There was a painting on the wall behind him, upside-down, a deer jumping over a rail fence. He was lying on a plastic sheet. A needle in each of his arms, tubes connected, the clear plastic full of red. He couldn’t move his arms and legs. He was covered in a flaking brown crust, dried blood. His shoulder and calf were bandaged but the bandages were soaked through red. He couldn’t see past that bright light blinding him to see what was holding him down, but something was. He felt lightheaded and there were tracers behind everything when he moved his eyes.
There was a door across the room. A window with the blinds drawn. A motel room maybe. The dark face of a TV standing on a dresser. A mirror. A very scared man with his mouth taped shut tied down to a bed. A flashlight duct-taped to the wall above him pointed down at him. A picture of a deer jumping over a rail fence but backward. Needles in his arms too. Clear plastic tubes full of red, connected to a machine set in the seat of a chair. Mike looked over and saw he had the same kind of machine on his side of the mirror. The tubes were running to it and a small plastic container on the side, the size of a coffee can, was almost full – of what was being taken from him using that machine.
IV bags, swollen full and red, lay in a neat pile on the nightstand.
More of what had been taken from him.
The man in the mirror was paler than he had ever seen him. He looked dead but was able to lift his head and look at him and blinked when he blinked. At the same time they tried screaming, but Mike could barely produce a weak groan. The mass of fabric packed into his mouth tasted like sweat.
The man with nothing in his eyes turned around. Mike had not noticed him there by the sink until he moved. He was missing a sock. Mike’s eyes kept wanting to roll back in his head but he forced himself to look in the face of the man and around the gag in his mouth tried to ask him to stop, whatever this was he was doing to him.
The man pushed his glasses back up his nose and hiked up his pants and knelt next to the bed like it hurt him to do so, leaning forward on his elbows. He never took his eyes off Mike, letting all that emptiness in his face spill out over his captor. “Good evening, Mr. Bond.”
Mike said nothing, couldn’t.
“Do you like James Bond movies?”
Mike said nothing.
“Which James Bond is your favorite?”
Mike tried saying please stop but the gag made it impossible.
“Mine’s Timothy Dalton.” The man lowered his voice. “So here’s the thing. I think there’s people trying to sleep next door so I’m not going to take that sock out of your mouth. Maybe later. So, in the meantime, if you don’t mind, let’s start by having you nod if you can hear me. Can you do that for me, Michael?”
Mike nodded.
“Your name is Michael, right?”
Mike nodded.
“I bet you’re wondering how I knew that. Sorry for snooping, but I had a peek in your wallet,” the man said. “Are you feeling okay, Michael?”
Mike shook his head.
“Are you in pain?”
Mike nodded.
“On a scale from one to ten, Michael, how much pain would you say you’re in right now?”
Mike just stared at him.
“Blink.”
Mike blinked ten times.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Mike tried telling him fuck you but, again, the sock forbade it.
“Which hurts more, where I shot your arm or where I shot your leg? One blink will mean your arm and two blinks will mean your leg.”
Mike blinked twice.
“Your leg hurts more. Okay, good, we’re getting somewhere, understanding each other.” The man knelt there next to the bed for several seconds, not saying anything. It was only now that Mike noticed the man’s blinks were slightly out of sync with each other, owlish.
“Michael, this is pretty new to me. I was only told about the process for the first time a few days ago actually, by my friend.” He paused. “You don’t need to know his name. He’s like a father to me. Better than the father I had, that’s for sure.” The man cast a glare at the corner of the room and Mike followed the angry look to an empty corner – where nobody and nothing stood. “Anyway,” the man continued, “this friend of mine, he’s asked me to do something to a coworker of mine – what I’m doing to you right now, actually. It doesn’t feel very good, I bet, but this coworker of mine, she’s not a very nice lady so it equals out.”
Mike wanted to wake up now. Wake up, wake up.
The man said, “I was going to just learn as I go when it came time to do this to her, you know, just sort of wing it, but then you came along.” He paused again. “I always thought that phrase was always kind of strange. ‘Then you came along.’ Like when people are talking about having babies, I picture it like a couple decide to have one together and no sooner do they make that choice than this random child comes along, out of the night, up to their front door out of the dark and rings the doorbell.”
Mike told himself to wake up, to wake up, but he didn’t, he remained here, stuck in his body, stuck in this place, trapped with this person talking at him and doing these things to him.
“Anyway,” the man said, “consider this like a test run. I would say dry run, but it’s anything but dry in here.” His smile rose, fell, never lighting his small, dull eyes. “So, as you’ve probably figured out, I’m taking your blood. Kind of like how they do at the hospital, except to save time it’s more like it’s being sucked out of you using that handy little machine over there. And as my friend explained it to me, your blood – because of the rough state you’re in right now – is very special. So, again, I’m sort of paraphrasing here, I can’t remember all the terminology he used exactly, but when a person is in pain or they’re scared, their body releases adrenaline into the bloodstream. You know what adrenaline is, right?”
Mike nodded.
“That’s good. Because you’re probably chock-full of the stuff right now. In fact, it’s likely the only reason you’re able to be conscious right this moment. So, all this you got coming out of you right now,” the man said and lifted under his hand one of the plastic tubes, “is loaded with adrenaline. And then that goes over there into one of those containers and then into one of these bags.”
The man showed him one of the bags, wrinkled and sucked free of any air, then another bag, one that was plump with Mike’s blood.
“But, and this is the important part,” the man said, “when a person expires, this other stuff gets released that’s called – and bear with me, I want to see if I can remember how to say it right – dimethyltryptamine.”
Mike said nothing.
“I’m pretty sure that’s how you say it. You’re a young guy, I’m sure you’re no stranger to partying, so you probably know dimethyltryptamine better as its shortened version, DMT. Thing is, that DMT you may’ve taken at a party…. Wait, have you heard of DMT before, Michael?”
Mike shook his head.
“Okay
, good, I don’t feel so stupid now because I’d never heard of it either. Anyway, DMT is a very powerful hallucinogen, I’m told. And without the version of it our bodies naturally produce, we wouldn’t dream. Naturally occurring DMT is literally the stuff dreams are made of. It gets released into our bloodstream not only when we dream but a great big gush of it gets excreted when people die, like I said. Which some people theorize is what’s actually happening when someone has a near-death experience. Everybody who ever tried saying they talked to god? Turns out they were just high.”
Mike just stared at him.
“So, you keeping up with me so far? I know this is a lot to take in. I had to have my friend repeat a lot of it two or three times before I had it all down, so don’t feel bad if you need me to cover something again.”
Mike neither said nor did anything.
“All right, moving on. As my boss explained it to me, he said that synthetic DMT and synthetic adrenaline can be made in a lab and mixed together and then used when going to a party or just for fun, but I guess it’s really expensive to make it that way. But using a method like the one we’ve got going right here,” the man said and spread his arms to indicate the whole of the insanity filling this motel room, “we can harvest the organic DMT/adrenaline mixture just about anywhere from just about anyone. And according to my friend, there’s some people with a lot of money who really enjoy the feeling it gives them so they’ll pay top dollar to get it. Unfortunately, you won’t be seeing any of that money even though you’ve helped us out a lot tonight. Guess that’s the way it goes, the low man on the totem pole never gets properly thanked for his hard work. But I appreciate it, Michael. I really do. You’ve been a real trooper with all this so far.”
Mike tried to pull away when the man reached forward to touch him but had no choice, no say, nowhere to go. The man’s fat fingers pressing against the side of his neck were hot, like the man was boiling under his clothes. Mike hated that he enjoyed the touch. He was so cold and the man, even if he was planning on killing him, had a warm hand. Mike was disgusted with himself for being forced to feel any pleasure from this individual, but there it was, the body’s needs superseding rational thought, repulsive as they were, but he was so cold. Likely from having lost so much blood. No, not lost. Fucking stolen. This psychopath is bleeding me to death.