by Mike Ramon
question, that’s all.”
“Cool. Now leave.”
Ben said nothing for a moment, and the two men stood staring at each other, George still with the beer in his hand.
“All right,” Ben finally said. “No problem. Thank you for your hospitality.”
Ben headed for the front door and George followed him, taking another sip of beer. Ben opened the door and stepped out. George put his hand on the door and started to close it, but the door suddenly rocked back into him hard enough to send him to the floor. The beer can went rolling across the floor, emptying its amber liquid contents onto the otherwise clean white carpet. Ben stepped back into the house and closed the door behind him.
“What the hell?” George mumbled in shock.
And then the other man was standing over him, and with one blow to the head George felt the world slip away as he lost consciousness.
In the darkness George head noises, a voice, something else he couldn’t quite identify. At one point he felt like he was flying, but when he tried to open his eyes he saw a reflection of himself, as if he were staring into a mirror, and then that one reflection turned into a hundred reflections, and he closed his eyes, knowing that he was not awake, that he was still gone from the waking world, the real worked he had once thought he knew so well, a world where a stranger didn’t knock on your door at three in the morning and fuck everything up. He wanted to get back to that world. All at once he felt like he was floating in water, but this time when he opened his eyes he could see nothing at all, and he decided that he must be floating in a sea of ink.
Back in the waking world, that world that George wanted to get back to, Ben dumped a glass of cold water on George’s head. George gasped, staring around with big saucer eyes. His gaze settled on Ben. The look on George’s face transformed from one of stunned befuddlement into one of righteous anger. George realized that he was sitting down, and he tried to stand, but he found himself unable to. He looked down and found that he was tied to the chair. His shirt had been removed, leaving him bare-chested.
“It took me a little while,” Ben said, “but I was able to find some rope in your garage. I hope you don’t mind that I appropriated it.”
“Let me out of this, you son of a bitch!”
“I already told you about the language.”
“Fuck you!” George yelled, spit flying from his mouth.
“Quiet down,” Ben replied calmly.
Ben brought up another chair and placed it so that it was facing George, and sat in it. He reached down and set the glass on the floor. They were in the living room. The TV had been turned off while George was away in dreamland, and the house was quiet. Ben cleared his throat.
“So, now you are going to answer my question truthfully,” he said. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
For a second George just stared at him, and then he broke into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
“You’re a fuckin’ fruitcake,” George managed through the laughter.
“That’s not very nice, George.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Ben lashed out, striking George on the left side of his face. The laughter stopped, replaced by a cold stare from the bound man, aimed at his captor.
“There,” Ben said, satisfied with the result. “Now, it’s time to answer my question. Just answer it, and I will leave you alone.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m a man of my word, George.”
“The brokedown car? The dead cellphone?”
Ben winced.
“Fair enough. A bit of necessary subterfuge, and I’m not proud of it. But I speak the truth now. Answer my question truthfully and I will leaver. You’ll never see me again.”
George thought about this for a second.
“Why does it matter to you?” he asked.
“That’s not important. What is important is that it does matter to me.”
George whispered something under his breath.
“What was that?” Ben asked.
“Nothing.”
Ben lunged forward and struck George again, on the left side this time. George let out a grunt of pain.
“There will be no more lies between us,” Ben said. “I won’t have it. What did you say?”
“I said, ‘fucking asshole’. Are you happy?”
“Of course not. None of this makes me happy. Is that what you think this is, some kind of sick game for my own pleasure?”
“I have no idea what this is.”
“Well, it’s not that; that much is certain.”
George tried to pull against the ropes, but there was no give; he was tied up pretty good.
“George, I’m going to ask you again. I want you to think carefully, and to answer honestly. If you don’t do this, I am going to hurt you. Do you understand?”
“What do you---”
“Uh-uh. One word--yes or no. Do you understand?”
George nodded his head. Ben sighed.
“I’ll accept that. Now here we go. What is the worst thing that you have ever done?”
George thought about it for a while. A full minute went by before he opened his mouth to reply.
“I slept with one of my wife’s friends. It was before we were married.”
“Before you were engaged?” Ben asked.
“After.”
“So she was your fiancé at the time”
“Yes.”
“And when you say slept, you really mean….”
“You know what I mean.”
Ben stomped down on one of George’s feet. George was barefoot, and Ben had on short boots. The pain was terrific; George screamed.
“What do you mean when you say that you ‘slept’ with her?”
“I fucked her! All right? Is that what you want to hear? I fucked her.”
“Better.”
Ben stood up and walked around his prisoner. George squirmed in his seat as he tried to turn his head enough to see what the man was up to. Ben came back around and George saw that he was carrying something in one had. It was a pair of pliers.
“I found this in your garage, too,” Ben said.
“What is that for?”
“I’m going to use it to hurt you, as I said I would.”
“But I answered your question honestly,” George said, a new shade of fear entering into his voice.
“Nope. That’s not the worst thing. Not the worst thing by far.”
Ben raised the wrench up and George tried to push himself back, away from the instrument. Ben grabbed one shoulder and rooted him firmly to the ground. Then he raised the pliers up and used them to grab a bit of flesh on George’s stomach. He squeezed hard and again George screamed, a sharper cry than before. Ben loosened his grip, and the pliers released the raw flesh.
Ben dropped the pliers on the floor and shoved George sideways; he landed on the floor, still stuck to the chair. The beer can that he had dropped earlier was laying not more than a foot from his face. He could smell the beer in the carpet. A fleeting thought flashed across his mind: “It’s gonna be a bitch getting that odor out of the carpet.” And then a booted foot pressed down on his face. George grunted and tried to speak, but all that came out were incoherent, muffled mumbles. The boot lifted away, and Ben pulled George back upright.
“Tell me,” Ben said.
“I told you already, you demented motherfucker!”
Ben reached down and picked up the pliers.
“No, no, don’t---”
Before George could say more Ben gripped his bottom lip with the pliers and started twisting and pulling at the same time. This elicited another scream from George. The pain was tremendous; it felt too big for one man to experience and live to tell about it. Blood poured into his mouth, slick and coppery. And then his lip was released.
“See what you’re making me do to you?” Ben asked. “It didn’t have to be like this. You chose this.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill you, you fuck!” George
yelled, blood and spit running down his chest.
“Hmm. That’s funny.”
Ben took a seat; the pliers were still in his hand.
“Let’s try this again,” he said.
“Go to hell.”
“I probably will. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
“I let you into my home.”
“I know that was merely a jest, so I won’t count it as a wrong answer. That’s your one freebie. Try again.”
“I don’t know! Okay? I don’t know what it is that you think I did, or what you want me to say. Just tell me, and I’ll say it.”
“Only you can save yourself, George. The truth can set you free, but it has to be your truth.”
“I stole money from a cash register at the store I worked at when I was seventeen. I threw a rock through a church window when I was, like, thirteen. I sucker punched a guy at a bar once. Is that good enough?”
Ben looked at him for a moment.
“No,” he replied.
He stood up and leaned over George. He grabbed hold of George’s pants and started to pull them down.
“What the hell are you doing? Stop!”
“You still haven’t told me the truth, George. I’m going to have to get a little extreme.”
“No, stop. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.”
Ben kept pulling on the pants.
“I hit someone with my car!”
Ben stopped. He slowly moved back to his own chair and sat down. Neither of them said anything. George found the silence unbearable, so he filled it with his voice.
“I hit a woman with my car two years ago. I was tired. I had worked late that night, and I was so tired, and I thought about pulling over to the side of the road to take a little nap, but I wanted to get home, so I kept driving. My eyes must have closed for a second, just a second. I felt a jolt, and I thought I had hit a deer. I stopped and looked in the rearview, but I