pause above his regular hesitation as he thought of driving into the midst of a swarm of unlearned and reckless drivers. But it was at this time that his second unfortunate event got the jump on him.
Out of nowhere, a stranger opened his passenger door, jumped into the car, and placed a gun to his head. “Don’t make a sound or I’ll blow your brains out!”
“What?”
If the average person were suddenly faced with the prospect of having the inside of their car decorated with their frontal and temporal lobes, human nature dictates that they would panic and beg for their lives. Not Harold Creeny. Because in Harold’s world, built around what was once believed to be an impenetrable net of safety, he could never have imagined falling prey to such deadly circumstances. Therefore, his response was not a direct reply to his attacker, but to the Universe itself, a universe that suddenly stopped making any sense to him.
“Are you deaf? I said I’ll blow your brains out! Now get us out of here, keep quiet, and follow my directions. If you do exactly as I say, you may come out of this alive.”
The captor’s last words echoed in Harold’s head, and he drove out of there without another moment’s thought.
“Turn right. Keep following this street for two more stop lights, then another right, and keep straight until I say otherwise.”
Harold was terrified. He wanted so badly to plead with the man to let him go, but he was unsure whether the man’s threat was loaded or not. The best course of action, he decided, was to play it cool and not make his captor angry. If only he wasn’t feeling so weak in the groin, then he’d feel much braver. It was hard to feel brave with a gun aimed at your head.
He turned right as he was instructed. However, just as he started down the next road, a large moving truck blocked off the street. The truck driver threw up his hands in a gesture of faked apology.
“Damn it!” Harold’s hijacker cursed in frustration. He looked around the sidewalk as if he expected the devil to pop up and drag him to hell. He pointed to an alley directly to the left. “Take a shortcut through here.”
“But it’s full of trash,” said Harold, which earned him a sharp jab in the ribs with the barrel of the gun.
“Now.”
Harold cut hard to the left and squeezed his car into the narrow alley. When he was halfway down, a black car parked and blocked the exit. He looked into his rearview mirror and noticed an identical vehicle blocking the other end, the place where he had entered the alley. Men in black jackets began running towards Harold’s car and Harold’s captor panicked. With a wild look in his eyes, he quickly got out of the car and began firing shots at men who were gaining fast.
Harold tensed and covered his head with his arms. This would be it then, he thought, to die in the crossfire of some sort of mob business. He never imagined he’d die after pissing his pants.
The gunfire stopped. The next thing Harold knew in the grip of his blinding fear was that he was being dragged from his car along with his now unconscious kidnapper, who had passed out or maybe been hit. Soon, there was the sound of a door being thrown open. Harold and his captor were forcefully taken into a badly lit hallway that led to an equally dark room. Finally, Harold was shoved into a steel chair. Five men stood around him, all brandishing guns, with murder in their eyes.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! They’re going to kill me! I’m going to die in the backroom of some filthy building to be forever forgotten by the world…
“Ricky, keep an eye on them,” said the gruff looking one who Harold guessed was in charge. “These three are going to get rid of the cars, while I go and inform Tony that we’ve got him. He’ll want to be here for what comes next.”
Ricky nodded gravely.
“And tie this one up,” he pointed at Harold with his gun as they left the room. “Sorry fella, but you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Harold was visibly shaking. Whoever this Tony person was (client, employer, mob boss, the building’s electrician, or …), he didn’t sound like someone Harold would invite to church. But what was he to do? Who were these gangsters? What building was he in? Was that music in the background? He tried to remember what the sign outside had said, but he was so shaken he couldn’t have remembered the brand name of his favorite cereal. If he wanted to leave this place with his life intact, then he would have to find a way to escape somehow. He knew this for certain. The question was how?
Harold was no man of action. He didn’t have Hugh Jackman’s biceps or Jet Li’s martial arts prowess. Harold never lifted weights in his life for fear of crushing a vital organ. Finally, he realized there was only one thing he could do…
When Ricky closed in on him, Harold’s survival instincts tore a shrill, undignified scream from his throat that would put a banshee to shame. Surprised by this piss-stained, seemingly weak and pathetic entrepreneur’s sudden outburst, Ricky stumbled back in shock. He obviously wasn’t expecting Harold to react to his approach with anything more than cowering sobs. That one moment of hesitation was all Harold needed to pick up his chair and clobber Ricky on the side of the head. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.
Harold stood in shocked disbelief. He never for a moment expected that his assault would work. The instant his being-butchered-in-the-woods cheerleader scream left his mouth, he knew it was all over. Any man whose battle cry sounded like an angry cat in heat needed to be put out of his misery. Now that he was looking down at both of his unconscious would-be killers, he decided not to question it and ran from the room.
He couldn’t leave through the same way he had come in for fear of encountering the other men, so he ran in the opposite direction and through the first door he could find.
Naked women everywhere. Sitting in chairs, looking into mirrors, applying makeup, trying on various levels of revealing clothing, and they all stared at Harold’s sudden appearance with mouths agape, struck dumb at the sight of a wild-eyed and disheveled intruder.
“I-I-I…” Harold’s mouth flapped the one syllable word but could say no more, while his thoughts reeled in horror. I am in a cesspool of gonorrhea and chlamydia.
The first scream rent the air, followed by several glittery items that flew through the air, aimed to cause pain. The women cursed and yelled at him.
“Get out of here, you pervert!”
“Bobby, deal with him!”
“If you want a show you’ll have to pay like everyone else!”
Harold tried to apologize and explain how it wasn’t his fault, how he was the victim of attempted murder, but his plea was snatched from his lips by a muscular bouncer who violently grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him from the room.
“Couldn’t keep it in your pants, eh buddy?” said the bouncer. “Thought you’d go in and show all of them girls what a big man you are, right?”
Customers in the main lounge turned in their seats, eyes momentarily peeled away from Sasha and Candy who were performing a double act using a single pole. A group of men sitting at a table nearest to Harold laughed and heckled at his brusque departure, slopping beer all over themselves and continuing to be slaves to their lust. Harold held back his retort. He didn’t care about his bruised and battered ego at that moment. All that mattered was being led through the front doors and into freedom, as far as possible from the mobsters.
“Don’t throw me too hard!” pleaded Harold.
The bouncer threw him out hard anyway.
Harold landed with a vicious thud on the cement sidewalk, scraping his knee and bruising other body parts. He sucked in a sharp breath of air through clenched teeth and grabbed his stinging knee, cursing all the while, because surely he would now catch some kind of flesh eating bacteria and would lose his leg. Back at the door, the bouncer crossed his arms and remained in the entryway, continuing to look on menacingly. Harold ignored him, because at that moment all he wanted to do was crawl back to his office and hide out the rest of this nightmarish day. It wasn’t fair. Why him? A man so careful about his health
and vigilantly aware of his surroundings.
Suddenly, there was the sound of screeching tires urgently braking against pavement, following by the howls of a sexually depraved housewife.
“You son of a bitch!”
Harold’s head immediately snapped to attention at the sound of his wife’s piercing voice. Instantaneously, he realized the day’s troubles up to now had been child’s play compared to what was to come next. He stood up and defensively raised his hands in surrender, hoping without hope to calm his wife before she caused an even bigger scene in the middle of the street in broad daylight.
His wife stepped out of the car that she had left in the middle of traffic. The vehicles waiting to get past her honked their horns and yelled for her to move out of the way. Harold could see in her eyes that the other cars were invisible to her. He was public enemy number one.
Her eyes zeroed in on his naked ring finger and her face contorted further with rage. She seemed not to notice all his other wounds. Harold looked at his hand with horrible comprehension.
“You cheating bastard! Am I not good enough for you? Can I not get your gears into motion like those cheap whores over there? Is that it, Harold?”
She swung her hand to slap him in the face, but Harold mustered his last bit of energy and ducked in time.
“I’ve been nothing but faithful to you even after you stopped having sex