Michael Hunter - Come Get Me

With a start he woke up. The dream still lingered so much that his throat hurt and he had a bit of a problem getting a deep breath. After a few seconds of gasping he realized some things from the dream weren’t a dream after all. The biggest one was that he was still unable to move but this time he knew why. Through blurred eyes he could barely see the floor a lot closer than he thought it should be. When he saw his feet closer than they should be he figured out that he was down on the floor lying on his side. That didn’t make much sense. The last thing he remembered was looking at Maria molesting Jill. He quickly looked around trying to find Jill. She was nowhere to be seen. He tried to move his hands but found he could barely move them. They were tied just like his feet. Struggling to move around so he could get a better look at his surroundings he finally found out where Jill was. Once he’d turned enough he could see her still hanging just as he remembered. She looked no different than she had. Still unconscious and absolutely no help in getting out of whatever mess they’d gotten into. As he watched her eyes popped open and looked around lazily.

“Jill!” he whispered. He didn’t know where Maria was so he knew he’d better be quiet. He hadn’t seen her when he’d been thrashing around but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Jill wasn’t responding to him. She just continued looking around in no particular direction. A string of drool dripped out of her mouth onto her shirt as he watched but she didn’t seem to notice. After a few more seconds her eyes fluttered closed. Whoever grabbed her must’ve drugged her to the gills, he thought as his own mind slowly began to clear. The inside of his head felt like a little gremlin had taken up residence and started pounding a drum, but other than that he was ok. Reassuring himself that she was fine for the time being he took stock of the situation. He was tied up in the middle of nowhere, his soon to be girlfriend was also tied up but even worse off than him and he had no idea where the people that had done this were. Yup, they were screwed.

Cursing to himself he looked around to see if there was anything close enough that could be used to cut himself loose. From another room came the sound of voices. At least now he knew where those other people were. He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he could tell they were arguing. He didn’t care what they did as long as they ignored him. He needed time to get out of here. Unfortunately he didn’t see anything that would help him in that endeavor. Looking back at Jill he saw she was still off in la la land and of no help yet. With no sign of a weapon of any sort and no help coming from anywhere he figured unless a miracle happened then they were both going to die.

Since no solution out of the situation presented itself he turned his attention to the argument. From the sound of Maria’s voice she stood just on the other side of the doorway the voices were coming from and she wasn’t happy. He could hear her yelling at someone but everything she said seemed to run together. His pounding head did little to help matters any. He only caught a few words and those didn’t make sense. The person she was arguing with interrupted her but Jim couldn’t hear any of what they said. Just a quiet mumbling. He struggled to hear what was said but got nothing. When he was hit it must’ve been pretty hard to mess up his hearing so bad. It didn’t surprise him much though. His vision was already blurry, so his hearing being messed up was just par for the course.

He was just going to start feeling sorry for himself when he heard a noise. He froze where he was. Maybe there were more than just the two in the other room. When he hadn’t moved for a few seconds the noise came again.

“Pssst!”

Jim decided to take a chance and turn around to see what it was.

“It’s Johnny Langill.” He heard as he wormed his way around. He almost stopped moving when he heard the voice but it was too late now so he kept going. At least if someone was going to talk to him he’d like to be able to see who it was. When he finally squirmed enough so that he was almost facing the other way he was surprised to come almost face to face with Pete. Sitting a few feet away Pete was propped up against a wall near where Jim had been laying. He didn’t know how he’d missed him before but there he was regardless.

“I think it has something to do with that damn purple dinosaur. I think he made him do it,” he said giggling to himself.

Jim almost couldn’t speak for a minute. Pete was the last person he’d expected to see here. “What do you mean it’s Johnny?” he said recovering himself. “And how did you get out of jail?”

“All I know is that one minute I’m sitting in a jail cell minding my own business and the next thing I know the lights go out,” he answered sounding slightly confused. “Then I heard some loud bangs I guess were gunshots, then silence. A few minutes later keys are rattling in my cell door and it pops open. Before I could even ask what was going on somebody hit me and I was out. After that the next thing I see is Johnny. He picks me up and throws me in here like a sack of potatoes. Do I look to you like a sack of potatoes?” Pete looked at Jim so seriously he almost started laughing. He would have if the situation was just a little different.

“He’s pretty strong,” Pete added when Jim didn’t answer. “You wouldn’t think it from looking at him though. He must work out or something.” This sent Pete into another giggling fit for some reason but Jim ignored it.

“What the hell did they bring us all the way out here for?” he whispered. “Do you know what’s going on?” He hopped Pete knew more than he was letting on. If they were both clueless then they were even more screwed than he’d thought.

“Well my dear Watson,” Pete said after calming down a little, “I’d guess we’ve been brought here for a very good reason. Not a reason we came up with mind you but one that someone here thinks is pretty good. Oh yeah, if the reason, whatever it may be, wasn’t good enough I’ll add this. It probably won’t matter too much since we’ll probably die in some horribly painful way before we find out anything else about the afore mentioned reason for us being here. Do you understand?” Pete said everything as if he was just telling someone that it was dark outside. It didn’t seem to bother him one bit he might only have a few more minutes to live. He was totally calm. If his demeanor wasn’t bad enough he started cleaning his finger nails, at least the ones he could reach, as Jim laid on the floor staring at him. He at least could try to get him free or something. Instead he didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

“Oh you want more? Well, it would seem our dear Maria has a thing for you.” He added when he noticed Jim was watching him. “She seems to have decided that since our little drugged up Jilly has made your heart go all pitter patter, she would just have to remove her.”

After his little speech he quietly started giggling as if something was funny. Jim wished he could see everything like Pete did. Maybe he would be laughing too but he doubted it. Yup, good old Pete was gone. He was going to die and he thought it was all funny.

Maria suddenly came storming back into the room followed a few seconds later by Johnny. Neither of them looked very happy. Seeming to want someone to vent her anger on she walked directly over to Pete and planted a stinging smack to his face.

“Shut the hell up ya damn freak,” she yelled. “I heard you talking all the way in the other room. Don’t think I didn’t hear all your snide little remarks but that’s ok. I have plans for you.”

Turning her attention to Jim she said, “It’s about time you woke up. I heard the freak talking to you. He was actually pretty close to the truth. I’m actually kind of surprised he was smart enough to figure out his own name much less anything having to do with what I’m going to do. I guess he’s a lot smarter than we all gave him credit for.” She turned and kicked him it seemed just for good measure. Maybe she hoped he would eventually match her image of him if she abused him enough. Thinking about kicking someone into stupidity made Jim snicker at the absurdity of it, but if there was anyone that would try it Maria was surely going to be first in line. This thought just made him laugh even more. He didn’t even try to stop himself. If he was going to die he might as well enjoy it. He looked up to find Maria looking at him. She still didn’t look very happy. Forcing himself to calm down he figured it was time for some real answers.