Guinea Pig
I wrote this the other night. Called Guinea Pig.
Awake again. Cold, always. And numb. He can’t forget that. Was he even really asleep? Well, no way to tell. Barely even matters anymore. Shaking his head and slowly allowing his eyes to creak open, the prisoner sits up. He’s shivering constantly, but it has been so long since he wasn’t shivering that he no longer even notices. The same white walls that surrounded him before still surround him, like an avalanche. Or maybe they’re ghosts, grinning at him from all sides, because they know he’ll join them soon enough.
Or so he hopes. He’s always so goddamn cold. But not dead. As far as he can tell, he’s not even dying. The bastard does it on purpose, he thinks to himself. He’s leaning against one of the walls of his cell, staring at the iron bars that keep him in this nightmare he’s been living for how long he doesn’t know. There’s a little slot at the bottom of the bars, through which he gets fed every day. His captor also slides bottles of water through it a couple times a day. Again, he’s a mostly healthy individual, although he probably doesn’t sleep enough. But that’s hardly a surprise, considering his current situation. Most people can’t sleep when they’re cold and naked 24 hours a day.
The bars are thick, he’s checked. Even if they weren’t, he’s hardly strong enough to bend them. The captive man tries, as he has tried many times before, to masturbate, finds he can’t. Maybe he’s too resigned to his miserable fate, or maybe he’s just too cold. After all, he’s been locked in a refrigerator, as far as he can figure. Or at least, his prison cell is in a constant state of refrigeration. He doesn’t know just how cold, of course. All he knows is that it isn’t quite freezing, because the water in his toilet is not iced over. It’s not cold enough to give him hypothermia, even though he prays for it to happen every day. It’s not even cold enough to give him frostbite.
That doesn’t change the fact that every waking moment for him is utter torture. He’s figured out that the guy that has him locked up down here does not keep him at a constant temperature; if that were the case, he would have adjusted to it by now. Best as the man can figure, his captor probably changes the temperature around all the time, sometimes moving it up enough to make his body think he’ll soon be warm again, only to drop it back down when he almost was getting comfortable.
The groan of an old trapdoor that signals that he’s about to be paid a visit. He’s not sure if it’s time to eat or not, but it hardly even matters. He wishes he was dead, so even though the food is actually pretty good, it brings him no pleasure. If he wasn’t forced to eat, he’d just starve himself to death. A gaunt man wearing a plush smoking jacket descends the ladder that sits on the far wall opposite of the one the prisoner is leaning against.
“Brrrr, it sure is cold in here!” he says in a tone of cruel mockery. “Hungry, buddy?”
“N...n…n…no.”
“Well that’s just too bad, because it’s time to eat. I’d be rather disappointed in you if you didn’t eat, and you know what happens when I’m not happy. Do you really want me to have to discipline you again?”
“F…f…f…fuck off.”
“Such hostility, when you’re my guest. I thought I told you not to piss me off? You’re really testing my limits today. Anyway, tonight we’ll be having Salisbury steak, I hope you like it.”
The lunatic on the other side of the bars slides a plate loaded up with food through the slot at the bottom of the bars, along with a bottle of Ozarka. Sitting against one wall, he watches as the prisoner petulantly digs into his meal. After a minute or so, he pulls out a slim package of cigarettes and sticks one in his mouth. Capris. Women’s cigarettes. The hostage has speculated for a while now that his captor might very well be a homosexual, but he doesn’t want to ask him, for fear of offending the man. However, he smokes thin cigarettes and talks with a bit of a lisp, and has a naked man locked in his basement, so the matter of his sexuality could certainly be considered in question.
“Care for a smoke?” he asks.
“No th…th…thanks. I fucking t…t…t…told you already, I don’t smoke.”
“Good. Don’t start. It’s a nasty habit, and they’re terrible for you.”
“I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”
The smoker chuckles to himself and takes a long drag on his cigarette. He slowly exhales a long tendril of smoke out through his nose, which lingers in the air like an illness. He watches, amused, as it seems to form shapes - dragon, bat, snake - before finally dissolving. Several minutes pass as he smokes and waits for his prisoner to finish eating; he doesn’t want him to go throwing up the meal he spent all evening preparing, after all. He stands up once his cigarette reaches the filter and with startling accuracy, flicks the butt between the bars and into the toilet bowl, where it hisses like an angry alley cat. The man in the cell slides his empty plate and water bottle back through the slot, and asks the same question he asks almost every time the man in the smoking jacket comes down to check on him.
“Why the f…f…fuck do you have me locked in a fucking f…f…f…freezer?”
“First of all, give me some credit. This is quite obviously not a freezer, as you are not freezing to death. And to answer your question, think of it as a grand experiment of human fortitude, if you want. At least you’re still alive, and I treat you well if you treat me with respect, you have to agree. Well, I hope you enjoyed the food, and have a good night.”
Twirling around with a slight flourish, he carefully climbs back up the ladder with one hand, and pushes open the trapdoor. It slams down, hard, and the prisoner is left to his own devices once again. He slumps back on the mattress his tormentor was gracious enough to put in his cell. The thought had crossed his mind to claw his way through it and somehow stab himself to death with one of the springs inside, but he didn’t know that he could actually do it. Besides, by the time he got through the thick exterior of the mattress, he’d probably have been visited and caught red-handed.
Being caught red-handed doing anything that might be considered a violation of whatever insane contract the psycho upstairs had in his head was not something the man has any desire to experience any time soon. He had suffered the man’s demented form of discipline many times in the past, though some of it was self-induced. There were a few different forms of it, including the implementation of a tazer and a bullwhip, but the most common form of punishment came from a simple bucket of ice water. Under normal circumstances, being doused with ice water would not be pleasant, but it would hardly be classified as torture. But when you’re living in almost-freezing climes, it can be several hours of pure hell.
After the first couple times he was exposed to the bucket, the captive man thought he would goad his captor into drenching him again and again to the point where he would catch pneumonia or in some other way get himself killed. Unfortunately, the scheme was a little bit too transparent. After getting called every foul name imaginable and administering the bucket a couple times, the psychopath decided to switch tools for a little while. Severe lashings didn’t cause the prisoner to give up his attempt to kill himself, so he took more drastic measures - specifically, he took the tazer to his balls.
He doesn’t remember how he got here; he just woke up one day and realized he was naked and freezing his ass off. He figures he must have been drugged or perhaps clubbed upside the head, but either way he can’t seem to remember much from before he was locked down here. Although one memory always keeps coming back to him, and he has held on to it above all else, including his sanity. He was 8 years old, and it was a beautiful day in mid-June. He had been riding his bike around the town he grew up in when he saw a dog looking lost and forlorn in a small field. He had stopped and after a lot of coaxing, befriended the dog, playing with him for well over an hour. Eventually they had both collapsed on the ground, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the day.
It isn’t enough to keep him warm, but thinking about it makes him remember that life wasn’t always made up of constant misery. Eat, drink, shit, piss, sleep. The latter of which is fitful and never lasts long, if it even happens. Most of the time, if he’s not doing one of those basic functions, he’s pacing his cell and talking to himself or thinking up ways of killing himself without getting caught doing it. He’d drown himself, but the water level in the toilet is too low. He wouldn’t be able to brain himself to death on the bars or the walls without attracting attention. So he resigns himself to his eventual death - the sooner the better.
A long time passes in this manner. How long, he doesn’t know. He’s asked before how long he has been locked down here, but the maniac never tells him. He’s also asked how long the man plans to keep him down here, and his only response is “That is up to you, my friend.”
One day the familiar sound of the trapdoor opening wakes him with a jolt. The man clambers down the ladder as usual, but something is different this time. He isn’t wearing the smoking jacket he always has on, for one; today he’s dressed in a pressed white shirt and black slacks. Also, his hands are empty of food or water, though the tazer is clipped to his belt loop. All he holds is a blindfold, which he hands through the bars to the bewildered man inside.
“Put that on.”
Obediently, the prisoner ties the blindfold around his head, and frantically speculates about what is about to happen.
“First of all, since you have asked me about it in the past - you’ve been here for 9 months. No significance about that, unless you want to get metaphysical about what’s going to happen next. I suppose it could be considered a rebirth of sorts.”
“What the h…h…h…hell are you talking about?”
“What I’m talking about, is choice. It’s a simple choice, really, depending on your perspective, but I suppose it really is the only choice that matters. I’m talking about life or death. I’m holding both of them out to you, and you simply have to choose which one you want.”
“Are…. are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. Serious as a goddamned heart attack. It’s time for this experiment to reach its conclusion, and I am eager to see what happens. If you need some time to consider, I certainly understand, but I haven’t got all day.”
After saying this, the man pulls out a cigarette and lights up while he waits to see what the prisoner decides. The blindfolded man can smell the acrid smell of the smoke, and reflects on the last nightmarish nine months. Only nine months, Good God, it has felt like two years to him. If he stayed here any longer, he’s almost certain he would completely slip into the grip of insanity. He’s amazed he hasn’t already. Does he want to die while he is still himself, or live in here for an untold amount of time like a gibbering lunatic? Rescue doesn’t seem very likely, and this crazy bastard seems to have either incredible luck or enough mechanical know-how to keep this cooler/prison from breaking down. He hears the hiss of the cigarette landing in the toilet water, and knows he has to make his decision.
“Death.” No stuttering, this time.
“Hmm. A cowardly answer, to be sure, but in this situation, I suppose it is a good one. Very well. I’m going to open the door to your cell now - but keep in mind I’m armed. Don’t take off your blindfold or try anything stupid or I’ll zap your dick off.”
There is a rattle of keys and a click as the door to his cell is opened for the first time since he was put inside of it. His stomach is knotted up like a pretzel and his breathing is rapid and shallow, but underneath his fear there is a deep sense of relief. His captor leads him to the ladder and tells him to climb. He pushes open the trapdoor and grabs hold of the floor outside, relishing the feel of it against his fingers. He stands up once he’s completely out of his prison, even though his legs are two columns of water.
He’s hit by a sense of how hot it is in the house itself. How does the man live up here like this? Nevertheless, his body drinks it in, sending endorphins of rapture coursing through his body. He wonders what’s going to happen next as he waits for his executioner to finish climbing the ladder. Presumably, the man plans to take him somewhere else to kill him. Maybe out into the woods somewhere, or maybe he will do it in his own backyard.
To the blindfolded man’s great surprise, he is instructed to take off the blindfold and put on his clothes, which he finds lying on an armchair not far from where he is standing. The house is cluttered and dark, and all the shades are drawn. Pewter statues of Gods, demons, and all manner of monsters are spread out all over the living room in which they stand.
“Why did you tell me to put on a blindfold if you’re just going to kill me without one on?”
“I just wanted you to be able to see your clothes while you got dressed. You’re putting the blindfold back on after you’re done.”
“Oh. Why the hell are you making me put my clothes on, then?”
“Well I can’t really expect you to walk home naked, now can I?”
“Walk home? What the fuck are you talking about? …are you letting me go?”
“Yessir, that I am.”
“But what about the life and death question? I picked death!”
“That was just a test, if you will. I told you, I’m ready for this experiment to be over with.”
“You’re fucking crazy! What’s stopping me from going to the cops?”
“First of all, you don’t know my name. Second of all, I’m going to drive you far away from where I live before I drop you off and let you go. That’s where the blindfold comes into play. If you try to peek and find out where I live, I’ll kill you on the spot.”
“Fair enough… Christ, it’s hot. What the hell are you getting out of this? Why aren’t you going to kill me?”
“I told you, this was just an experiment. Now I’m done. I just have an inquisitive nature, I guess. Anyway, put your blindfold back on, please, it’s time to go.”
The former prisoner does as he is told, and lets the other man lead him outside into the blazing sun, which feels like a million degrees. They get into a beat-up grey Camry which starts up willingly. The driver takes them on a purposely confusing ride, with plenty of unnecessary and contradicting turns, driving for a good thirty minutes. Meanwhile his passenger moans about the heat and asks him to turn the AC all the way up. Finally, they stop next to a small playground, and the driver puts it in park.
“Alright, we’re here. I’m going to let you out now, but I will be watching you. If you don’t wait five minutes before taking off the blindfold, I’ll pick you back up, or maybe I’ll just kill you. Just looking after my own hide. Now get out, and enjoy your new life.”
The blindfolded excitedly gets out of the car and sits down on the sidewalk to wait. He is sweating profusely, but he hardly even cares. He’s finally free! He can hardly even believe this is happening - if he wasn’t so hot, he’d think he was still lying in the cell dreaming. After a couple minutes go by, he figures he’s safe and takes off the blindfold. He looks around the playground he finds himself in, and recognizes the part of town he’s in. It’s going to be a bit of a walk to get home, or at least what used to be home, but he’ll make it. After all he’s been through, he has to make it.
He starts walking and is hit by a flood of remembrance. He is surprised at how easily he forgot his wife, his family, and everything that made him who he was before. Hell, after walking for about fifteen minutes, he even remembers where he met the fucker that locked him up like that. He was at a pool hall, shooting a few friendly games with anybody that wanted to play, when the man had challenged him. After getting trounced, he offered to buy drinks for the two of them, since he was the loser after all. Most likely he slipped some rohypnol into the drink before giving it to him, and then acted like he was taking the seemingly drunk man home.
That goddamned bastard, he thinks as he walks a little faster. Sweat is pouring out of his body in torrents, and the day is unbearably hot. Even for a summer day, this is far too hot. He’s too excited to listen to his body when it tells him he needs to slow down and drink some water, though. He has to get home and see his wife again. He has to tell somebody about what happened to him. That’s the only thing the man cares about, and he doesn’t even notice the fact that the man who drugged and took him prisoner is actually following him at a safe distance, watching to see what happens to him. He doesn’t notice when his body can no longer handle the heat, and he starts to see things that aren’t really there. He doesn’t even notice when he falls to the ground and is unable to get up. And he definitely doesn’t notice when he slips into a coma, due to the onset of a heat stroke. Nobody else seems to notice, either, until it is too late and a man mysteriously dies of a heat stroke in 72 degree weather. Well, except the man following him in a beat-up grey Camry - he notices. He watches and laughs, delighted with his own brilliance.
Awake again. Cold, always. And numb. He can’t forget that. Was he even really asleep? Well, no way to tell. Barely even matters anymore. Shaking his head and slowly allowing his eyes to creak open, the prisoner sits up. He’s shivering constantly, but it has been so long since he wasn’t shivering that he no longer even notices. The same white walls that surrounded him before still surround him, like an avalanche. Or maybe they’re ghosts, grinning at him from all sides, because they know he’ll join them soon enough.
Or so he hopes. He’s always so goddamn cold. But not dead. As far as he can tell, he’s not even dying. The bastard does it on purpose, he thinks to himself. He’s leaning against one of the walls of his cell, staring at the iron bars that keep him in this nightmare he’s been living for how long he doesn’t know. There’s a little slot at the bottom of the bars, through which he gets fed every day. His captor also slides bottles of water through it a couple times a day. Again, he’s a mostly healthy individual, although he probably doesn’t sleep enough. But that’s hardly a surprise, considering his current situation. Most people can’t sleep when they’re cold and naked 24 hours a day.
The bars are thick, he’s checked. Even if they weren’t, he’s hardly strong enough to bend them. The captive man tries, as he has tried many times before, to masturbate, finds he can’t. Maybe he’s too resigned to his miserable fate, or maybe he’s just too cold. After all, he’s been locked in a refrigerator, as far as he can figure. Or at least, his prison cell is in a constant state of refrigeration. He doesn’t know just how cold, of course. All he knows is that it isn’t quite freezing, because the water in his toilet is not iced over. It’s not cold enough to give him hypothermia, even though he prays for it to happen every day. It’s not even cold enough to give him frostbite.
That doesn’t change the fact that every waking moment for him is utter torture. He’s figured out that the guy that has him locked up down here does not keep him at a constant temperature; if that were the case, he would have adjusted to it by now. Best as the man can figure, his captor probably changes the temperature around all the time, sometimes moving it up enough to make his body think he’ll soon be warm again, only to drop it back down when he almost was getting comfortable.
The groan of an old trapdoor that signals that he’s about to be paid a visit. He’s not sure if it’s time to eat or not, but it hardly even matters. He wishes he was dead, so even though the food is actually pretty good, it brings him no pleasure. If he wasn’t forced to eat, he’d just starve himself to death. A gaunt man wearing a plush smoking jacket descends the ladder that sits on the far wall opposite of the one the prisoner is leaning against.
“Brrrr, it sure is cold in here!” he says in a tone of cruel mockery. “Hungry, buddy?”
“N...n…n…no.”
“Well that’s just too bad, because it’s time to eat. I’d be rather disappointed in you if you didn’t eat, and you know what happens when I’m not happy. Do you really want me to have to discipline you again?”
“F…f…f…fuck off.”
“Such hostility, when you’re my guest. I thought I told you not to piss me off? You’re really testing my limits today. Anyway, tonight we’ll be having Salisbury steak, I hope you like it.”
The lunatic on the other side of the bars slides a plate loaded up with food through the slot at the bottom of the bars, along with a bottle of Ozarka. Sitting against one wall, he watches as the prisoner petulantly digs into his meal. After a minute or so, he pulls out a slim package of cigarettes and sticks one in his mouth. Capris. Women’s cigarettes. The hostage has speculated for a while now that his captor might very well be a homosexual, but he doesn’t want to ask him, for fear of offending the man. However, he smokes thin cigarettes and talks with a bit of a lisp, and has a naked man locked in his basement, so the matter of his sexuality could certainly be considered in question.
“Care for a smoke?” he asks.
“No th…th…thanks. I fucking t…t…t…told you already, I don’t smoke.”
“Good. Don’t start. It’s a nasty habit, and they’re terrible for you.”
“I’ll definitely keep that in mind.”
The smoker chuckles to himself and takes a long drag on his cigarette. He slowly exhales a long tendril of smoke out through his nose, which lingers in the air like an illness. He watches, amused, as it seems to form shapes - dragon, bat, snake - before finally dissolving. Several minutes pass as he smokes and waits for his prisoner to finish eating; he doesn’t want him to go throwing up the meal he spent all evening preparing, after all. He stands up once his cigarette reaches the filter and with startling accuracy, flicks the butt between the bars and into the toilet bowl, where it hisses like an angry alley cat. The man in the cell slides his empty plate and water bottle back through the slot, and asks the same question he asks almost every time the man in the smoking jacket comes down to check on him.
“Why the f…f…fuck do you have me locked in a fucking f…f…f…freezer?”
“First of all, give me some credit. This is quite obviously not a freezer, as you are not freezing to death. And to answer your question, think of it as a grand experiment of human fortitude, if you want. At least you’re still alive, and I treat you well if you treat me with respect, you have to agree. Well, I hope you enjoyed the food, and have a good night.”
Twirling around with a slight flourish, he carefully climbs back up the ladder with one hand, and pushes open the trapdoor. It slams down, hard, and the prisoner is left to his own devices once again. He slumps back on the mattress his tormentor was gracious enough to put in his cell. The thought had crossed his mind to claw his way through it and somehow stab himself to death with one of the springs inside, but he didn’t know that he could actually do it. Besides, by the time he got through the thick exterior of the mattress, he’d probably have been visited and caught red-handed.
Being caught red-handed doing anything that might be considered a violation of whatever insane contract the psycho upstairs had in his head was not something the man has any desire to experience any time soon. He had suffered the man’s demented form of discipline many times in the past, though some of it was self-induced. There were a few different forms of it, including the implementation of a tazer and a bullwhip, but the most common form of punishment came from a simple bucket of ice water. Under normal circumstances, being doused with ice water would not be pleasant, but it would hardly be classified as torture. But when you’re living in almost-freezing climes, it can be several hours of pure hell.
After the first couple times he was exposed to the bucket, the captive man thought he would goad his captor into drenching him again and again to the point where he would catch pneumonia or in some other way get himself killed. Unfortunately, the scheme was a little bit too transparent. After getting called every foul name imaginable and administering the bucket a couple times, the psychopath decided to switch tools for a little while. Severe lashings didn’t cause the prisoner to give up his attempt to kill himself, so he took more drastic measures - specifically, he took the tazer to his balls.
He doesn’t remember how he got here; he just woke up one day and realized he was naked and freezing his ass off. He figures he must have been drugged or perhaps clubbed upside the head, but either way he can’t seem to remember much from before he was locked down here. Although one memory always keeps coming back to him, and he has held on to it above all else, including his sanity. He was 8 years old, and it was a beautiful day in mid-June. He had been riding his bike around the town he grew up in when he saw a dog looking lost and forlorn in a small field. He had stopped and after a lot of coaxing, befriended the dog, playing with him for well over an hour. Eventually they had both collapsed on the ground, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the day.
It isn’t enough to keep him warm, but thinking about it makes him remember that life wasn’t always made up of constant misery. Eat, drink, shit, piss, sleep. The latter of which is fitful and never lasts long, if it even happens. Most of the time, if he’s not doing one of those basic functions, he’s pacing his cell and talking to himself or thinking up ways of killing himself without getting caught doing it. He’d drown himself, but the water level in the toilet is too low. He wouldn’t be able to brain himself to death on the bars or the walls without attracting attention. So he resigns himself to his eventual death - the sooner the better.
A long time passes in this manner. How long, he doesn’t know. He’s asked before how long he has been locked down here, but the maniac never tells him. He’s also asked how long the man plans to keep him down here, and his only response is “That is up to you, my friend.”
One day the familiar sound of the trapdoor opening wakes him with a jolt. The man clambers down the ladder as usual, but something is different this time. He isn’t wearing the smoking jacket he always has on, for one; today he’s dressed in a pressed white shirt and black slacks. Also, his hands are empty of food or water, though the tazer is clipped to his belt loop. All he holds is a blindfold, which he hands through the bars to the bewildered man inside.
“Put that on.”
Obediently, the prisoner ties the blindfold around his head, and frantically speculates about what is about to happen.
“First of all, since you have asked me about it in the past - you’ve been here for 9 months. No significance about that, unless you want to get metaphysical about what’s going to happen next. I suppose it could be considered a rebirth of sorts.”
“What the h…h…h…hell are you talking about?”
“What I’m talking about, is choice. It’s a simple choice, really, depending on your perspective, but I suppose it really is the only choice that matters. I’m talking about life or death. I’m holding both of them out to you, and you simply have to choose which one you want.”
“Are…. are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. Serious as a goddamned heart attack. It’s time for this experiment to reach its conclusion, and I am eager to see what happens. If you need some time to consider, I certainly understand, but I haven’t got all day.”
After saying this, the man pulls out a cigarette and lights up while he waits to see what the prisoner decides. The blindfolded man can smell the acrid smell of the smoke, and reflects on the last nightmarish nine months. Only nine months, Good God, it has felt like two years to him. If he stayed here any longer, he’s almost certain he would completely slip into the grip of insanity. He’s amazed he hasn’t already. Does he want to die while he is still himself, or live in here for an untold amount of time like a gibbering lunatic? Rescue doesn’t seem very likely, and this crazy bastard seems to have either incredible luck or enough mechanical know-how to keep this cooler/prison from breaking down. He hears the hiss of the cigarette landing in the toilet water, and knows he has to make his decision.
“Death.” No stuttering, this time.
“Hmm. A cowardly answer, to be sure, but in this situation, I suppose it is a good one. Very well. I’m going to open the door to your cell now - but keep in mind I’m armed. Don’t take off your blindfold or try anything stupid or I’ll zap your dick off.”
There is a rattle of keys and a click as the door to his cell is opened for the first time since he was put inside of it. His stomach is knotted up like a pretzel and his breathing is rapid and shallow, but underneath his fear there is a deep sense of relief. His captor leads him to the ladder and tells him to climb. He pushes open the trapdoor and grabs hold of the floor outside, relishing the feel of it against his fingers. He stands up once he’s completely out of his prison, even though his legs are two columns of water.
He’s hit by a sense of how hot it is in the house itself. How does the man live up here like this? Nevertheless, his body drinks it in, sending endorphins of rapture coursing through his body. He wonders what’s going to happen next as he waits for his executioner to finish climbing the ladder. Presumably, the man plans to take him somewhere else to kill him. Maybe out into the woods somewhere, or maybe he will do it in his own backyard.
To the blindfolded man’s great surprise, he is instructed to take off the blindfold and put on his clothes, which he finds lying on an armchair not far from where he is standing. The house is cluttered and dark, and all the shades are drawn. Pewter statues of Gods, demons, and all manner of monsters are spread out all over the living room in which they stand.
“Why did you tell me to put on a blindfold if you’re just going to kill me without one on?”
“I just wanted you to be able to see your clothes while you got dressed. You’re putting the blindfold back on after you’re done.”
“Oh. Why the hell are you making me put my clothes on, then?”
“Well I can’t really expect you to walk home naked, now can I?”
“Walk home? What the fuck are you talking about? …are you letting me go?”
“Yessir, that I am.”
“But what about the life and death question? I picked death!”
“That was just a test, if you will. I told you, I’m ready for this experiment to be over with.”
“You’re fucking crazy! What’s stopping me from going to the cops?”
“First of all, you don’t know my name. Second of all, I’m going to drive you far away from where I live before I drop you off and let you go. That’s where the blindfold comes into play. If you try to peek and find out where I live, I’ll kill you on the spot.”
“Fair enough… Christ, it’s hot. What the hell are you getting out of this? Why aren’t you going to kill me?”
“I told you, this was just an experiment. Now I’m done. I just have an inquisitive nature, I guess. Anyway, put your blindfold back on, please, it’s time to go.”
The former prisoner does as he is told, and lets the other man lead him outside into the blazing sun, which feels like a million degrees. They get into a beat-up grey Camry which starts up willingly. The driver takes them on a purposely confusing ride, with plenty of unnecessary and contradicting turns, driving for a good thirty minutes. Meanwhile his passenger moans about the heat and asks him to turn the AC all the way up. Finally, they stop next to a small playground, and the driver puts it in park.
“Alright, we’re here. I’m going to let you out now, but I will be watching you. If you don’t wait five minutes before taking off the blindfold, I’ll pick you back up, or maybe I’ll just kill you. Just looking after my own hide. Now get out, and enjoy your new life.”
The blindfolded excitedly gets out of the car and sits down on the sidewalk to wait. He is sweating profusely, but he hardly even cares. He’s finally free! He can hardly even believe this is happening - if he wasn’t so hot, he’d think he was still lying in the cell dreaming. After a couple minutes go by, he figures he’s safe and takes off the blindfold. He looks around the playground he finds himself in, and recognizes the part of town he’s in. It’s going to be a bit of a walk to get home, or at least what used to be home, but he’ll make it. After all he’s been through, he has to make it.
He starts walking and is hit by a flood of remembrance. He is surprised at how easily he forgot his wife, his family, and everything that made him who he was before. Hell, after walking for about fifteen minutes, he even remembers where he met the fucker that locked him up like that. He was at a pool hall, shooting a few friendly games with anybody that wanted to play, when the man had challenged him. After getting trounced, he offered to buy drinks for the two of them, since he was the loser after all. Most likely he slipped some rohypnol into the drink before giving it to him, and then acted like he was taking the seemingly drunk man home.
That goddamned bastard, he thinks as he walks a little faster. Sweat is pouring out of his body in torrents, and the day is unbearably hot. Even for a summer day, this is far too hot. He’s too excited to listen to his body when it tells him he needs to slow down and drink some water, though. He has to get home and see his wife again. He has to tell somebody about what happened to him. That’s the only thing the man cares about, and he doesn’t even notice the fact that the man who drugged and took him prisoner is actually following him at a safe distance, watching to see what happens to him. He doesn’t notice when his body can no longer handle the heat, and he starts to see things that aren’t really there. He doesn’t even notice when he falls to the ground and is unable to get up. And he definitely doesn’t notice when he slips into a coma, due to the onset of a heat stroke. Nobody else seems to notice, either, until it is too late and a man mysteriously dies of a heat stroke in 72 degree weather. Well, except the man following him in a beat-up grey Camry - he notices. He watches and laughs, delighted with his own brilliance.