I woke up about a minute later. I was sitting on the floor, and a terrible pain was throbbing at the back of my head. I had a brand-new bump there, right next to the previous one, but I couldn’t feel how serious it was with my fingers because my hands were tied behind the legs of a kitchen table. In my lap, I saw my shirt rumpled into a ball. I stirred and tried to look around, still feeling dizzy. The injury was obviously serious enough because it felt as if I had a tennis ball attached to my head!

“What were you actually trying to do? Seduce me with your BO?” I heard someone asking.

It was Sharon. I turned my head toward her. She was sitting on the sofa in the bungalow’s distant corner, wearing only a white robe. Her legs were naked, and she held a smoking cigarette in her right hand.

“You wouldn’t have been so happy now,” I said hoarsely, “if your monkey didn’t come from behind!”

She just smiled and came to the kitchen corner to pour a cup of coffee for herself. She wore nothing under the robe, and naturally, she flashed me with her privates when she stood up—it was already an established tradition in our relationships. This time, however, she had it bald down there. Just then, the door sharply opened, and the jerk who had “attached” the tennis ball to the back of my head appeared.

“Well, the hero’s up!” He jeered, satisfied to see me conscious again.

I left his wicked remark without comment and groped with my fingers to explore the situation behind my back. The table wasn’t too big, but it was made of solid wood—something not very typical for motel bungalow furniture. My wrists were tied pretty high up with something that felt like cooking rope. It was fastened to the corner brackets right under the tabletop, making my potential escape a bit problematic. The rope cut painfully into my flesh every time I tried to move my hands.

The man stepped inside and went to kiss Sharon, grabbing her ass with his left hand. On the other hand, he carried a camera hanging from its strap. It looked like one of those I had used on my Chinatown mission.

“So you work for Blondie now, huh? She’s your new boss?” He turned back to me.

I tried to shrug, which was virtually impossible in my position. “What makes you think I’ll discuss this with you?” I asked coldly.

“Well, the fact that you’re in a terribly shitty situation, for example! Isn’t that good enough?” The guy sneered and put the camera on the sofa.

I ignored his joyful remark and asked instead, “If I answered, would it make my shitty situation less shitty?”

“As a matter of fact, no!”

“Speaking of shitty things,” Sharon suddenly broke in as she unexpectedly dropped her robe to put on her clothes, and for a moment, she stayed there completely naked. “You did a really shitty job with the camera, Mellrow! To be honest, I had my doubts before hiring you, but you actually surpassed everything I thought you could mess up.”

I stared at her. She was putting on a see-through bra, and her breasts bobbed a couple of times before the brassiere restricted their movement. She came to the wardrobe and pivoted left and right to take a look at herself in the mirror, which allowed me to explore her splendid ass and crotch from different perspectives. I wondered why she did this. She could have easily put on her underwear with the robe still on, but she chose to pull up a peep show for us. One possible reason was that I had already seen her naked, and she didn’t care, but we weren’t alone here. Her stupid boyfriend was also present, and, by the way, he enjoyed the show just as much as I did.

“You know what?” I said after a while, turning my head away. “It wouldn’t have made any difference even if I had taken a picture of Chavez and Li Jin Tao making out! With a genius plan like yours, nothing really matters. You’re simply amateurs!”

Sharon suddenly turned around and came to me. She slapped my face without showing any emotion. It felt weird to receive that from a naked woman in a see-through bra and no pants. I hadn’t experienced such a thing before!

“What do you know about our plans, you slug?” her boyfriend maliciously asked behind her.

“He knows nothing!” Sharon glanced at him coldly. “He’s just bluffing.”

Then she walked back and went on with her dressing.

“Well, one thing is for sure: for some reason, you want Menelaus messed up with the Chinese,” I said, just to tease her and let her know that I knew something after all. “That’s why you hired me, didn’t you?”

They looked at each other, surprised. My insight wasn’t such an extraordinary achievement, and it was pretty obvious, but I thought I should say it because I needed to dent their confidence at least a little bit. For a moment, Sharon stopped putting on her stockings, her hands pausing over her right thigh, but after a second, she carried on.

“It doesn’t really matter what he knows,” her boyfriend mumbled. “He’s a fucking loser, and he won’t know it for too long!”

“And what if I’m not the only loser, huh? What if there are others?” I began to improvise, taking random shots in the dark. “Why do you think these were the only pictures from the meeting in the Red Dragon?”

“There are no more cameras. He keeps bluffing,” Sharon replied evenly, this time without pausing her erotic show. She was putting on her panties now—also made of see-through stuff. I wished I could say something else to make her stop and come to slap my face, but there was nothing valuable in my head. That’s why I just went on jabbering bullshit.

“I’ve been to the police,” I said casually, “and I’ve also talked to Menelaus. If you think your little plot will work, maybe you should think twice.”

“And how did you get to Menelaus exactly?” Sharon asked without looking at me.

“Bjornson arranged that,” I said quickly, hoping to accidentally hit on the correct answer again. “She got in touch with him.”

The “stripper” sharply raised her eyes to look at me, and for a moment, I thought I had succeeded. I thought she was going to come and slap me. She proved me wrong, however.

“Bobby Bjornson’s his mistress, you hopeless fool!” she sneered instead. “She doesn’t need to ‘get in touch’. She’s in full bodily contact the entire time!”

I blinked twice when I heard this, and my face stretched like I had tasted something sour. I could not know if it was true, but it was possible. Anyway, it caught me entirely by surprise and felt almost like another slap from Sharon. That’s actually the main problem with improvising—you usually don’t know the exact result of your actions!

“Well, she works both sides. What’s the big deal?” In the next moment, I tried to save my face—at least to a point. “I suspected as much. Besides, she’s not much different than your little buddy here, isn’t she? He also plays behind his boss’ back!”

Although my shot was rather long this time, I unexpectedly hit the bull’s eye. They glanced at each other again, but they seemed anxious now. Sharon kept her eyes on her boyfriend for a while, pressing him, and eventually, he shrugged uneasily.

“I guess he must have snooped down at the house. I saw a car parked a little bit down the road, and I think it was outside the mansion, too.”

“For Christ’s sake, Marty!” Sharon suddenly snapped, holding her black skirt in her hands. “Didn’t you recognize his clunker? And is it so hard to take a look behind your back every now and then? Your negligence will screw us over!”

“How was I supposed to know? I left him in such a pretty pickle!”

“That’s how you were supposed to know! He was in a pickle. He’d start poking his nose just everywhere to get out of it!”

Marty was obviously unhappy with his girlfriend peppering him while I watched, but he said nothing except, “He won’t leave here. Don’t you worry! He won’t be a problem anymore.”

I shivered uneasily, even before he finished his phrase. His words had the effect of a cold shower on me, and I suddenly realized I might die here. The threat made me grope feverishly behind my back with my fingers. The table wasn’t too heavy, and I could probably stand up while still being tied up, but I didn’t know how that was supposed to help me. The bastard had a gun, and he would have shot me long before I broke the Olympic record for table lifting.

A few minutes later, Sharon finished dressing and took a long sip of her coffee. She looked gorgeous, just as she had been when we first met in my office. Yet her beauty was somehow frigid and unemotional—like that of an evil queen from a fairytale. It was a beauty you should be careful with! After a while, she slowly lit another cigarette and came to me.

“You know what, Mellrow?” She smirked while looking me in the eye. “You’re a very, very weird dick, indeed! I’ve never met anyone like you before. And I hate to admit it, but you have some primitive charm. Maybe in some other time, perhaps in another universe, you and I could’ve had a different story—one that wouldn’t end so tragically for you, but here and now, you’re just a dick who is going to die.”

I tried to stay cool even though my situation was desperate.

“I’m not too sure about that,” I grunted sourly. “The time and universe tend to be relative, you know. We might meet again pretty soon. I wouldn’t hurry shutting that door behind me if I were you!”

“I really doubt it!” she said with a cold smile. “If it happens, I’ll take my words back, but chances are pretty slim. Farewell now!”

She turned around to walk to the sofa, stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray while taking her handbag, and left the bungalow. I followed her with my eyes. Despite her coldness, she still looked awfully hot, and for a moment, I regretted that we weren’t in another universe at some other time.

As soon as the door closed, things immediately turned businesslike. Marty promptly grabbed his camera again and came to me to hang its strap on my neck. He wound it around twice, smiling derisively all the time. I just wanted to punch him in the face, but unfortunately, I couldn’t move.

“For Christ’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?” I asked him, annoyed.

He took out his gun and cheerfully waved it before my eyes. It was a Beretta Necrophile 707B—a really nice piece.

“You’ll see,” he answered. “You’ll serve a purpose!”

“A purpose? What purpose? Won’t you ever quit your bullshit and just shoot me like a normal person would do?”

“Is that what you want?” the jerk put the gun under my right cheekbone. I said nothing and only looked at him coldly. I knew he wouldn’t pull the trigger because he obviously had something in mind, and besides, he wouldn’t want my blood all over his face.

“Na-ah, you’ll serve a purpose!” He soon proved me right.

The guy slipped his gun into his pocket and went to the kitchen sink to grab a bottle of cooking oil. Then he returned to me, carefully examining the floorboards in front of the wardrobe to my left. He poured a load of oil there, crossed the room to strip the sofa of one of its cushions, and then brought it back to the kitchen area, putting it on the kitchen counter. Soon, he added a big pot to his acquisitions and dug in the cupboard above the sink for something else. All the while, he was whistling some popular tune without paying any more attention to me. It gave me time to resume my examination of the situation behind my back. Every now and then, I cast a glance at him, however. I was terribly curious to know what he was doing.

“You’re aware she’ll dump you as soon as you’ve served your purpose, right?” I tried to distract him from his search because I was afraid he would finish soon. I needed more time.

He turned around sharply.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I bet you think she’s hot, don’t you? Well, she’s hot, alright, but in the coldest way! This chick is incapable of real feelings, and you’d be a damn fool if you thought she wasn’t using you.”

“That’s none of your fucking business, Mellrow!” he exclaimed irritably, still looking at me. “Just stick to your purpose and stop worrying about mine!”

He then turned around and went on digging.

I continued my work beneath the table as well.

“She’s too good for you, you fool!” I kept teasing him to buy a few more minutes. “You like her blowjobs, but that’s a very delicate business. You can do that properly in only three cases: if you do it for a living, if you really love the man, or if you have a cause that makes everything else irrelevant. Well, she’s obviously not a hooker, and she’s clearly not in love with you, so what do you think it is?”

He stopped again and slowly came to me. He didn’t pull out his gun, however.

“She’s unbelievable, isn’t she?” He grinned lewdly, and I instantly knew I wasn’t the only one who had experienced Sharon’s oral skills. “Makes you forget everything else. It just blows your fucking mind!”

“It does,” I agreed. “Is this Bobby’s camera hanging on my neck, by the way?”

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“Did you know I worked for her from the very beginning?”

He smiled.

“We knew everything, you jerk! We knew even the color of the boxer shorts you would wear the morning before you went to the Red Dragon.”

“But you didn’t know I was going to come a little bit earlier and see you arrive there, did you?” I sneered. “So you didn’t know everything then! Is that why you slipped the evidence into my car?”

Marty showed me his teeth. “Boy, you’re really a very annoying dick, you know that? I just had to shoot from a safe distance or do something else to attract their attention to you. There was absolutely no need to make all these stunts!” He turned around again and sluggishly returned to the cupboard, continuing his search for the mysterious thing. “But you just can’t follow simple instructions! And you know what? If you had played your cards a little better, you could’ve actually lived a bit longer—maybe even long enough to get another steaming blowjob. But you really made yourself useless, buddy!”

“Yeah, I did that, didn’t I?” I murmured vaguely. Behind my back, I was still working feverishly. Though abundant, the cooking rope around my wrists wasn’t enough to restrain my movements entirely because the knots were an amateur job, as it turned out. Obviously, they had nothing else at hand when they tied me up. I discovered that if I moved my wrists in the opposite direction from how the rope was wound, I could probably slacken the grip enough to free my hands. While doing so, I could also reach the corner brackets holding the tabletop to the table legs. Some of their bolts were loosened, too. I couldn’t figure out how to use this yet, but it was worth knowing.

“If you had stuck to the plan, your dick wouldn’t be hanging down so sad now, but maybe sticking up right into her mouth!” Marty kept on directing virtual porn scenes for me, still searching, and a minute later, he finally found what he was looking for. It was a ladle. He took it out, turned the tap to fill the pot with water, put the pot on the hot plate beside the sink, and turned the latter on. After that, to my surprise, he came to me with the ladle in his right hand. “Now you can only be sorry because you’ll never have another chance!” He finished his musings.

At first, I was so amazed to see him standing there like that that I almost forgot my terrible situation. For a moment, I just wanted to know what the hell he had in mind!

“So you’re cooking me now?” I asked, bewildered, when he slipped the ladle handle between the camera strap and my neck. “Can we play some music too?”

Hearing me, Marty suddenly stopped and let go of me. He turned around to look anxiously at the kitchen counter and quickly went there to take the cushion. Then he moved back toward me.

“That’s a fascinating idea!” he grinned, raising the cushion happily. “But you know what? I’ll try that some other time, okay? Now I’ll just—”

And that was actually all he got to say. The fool forgot about the cooking oil beside the wardrobe and carelessly stepped upon it, turning such an extravagant somersault that I thought he would kick the ceiling. His weird “weapons” flew all around him, and a second later, his body flopped heavily onto the floor as he cursed severely.

My jaw just dropped with amazement when I saw his acrobatics. It was more than I could take, and I would’ve surely laughed my ass off had I not been tied up with my life in danger. However, since the moment was perfect for my insidious plan, I pulled myself together and struggled on my feet. My insidious plan was mainly based on the eagerness of the table to fall apart and free my wrists and the chance that some of its legs would hop into some of my hands to serve as a challenge to Marty’s “deadly” ladle. I had already managed to loosen two bolts enough, so I believed it would work. Unfortunately, it didn’t! Just like Marty’s plan, mine failed spectacularly, too.

In a second, I was standing on my feet with the camera wildly swaying on its strap and beating upon my chest, and although I was almost free, the damn table still refused to fall apart. It was hanging from my shoulders behind my back in the most ridiculous way, and Marty was already getting up. His right hand reached for his pocket, where he had his gun, and I looked around desperately. Since I had no other option, I gripped the table legs, as I was still tied to them, and tried to make a pirouette while taking a few steps forward. I hoped the table would catch Marty, and he would slip on the oil again. I wildly turned around, and just at the moment when I almost lost consciousness from straining too much, I felt a sudden relief on my shoulders. The table unexpectedly decided to obey me and disassembled loudly.

All the pieces except the two legs in my hands violently showered upon Marty like a furniture avalanche. The poor bastard flew back toward the sink, with the table counter pursuing him closely. Feeling hopeful now, I took another step forward, adequately armed with my wooden “rifles,” but I saw that the jerk had already drawn out his gun. I had no time to stick to my ruined plan anymore, so I turned around instead and ran out of the bungalow before he fully awakened to action. After that, I raced through the backyard as if hundreds of daemons chased me.

In about two minutes, with one of the table legs still in my hand, I made it to my car and feverishly started the engine. I did it just in time to see Marty appear out of the motel area with his gun. I zipped by him in my Beijing, and he shot at me once, but he only hit my left tail light. Weirdly enough, he didn’t hop into his car to follow me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, staggering with his left hand pressed against his temple. He seemed dizzy.

I stepped on the gas and quickly drove away. Soon, I was on the First Ring Road, storming into the city and, half an hour later, into downtown. As I hurried home, I couldn’t stop wondering what the fucking jerk had actually wanted to do. I was so curious that if he were unarmed, I would’ve probably gone back to ask him to continue just to see what it was.

Judging by his actions and knowing his love for plotting, I suspected his “brilliant” idea was to suffocate me, sliding the ladle handle between the camera strap and my neck and swiveling it a couple of times to tighten the grip. However, it was unclear what the pot on the hot plate and the cooking oil were for. Maybe after that, he wanted to frame an accident—perhaps, while preparing macaroni and walking merrily around my bungalow with the device hanging on my neck, I was supposed to slip on the spill, and the strap would catch on something. The wardrobe handle was a good candidate because the jerk had carefully inspected that area before he started it all. As for the cushion, I simply didn’t know what to think about it. Maybe he wanted to prevent my screaming with it. These were all only wild speculations, though. Nobody could really predict what a weird dude like him would think.

I looked down at the camera still hanging on my neck and took it off, throwing it on the backseat with the table leg. The bastards obviously wouldn’t give up on their initial plan to set me up with pictures of Li Jin Tao and Chavez in the restaurant. Probably, they needed it for what they intended to achieve later on. “What a fucking idiot!” I thought, still not believing what Marty had done. “What moron cooks like that? Sharon would surely kill when she knows about it!”

©2016 S.T. Fargo
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!
(www.stfargo.com)