How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers (2 page)

Feed me, Seymour . . .

So you worked on the new project and your eyeballs dried out because you forgot to blink and your stomach committed suicide because you hadn’t eaten in two days and none of it was important, none of it at all. The only thing that mattered was the next word you wrote, the next character you gave the gift of life.

You fled to your own private catacombs and locked the door behind you. Reality disintegrated and in its place stood a dream. A dream you experienced while awake, only you weren’t really sure you were awake. You weren’t really sure of anything anymore. You just hoped that once you finally did wake up—years from now, on your deathbed—the work you’d done wasn’t complete and total shit.

But until then, there was more work to be done, and there was never not going to be work to be done while Nick’s heart continued to function, and the great wonderful truth was he wouldn’t trade any of this for the world.

And even if his alcoholic agent wasn’t able to sell his new novel,
The Owls in the City,
to one of the Big Five, or the Big Six, or the Big Dick, then Nick would continue self-publishing his books through his own small press, because in the end, it didn’t really matter. The readers didn’t care who published what. They just wanted something to help pass the time between life and death.

Nick returned to the living room. Louise was passed out on the floor, naked. He vaguely remembered her and Stephen fucking sometime last night, but Nick had fallen asleep before either of them finished. He scratched the lice in his scalp as he stared at her, then realized how creepy he would look if she suddenly woke up, and ran off into the kitchen to see if there was any food. There wasn’t.

He was the founder of his own publishing company and he couldn’t even afford a fucking Pop Tart.

He reached in his pocket for his cell phone, planning on calling up Eliza and seeing if she wanted to buy him some burgers—Eliza never turned down a burger, and since she freelanced for multiple small presses, she actually could afford food once in a while—when he realized his phone was missing. He checked his bed. It wasn’t there.

It took him a few minutes to remember he’d thrown it at the bartender last night at Nightscapes. The guy had been an ultra-Christian and kept loudly disapproving of Nick and his authors’ behavior, so he’d chucked his phone at him. In retrospect, there were probably better objects to whirl at a bartender. Objects that Nick didn’t own and depend on daily. Like an ashtray, or the tray of peanuts on the bar that had begun to sprout some kind of parasite. Now Nick would have to go back down there and see if they had saved the phone or thrown it away. Even if they did somehow have his phone, it was probably shattered or, at the very least, sticky and gross.

“Shit.”

Nick dry swallowed some aspirin, got dressed, and drove toward Nightscapes, hoping he hadn’t been banned for life, although if he had, he’d understand. You didn’t throw dildo crucifixes at a crowd of strangers and not face any consequences.

3. INDENT YOUR FACE

Nobody knew how
to indent a paragraph. Writers stared at their screens with an assortment of indentation choices, all of them wrong except for one. The answer was available online—all they had to do was Google the question. It wasn’t like they weren’t checking Facebook and YouPorn every ten minutes, anyway.

But no, looking up common manuscript formatting guidelines was apparently too much to ask from a profession as embarrassing as “writer”. So they did what they always did and clicked the goddamn TAB key. Eliza couldn’t conceive of a more selfish action, besides the rare fuckheads who actually used the
space
key three or four times to indicate an indentation. She firmly believed that it should be legal to scalp such a dubious, thick-skinned motherfucker.

Sometimes she was afraid of meeting a “space-indent” author in person, because she really didn’t know what she’d do. She believed she’d go into some sort of blind rage, like how Vietnam vets go all batshit whenever a balloon pops and they start shooting fools with antique rifles and gutting them with bayonets, or whatever they used in Vietnam. Like Eliza ever paid attention to that shit. Like there weren’t more important things to be doing in high school than paying attention to some bored middle-aged man talk about wars that had ended before she was even alive.

If it was up to Eliza, BILF Publishing would automatically reject any author who submitted to them without using the proper indentation formatting on their manuscript. If these people didn’t care enough to make their work presentable, then why should she care enough to edit it?

To her, it spoke plenty about the type of author the person would be. If the author couldn’t pay attention to a few simple guidelines, then how could anyone honestly expect the author to take his or her work seriously? The type of assholes who didn’t care about indentation etiquette were the same type of assholes who did zero self-promotion besides once in a while posting links on their Facebook pages with the “pls buy my book lol” captions. Shit, they were the same type of assholes who posted about every new five-star review they received from their parents. This business was stressful enough without them involved in it—adding them into the equation was like a hammer bashed into an already livid migraine.

If it was up to Eliza, they would all be executed. Literally executed. Brains blown out all over their impotent keyboards.

What she needed right now was a break. She’d been formatting this book for the last four hours and if she messed with it any longer without getting a burger in her system, she’d drive her tiny fist through her stupid laptop. The final proof for Tommy Yorke’s
Cock Mutants
wasn’t due for another two weeks, anyway. She just liked to get a head-start whenever possible. In the past, her typical work schedule had involved digesting as many drugs as her friends could afford to offer for free and waiting until the day before a deadline to even start a project. But she’d stopped partying so hard once her parents kicked her out and she had to actually start coming up with rent money once a month. That wasn’t to say she was a total spaz or anything. She still enjoyed the occasional acid trip and casual orgy.

Eliza didn’t have a car, and she had too much shit to do to just start walking around town, so she pulled out her cell phone—more like lifted it from her desk because who doesn’t always have their cell phones out, in reach, just in case someone wants to contact you or you witness something extraordinary that you just
have
to record on video?—and called her brother.

He answered on the eighth ring.

“Who is this?”

“Your cell has caller ID, Billy. You know who this is.”

“My screen’s dirty. Can’t see shit.”

“Have you thought about cleaning it?”

“I tried that once. The phone was destroyed.”

“That’s because you tried washing it in the sink.”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know?”

Eliza groaned. She rubbed her stomach. “Look, I’m hungry as balls over here. Come pick me up and I’ll treat you to a burger.”

“Uh.”

“Billy?”

“Now’s not really a good time.”

“Oh, shut up. You’re never doing anything. Come get me.”

“No, really, sis, now’s not a good time. I have some . . . shit going on.”

“I’ll even buy you a milkshake.”

“Uh.”

“Billy . . .?”

“I don’t know, sis.”

“Dude, get your ass over here.”

“Fuck. All right. Give me a few minutes.”

Eliza placed the phone back on her desk and stared at the open InDesign file on her laptop. She couldn’t have forced herself to continue working right now if her life was on the line. Screw it. She minimized InDesign and brought up her browser, which directed her straight to Facebook. Three private messages were waiting in her inbox. The first one was from some author she’d never heard of asking if she was interested in reading and reviewing his book in exchange for a free PDF copy. She blocked the person without responding. The second private message was sent from a barely dressed teenager asking Eliza if she liked girls who squirted. The last private message was from Tommy Yorke:

“hey, grrrll, i decided to go thru and change my book to first person present tense after all, so i guess u need this version now? thanks!”

He’d included a Word attachment of
Cock Mutants Final FINAL Draft.

Eliza closed her laptop and screamed.

4. OFFICER DOUGHNUT

Officer Joseph Nous
was fully aware he was supporting a stereotype by accepting a free doughnut from the coffee shop, but honestly, he didn’t give a shit. Doughnuts were delicious no matter who you were or what your job was. If bystanders shouted any smartass remarks, he’d just douse the fuckers with pepper spray and claim they were reaching for his gun.

Joseph nodded at the doughnut and smiled at the girl behind the counter, told her thanks and mentioned what a big help she was being. She smiled back and winked. Her flirting was obvious. Especially since she kept trying to give him her phone number in case he had any further questions, despite him not even being finished with his initial set of questions.

He swallowed a chunk of his doughnut and continued. “As you were saying, Ms. Matthews?”

The girl shrugged. “Like I said, that crazy bitch spat in the dude’s eye, he freaked out and ran outside, and that was all I really noticed. I was kinda busy making coffee, which is, ya know, like, my job? But yeah. Like. Okay. Get this. When the man was in line, like, waiting? There was this other dude ahead of him, and he was acting all buggy, like he was tripping? Kept looking back at the other man like he knew him or something. I don’t know. He was actin’ pretty crazy, you know? So I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who was fighting him outside. I mean, like, who else could it have been?”

“Uh huh.”

Joseph had his notebook open, but he wasn’t writing any of this down. He’d already gotten the gist of the story from the bystanders outside. One man randomly approached another man, had a brief exchange of words, then they attacked each other. They fought in the middle of the street, bashing their fists into each other’s faces, until a car came along and blasted on the horn. Then one man, the crazy one who’d initiated the assault, dragged the driver out of the car and started beating on him, too. When the original victim began crawling away, the crazy man ran back over to him, grabbed him by his hair, and dragged him to the car. The psycho then popped open the car’s trunk, tossed his first victim and the driver inside, closed it, got behind the wheel, and drove away.

All this time, a crowd of pedestrians stood and recorded the brawl on their cell phones. The video was currently on YouTube with over thirty thousand views already. Everything was a TV show now. Something unusual happened and instead of helping, people would just insert a screen between them and the bizarre. Cell phones became coping mechanisms. They made the horror of reality less real. Less tangible. As long as they stayed far enough away to capture everything on video, then danger remained a fairy tale. The world was insane and surreal. Of course, that wasn’t entirely true, because someone
did
attempt to help the man being assaulted, and look what happened to him. Not only was he also beaten, but then he was kidnapped to top it all off. Nobody was truly safe. Maybe the people with their cell phones had the right idea. Stay back, film the action, then upload it on the Internet for the whole world to drool over. This was the way of life now. This was the law of disorder.

But goddamn, this was one fine doughnut.

When he left the coffee shop, Joseph made sure he had saved the barista’s phone number. Maybe there would be more free pastries in the near future. Or maybe she wasn’t interested in him at all. He’d been delusional before, with other girls. Sometimes women were nice to him just because they were paranoid he’d discover drugs in their purses. It was difficult to determine who was kissing his ass and who was genuinely attracted to him. His last relationship had lasted just under two months. She told him she was a stripper and nothing more, which turned out to be bullshit when Joseph busted her for hooking behind her place of employment. And the girlfriend before the stripper had only started having sex with him because she thought she’d be able to talk him into stealing drugs from the evidence room in the police station. Once she realized he wasn’t going to budge on that issue, she gave another officer on his precinct a blowjob and convinced him to do what Joseph refused.

He drove away from the coffee shop wondering if he was destined to live life alone. Well, not completely alone. His precious dachshund, Lucy, was waiting for him at home. As long as he continued to feed and pet her, she would always love him. And maybe that was enough.

5. BURGERS & MILKSHAKES

Billy was high
as fuck. It was obvious as soon as Eliza got in the passenger seat. Dude was shaking and twitching and acting like the sky was raining black helicopters. His eyes were dark and his skin was bloodied from persistent scratching.

Plus, he wasn’t driving his own car.

“Whose car is this?”

“This is the car of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

“And he just let you borrow it, huh?”

Billy nodded. “Jesus and me are tight.”

“You look fucked-up, man,” she said, feeling a mixture of amusement and worry. “What have you taken?”

Billy kept scratching his face and wincing like it burned. “Last night, or last year, after the bar, I left everybody and was hanging out with some preacher, I don’t know. He had some good shit, sis. Not even playin’. Like Walter White shit. Like the kinda shit the Burger King Queen has, but this was actually decent. Haven’t even been to sleep in days, in centuries. I’ve been awake since the Big Bang, sis. Maybe I am the cause of all life on Earth—shit, who knows, right? Never gonna sleep again, I swear to God. Sleep is just a waste of time, I’m telling you.”

“Crank?” Eliza dug her nails into her palms. “C’mob, Billy, not that hardcore shit again. We talked about this.”