Games Boys Play (20 page)

“Don’t tell you?”

“You know what I don’t get when I play by myself?”

Dylan shook his head.

“I don’t get to
not
know what’s going to happen. In fact, I know every fucking thing that’s going to happen, including a pretty reasonable estimate of how long it’s going to last. I’m afraid if you ask your questions, I’ll know what’s going to happen, and I don’t want to. So just do it. Or don’t do it. If it freaks me out, I’ll be the first one to let you know. You’ll finally get to hear me use the safe word.”

“It’s not like I’ve been hoping to hear it. More like just hoping I don’t fuck everything up.”

“Hey,” Brian said.

“What?”

“At which point did you think you went too far last time?”

Tapping ash off the end of the cigarette, Dylan shook his head. “I just worry too much is all.”

After a while, Brian said, “Just don’t break anything.”

“Yeah.” Dylan was contemplating the cigarette again, rolling between his thumb and index finger. “Yeah, I’m trying not to.” He took a long drag without meeting Brian’s eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Four

A knock came at the door.

He went ahead and answered without checking the peephole, swinging it wide open. A gun came at him, a black-gloved hand, the masked intruder kicking the door closed as he grasped the front of Brian’s shirt and shoved him in an arc till his back slammed against the wall.

He held on to the intruder’s fist with both of his, trying not to grin.

“I’m back.”

He was probably supposed to feel fear and exhilaration; he did feel the latter, and something else, something shifting and warm.

“What’d you forget?” Brian asked.

The fist closed tighter in his shirt and yanked him away from the wall just far enough to shove him back against it.

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little.

“That’s gonna get wiped off your face.” The intruder jerked the gun in the direction of the dining area. “Pull out a chair.” Without waiting for Brian to comply, the intruder hauled him off the wall and gave him a push.

Brian, still smiling, strolled over and slid his hand through the back of the closest chair. Lifting it, he turned away from the table, set it down—raised an eyebrow at the intruder, who pointed the gun to a spot five or six feet back from the table.

Brian moved the chair.

“Take a seat.”

Brian sat, facing the table. The intruder let the all-familiar backpack slide down his arm to settle on the floor by Brian’s foot. It seemed more filled out than usual and landed with a heavier
thunk.

“There’s tape at the top. Get it out.”

Brian leaned over and unzipped the bag. Sure enough, there was a roll of clear packing tape at the top. When he reached in to get it, the inside of the bag was cold. Another frozen key in a bottle somewhere in there?

“Tape your ankles to the chair.”

He flicked his eyes up before bending over and picking at the edge of the tape with his fingernail until he was able to peel it up. Moving an ankle back to the chair leg, he started passing the tape from hand to hand, winding it around his jeans and the chair, struck by the strangeness of it, tying himself up in front of someone. The intruder leaned against the dining table, watching. When his left ankle was good and stuck, he tried to tear the tape off the roll, but it wasn’t like duct tape; it wasn’t designed to tear easily. He looked up. “Little help?”

Dylan nodded toward the bag. “Outside front pocket.”

He found the plastic-covered safety cutter. Shaped like a credit card with a notch in it, it was designed so you could slice through something thin—plastic cuffs, an envelope, tape—but it was useless if you hoped to threaten someone with it. He slid the notch through the tape, cutting it free from the roll, then moved on to tape his other ankle.

When he sat up, the intruder said, “Do your mouth too.”

He looked from the intruder to the roll of tape in his hand, his chest rising and falling slowly. His balls throbbed, once. He felt like he was sinking. He felt like it was someone else’s hands peeling up the tape, slicing a strip free, letting the roll sit in his lap while he pressed the strip across his mouth.

The intruder nodded at the roll.

He added another strip across his mouth, then a third, then raised his eyebrows.

“Put your hands behind the chair.”

The intruder picked up the tape and started a fresh strip. Rather than going for his wrists, he pressed it against Brian’s sternum and began to wrap it around his chest, his arms, and the back of the chair. The smell of smoke clung to Dylan’s clothes. Brian lifted his chin, pulling a deep draught of it through his nostrils. The back of his head bumped softly against the intruder’s shoulder.

He crossed Brian’s wrists behind the chair and taped them. Then, instead of cutting the roll from the tape, he wrapped from Brian’s wrists around his stomach, back over his wrists and around again, taping his hands and lower back tight against the chair.

Shifting and flexing his muscles against the tape, Brian tried not to think of all the hairs that were going to be ripped out of his skin when it was time for this shit to come off.

The intruder dug in his bag for a box wrapped in plastic grocery-store bags. Brian cranked his head around to watch him walk to the freezer and put whatever it was inside. Then he was on his way back, snagging the backpack, carrying it to the table.

He pulled out a small laptop, setting it up so its screen faced Brian. He turned on the light over the dining table and stood at the laptop, swiping and clicking. When he finally moved out from between Brian and the laptop, Brian saw the screen and started to struggle.

The murky, under-lit figure on the screen struggled too.

He dragged short breaths through his nostrils and tried to think clearly about this. The Brian on-screen watched him watch the screen.

He dropped his head, trying to lean forward against the tape, to get his hands free behind him. He didn’t want to watch himself on-screen.

The intruder, meanwhile, was in the living room unplugging a floor lamp. He carried it back and positioned it a little behind and to the side of Brian, plugged it into the wall, and adjusted it till he was satisfied with the lighting. Brian’s gaze crawled up to the screen. Light reflected off the clear tape around his lower face. His lips looked distorted. He closed his eyes, turning his face away.

“Relax. It’s not going on YouTube. In fact, just pretend it’s not there.”

It’s right in front of me
. He tipped his head back, struggling futilely against the tape that held him to the chair.

“We’re making a promo video. It’ll probably be seen by just one or two potential buyers. If you’re lucky. If
I’m
lucky. I don’t want to spend the next fucking six months shopping you around.” He drew an iPhone out of his pocket and set it beside the laptop. “And the better you cooperate, the sooner I get the footage I need, the sooner it’s over. Plus, this time you get a nice treat.”

By sheer will, Brian forced his gaze over and up to the intruder’s unseeable face. He narrowed his eyes and said a muffled, “Fuck you,” the tape pulling at his cheeks.

“Time for your screen test.” The intruder drew one more thing from the bag, a piece of white cardboard with a string tied to two corners. Walking behind Brian, he slipped the string over Brian’s neck and adjusted the sign so it hung against Brian’s chest. On the cardboard rectangle was printed an identifier: AFS082201. He recognized the numbers as the date they’d sat down and worked out their band: name, game plan, and everything.

Brian glared at the webcam’s green light.

Placing a hand on top of Brian’s head and another under his chin, the intruder, standing behind him, began tilting, turning, and angling his face, presenting different views to the camera. He jerked his head free. The intruder’s hands caught him again and held on tighter. When he turned Brian’s head ninety degrees to the right, Brian’s cheek displaced the smells of laundry soap and Dylan from the intruder’s hoodie. Cigarette smoke and coffee. His head was forced back to the front, then all the way to the left, where he breathed in Dylan again for the few seconds he was held there.

The intruder let go.

Scowling, he shook out his head.

The guy on-screen did the same.

He really didn’t like watching himself taped up like this. He hoped Dylan wasn’t actually recording this. If he was, it needed to be deleted, and then permanently deleted, and then maybe the hard drive needed to be reformatted and written over, every sector of it, and then run over by a Humvee, torched, tied to a large rock, and pitched into the ocean, preferably the radioactive part off Japan. If it
was
being recorded, it was definitely a line crossed, but one that had already
been
crossed, so there was no point in safe wording it now—especially if that caused everything to come to a halt just so Dylan could say
It’s not recording
. To this point, the intruder had never spoken to him as Dylan. He preferred it that way.

Anyway, the last thing he needed was footage of himself humming “The Imperial March” through his nose.

The intruder put his mouth level to Brian’s ear and said, softly enough that the computer wouldn’t pick it up if it were indeed recording, “Now we’re gonna show how well you squirm.”

Brian pushed a sound through his nostrils and jerked away from the intruder’s words.

At the jingle of a belt buckle, his ears pricked. He jerked his head around, looking from the intruder’s belt being pulled through its loops up to the intruder’s face, the eyes in the mask passive, as if he were just taking off his belt…

He folded the belt double and snapped it. The leather cracked sharply.

Brian struggled against the tape.

“Watch the screen.”

He was more interested in watching the belt. The intruder had the buckle end closed in his fist, some of its length wrapped around his hand.

He grabbed Brian’s chin and forced his face toward the screen. “Watch, or I’ll hit you across the face with this.”

He swallowed hard, turning his nose in the direction of the screen but keeping his eyes shifted far to the side, watching the intruder take a step back, watching the belt arc up and come flying down.

The muscles in his thigh jumped as the belt thwacked across it. His foot tried to come off the floor, fighting the tape. Stinging prickles broke out across the top of his thigh. Forgetting all about the screen, he watched the belt arc up again.

He bit back a noise as the belt hit him, his muscles jerking in response.

He turned his face away.

Thwack
. His thigh jumped.

The skin under his jeans heated like fire licking across it.

Thwack
. His whole body tightened. He clamped his eyes shut, bracing for the next.

Thwack!

He grunted. He squirmed, not trying to get loose, just trying to get out of the way.

Thwack!

A choked sob came through his nostrils.

The next sound the belt pulled from him was higher pitched, verging on a whine.

THWACK!
In the same place again. His thigh was on fire. The muscles in that leg ached. He yelled wordlessly against the gag.

The intruder grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.

He panted through his nostrils, the leather belt sliding lightly along his throat. His unharmed thigh felt strange, like it yearned to match the other. He shifted his hips as the belt trailed back up his throat. His groin throbbed deeply in contrast to the stinging across his thigh. He wanted the other thigh hit. He clamped down on a moan as the belt traced past his ear, and then it was gone.

The buckle thunked as the intruder tossed the belt beside the laptop. Then he was coming back. Brian watched him warily, eyes following as the intruder went past his shoulder.

Hands on his head turned him forward, toward the screen.
Now what?
But the fingers prying at the tape on his face answered that. Tingles ran down his jaw, but he knew that pleasure wouldn’t last long. The intruder got the edge of the tape up and tugged.

Curling his fingers into fists, Brian braced for the pain.

The adhesive pulled, stretching his skin, then releasing it, inch by inch, leaving his smarting skin feeling road-rashed. He panted through gritted teeth.

The intruder crumpled the tape and dropped it on the floor before heading to the kitchen.

The floor lamp just behind Brian made it hard to see what he was carrying back, and then he was at Brian’s side, and the thing in his hand was a frozen chocolate pop, the narrow, single-stick kind.

“You like chocolate, right? Everybody likes chocolate.” Careful to stand out of the way of the webcam, he held the ice treat in front of Brian’s mouth. “Come on. Give it a lick.” He wagged a finger. “No teeth, though.”

Brian shook his head.

The intruder nudged his cheek with the cold end of the Fudgsicle.

He turned his face.

The chocolate pop followed, bumping the corner of his mouth, his chin, his cheek. Getting behind Brian and laying a hand along his cheek, the intruder held Brian’s face still while he pushed the rounded tip against his closed lips.

He didn’t typically have a problem with Fudgsicles, except that he was being told to do it and would be doing it on camera. He dragged his chin away.

The intruder forced it back, gloved fingers digging into his chin and cheekbone.

He thought of saying no, but it would mean opening his mouth, so when the Fudgsicle tried to get through his lips again, insistent and beginning to melt a little, he just shook his head. A thin line of chocolate wet his chin.

The intruder wrapped an arm around Brian’s forehead, pinning him against the intruder’s sternum. He held the Fudgsicle to Brian’s mouth. His lip rode up. Coldness bumped his front teeth. Wincing, he jerked his head, but the arm held him.

“If this melts all over my hand, you’re going to live just about long enough to regret it.”

He kept his teeth clamped shut. His chest was tight. The urge to open his mouth and suck in a huge gulp of air was strong.