1:30 am
Has anyone even noticed we're gone? The silence was going to E.J's brain. They attacked him on his way home from work. They had to go after him first. They needed his phone to track Ashlyn's phone.
The door finally opened. Marcus finally entered the room. To E.J's anger, he didn't see Ashlyn with him. "Your cousin will be joining you soon," Marcus said. "Hopefully alive. If not, that would put a wrench in our plans."
"Fuck you," E.J spat. Marcus slapped E.J. across the face.
"Careful, I get to choose your death." Marcus reminded the teenager. He made finger guns. He pressed it into E.J's forehead. "I can end your life with a quick bullet to the head. Or I can make it drawn out. I hold the powers."
"You said you're doing this as revenge on our parents?" E.J asked. "I agree with you that our parents are scumbags. Ashlyn agrees too. We've had to live with them for years. We've dealt with them our entire lives."
E.J remembered reading sympathizing with your captor increased your chance of survival. "And, yet, you still happily take the benefits of being their children," Marcus responded. "I saw the cars you two drive and the clothes you wear. I heard your father pulled the strings for you to get into Duke University. You got a chance people would kill for handed to you on a silver platter, but you threw it away."
"And if I said yes, you'd be here chastizing me for it," E.J said. "I can't win with you."
"My life would be easier if I cut out your tongue," Marcus sighed. "However, then I wanted to hear you scream."
I'm not going to scream. Marcus is not going to get that satisfaction. The man placed a plant of wood between E.J's feet. "Have you ever seen the classic movie Misery?" Marcus asked. The only horror movie E.J liked was Sweeney Todd. E.J had never watched Misery. However, he knew where this was going. E.J had heard of the infamous hobbling scene.
E.J tried to remove his feet. Marcus held up the sledgehammer like he was the mighty Thor. Marcus's hammer made contact with E.J's right ankle. E.J bit his lower lip to prevent himself from letting out an agony-filled scream. He had never been in more pain than his ankles were going through then. He felt a warm liquid escape his body.
A woman entered the room. "She blacked out," the woman yelled.
"Bring her back in," Marcus said. "We need to check on how close the police are. The bitch probably called the cops before we sent her that message. We might need to move to a third location if the police are too close."
"Where would we go?" the woman asked.
"I don't know, Jessica," Marcus said. "I know we've planned this too well for something to go wrong."
"Okay," the woman E.J now identified as Jessica, responded. The two people left the room. A few moments later, they dragged Ashlyn back in through her hair. Every inch of her face bruises and cuts all over. E.J blacked out a few moments after that.
