SO I ALMOST MARRIED A HIT MAN
By Greg Emerson
thedistresser1963@yahoo.com
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I prepared breakfast, plotting that while I was ungagged to eat it—assuming I was allowed to partake—I’d ask some questions, preferably in front of Brick, who was still snoozing.
As Travis said, Brick did indeed awaken as I placed the plates on the table. He padded into the kitchen, mumbled “Good morning,” and sat down.
“Mmmm?” I said, pointing to my gag.
Travis nodded.
I placed my hands together in prayer-like manner, nodded, and reached behind me to untie the knot.
Brick and Travis were already forking food into their mouths by the time I ungagged myself.
I sat down and joined them.
We ate in silence for about a minute. I cleared my throat and dared speech.
“You guys like it? You’re not saying anything.”
The men looked at each other then at me.
“It’s good,” Brick said through a full mouth.
“Good,” Travis said.
Good.
“Cool,” I said.
I sipped orange juice and tried some more talking, testing the waters.
“So,” I began, “you guys got a full day of spying, huh?”
I grinned pleasantly, trying to come off as non-threatening to their peace and quiet as possible.
The men grunted in response. I took it for a “yes.”
I sighed. They weren’t talkative, which meant that maybe I shouldn’t be, either.
But I just couldn’t help myself.
“Travis?” I said sweetly.
He looked at me and forked in some more egg.
I sat up straight, dabbed my mouth with my napkin, and spoke.
“Why do I have to be kept gagged so much? I’m not stupid. I’m not going to start yelling. That wouldn’t get me anywhere.”
There was a VERY awkward silence—bordering on terrifying. Had I crossed a point of no return?
“I’m not afraid of you yelling,” he said, and that’s all he said, leaving me to fill in the blanks.
I felt deflated, then I felt angry.
I dropped my fork onto the plate, purposely so it would clang a bit.
“So you just don’t want me to talk…right?” There was hurt in my voice—I hoped Travis sensed it.
He swallowed bacon, took juice, and looked at me.
“I really rather you didn’t,” he said.
What an asshole!
“Look,” I said, trying to keep my emotions in check. “This is all very stressful for me. The man I thought might be my husband some day has turned out to be a hit man or something and is holding me captive in my own home. I think I’m allowed a little slack here—and that means talking sometimes.”
Upon hearing the word “husband,” I caught Brick arching his eyebrows.
Travis wiped his mouth and looked at me intently.
“I have a job to do, for which I’m paid very well,” he said. “I don’t need distractions.”
I sighed. “Fine. Just lock me in my bedroom or something. What’s so hard about that?”
“Yeah, so you can open the window and scream bloody murder?”
I frowned. “I won’t do that.”
“I know,” he said, chuckling smugly.
I rolled my eyes.
I turned to Brick.
“Brick, honey, talk some sense into him—please?”
Travis cut him off. “Brick isn’t in charge here. I am.”
I narrowed my eyes at Travis.
“Fine,” I said, biting off the word. “But I will NOT talk a lot, I promise. I just can’t take not being able to talk at all.”
I could see the gears in Travis’s head spinning. This could be good or very bad.
“We’ll set up a schedule,” he said.
I tilted my head. “A…schedule?”
“Yes. I’ll let you be ungagged for certain times.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or turn the table over at such a suggestion. But he was as serious as a heart attack.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I stammered.
He shrugged. “Take it or leave it, sweetie.”
“I’m not your sweetie—not anymore. You lost ‘sweetie’ status when you drugged me and taped me to that chair.”
He just looked at me. “Well?”
My chest heaved, my blood pressure rising.
“What sort of…schedule?”
“Forty-five minutes gagged, 15 minutes ungagged, per hour.”
This was so surreal, negotiating when I could talk. In my own home, no less!
“You sure 15 minutes won’t turn into ten, then five, then…none?”
He laughed. “No…I’m a man of my word, Lauren.”
I was incredulous. “OH? A man of your worrrrrd?” I said, stretching out “word” for emphasis of its ironic use.
“A man who I thought was my protector and kindred spirit and who turns against me is a man of his word? What a crock!”
I was pushing it, and I knew it.
“I didn’t go back on my word, Lauren. I just kept certain things from you.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Oh, and there’s a big difference? My bad,” I said disgustedly.
I wasn’t used to being up this early and that wasn’t helping my countenance. But then Travis rose and approached me and I thought it wise to shut up.
He loomed over me as I looked up at him, afraid of what he was going to do about my sassiness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The men were using the equipment now, not just testing it. It was nearly 8:00 a.m.
Travis wore headphones and was scribbling on a legal pad. They must have placed microphones ahead of time.
Brick was peering through what looked like a telescopic lens for a camera, except that it was connected to a black box, not a camera body. It made a soft whirring sound, and he would occasionally press a button and look through the viewfinder. Wasn’t sure exactly what that was.
I’d have asked, but Travis had gagged me again.
I was back in the chair, but he didn’t use nearly as much tape as before—just around my wrists and the armrests, and around my ankles.
There was no sock in my mouth, which Travis had taped shut.
It was just enough stuff to keep me still and relatively quiet, the way Travis preferred me.
I was bored to tears. Watching the men set up the equipment was kind of interesting; watching them use it wasn’t.
All I could do, and all I did do for about an hour, was sigh, look around, and try to keep my mind active.
The men were so into their work that they paid me no attention whatsoever. As if it was totally normal to have a bound and gagged woman in the room. For these men, maybe that was true.
I drummed my fingers lightly on the armrest, tapped my toes occasionally into the soft carpet. I sighed a lot. I could have been in my bedroom, reading or watching TV, totally out of their way. But Travis didn’t trust me and wanted me in his presence.
Finally, about 45 minutes after this lovely entertainment, Travis took off his headphones, ran his hand through his disheveled hair, and tossed the legal pad aside. He had been sitting in another kitchen chair that he brought into the front room.
He looked at me, probably for the first time since he taped me to the chair.
“How you doing?” he asked.
My eyes narrowed and I slowly shook my head, as if to say, “I’ve been better.”
He promised me 15 minutes per hour of being ungagged, and it had been just about 45 minutes of enforced silence.
I jutted my jaw forward, grunted, and tilted my head. Translation: ungag me.
He gave me a wry grin.
“Feeling talkative, are we?”
I rolled my eyes.
But he teased me no longer and gently peeled the tape from my mouth.
I licked my lips, murmured “Thank you,” and coughed.
“I’d like to walk around a little bit. I’m cramping up,” I said.
Travis nodded. “Fine.”
He cut me loose—ankles and wrists.
I rubbed my chafed wrists and flexed my toes. Then I stood and stretched, reaching for the sky so much that my midriff was further exposed at the bottom of my t-shirt.
I stood on my tiptoes, in order to stretch my calf muscles. It wasn’t a move designed to seduce or flaunt, but I caught Travis staring at me.
“Enjoying the show?” I asked, winking at him.
Busted!
Travis just shook his head, blushed slightly, and picked up the legal pad to look at his notes.
“I want to take a bath or shower,” I said, feeling empowered to ask for things now that I had 15 minutes per hour to talk.
“And I want to change clothes. I’ve been wearing this stuff since yesterday afternoon.”
Travis gave me no argument.
It was around 9:30 when I settled my sore body into the hot, bubbly bath.
Heaven!
I soaked for nearly 20 minutes, practically feeling every individual, tiny bubble tickle my skin. My feet poked from beneath the bubbles and were rubbing against the faucet. Occasionally I’d stick my big toe into the faucet. I thought of that “Dick Van Dyke Show” episode where Laura gets her toe stuck in the faucet and I chuckled softly to myself.
I closed my eyes and reveled in my bath. For a few moments I even forgot that I was being held captive.
Travis knocked, startling me.
“You almost done?” he called through the door.
I frowned, cranky that he interrupted my solitude.
“In a minute!” I called, annoyed.
“FIVE MINUTES,” he said.
I mumbled some choice words, for my ears only.
Sighing as my bath time was ending, I opened the drain and stood, grabbing a fluffy towel.
I dried myself and put on a little makeup to make me feel feminine and better about myself. Nothing special—just some eye shadow and blush. I considered painting my lips but thought, why bother? It would only get smeared off anyway.
I slipped into another pair of shorts—white ones that came mid-thigh, and pulled a purple tank top over my torso. No shoes, of course.
I gave my hair a quick brushing, brushed my teeth, and I felt like a new woman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The men were analyzing and discussing their data when I emerged from the bathroom.
Both of them looked at me and stopped talking.
Travis said, “Feel better?”
I smiled. “Tons.”
He nodded to the chair.
I groaned. Not again.
“Have a seat,” he said.
“Please,” I said. “Not the chair again. My back is just starting to feel better.”
“You don’t want to sit in the chair?”
I shook my head.
“OK,” he said.
That was too easy, I thought.
There’s an old saying that says, “If something is too good to be true, then it probably isn’t.”
It was too good to be true when Travis put up no resistance about placing me in the chair. That’s because he had a Plan B. Travis was good at plans.
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on the clock,” he said as he yanked a strip from the unending roll of duct tape.
“You’d better,” I said. “I get my 15 minutes and I expect my-mmmffff.”
Travis ended my declaration by smoothing the strip of tape over my mouth.
He winked at me as I sighed and glared at him.
I was on my bed, my wrists taped and placed above me, fastened to my wrought iron headboard.
My ankles were again taped. And, of course, so was my mouth.
Travis added another strip of tape over my mouth, overlapping the first one, taking care to smooth that one down as well.
Then he left.
So here I was, in my bedroom as I had asked to be, but I didn’t ask to be bound. Didn’t matter. Travis was going to do what Travis was going to do—as usual.
I experimented with my wrists, seeing if I could twist them enough to loosen the tape.
Funny thing about duct tape. The more you fight it, the tighter it gets.
I groaned as all I was doing was making my wrists more tightly bound. I tried my ankles but they were as if they were glued together.
I pounded my bare heels into the mattress in frustration.
I have to give Travis props. Forty-five minutes later, almost to the minute, my bedroom door swung open and there he was—holding a tray with food on it.
It was not quite 11:00—a little early for lunch—but then again I was up at an ungodly hour so an early lunch was OK.
“Hungry?” he said, entering my room.
As a matter of fact, yes, I was.
I nodded.
He set the tray on my dresser and approached me.
“Told you I’d be back in 45 minutes,” he said proudly.
I purred and nodded.
Travis sliced my wrists free—my arms felt wonderful to not be stretched above me anymore—and did the same with my feet. I ungagged myself.
I sat up, running my hand through my hair and working my lips and jaw.
“What’s on the menu?” I asked with a voice made husky from repeated gagging.
“Brick picked us up some hamburgers,” he said, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t heard anyone leave. But then I remember dozing off for a bit.
“From where?” I asked, as if it mattered.
“Burger King,” he said.
“Wonderful,” I said—and not sarcastically. I liked Burger King; Travis must have remembered. What a sweetie.
A Whopper with cheese, fries, and a chocolate malt awaited me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Travis didn’t eat—he probably already ate downstairs—but he stayed with me while I munched. No doubt to guard me.
I tossed my head to flick hair out of my eyes (and mouth), bit into my burger, and looked at him. We made eye contact and I arched my eyebrows up and down in a friendly manner, smiling through my burger.
After I swallowed, I said, “So…how long are you guys going to be here?”
I was being friendly, not confrontational.
“However long it takes,” Travis said in an answer that was SO Travis.
“Can you be more specific?” I said before sipping some malt.
“No.”
He was giving me short answers again, which meant he didn’t want conversation. Funny how he could talk and talk when I was gagged, though.
I tried again to get him to talk to me.
“Can I be of any help? I see you taking a lot of notes. I could do some grunt work for you guys.”
I was proud of myself; I was being very cooperative and unannoying, or so I hoped.
“Nah,” he said, standing and stretching. “We’re capable of handling everything.”
No doubt.
“Oh, I know you are,” I said. “Just thought it might be easier if I helped.”
Travis looked at me. “What are you up to?”
Confused, my eyes narrowed at him. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you being so nicey-nicey all of a sudden?”
I rolled my eyes. “A girl can’t be nice? I’m just trying to make the best out of a bad situation for myself.”
“I know the drill. Befriend the captors, wait for a weakness, then try to get away,” he said.
Disgusted, I just ate more. “Whatever, Travis. Forget I asked.”
I mumbled, “Asshole” under my breath and he caught me.
“What did you just say?”
I looked at him innocently. “What? Nothing.”
He sneered. “Right. Nothing.”
I smiled overly sweetly and consumed my meal.
It all happened so fast. I found out how quickly Travis could act. It was impressive, albeit frustrating for yours truly.
There was a knock at the front door, then the doorbell, in rapid succession. I recognized the pattern as that of my newspaper carrier, Sandy, who collected once a month.
I was going to tell Travis all this, but he was upon me like a cat, wrapping his left arm across my chest and his right hand over my mouth before I could get a word out.
“Shhh,” he whispered into my ear.
Eyes wide, I nodded.
The doorbell rang again. Travis held me tightly. I could actually feel his heartbeat against my back.
“Who is it?” he whispered.
As if I could answer.
I rolled my eyes.
Travis’s hand was cemented over my mouth. I tried to say “The paper girl” but all that came out was “Mmm emmer irr,” as Travis tightened his grip over my mouth.
I rolled my eyes again.
Finally, Brick called upstairs, “She’s gone!”
Travis sighed in relief and released me.
I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.
“That hurt! You squeezed so tight!”
He mumbled an apology and walked to the top of the stairs.
“Who was it?” he called to Brick.
I sighed and followed Travis, talking and walking at the same time. “I TRIED to tell you—it was Sandy, my newspaper carrier. She came to collect.”
Travis turned to me and looked a little sheepish.
“Oh?”
I chuckled without mirth. “Yeah! Now don’t you feel a little silly?”
Travis didn’t back down.
“No, because it could have been anyone.”
“Oh, my knight in shining armor? That was YOU, I thought!”
I turned on my heel and marched back into the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I didn’t expect the door to stay shut for long; I had slammed it mainly for effect.
Sure enough, within 15 seconds, Travis entered.
“Look,” he said. “This isn’t going to be a rose garden, while we’re here. I know that, you know that. And…I…appreciate your offer to help.”
But?
“But this is literally a life or death job, Lauren. Not YOUR life—don’t worry about that. But…it IS a life or death job.”
I was seated on my bed, legs swinging off the side, my arms folded across my chest.
“I understand,” I said softly. “But you simply can’t put yourself in my position, Travis. You have no idea. I’ve been betrayed by you, don’t you get it?”
He sighed and looked away. He knew I was right.
“You still haven’t given me a good reason why I have to kept like a prisoner. I guess it doesn’t matter, but it’s bad enough to be treated this way—even worse when you don’t see the justification.”
“This is my life,” Travis said. “In my life, I don’t trust anyone.”
How sad, I thought.
“But I thought I was your life! I thought your life had ME in it! For real.”
I fought back tears.
“It did,” Travis said. “It did include you.”
I tilted my head and said, “Until when—yesterday at 5:00?”
“Yeah,” he said with some sadness in his voice. “Pretty much.”
I lost it. I started sobbing, placing my hand over my eyes then over my mouth, sobbing softly.
Then the dam broke and I completely broke down, tears flowing, chest heaving, nose sniffling. I mean, I wailed for about a minute.
Travis came to me and wrapped a beefy arm around my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Angrily, I shook myself from his grasp.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you fucking touch me!”
“Lauren…”
I stood, ran my hand through my hair, madder than a wet hen.
“You son of a bitch! You NEVER cared about me! You planned this all along! You said it yourself: you struck up a relationship with me because of WHERE I LIVED!”
I wasn’t thinking straight. I caught sight of a small candle in a glass dish on my dresser. Raging, I grabbed it and flung it toward Travis’s head.
“LAUREN, GODDAMMIT!”
I didn’t know until it was too late, but Brick had heard the commotion and had raced upstairs. He seized me from behind in a bear hug, lifting me off my feet.
I kicked like a raving lunatic, screaming. No words, just primal screams.
“Get her on the bed!” Travis ordered.
Even in my enraged state, I was no match for the two burly men.
Within a minute, they had me taped again, on my stomach. My wrists behind me, ankles together, knees folded and ankles taped to my wrists. Hogtied like a baby calf.
Travis ended my verbal tirade by wrapping tape completely around my head and over my mouth. It would be a bitch to get out of my hair.
Around and around he wrapped it, four or five times. I lost count. All I know is when he was finished, my head felt like it was going to explode because the tape was wrapped so tight around my head and mouth.
The men finished with me and I could hear them trying to catch their breath. At least I gave them a little trouble.
I was gagged so tight that I could only make soft humming noises. Quite a change from the screaming meemie I was moments earlier.
They left me there to wallow in my own misery.
It scared me to be hogtied. I felt so helpless
I couldn’t get comfortable. All I could do was rock on my belly. I could actually feel my heels with my fingers.
I wiggled my toes and flexed my fingers. If they left me like this for an extended amount of time I was afraid I’d go crazy.
The gag was amazing. My lips were glued shut and my jaws were immobilized. Nothing was inside my mouth but it didn’t matter; my mouth was welded shut, my jaws unable to budge. I was virtually mute.
I did the only thing expected in a situation like that.
I cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The men didn’t come back for me as soon as I had hoped. They had bound me cruelly—somewhat understandable because I had been out of control—but still they seemed to have forgotten about me.
The clock on the bedside table—I could actually see it if I craned my head to the left—read 11:45 a.m. I guessed that they’d been gone about 20-25 minutes.
20-25 minutes of agony.
The most comfortable position was to not move. I found that out the hard way, after several attempts to loosen my bonds or roll onto my side.
I couldn’t get enough leverage to roll over, which I thought might bring more comfort. I sighed and concentrated on not moving at all. Occasionally I’d rock on my tummy but that was just to keep circulation moving as much as I could.
I perched my chin on one of my pillows. When that got tiresome, I laid my head on my left or right cheek, alternately.
The gag was giving me a headache, it was wrapped so tight around my head. I became violent and Travis and Brick responded in kind. This was no fun, at all.
Where WERE they, anyway?!
I kept thinking that, at any moment, Travis would enter and declare my lesson learned and get me out of this horrible fix. But it was pushing 12 noon and nobody was coming.
I had to make noise, to remind them that I was up here. How they could ignore me was both unfathomable and maddening as hell. Not to mention just plain old rude.
First thing I tried was screaming.
HA!
With my stomach compressed, thanks to me lying on it, and the yards of tape wound around my head and mouth, I knew it would be a challenge—even for me, voice-trained—to make enough noise for them to hear me way downstairs.
But I tried anyhow.
I took in as much breath as I could, which wasn’t much, and let it settle briefly in my lungs.
Then I screamed, and it was a joke.
I had grandiose ideas of making at least enough noise to carry into the hallway.
Not even close, friends.
My “scream” was actually no more than a humming sound that lasted maybe three seconds and carried about five feet.
I’m not kidding.
I paused to catch my breath. I was going to try again. Maybe that was just a bad attempt.
Again I took in air, I thought more this time.
Again I screamed.
OK, more humming, maybe seven to eight feet.
They weren’t going to hear me screaming.
I wasn’t going to tell Travis, but he sure knew how to keep a woman quiet.
The scream I tried would have brought the house down if I was ungagged. Instead, it was a harmless hum that barely registered on the decibel scale.
On to Plan B.
I could hear them downstairs, so I knew they hadn’t left me alone.
I had limited range of motion, but I needed to find a way to make noise. My bedside table had not only my clock on it, but also a small lamp. Maybe I could nudge it over so it would crash to the floor.
But how to move laterally?
Grunting, breathing through my nose, I bucked and undulated and rocked, trying to move my body toward the table, which was about four feet to my left.
I made note of the time when I started this challenge: 12:05 p.m.
It was a painstaking journey to the left side of my bed, “hogtaped” as I was.
I found a rhythm, which was to buck, heave myself to the left, and arch my back. My toes wiggled and my fingers waggled as part of the whole moving process.
I had to pause and rest every so often, because moving in this manner was awfully tiring. And I wasn’t even sure that I could knock the lamp to the floor!
Nearly 15 minutes passed and I had moved about two feet.
I grunted, whimpered and growled as I tried to move laterally toward the table.
Those fucking men downstairs! How long did they plan on leaving me like this?
I used my anger toward my current endeavor, because this was a kind of moving that was best done in anger, I was realizing.
Ten more minutes passed and I was about a foot away from the table.
It had taken me about 25 minutes to move three feet.
Had I been on the floor, I could have moved faster, but doing this on a soft mattress was making an already difficult task even harder.
Finally, after about 30 minutes of straining, grunting and undulating, I was close enough to the table to do some damage, or so I hoped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
First, I listened, to make sure I could still hear them. At first I heard only silence, which scared me. But then I caught someone’s voice—I think it was Brick’s—and so I knew the men were downstairs, forgetting about me, apparently.
I wiggled so that my body was at a 45-degree angle to the foot of the bed. I needed that angle so my feet could land on the table and jar it enough to (hopefully) knock the lamp over.
Grunting some more, I rolled to my left, swinging my feet as much as I could. But they were taped awfully close to my wrists and so they didn’t have that great of a pendulum effect that I was hoping for. In other words, I’d “swing” my feet but they didn’t swing very far.
I sighed and buried my head into the pillow, screaming in frustration. It came out as a tiny hum.
Thirty-five minutes into this and I hadn’t accomplished anything, other than getting close to the table. My leg muscles screamed in pain and were cramping. I kept wiggling my toes to encourage circulation of some sort.
I rested for a few minutes, cursing the men for leaving me in this state of bondage. It was terribly uncomfortable and getting more painful by the minute.
I opened my eyes to see the lamp tantalizingly close. Had I been untaped I could have reached it with my hand with little trouble. But it may as well have been a million miles away.
I tried a few more times to roll and swing my feet, but I wasn’t coming close to touching the table at all. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turned out that I simply wasted 40 minutes and caused myself more pain.
I rested again, crying a little in frustration and pain. I hated the men at this moment—absolutely despised them. Was this any way to treat a woman?
I turned onto my right cheek so that I could look at the lamp. I wanted to see it, for whatever reason. I wanted to see what I couldn’t reach, as illogical as that sounds.
Through some tears in my eyes, I gazed at the lamp.
Then I sighed, closed my eyes, and waited, impatiently.
I must have dozed off, because I hadn’t heard my bedroom door open.
“LAUREN! Jesus, I’m sorry!”
It was Travis.
Suddenly, it seemed, he appeared to my left, standing next to the bed.
“I am SO sorry,” Travis said, and he was sincere.
I wasn’t angry as much as exhausted. I craned my head to look at him, and made a pathetic little hum.
He didn’t taunt, didn’t tease, didn’t crack wise. Out came the pocket knife and he started slicing me free.
When I was able to lower my legs and straighten them, it was so glorious that I sobbed in relief. I had been hogtaped for nearly an hour, which was 59 minutes too long, thank you.
Freed, I was turned onto my back by Travis. I blinked and looked up at him.
His look was that of someone who did something bad and didn’t know what to say. All he could do was look at me apologetically.
“Hmmmmm,” I said through the gag, barely audible.
“We had an equipment malfunction downstairs and we just…got involved with that,” Travis explained. “We forgot about you, Lauren.”
I was too tired to be mad at him. I just nodded softly and hummed.
“Forgive me?”
Typical man. Asking for forgiveness before the woman can properly browbeat him. In other words, he wants to move past this ASAP.
I just sighed and closed my eyes, feeling tingly in my legs and feet from lack of circulation.
Brick entered my bedroom.
“Is she OK?” he asked, the sweetie.
“Yeah,” Travis said. “I think she’s fine.”
I opened my eyes and looked up at the two men hovering over me. My hands reached for the tape over my mouth.
But then I remembered that Travis had wound the stuff around my head, so this wasn’t going to be a simple matter of peeling it away. I groaned.
“It’s OK,” Travis said. “I’ll get it off you.”
Even Travis knew that this was no time to keep me gagged.