Page 21 of Wandering in Darkness
Lane somehow still has his sunglasses on.
And Brigs is off scouting out a fun place to take a nap.
“Briggy, baby. Come, come. Come to papa.”
“Felix… what did you get out of the car? You said you grabbed something to save us… what exactly did you grab?” I ask, concern replacing the momentary relief I’d felt.
“Shhhh, I have to concentrate,” he says. “Briggy… pig, pig.”
Brigs wanders over before trotting right past Felix’s legs and coming over to see what I’m up to. He sniffs me with his wiggling snout and then wanders off again.
“FUCK. Brigs, get your ass over here,” Felix yowls as he tries scooting toward the pig.
“Lane… please… do you understand why he needs the pig?” I ask.
Lane is quiet for a long moment. “You have to trust the process,” he says before jerking the chair all around.
Clearly, he doesn’t trust the process and has decided he’s going to break himself free.
“What the fuck kind of tape is this?” he asks before he teeters and crashes to the ground with an “oof.” Brigs hurries over to see what he has going on as Felix leans forward and nearly squishes the pig when he falls to the ground.
“Brigs, here,” Felix calls desperately. “Come, come. Show everyone how smart you are. And why you should be a huge part of this family. And why we can never get rid of you!”
Brigs hesitates, and for a minute, I think we all question if the pig is going to do something phenomenal before he just lies right down next to Lane with a big sigh.
And Antonio still has the bag on his head.
I decide to scratch relying on Felix and try my hand at something. “Lane, what if you roll this way? I’ll see if I can get the tape on your wrists with mine.”
Felix tries rolling into the pig, which proves to be rather hard when the legs of his chair are splayed out in a way that prohibits it. If I wasn’t confident I was about to die, I might have allowed myself a chuckle at the way Felix is floundering.
The hero pig in question is fast asleep at this point—I think he enjoys movement as much as Felix does, and the trek through the trees has wiped him out.
The pig is now in the way, and I’m struggling to even reach Lane as I try to jump my chair over to him.
Antonio has obviously pulled forth some ancient mediation technique and left this world to become one with his bag.
The door opens and we all freeze in different stages of suffering. I look over at the guy who enters and watch as he scrutinizes all of us. Antonio probably gets a gold star for being the best prisoner.
He isn’t part of the original four, but those four do join him as he walks over with an air of power… and confusion. But really… who is not confused when dealing with us?
The man exudes confidence while he examines each of us with dark eyes. He has dark hair and a goatee that he had to have spent too much time shaping perfectly. He comes over and rights Felix and then struggles to right Lane before nearly falling on him when righting him proves to be too much work. The other guys rush over to help.
“Where is the drop-off?” he asks.
“Where is what?” Felix asks.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” he snaps.
“You’ve got the wrong guys,” Lane says. “Who the fuck do you think we are? We pulled over to take our pets for a walk and you just straight up abduct us? What the hell do you have going on here?”
“If you’re not going to tell me what I want, this is going to get a whole lot harder,” he snarls.
“You have the wrong people,” I say. “It’s clear you were waiting for someone, and if I were you, I’d head back out there because whoever you were waiting for isn’t us.”
He walks up to me and grabs me by the front of my shirt, jerking me forward as he looks down at me. “The only words I want out of your mouth are answers. I ask a question and you answer. Do you understand?”
I just stare at him, and he hits me hard enough it stings. I can taste blood from where my teeth cut into my lip.
