Chapter One:
With bloody fingers and cracked fingernails, he pries at the loose screw on the wooden table. Bound at the wrists with old frayed rope, his chances to free him - self depend on getting something sharp to poke at the knot to loosen it. He has no memory of how he found himself strapped here.
He continues to pick and pluck at the screw. His vision, still blurred by the blow to his head, is blinded by the sun peering in through the slatted holes in the ceiling. The rot and decay of the surrounding structure lead him to believe that he’s in a building, possibly abandoned for decades.
This feeling is familiar.
His memory slips back to when he was a POW in Afghanistan. He can hear screams, but cannot make out words. With a jolt, the memory slips away into nothingness, bringing him back to the task at hand.
Blood is pooling around the screw and his wrists are becoming raw as he tugs on the ropes. The blood starts to lubricate the screw as it drips down into the hole, making it slippery and more difficult to grasp with his torn finger - tips. With the plucking and tugging, he is slowly pulling and twisting the screw out of the splintered wood. One final tug and he pulls the screw free. He holds it in the palm of his hand and lets out a sigh of contentment. After a moment, he begins to poke at the knot near his wrists.
Suddenly he hears a crack, what sounded like a plank falling, and feels a little give in the wooden table where he is strapped. The leather straps across his chest and abdomen seem to tighten and pull down onto him as the loose plank falls to the floor. He stops picking at the rope as the table cracks again and becomes unstable. He palms the screw tightly, shifts his body weight, and the table starts to slowly rock head to toe, back and forth, freely. After a third crack, the table’s legs near his head give way and break under his weight. With his legs pointed toward the tattered and hole-filled ceiling, the blood is starting to rush to his head. He closes his eyes briefly as his head begins to spin from the force of gravity of the leaning table. He begins to pick at the rope again and the knot becomes loose enough to slip his hand out.
Freed, he swings his hand across his naked body and tries to reach the other knot on his left hand. Picking and prying at the knot, the rope is turning red, stained from his blood. He pulls on the rope to create enough slack to loosen the knot. With relief, he cheers as his other hand slips out of the tight confinement.
Sweat is rolling up his back as he’s removing the buckle of the large leather strap holding him to the table. He swings his body up with one grunting situp. His abs are sore and bruised and it feels as if he was hit in the stomach with a wrecking ball. He falls back down on his back with heavy panting breath. He swallows a bunch of air and muscles his way back up, grasping the sides of the table for added leverage. He unties the knots, freeing his legs, and stumbles off the table and onto his stomach.
The wooden floor creaks and seems to cry in pain with the stress of his weight as he makes his way to his feet. He slowly shuffles across the floor, trying to avoid getting a loose nail, splinter, or a shard of glass in his bare feet. He winces in pain as he touches his head. It feels as if he was struck by something.
He tries to remember the events that brought him here, but everything is fragmented. The memory of Afghanistan continues to haunt him as he struggles to remember the last twelve hours.
The muted screams become clearer as the mangled man, lying next to the smoking wreckage of a humvee, is calling out his name. “DEE!” the soldier is painfully screaming in fear.
“1-2-3-4-5, Clifford Dee is still alive,” he says to himself as he closes his eyes. This is the same technique he used as a POW in Afghanistan to help reassure himself.
Clifford swings open a solid oak door to a joining hall. He turns behind him to see that he was in the sanctuary of an old abandoned church. The table he was strapped to, was an old altar of some sort. There is a stained-glass window of what he believes to be Saint Peter at the gates in the back by the pulpit. It’s hard to tell due to it being partially smashed and broken. Clifford turns away from the sanctuary and heads into the darkened hall. Beams of light are streaming across the darkness as he makes his way to the illuminated doorway in front of him.
Pushing through the doorway, he feels a burning in his blue-green eyes as they attempt to adjust to the blinding daylight. Looking around he comes to realize that this church is in the center of the woods.
Clifford laughs to himself, “I think this is how horror movies start out.” He spots a dirt road through the trees that look just large enough for a car to pass.
Clifford, standing naked in the sunlight, realizes that he must find something to protect his body and more importantly, his feet if he’s going to journey back to civilization. He stumbles back into the church looking for anything to use as clothing. Clifford finds a cracked wooden cupboard that has a tattered burlap sack inside. As he pulls on the sack, he is startled by a rat scurrying by.
“JESUS CHRIST!” he exclaims as he jumps back with the sack in his hand.
From behind the sack, there is a worn hand-painting of the crucified son of God. Clifford says to himself, “Literally,” as he makes out the picture. The sack opening is big enough to fit his legs and waist into. He rips a large piece from the bottom, so he can use it for pants.
Clifford walks over to the broken table where he painfully awoke earlier. He wraps the ripped portion of the sack around a large shard of glass, to use as a handle, and starts shaving rope off the ties that previously bound his hands and feet. After he cuts off several pieces of rope, he slips his naked legs into the sack and pulls it up around his waist.
“This is really going to chafe my dick,” he mutters to himself in discontent. He wraps a piece of rope around his waist and rolls the top of the sack down onto it. He ties a knot into the rope, using it as a belt to keep the sack around his waist. Clifford picks up the leather strap that once buckled him to the table.
He uses the glass knife to saw it into pieces for the bottoms of his feet. He uses the remaining burlap to wrap his feet all the way to his ankle and secures it with the last bit of frayed rope, making the worst pair of shoes he’s ever worn.
He isn’t going to be able to play basketball wearing them, but they might be able to protect the bottom of his feet long enough until he finds something better.
Clifford picks up his make-shift glass knife and looks at the reflection of his face and has a brief flashback.
Coming to in the backseat of a car, hands tied behind his back and a gag in his mouth. He glanced into the rear-view mirror where he could see the driver. They make eye contact. Darius said, “Look who’s awake.” Marcus looked over his shoulder, “Not for long,” As he punched him directly in the side of the head with a shiny pair of brass knuckles.
End memory.
Clifford was hunting Darius and Marcus Tye.
The notorious Tye brothers.
They were hitmen hired to take out family members of local “Connected Men,” to send messages. The media, unaware of the mob connections, are calling them, “Spree Killers.” A mistake was made, and Clifford’s employer, Mr. Bandoni, was affected. While contracted to kill the daughter of the head of the O’Connell family, Brenden Bandoni, one of Mr. Bandoni’s rising stars and nephew, was asleep in her bed. Everyone says he put up a good fight to defend her, but no one really knows if that was the case, as both were killed.
Clifford doesn’t know the politics of this situation, but with no families protecting them, Bandoni was given the green light to have them taken out. Bandoni decided to go outside the family and hired Clifford to do so.
Back outside in his makeshift shorts and shoes, Clifford is walking with more confidence that he will not catch his feet on anything sharp. The ropes and burlap are slight agonizing torture to the tops of his feet, but worth the pain knowing that the bottoms are well protected.
While making his way down the dirt road through the trees, Clifford looks around to notice the sun toward his back. “I’m heading East,” he says to himself trying to understand his bearing.
After about an hour of walking down the narrow car path through the woods, Clifford hears a car.
He darts off the path and crouches behind a small shrub. His heart is racing as he knows that he’s too weak to fight off someone’s grandmother, let alone the two psychopaths that already got the drop on him once. The car slowed to cross a few of the bigger dips and rivets of the stony path. He can hear music playing as it passes the tiny shrub that is concealing him. Clifford, peering through the bush, looks inside the car to see that it was, in fact, the brothers.
Clifford remembers following them to an apartment building.
They pull up and both jump out and head inside. Clifford stops across the street and waits. After a few minutes, Darius exits alone and walks up the street, away from his car. Watching and wondering where Marcus is, Clifford decided to follow Darius. He walked up toward their car and peered inside. “Clifford Dee?” He heard from behind him. Standing before him, Marcus said, “Stacey says, ‘Hello’.” The last thing Clifford saw was the sun glimmering off of the pipe before it struck him on his head.
Clifford realizes in about 20 minutes they’ll be disappointed to find an empty church and will probably come looking for him soon after. He waits until the car is out of sight and starts walking at twice the pace.
The sun is starting to set behind him and the air is getting colder. He can see a crossroad off in the distance. The intersection is paved, but the road which continues east turns to gravel. At the intersection, he hears a car approaching from the north. Knowing that The Tye Brothers had no way of doubling back to come from that direction, he wanders to the side of the road and waves his hands.
A small sedan approaches and passes him, doing about sixty miles per hour. He continues to wave his hands at the car. The driver of the car, noticing that Clifford is basically naked in the middle of the road, decides to stop.
Clifford sees the brake lights and the car quickly coming to a stop and cheers, “Yes! Thank you!” he blurts out as he drops to his knees in exhaustion.
The driver begins to back up slowly and throws the car in park as it gets close to Clifford, climbing back onto his feet. A beautiful young woman steps out of the car and slowly walks toward Clifford.
“Are you okay, sir?” was the sweetest sounding question he has heard all week. “I need a hospital, please,” Clifford says as his legs start to give out. His feet are sore and worn and his burlap shorts are in shreds.
“Do you have any water?” He questions as he is severely dehydrated. She opens the backseat door of her sedan and helps Clifford into the car.
“What’s your name?” she asks. “Kyle,” he responds, “My name is Kyle Somers.” Wincing outwardly over his lie which she assumes is due to pain and exhaustion.
“Well, Kyle Somers, you’re lucky I found you,” She says as she closes the door. “I will get you some help.”
He closes his eyes and the rhythmic sound of the rubber on asphalt lulls him to sleep.
