silly. Do you want a coffee?” Stewart felt like a fool, prattling on this way, but he couldn’t seem to stop.
Philip turned to his companions. “You guys want a fucking coffee?”
The man, who was shorter than Philip, wider, and sported a variety of tattoos, one of a spider on his left cheek, said “Coffee, sure. Why the fuck not?” He rubbed his hand over his shaved head a couple of times.
“Let’s have a tea party!” he yelled, and the two men laughed.
The girl stood staring at Philip, her hands stuffed in the oversize men’s coat she wore.
“OK Stew. Why don’t you scamper into the kitchen and fix us a nice cup of hot coffee.”
Stewart felt he should really ask them to leave but, now that he’d offered them coffee and they’d accepted, he didn’t see how he could. They would probably just leave after the coffee. He could keep the situation under control. If he just stayed calm and didn’t let on he was frightened, he’d be OK. There really was nothing to be afraid of, it was simply that the hour was late and Philip was making jokes in bad taste. But young people did things differently. Philip wouldn’t hurt him. Philip was a friend. In an hour Stewart would be in bed, safe and amused at how nervous he’d been.
In the kitchen he hurried about, boiling the kettle, spooning instant coffee into mugs, grabbing milk from the refrigerator, sugar, putting things on a tray. This is going to be OK, he kept repeating, like a mantra. This is going to be OK. OK. OK. He didn’t want to leave them alone in the living room. He heard noises, not talking, but scuffling noises. Metallic noises. He couldn’t hear voices and that made him more uncomfortable. He picked up the tray and walked back in to the living room. As he came through the doorway he could see Philip and the Spider Man. They were dismantling the stereo. The speakers were already unwired, placed by the door. Philip was bending over the back of the stereo casing, fiddling with the wires. Spider Man was hunched behind the equipment. Stewart couldn’t see the Gothic girl.
“Stop it! Philip! Don’t....”
Before he could finish the sentence he felt the back of his head explode in a starburst of yellow and red lights. He dropped the tray and fell forward to his knees in the broken china and spilled coffee. He tried to turn and see what had hit him. Gothic Girl stood behind him. She had a hammer in her right hand. That hand was raising itself up again. And coming down.
“Don’t...” Stewart whispered.
But she did.
The first sense Stewart regained was sound. Medium sized sounds, like big rodents moving around the room. He couldn’t understand. Pigeons on the roof. Then the pain began. His head hurt, his jaw hurt. His jaw felt like someone had put a white-hot ice pick in the joint. His mouth was open. Close it. The pain would stop if he closed his mouth. He couldn’t. He had something in his mouth. He opened his eyes. Oh God.
Stewart was tied to one of his dining room chairs. His ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. His arms were tied to the arms of the chair. His chest was tied to the back of the chair. He had something stuffed in his mouth and something tied around his head holding it in. It was hard to breathe. His head hurt. A lot. He was dizzy. He was nauseous. He was afraid he’d throw up, choke to death. He had to stay calm. He wanted to cry.
He heard noises from the bedroom.
Philip and Spider Man had the stereo packed up and ready to go. They also had his wallet, his watch and his silver candlesticks on the table. There was a pillowcase next to the door that looked as though it had some things in it. He didn’t have much else of any monetary value. No television. He couldn’t imagine what would be in the pillowcase. Why didn’t they just go now?
Gothic Girl came out of the kitchen and looked at him. She had no expression on her face. It was as though, under the white make-up there was nothing, just empty air, the paint merely giving form to the void. She walked into the bedroom. A moment later she came back out, followed by Philip and Spider Man.
“Weren’t sure you’d come back to us, man. But glad you aren’t going to miss the rest of the party.” Philip smiled. Spider Man smiled. “Why don’t you put the kettle on again, Babe. We didn’t get our coffee.”
Gothic Girl went back to the kitchen. There was something obscene about this parody of domestic roles. It was perverse. The girl appeared back at the door from the kitchen. She had the electric kettle in her hand. She stooped down and put it on the floor next to his chair. She plugged it in. Stewart didn’t understand. Why would she not just make coffee in the kitchen? He was missing something, his brain addled by pain and fear. There was something he was supposed to know.
The kettle began to boil. She unplugged it. She stood up with it in her hand and raised it over his head.
Losing consciousness took some time. He was more grateful for that state of oblivion than he had been for anything in his life. By that point he was past hoping they would stop torturing him, past praying someone would sense what was going on in his apartment and call the police, past imploring behind his gag for mercy. He just wanted to faint.
He had wondered from time to time, when listening to ghastly news reports of atrocities committed in far off lands, if he would break under torture and tell his captors what they wanted to know. Now he knew the answer to that question. Of course he would. The horror of this particular situation was that there was nothing they wanted to know. They just wanted to keep doing what they were doing until they didn’t want to do it anymore. It was quite simple, really. The only thing required of him was to continue feeling and he did that very well, until eventually, a merciful God granted the reprieve, the pardon, of insensibility.
When he came to, he was alone.
He lay on the floor. His ankles were still tied to the chair, although his hands had been freed. This struck him as funny, that his tormentors had been thoughtful enough to untie his hands. He couldn’t imagine why. He giggled and another part of his psyche, far off and away somewhere thought, Oh dear, laughing can’t be a good sign. I might be going crazy.
His brain worked mechanically, taking in details, without emotion, as though some vital wire had been disconnected.
His skin was sticky. He was covered with a mixture of blood, mucous, peeling skin, egg shells, green paint, cigarette butts and other things he had trouble identifying.
He was extremely tired. His body was lead, although he didn’t feel very much pain, for which he was immensely grateful. He concluded the best thing he could do was sleep. That seemed very sensible.
He untied his ankles and crawled to the couch. He hauled himself up onto the soft cool leather and instantly fell asleep.
Craig, the neighbour who often locked himself out, found Stewart later in the morning. First he was sick to his stomach, and then he called an ambulance, and so Stewart did not die, although he wished for sometime afterwards that he had.
His friends, David and Diane, came by the hospital to visit. They brought a Walkman and Vivaldi tapes.
“We thought this might help,” they said, softly, awed by the presence of so much equipment, so many blinking lights and bleeping monitors. They put the tape in, and lay the earphones gently on the batting of the bandages, trying not to hurt him.
“That’s very kind of you,” he said, although his words were hard to understand given the condition of his mouth.
When
