I had finally bought a house. Brick and boring but it was mine, all mine! It has a shared driveway with the house behind it and I met its owner on the first day while moving some boxes. He was driving down the driveway and stopped to talk to me.
“Welcome to the neighbourhood, young lass! I’m Terrence [not his real name],” a man in the front seat of the white ute (pick-up truck) said to me.
I put down the box I was carrying. “Hey, thanks so much.” I introduce myself.
Terrence was the height and width of a family fridge and super smiley and friendly. His slobbery dog in the passenger seat jumped on him excited to see me.
Terrence pushed the dog away playfully. We chat for a bit and then he gave me this doozy, “I just want to warn you. If you see anything weird, don’t worry.”
“Weird?”
He continues. “Yeah, weird. I know it sounds like a joke but I run a business, completely legal and legit, where people pay me to kidnap them and hold them in my house for a day or so.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know, right. Weirdos are everywhere. People have weird fetishes, hey.” Terrence smiles and shrugs.
“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose they do.”
Terrence hit the side of the car with his hand. “Anyway! I’ll leave you to it! Let me know if you need anything and welcome to the neighbourhood!”
“Oh, just one thing before you go. Do you know why the previous owner left?” I said.
“They didn’t tell you? Deceased estate. Very sad. But, yeah, Phil [not his real name] was a great guy. We were good friends.”
Deceased estate. No, the real estate did not mention that. Interesting.
“I’m sorry to hear about your friend,” I say.
Terrence smiles. “What is life but a series of moments and all we can do it make the most of it while we’re here. Am I right?”
I nod. And just like that he is gone.
I finish off carrying all the boxes inside and promptly pass out on my bare mattress exhausted.
I wake up with a start to a woman’s screams coming from outside my house. I have no idea what time it is but it’s dark. I jump up and head to my window. What I see freaks me the fuck out. The white ute rumbles past my house as Terrence, in the driver’s seat, spots me. He smiles and gives me a thumbs up. In the ute tray is a woman screaming. She’s bound and gagged and as she passes my window we lock eyes for just a second and I see only one emotion. Fear. Her eyes are just pleading for me to do something. Anything. Fuck. Soon the ute is out of sight and within seconds her screams stop.
I sit on my bed in shock. I know that Terrence told me he makes money from people paying him to kidnap them but that looked like a real kidnap to me. That girl was scared.
My head flicks up to a tap at my window. It’s Terrence and he’s sweaty. “Sorry about that [my name]! She’s fine, just a client, have a good night!”
I nod, still in shock.
Sleep doesn’t come easily but I finally do get back to sleep. The next few days are uneventful. I go back and forth on whether to call the police or not but I end up not. I spend my time unpacking, cleaning, finding new jogging spots in my new neighbourhood. I see Terrence every now and then. He always has that slobbery dog with him. Every time I speak to Terrence I get a bit more info about his business as it’s, frankly, fascinating. People who want to be kidnapped contact him, pay him $5000 on average, and then without warning Terrence kidnaps them. He keeps them “against their will” for a day or so before dropping them home. They need to sign contracts. Some of them do it for sympathy from family and friends. For others it has just always been a fantasy. A really weird fantasy if you ask me.
Terrence said the hardest bit is making sure the rest of their family doesn’t freak out when he takes them. So he often does it when they are alone walking or eating lunch in a park or something.
As the weeks go by I get to know him more. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and by this point I would classify him as my friend. One morning we are drinking a coffee on my front porch and he proposes something way out there.
“I have a job coming up and, well, I need your help.”
“The kidnapping stuff?” I say.
“Yep. The kidnapping stuff. Two of them this time.”
I nearly spit my coffee out. “Two? At once? Seriously?”
“Yep. I could probably handle both but it would be real handy to have someone else there with me in case it gets a bit rowdy.”
Reluctantly I tell him I’m in. I feel a bit weird about it but also excited. Plus, he is giving me $1000 for my troubles.
That night I jump in his ute. No dog. Shame. I sit next to ropes and zip ties and handcuffs. Terrence tells me the plan as we drive. Before I know it we arrive outside a nondescript red brick house. Terrence opens the car door, looks at me and smiles. “Let’s go.”
“Just wait a sec,” I say. Terrence closes his door again.
“Nervous?” He says. I nod. He smiles back at me. “Take your time.”
We wait in the car a bit longer for me to get my nerves up. I do some breathing exercises to calm myself as Terrence watches funny cat videos on his phone. When he chuckles his chin wobbles. Then I’m ready.
The plan starts smoothly. We glide silently across the grass lawn to the house (I can hardly believe it but the big fella moves like a lump of butter in a hot pan). Terrence knows where the spare key is. My whole body is shaking with nerves but I’m okay.
We look through the window. Two men sit on the couch watching TV. Terrence opens the front door and we kind of crouch/walk into the hallway and I kick a pot plant in the dark. The two men look up at the exact same time. They both SCREAM.
Terrence swears under his breath and lunges at them both, his massive wingspan pinning them to the couch. I stand there frozen.
“[name redacted]” Terrence shouts at me. “Bring the fucking zip ties!”
I snap out of it and grab the zip ties. Run over to the couch where the two men are struggling to remove themselves from the Terrence bear hug. Before they get a chance to get very far I put a large zip tie around each of their ankles and also wrists. They scream and shout. I’m guessing this is all part of the fun for them. Yes, I am finding this weird. Their noise level does decrease as Terrence binds their mouths. We also cover their eyes. With a fair bit of struggling we manage to put them in the back of the ute and tie them down.
On the way home Terrence asks me how I’m doing.
“Bit freaked out but on a high,” I say, still breathing fairly heavily. This is by far the craziest thing I have ever done.
Terrence said I could go home or come over to his house to see the next stage. I am tempted to just go home but decide I would like to see the next bit. We get home and Terrence leads the men, still struggling, into his home. We lead them down into a basement. At least 20 stairs. It starts to get damp and cold on the way down and I feel like that maybe I should have just gone home.
I’m loosely holding one of the men when he turns to me, pulling his mouth covering off with his teeth. “You gotta fucking help me! What are you freaks doing!” I stare back at him. Tuffs of curly, sweaty hair sticks to his forehead and blood trickles down his chin from a busted lip. I’m about to open my mouth (even though I have no idea what I’m going to say) when Terrence grabs him, rips him away from me, throws him in a chair. “You’re right, big fella,” Terrence says.
Something deep in my heart knows this feels very wrong. Before I could contemplate any further I jump about a metre in the air with a movement from the corner of the dark room.
Terrence nods to the movement and mumbles to me, “He’s the client.”
He’s the client? What?
A man with glasses comes out of the shadows. He looks at the men tied to chairs with a hatred in his eyes I haven’t seen before.
Terrence motions to the stairs and I’m more than happy to follow him upstairs away from this weird basement triangle fuckery.
I finally feel comfortable enough to talk. “Terrence, what the fuck. Who is that guy and what do you mean he’s the client?”
Terrence shrugs as if I asked him why the sky is blue. “Sometimes the kidnapped are the client. Other times someone wants to settle a score with the kidnapped. That’s what happened in this case. Some weird love triangle I guess but I don’t ask.”
I stand there, mouth wide open, speechless.
Terrence chuckles. “Don’t worry. They can’t hurt them or anything. That’s part of the rules. See this? He signed a contract saying that he can’t even physically touch them. All good.”
He motions to a contract on the table.
He continues. “They usually just shout at each other for a few hours and then we take them home and everyone’s happy. We have cameras and everything. See?”
Terrence flicks on a monitor at the table and I see the three men in the basement.
“Yeah, but THEY didn’t sign a contract, did they?” I say, pointing to the poor men on the chairs.
Terrence grimaces. “Kinda a grey area, isn’t it? I suppose officially they didn’t sign contracts but, you know - ”
Movement on the monitor interrupts Terrence’s lame attempt at justifying ACTUAL kidnapping. The man with the glasses stands over the other two men in the chairs. With one slicing movement of his arm my fears come true when I see the glint of a knife.
“Oh, shit.” Terrence says. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
We both sprint downstairs but it’s too late. The man with the glasses stands over the two men, both still attached to chairs, both coughing and spluttering as the blood spurts from their neck.
The man with the glasses screams at us. “They both fucking deserve it!” He points the bloody knife at the dying pair. “They ruined my life!”
My instincts click into gear and I started to move towards the dying men but it’s too late. Through massive and rapid blood loss they are both dead within 30 seconds. My attention turns to the man in the glasses. His breathing is heavy and he looks scary as hell. Terrence and I look at each other and run up the stairs. The man with the glasses follows us up but we close the door behind us. Locked. Silence.
I talk first. “Terrence. There’s two dead men in there. I’m calling the police.”
“Stop. No. You can’t. If you do that we would go to jail.” He starts mildly hyperventilating, completely out of character for the big guy. “Just let me think.”
We sit in Terrence’s kitchen in silence for a few minutes. His happy dog keeping us company, oblivious to the terror in the basement. Every now and then the man in the glasses bangs on the door. We ignore him.
Terrence talks slowly. It is clear he had been thinking. “If we let him go we are in proper trouble. That’s for sure.”
“Agreed.” I say. “But we have to. What choice to we have? We have to let him go. And call the police.”
Terrence ignores me and continues. “If we get rid of him I think we will be okay.”
“Get rid of him?” I ask. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We took the fellas at 3 am in the morning. No one saw us. No one knows they are here. We get rid of the third fella and we’re golden.”
I stare at him. “Are you fucking insane?! No way. I’m going home. I’m sorry but I want no part of this.” I walk to the door. Terrence stands up, starts to grab my arm but stops himself.
“At least just help me check on the guy.” Terrence says. It’s true, we hadn’t heard any banging for a while.
I pause. “Okay. Let’s check on him and then call the police. Deal?”
Terrence hangs his head in defeat. “Okay. What choice do we really have, hey? Deal.”
I nod. I pause. I’m nervous. Maybe I should just go home and we can all just deal with the consequences.
“We doing this?” Terrence asks, making my mind up for me.
We move to the door. Still no sound behind it. Terrence slowly moves the bolt locking it and opens it. I peer through. The man isn’t on the stairs. I yell out, “Buddy? You okay?” No response. I creep down the first three steps.
And now looking back I can’t believe how so fucking dumb that was. Just stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have just gone home. I shouldn’t have even been involved in this shit in the first place.
I’m about to yell out again when I hear the door close behind me. Locked. And before I know it I’m stuck in a basement with a killer.