I reached inside the trunk and moved the drugged girl slightly so I could get her purse. After digging through a pile of junk (mostly phone numbers, make up, and tampons) (yuck), I finally found her wallet. Her name was Emma Bernsette, 28 years old, five-foot-seven, 130 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. I looked from the wallet to the bound and gagged woman in the trunk. They were the same person, and she was kind of cute.

“What are we going to do?” Dillon asked, running his fingers through his hair.

“We? Since when is there a we?” I demanded, looking up at him.

Lights were beginning to turn on in the neighbor’s house. “Come on, let’s get her inside before the neighbors see.” I said.

Together, we lifted her out of the trunk. I leaned her against Dillon and closed the trunk. I turned back to Dillon to see him trying to look down her shirt.

“Dillon, don’t be a pig! There isn’t any time for that! Hurry up, let’s get her inside.” I scolded.

I picked up her legs and Dillon and I shuffled to the front door. I turned the knob and kicked it open, and then walked carefully down the three steps to my living room and set her down on the couch. Once she was secured there, I locked the doors and windows and closed all the blinds in the room.

“I’m kind of glad I napped the wrong girl…this one’s cute.” Dillon announced, leaning (more like looming) over the chic on the couch.

“Did you find her in a bar?” I asked, snapping my fingers in his face to get his attention.

“Dance club.”

“Figures. Everyone is cute when it’s dark and you’ve got beer goggles.”

“Who are you trying to kid? You think she’s hot too.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I haven’t gotten laid in months.” Damn. There’s the sweet victory of getting a house from a divorce, but then there’s the stinging, poisoning feeling of defeat that you get when you admit that you’re wrong and that you haven’t had sex since your spouse left, “Just shut up and let me think, will you?”

“What’s gonna happen when she wakes up?”

“Dillon! Shit! Um, I don’t know. I guess we should put her somewhere with no windows so she can’t escape and kick our asses or call the police.”

“That’s what Pop would say.”

“Change of plans then.”

“What do you have against the ol’ man?”

“Aside from him being a mob leader and scaring away all of my friends and my wife, I’m not entirely sure.”

“You just need to talk to him again. He’s changed.”

“Doubt it. When’d you drug her?”

“About an hour and a half ago. She’ll be out a while longer.”

Dillon and I stood in silence. He looked up at the ceiling, which was a very nice dark green (painted by yours truly), and I inspected the dirt on the bunny slippers’ ears. There was a sudden, audible gurgle that snapped the silence in the room. I looked over at Dillon suspiciously.

“That sounded a little sloppy, need to wipe?” I asked as I stepped sideways away from him.

“That was my stomach!” Dillon protested.

“Whatever.”

“I’m starving! I’ve been partying—”

“You mean ‘prowling.’”

“—all night, I haven’t had time to eat anything! You have something you’re willing to give me?”

“I go grocery shopping on Wednesdays, you know that. It’s only Tuesday. The cupboards are bare, Mother Hubbard.”

“No wonder you haven’t gotten laid, queer.”

We stood in silence once more. This time, Dillon stared at the side of my head. I could feel his stupid eyes burrowing their way into my skull. This is how he gets his way. He stares at you until you give in and do what he wants you to. That’s the way he got all of his girlfriends. His stomach gave another protesting growl.

“Ugh! Fine! I’ll go get you something.” I finally caved.

“Cool! I’ll stay here and guard the babe, heh heh heh.” Dillon responded.

“Oh no you won’t. You’re coming with me. We’ll put her in the bathtub and lock the door.”

“Dude, you can lock your bathroom door?”

“Yeah. Sheryl and I got an old fashioned doorknob for it when Ricky was a baby. That way we could have a place he couldn’t get into. We didn’t want him to chug the mouthwash and end up like you.”

We picked up the unconscious girl again and lugged her up the stairs to the bathroom. I put a pillow under her head after we set her in the bathtub. Dillon pulled out a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. I stopped trying to get the girl’s head to stay on the pillow and watched him.

“I’m not even gonna ask you what you were going to do with those.” I said.

“It’d be better if you didn’t. Do you have anything we can attach these to so she doesn’t escape?” he asked.

I looked around. It’s not like I keep fetish rings handy in case some freaky woman decides that she wants to chain me up in my bathtub. The pipes to the sink were too far away, unless we wanted to drape her over the side of the bathtub like a towel, and the towel bars were too high. I looked to my right, in the direction in which her hands were closest to the wall, and to the right of the shower curtains was the one thing I had been looking for: the toilet paper roll. And behind the roll of toilet paper was a bar. It wasn’t the brightest idea because you could easily just push it inwards and escape, but it was something.

“Give me the cuffs.” I ordered, and Dillon handed them to me obligingly.

I put one of the cuffs through the middle of the rope that was tied around her hands and then took the other cuff and clamped it around the bar holding the toilet paper. It’s a good thing Sheryl ignored me when I suggested that we put the paper holder on the other side of the toilet; I can only imagine what it would be like to wake up and be stretched across the pot.

I took the bobby pins out of the cupboard and put them in my pocket. I closed the door behind Dillon and I and found the key to it in my sock drawer. I returned to the bathroom door and turned the key in the lock. I then slipped the key into my other jacket pocket and placed the bobby pins on the counter as Dillon and I headed out to his car. I buckled my seat belt as Dillon closed and locked the driver’s side door. He started it up, and I began to relax when we pulled out of the driveway. It was already a bad night, what could really make it worse?

The Corner Store was nothing like a corner store. First of all, it was nowhere near a corner. It was smack dab in the middle of the rows of stores on Juniper Street. Secondly, it wasn’t the nice corner store run by a nice old couple named Bev and Bert, no, it was run by some thug named Alejandro who had tattoos covering the better portion of his body. Dillon pulled into a parking spot right in front of the store (no one was there, it was the middle of the night.) and unbuckled his seatbelt. I unbuckled mine and got out of the car into the fresh air.

“Did you know that your car smells like cheese?” I asked.

Dillon shrugged and stepped onto the sidewalk and into the building with me cautiously following behind him. He picked up a little red basket as he walked through the doorway and headed for the deli. He found a sandwich that he liked from the wide array of deli foods and tossed it into the basket. He then went to the chip aisle and stared almost helplessly at all of his options. He looked from side to side at the shelves.

“Sometime tonight, please! In case you don’t remember, there is a girl lying unconscious in my bathtub!” I hissed, very much aware that someone was walking towards us from behind.

“You can’t rush this! Tell you what, if you go and get me a bottle of root beer, I’ll have my chips by the time you come back.” Dillon bargained.

“Fine. But hurry up!”

I turned around and stood toe-to-toe with the biggest, most muscled Mexican I’d ever seen. He had tattoos that snaked their way from his fingers to his chin. This was Alejandro. I looked up at him and gulped.

“How you folks doin? Need any help?” He inquired in an almost friendly tone.

“N-no, we’re fine, thanks.”

He looked down at me. Then he looked down at my slippers. He raised an eyebrow at me and a piece of me died on the inside. Here I was, facing one of the toughest men ever to walk the face of the planet, and I was wearing bunny slippers.

“Nice slippers.” He said at last.

“Th-thank you. Excuse me.”

I walked around him and nearly sprinted to the nearest soda fridge. I pulled out a root beer and dashed back to Dillon. True to his promise, he had picked out a bag of chips. He was talking lightly to Alejandro. When they saw me, they headed to the checkout counter. Alejandro took his sweet time in running the items over the scanner, talking to Dillon like they were old buddies. I tapped my fingers against my thigh and glanced up at Alejandro. His eyes latched on to mine and I could almost see him strangling me in the reflection. I turned around and pretended to look at the candy selection near the bottom of the rack, secretly checking to make sure I hadn’t pissed myself. A hand fell on my shoulder and I jumped up, then turned and got stuck in a pose that made me look like I was about to kung fu my brother. Both he and Alejandro stared in confusion, looked at each other, and laughed.

“Come on, we better get you home. It’s the meds he’s on, Al, they make him jumpy late at night.” Dillon explained (lied, but it was a good lie, so that can be overlooked).

Alejandro bid us a sociable (yet murderous) sounding good-bye as we left. I stood outside the car, impatiently waiting for Dillon to unlock all of the doors. He already had his seatbelt buckled before he realized that I wasn’t sitting beside him. Nothing was said until we were at the stoplight halfway home.

“You need to relax more around people. Alejandro is a good guy.” Dillon said, taking a bite out of his sandwich and ignoring the road.

I stretched quickly across the seat and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking it to the right to get the car back in our lane. Dillon indignantly slapped my hands away.

“I can drive and eat at the same time you know,” He snapped.

“I could tell by the way we weren’t anywhere near the right side of the road.” I argued.

“Seriously though, you should chill. It’s like being an accountant has shoved a rod of distrust up your ass.”

“Did you see how big he was? He could have squished me!”

“Pretty much anyone can squish you, you know that, right?”

“Oh just pay attention to the road, will you?”

The old Buick pulled into my driveway and stopped shakily. Dillon reached into the back seat and retrieved the rest of his dinner and I unbuckled. I put my hand on the seat to give myself some leverage as I climbed out of the car, and a sharp pain shot through my palm. I recoiled quickly, fearing that some rabid squirrel had crawled into Dillon’s car and got cozy inside the seats and was pissed off when I smushed him with my hand. Much to my disappointment, it was just a spring.

“Damn it, Dillon! Your car bit me!” I cried.

“Be quiet! Do you want to wake up your neighbors?” He hissed.

“I’m bleeding!”

“You’re a paper pusher, I would have thought that paper cuts would have trained you for something like this.”

I rushed inside and to the bathroom, trying my best not to drip blood onto my freshly cleaned floor. I fumbled in my pockets for the key to the bathroom door and unlocked it. I turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open. Out of nowhere, a Kleenex box hit me in the head. I stumbled backwards in shock. It isn’t every day that you get hit in the head by a flying Kleenex box. I hit the wall behind me and looked in the bathroom. The woman was clearly awake and had freed herself from the toilet paper holder.

“What the hell did you do to me?!” She shrieked, grabbing at whatever was readily available for the pitching.

I dodged the cup that held my toothbrush and it shattered beside my head. The woman throwing my toiletries at me caught me off guard, and it more than likely showed through my deer-in-the-headlights look.

“Lady, calm down! We didn’t do anything to you!” I tried explaining.

Emma Bernsette was not a woman to be calmed. I was halfway curled into a ball, trying to burrow into the wall, when I turned my head and saw what she was grabbing next. I’m not sure whom I was more afraid of: Alejandro or Emma. She had snatched my blue and white toilet brush and turned to me, a look of pure rage and a hint of PMS glowing in her evil brown eyes. I yelped and scrambled down the hall to the stairs. Dillon was sitting at my table, eating his chips like the sounds of shattering toothbrush cups and flesh-hungry women were normal. He only raised an eyebrow when he saw me launch myself into my living room with the crazy toilet brush lady following me.

“Oh God, I’ve been gang raped!” She cried, the toilet brush raised in one of her hands.

“What? Come on, lady, I’m more interested in my potato chips than you.” Dillon scoffed unceremoniously, chip bits flying out of his mouth.

“How charming of you. There really is no end to the pig in you, is there? I mean, earlier you thought she was hot, but now you’re saying that the potato chip gives you more of a hard on than she does? No wonder you’re single.” I defended, popping my head out from my couch cushions.

“What’s going on here?” Emma asked, lowering the toilet brush slowly.

“Do you want me to tell her or should I let you? No, let me, I don’t want to have to clean soggy chip particles off of my table. Emma, you’ve been—”

“Dude! Whoa! We can’t tell her, she’ll call the cops.” Dillon objected.

“Hello, she’s gonna tell the cops anyway! And we’re both going to jail because you were too stupid to just go to them in the first place.”

“If I’d gone to the police, I would have had to tell them about Pop, and then everyone would have been arrested.”

“Everyone but me, I’d still be asleep.”

“You’re up shit creek now, aren’t you, Jack?”

“Emma, you were kidnapped. But you weren’t supposed to be kidnapped, Dillon just grabbed the wrong woman.”

“I’m confused…what’s happening?” Emma said.

“You better sit down for this one, my brother’s stupidity might overwhelm you.”

And so I told her, in small, carefully thought through words what was going on. After about half an hour of her asking questions, she finally understood what my sibling had done. All the while, she kept a firm grip on the toilet brush and sat on the far end of the couch, out of my reach and away from Dillon, who was still sitting at my dining room table.