Chapter 226: Without Boss and Goon

Thursday, May 19 to Saturday, May 21, 2005

First a brief report on events in Corvallis. Thursday morning Julia had called my cellphone to tell me what to wear to school. When I didn't answer her call to my cell, Julia called her home's landline. When no one answered that she successively called her parents' and Ava's cellphones, alerting my family with her increasingly frantic concerns while the phones were ringing unanswered. Thus the discovery process started thirty minutes earlier than it would have from my failing to pick up everybody for school.

Mom stayed with Carol and Donna at a neighbor's place while Dad drove like a maniac to the Williams', with Julia calling the police from the car. Dad and Julia arrived before the cops. Dad made Julia stay in the car while he went inside using Julia's key. The first thing he saw was the broken security system. He rushed back to Julia, told her to report that to 9-1-1, then went back inside. He found an exhausted Ava bound to the bed in Julia's room. She'd been struggling to escape for hours. He released her while she told him what little she knew, then he found an identically bound Vanessa. Then the cops started arriving.

I removed our hoods as soon as Boss's and Goon's footsteps had faded away, hopefully for a few days. And while I was hoping for things, I hoped the cops would be the next people we saw, preferably closely followed by a pizza delivery guy, because I was getting hungry.

The baddies would probably be away for quite a while, so I was tempted to try removing the gags too. I thought I had a good chance of getting them off if I tugged for long enough, but I decided not to because I wouldn't be able to put them back on convincingly. If the baddies returned before we got a lucky break, they'd be angry at us because of the fake story, and the extra annoyance and suspicion caused by very loose gags might make a fatal difference.

I'd leaned forward to inspect the damage to my left leg. It was very visibly smashed, with the skin torn and the end of my fractured bone sticking out sickeningly. I controlled my nausea long enough to forcefully imagine that the blood flow was stopping around the torn area. I looked away, with no intention of ever looking again.

That urgent job done, Prof and I signaled back and forth. The story he'd told the baddies was one he hadn't mentioned to me before. There were some boxes of junk in the back of his garage, one of which contained an old toaster; and there were old cans of paint too, so the baddies had stuff to keep them busy, hopefully long enough to either get caught (surely there'd be cops around) or somehow lead the cops to us. The chance of someone else finding us (say the local city's regular Basement Safety Inspector) wasn't looking too hopeful, given Boss's lack of concern at leaving us here.

The thought of some member of the public being upstairs made me think about removing my gag so I could yell for help, but I figured I could tap on the wooden ceiling beams quite loudly with my ring, which should resound even better than my voice would. Despite Boss's saying, "Leave nothing useful," they'd left the possibly useful ring.

[[Boss had expected to have to go on recovery trip(s), and had always intended to take Goon with him. This house was chosen for its being a good place to leave us unattended. For example, we couldn't hear anyone at the front door and neither could they hear any noises we might make; the door at the top of the stairs was locked to discourage any casual visitor coming down, and the landlord was not a local. Boss didn't want a third partner, and leaving Goon with us was a bad idea, as Boss wanted us to be alive when he returned. He expected any recovery trip(s) to have less than a 50/50 chance of being successful, as in his experience people often lie under torture, sometimes needing several motivation sessions to provide the correct combination for the safe, or whatever. The house was a good enough place to leave us alone, and a few days without food and water would add very nicely to our torture. The property had quite a long driveway, at the road end of which he'd tied a thin string across it. Any vehicle turning into the driveway would break the string. A rag was attached near one end of it, so when they returned and drove past at the normal speed, a quick glance at whether the rag was raised or lying limp against the tree trunk would reveal whether the string was broken or not.]]

^

We had a long, boring wait, which was WAY better than being tortured! The more waiting the better, because it increased our chance of being found by someone.

Even at our letter-by-letter rate, we communicated a lot, including Prof's agreeing with the gags staying on. We tried to plan responses to every possible future scenario, from someone walking around upstairs through to the baddies returning after failing to get into the garage, or discovering we'd lied, or kidnapping more people, etc. Prof had located the imaginary machine inside the garage rather than the house itself especially to minimize the danger to the rest of his family. He hoped the chosen location would stall the baddies as it'd be difficult for them to get at, and it might lead to their being caught, as there should be cops around.

There was a great deal of personal communication between us. When you're facing death you have a need for that, even when you're trying to pretend that you're not worried. We weren't facing death directly, as Goon would almost certainly remove our hoods before starting to kill us, whereupon his eyeballs would be history. It was immediately after that, that things got very tricky. We tried to plan for that event too.

We loved the slow, uneventful passing of time, except for the issues of excretion, exercise, food, water and even boredom.

I NP'd my severed finger up to my face so I could look at it closely (blame boredom). Despite all my talk with Sensei about how easy it was to visualize fingers in external locations, seeing my finger disconnected from my hand was an EXTREMELY weird and uncomfortable experience, but somehow fascinating. I don't recommend it though. I returned it to the floor, placing it under Prof's chair so he wouldn't have to look at it.

We both had to piss. Fortunately I could use NP to aim our cocks so we stayed dry, except for a few drops which soon dried. Somewhat more than a few drops in Prof's case, rather graphically teaching me that old guys can't piss as well as young ones. Opening Prof's PJs and holding his cock was an unnatural act, but he told me not to be silly, a letter at a time.

I managed to avoid the need to have a crap, but Prof couldn't, so he spent most of the time sitting in his own shit.

Sitting in the bare metal chairs for hour after hour caused ever-increasing discomfort, especially for Prof. We wished we could get up and walk around (for a variety of reasons), but the best we could do was flex our muscles, do very small squats, and make other small movements. It was a major pain in the ass.

We knew that people could survive weeks without food, so we weren't worried about that no matter how uncomfortable it was going to be. Going hungry wasn't going to be fun, but it was our firm favorite over more torture, so the longer the baddies were away, the happier we'd be. Although after a day, I was hoping that the pizza delivery guy would arrive first, closely followed by the police, but otherwise we put up with it.

Water is what we started missing the most. We'd both heard that people can go for much longer without food than water, but we didn't know what the timeframes were. In our ignorance, we'd assumed water wouldn't be a big deal. I'm used to being hungry several times a day, but I'm rarely conscious of thirst except after strenuous exercise or work, neither of which applied now.

Our not being concerned about liquids lasted, we guessed, about a day (I'd taken my watch off before having sex with Ava. Just as well, or Goon might have severed my wrist to claim it). After that day, our thirst became something we were increasingly conscious of.

A lot of time passed, whether rapidly or slowly we had no way of knowing. It certainly passed unpleasantly, with thirst, hunger and discomfort becoming acute.

^

We heard what was recognizably Boss's and Goon's footsteps descending the stairs after what we thought was about three days. I muttered "Frgh" (it would have been "Fuck" without the gag), created a light blob, turned the room's light off (we'd been using it rather than a light blob), put our hoods back on, then canceled the light blob.

[[It was only two days. We'd been kidnapped very early Thursday morning and they'd left on their mission to get the machine from Prof's garage later that day. The baddies had arrived in Corvallis early Thursday evening, spent Thursday night studying what was going on and giving time for the commotion to diminish. They'd broken into the garage in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, had loaded up their van with the boxes of junk and all the paint cans, and had then driven to a safe location to search through them. Finding neither of the two parts, they'd returned to our prison, arriving about dawn on Saturday. During the trip back Boss had told Goon what to do on arrival. They were going to play their version of "Good Cop / Bad Cop", which in their case was "Bad Criminal / Bad and Murderously Psychotic Criminal" (Goon taking the latter role, as he had a natural affinity for it). When Boss gave the word, Goon was going to go psycho with the length of timber, pretending to lose control, but 'only' breaking my arms and legs repeatedly until Boss called him off, hopefully after Prof or I coughed up the desired information.]]

Their footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs in the other room, crossed the room, there was a small thump on the wall beside the door, then the door opened and they walked into the room, accompanied by the sound of Goon menacingly slapping the piece of 2-by-4 into his palm. Goon stopped that long enough to remove our hoods and gags, then resumed acting menacing. He was good at it.

Both guys were looking highly pissed off and ready to take it out on us. Boss spent a couple of minutes ranting and raving about how "Fuckin' angry I am at your fuckin stupidity," etc. Before they'd left a few days ago, Boss had promised terrible consequences if Prof's story was a lie. It had been a lie, and now Boss was enjoying describing what Goon was going to do to me. "Terrible consequences" was an accurate description.

They were far too terrible to be allowed to happen. Prof and I had discussed this scenario, and we couldn't let them carry out their threats because if I was injured much more than I was now, I wouldn't be able to get us out of here even if they released me from the chains - and it looked very much as if they were about to injure me MUCH more! There were two of us here, which they would think was one more than they needed to learn the secret of our roulette win. It was obvious that they were going to beat me severely to pressure Prof into telling the secret, and if that didn't work, the next obvious escalation was to kill me horribly in front of Prof, threatening to do the same to him if he didn't cough up.

[[Boss certainly didn't look it, but he wasn't actually upset. In the course of his career, he'd many times had to coerce information out of people. In Vegas, people sometimes acquire large sums of cash that they physically hide rather than deposit in a bank, to avoid having to pay tax on it, have their spouse know about it, or for many other reasons. Boss preyed on such people. That was partly why he'd been in the casino when Prof and I had been: he'd been prowling for big winners, that being one of his standard scouting methods. He rather enjoyed the information-extraction game, and was smart enough to see its big picture. Goon was more of an immediate gratification kind of guy, but Boss had spent a good portion of the return trip getting Goon into the right mindset. He wanted Goon to smash me up, but not to lose control and kill me. That would be the slow and very deliberate next stage, if we didn't talk or if the next retrieval trip didn't produce the goods. Boss's current ranting to us was partly to work on our psychology, and partly to give him time to check to make sure we were awake and aware enough to get the full benefit out of what was to follow. It'd be no good beating us for information if we were too weak or dehydrated to think or talk.]]

Boss decided we were both fit enough to provide him with the information he wanted, so he said, "I wouldn't want ya to think I'd break my word, so practice baseball all ya want Tom, just like I promised, haha. Smash the stupid fucker to a pulp, haha."

Goon chuckled homicidally, hefting his bat and advancing toward me, doing an excellent job of showing delight at being able to unleash all his viciousness.

Boss leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and waited for the screaming to start.

I saw Prof nod, which I TOTALLY agreed with, so I started arranging for the screaming to start. I got all my minds to actively center, as having a four-mind poke, rather than a three-mind one, might make all the difference between bursting an eyeball or not, with "not" being a very bad outcome. So all four of my minds tried VERY hard to keep a very calm, centered state of mind. If we all lost center, the NP-points would cancel, which would be very inconvenient if we only had a narrow window of opportunity.

We created four minimum-sized fingertips, one behind the other with the front one shaped to be as sharp as its mind could make it, forming a disappointingly blunt NP-spear aimed at Goon's right eye. NP-fingertips have no mass, and therefore no momentum (momentum equals mass times velocity), so there's no point in "taking a run" at the target. We simply created the 'spear' ahead of Goon, moved it immediately in front of his right eyeball, crossed our metaphorical fingers (most of our real ones no longer working) then had all the fingertips push straight forward with their maximum thrust - 14.1 pounds of force plus whatever tiny improvement we'd made from all our tedious practice pushing against walls and the ground.

Goon screamed, dropped his 'bat', and flung his head back as his hands reached for his face. The speed of his reaction was too damned fast for me to spear his remaining eye.

Goon was screaming and spinning around wildly, so I'd probably get a look at his remaining eye soon, but I better check what Boss was doing first.

The asshole was running out of the room! He usually stands near the doorway and well away from us, but I never expected him to run away from two bound guys, especially when he'd seen that we hadn't moved a muscle. The only thing I could think to do was ankle-tap him, hoping to trip him before he got away, then get his eyeballs when he was looking around to see what the fuck was going on.

I tripped him, and he fell forward, but he was so close to the doorway that he easily caught himself on the doorframe, regained his footing and shot out of the room, never looking back.

I heard Prof yell, "TOM! Behind you!"

I looked at Tom, as he spun around to look in my general direction. Mentally thanking Prof, I destroyed Goon's remaining eyeball, causing his screams to reach an even greater volume.

I put #2 back on duty, to be sure I'd be centered if something surprising, and therefore distracting, happened.

#1: <Now what the fuck can we do? We need to permanently deal with Goon before he calms down enough to attack us by feel.>

#3: <Maybe we could slide that piece of wood to us, lift one end up into our hand so we'd be physically supporting most of it's weight, then use it to bash Goon with NP helping when he gets close enough.>

#4: <It'll hurt him a bit, but that's all. We can keep poking him in the eyeball sockets. That should hurt like hell and will hopefully keep his hands up to protect his face rather than attacking us. We can tap him on the shoulder, trip him up, hit him with our flying ring, and stuff like that to keep him off balance for a long time. But that's just stalling stuff. It might be better to try to steer him into the other room so he can't physically attack us.>

I caught a peripheral flicker of movement in the doorway. It was Boss, crouching around the doorframe with a pistol in his hand, aimed toward me. That massively discouraged me from poking him in the eye. Boss looked to be cautious and in control, so there was no need for me to do anything immediately.

I was debating how to get him to point his gun elsewhere, and to keep it pointing that way while I destroyed both his eyes, when Prof yelled, "DON'T SHOOT! Tom's hemorrhaged. Bad temper. Blood pressure. Call 9-1-1." Prof was talking in short sentences because our mouths were so dry that talking was difficult. Especially for him, by the sound of his voice.

"Yeah, right!"

Goon responded to Prof's statements by calling out, "I can't fuckin' see! My eyes hurt like fuck." In a self-pitying tone, "I'm blind, Dom. My face's wet. Somethin' fuckin' bad happened."

Dom didn't react to our hearing his name. He said, "Stay there. I'm comin'."

Boss cautiously edged into the room, gun at the ready. He circled wide around me, keeping his eyes on both of us. He got to the piece of wood, picked it up, and used it to reach under my chair from behind to prod the chains, to make sure they were securely padlocked to the ringbolt. I was naked with the chain wrapped around my waist and both forearms, so it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going anywhere.

He repeated the exercise with Prof, then moved to the far side of Tom. Putting the wood down beside him, but retaining his hold on the gun in one hand, he used his free hand to start trying to get Tom to remove his hands from his face.

#1: <Damn, he didn't put it down! Does anyone know what that gun's likely to weigh? Could we pick it up with NP and zoom it out of there fast enough for him not to catch it?>

#4: <I don't know if we could even pick it up, let alone achieve anything close to a "zoom". There's the weight of the bullets too, whatever they weigh. It's nearly all metal, so it's got to weigh quite a lot.>

#2: <I don't know either, but I'd sure like to get it off him. Our getting it solves a lot of problems.>

#1: <We don't want to hold it in our hands if we can avoid it, because of fingerprints, and if we fire it I think we get some sort of gunpowder on us which the cops can detect. If we need to fire it, let's try to be holding it away from us with NP.>

#2: <If he puts it down, I guess it won't be so heavy that we can't pick it up, but I doubt we'll be able to zoom it. We'll need to distract him. It'll need to be a good distraction too, because his first reaction will be to grab for the gun.>

While we were discussing possible distractions, we looked at Prof, who saw me looking and signaled, "GET GUN" to me. I nodded back.

Boss got Goon to move his hands away, giving Boss a horrible shock.

Goon heard Boss's reaction, "What happened? What can you see?"

Before Boss could answer, I half-strength poked Goon in both eye sockets at the same time, using two minds on each.

Goon screamed again, his hands flying to his eye, and his body thrashing around.

Boss gave us a quick glance, saw we were no threat, and carefully put his gun down on the floor, pointing it diagonally at the wall. It was to his right, on the side farthest from us. Then he bent forward to check his friend.

I could see the gun, which removed one of my major fears. Boss's care in how he angled it presumably meant the safety was off, which had been another of my worries. I've never fired a gun, but I know they have some sort of safety switch; I just didn't know where or how, and I didn't want to have to fly the gun back to me so I could fiddle around working out how to change it. I might not have the luxury of that much time.

I had a major choice to make over how many of Boss's eyes to pop before trying to take the gun. I could try to do both his eyes first, but that might give him time to grab for the gun. Or I could try to sneak the gun away first, which would be great, if it was successful. Or I could do one eye and then go for the gun as a midway option.

Boss was kneeling on the other side of Goon, which meant he was more or less facing me. One issue was in which direction to move the gun. If I moved it behind him, I might get it clean away without him seeing it, especially if it was fairly light, but if he chased after it, he'd be looking away from me making his eyes safe. Alternatively, if I moved the gun toward me to keep his eyes in sight if he chased after it, then he'd see it moving.

Getting the gun was the most important, because that gave me two ways of attacking him, and left him with no ways of attacking us in the time I'd give him.

A lot depended on the weight of the gun. It could be too heavy to lift with NP, permitting Boss to retain it. That implied blinding him was the best idea, except that if he was blind but still had the gun, he could still kill, quite easily once he settled down enough to think. I was too scared to try to weigh the gun by using NP on it now, because if it made even one scratching sound on the concrete Boss might pick it up.

Prof called out to Boss, "How bad?"

Boss ignored Prof, continue to try to calm down Goon. That wasn't going to be easy because Goon was pretty freaked out.

I decided on what I was going to do, including hoping like hell that the gun wasn't too heavy to NP away. Or, at the VERY worst, that it wasn't so heavy that I couldn't roll it along the floor while I screamed my head off to cover the sound of its movement.

I had a choice of two suitable objects for the first action I needed to do, either my ring, or the finger it'd came off. Given Boss's position, the ring was the most out of sight, so I lifted it all the way to just below the ceiling, then flew it so it was at ceiling height and just behind directly over his head.

I was collecting myself to get ready to poke Boss's right eye when Prof called again, "I know medicine. We do deal for my help."

"Shut the fuck up!"

I didn't want Boss to get so angered by Prof's distraction that he grabbed the gun and shot us both, so I was about to poke his eye, when I had a cute little idea. There was no time to think about it so I created the NP effect of feet walking heavily (for NP) across that part of Goon's ankle that I could see.

Boss was kneeling next to Goon's head, on the side of Goon away from us. Conveniently Goon's feet extended to the Boss's left, roughly toward us and away from the gun.

Goon immediate jerked both feet up, yelling, "Somethin's on my leg."

Boss had been looking at Prof, so Goon's leg had been in Boss's field of view. Boss hadn't seen anything move, so he knew nothing important was happening. At most a spider, and certainly nothing requiring the gun.

I NP'd some more heavy footsteps on Goons shin again.

"Get it off!" demanded Goon, reaching his own hands down.

Boss leaned forward to see what all the fuss was about.

I canceled the NP that was holding up the ring, so it started falling. I formed the eyeball popping spear, taking a couple of tenths of a second to let the ring get closer, then I rammed the spear into Boss's right eye.

Boss screamed and jerked back, his hands flying to his face.

My first three minds created multiple NP-points under the gun while #4 created a flash of a vaguely human-sized stack of dark red light blobs right beside Boss's left side moving rapidly behind him. #4 canceled the blobs, then created an NP-point which poked Boss on the left of his neck at about the same time as the ring fell in front of his face (I'd intended for the ring to confuse him by landing heavily on his head, but it'd missed because Boss had leaned farther back than I'd expected).

Hoping that Boss would think he was in combat with some guy who was to his left and already on top of him, I yelled, "CUT DOM'S THROAT!" That should keep him occupied for a while.

#4 had performed the human-shaped blob movement and the neck tap very quickly, so it could join in with the task of moving the gun, as I'd thought #4's services might be essential if the gun was heavy.

I'd previously decided to start by sending the gun straight up. There were three reasons:

1. It was the easiest for me, as I didn't need to play around allocating fingertips between lifting and pushing. Every NP-point of the three minds went into lifting, and they just, 'went for it'!

2. It was the quickest way for me to get it out of Boss's reach. A kneeling guy could leap after it if I sent it sideways, maybe extending his grabbing range to six feet or so horizontally. But he couldn't leap that far upward. By the time Boss got to his feet, I would've accelerated the gun even farther away (acceleration causes distance covered to rapidly increase).

3. I expected Boss to make a lunge for the gun shortly. When he did I was going to let the gun fall while I poked his remaining eyeball. Blindness, gravity and pain would almost certainly cause his lunge to miss, especially because immediately after the eyeball popped I'd start max-accelerating the gun sideways away from him, letting it fall and curve away from where he last saw it.

Events unfolded somewhat differently than I'd expected.

By the time #4 was ready to join in helping move the gun, it was already accelerating upward GLORIOUSLY, because the gun was WAY lighter than I'd thought it'd be. It weighed slightly less than one mind could lift, so three minds were able to accelerate it upward at about 2 g's. In the quarter second we'd had so far, we'd lifted the gun TWO FEET! That may not sound like much, but it's HUGE! You won't appreciate the significance of that as well as I do, not having had my enormous experience with accelerating things around with NP, but two feet in the first quarter second means another six feet in the next quarter second, making eight feet in total. The gun would reach the ceiling in less time than it'd take Boss to even start to react, let alone manage to achieve anything useful. Since Prof's and my lives were at stake, getting the gun two feet up in the first quarter second was an abso-fucking-lutely marvelous surprise.

Colliding with the ceiling might fire the gun randomly, so every mind changed position to start pushing the gun toward me at 4 g's, letting gravity slow its rise, by which time it'd be three times higher than it was now, i.e., 6 feet. (I'd accelerated it upward at 2 g; it'd decelerate at 1 g, so it would rise a further twice as much as its current two feet before it started falling). Six feet high was well out of Boss's vertical reach. Not only would the gun be six feet high after another half a second, but at a 4 g sideways acceleration it'd be 4 feet away horizontally and already heading my way far faster than Boss could get after it. (With all the practice I've had, these calculations are intuitive, just like for you when you catch a ball. When I use NP, or when you catch a ball, neither of us does physics calculations; but I'm putting numbers in this text so you can visualize the situation. In reality I simply knew that two feet in the first quarter second meant I OWNED this gun!)

Two seconds later Boss - in pain and massively surprised - was just finishing his predictable sequence of actions. He'd floundered around for his attacker, found nothing; lunged for the gun, found more nothing; looked frantically around the area for it, realized it was well and truly gone; then look at us as he was leaping to his feet, trying to understand what was happening.

I had the gun hovering about five feet away from me so I wouldn't get any gunpowder on me when it fired, and it was on the same side of me as Boss was, so if he lunged for the gun, he wouldn't be coming near to Prof or me.

I wanted to know whether the gun would fire, to check whether the safety was on and whether it had any bullets in it. I greatly feared it wasn't loaded because of its lightness. If it was loaded, I wanted to fire to get Boss's attention and his surrender as I had a REALLY important job for him: unlocking our chains! The choice of what to fire at was easy, since I wanted Goon dead. He was too big, too violent, too stupid, and totally surplus to requirements. Plus I wasn't going to leave any witnesses alive anyway, not after their experiencing bursting eyeballs and one of them seeing an impossibly flying gun. All of my objectives were neatly achieved by my pointing the gun at Goon and pulling the trigger.

I was smart enough to realize that pulling the trigger would affect the gun's orientation, so I pulled it by slowly increasing the pushing force on the trigger, while increasing the compensating force on the barrel to hold it on target. I didn't expect my aim to be wonderful, as the gun was to my side, so I was simply aiming at the middle of Goon. I didn't mind if it took a few shots to kill him later, just so long as I found out that the gun worked and Goon was incapacitated now.