The Law of Nines

As soon as he did, before he could open his mouth to say a word, Bethany lifted her arm, pointed a gun at his chest, and pulled the trigger.

15.

BEFORE ALEX WAS ABLE TO DODGE more than a few inches to the side, the gun went off.

At the same time that he heard the bang, it felt like a bolt of lightning slammed into him. Instant, overwhelming pain drove out a scream.

Every muscle in his body abruptly went rigid. It was all so sudden that he couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He knew he’d been hit, but he couldn’t tell where. Paralyzed by a shock of enormous force clamping down on him, his body wouldn’t respond to his wishes.

Alex toppled backward. Try as he might, he couldn’t even lift an arm to break his fall. Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter.

As he fell back he saw twin coils of fine wire unspool from the gun.

It wasn’t a regular gun, he realized, but a Taser. As he shuddered under the grip of the pain, it seemed that it might as well have been a regular gun. He was surprised that, despite the agony that made his body unresponsive, his mind worked.

Bethany stepped into the room to stand over him.

Alex could hear himself screaming in unendurable agony, but he could do nothing other than endure it.

He’d had time to move only inches before she’d pulled the trigger. One of the steel darts had stuck in his left pectoral muscle. At the same time the other dart, going lower by design in order to spread the electrical charge through the largest muscle mass, had firmly lodged in his lower abdomen. All his muscles had cramped iron stiff with all-consuming pain. It felt like a mountain was crushing him.

Regular stun guns caused pain. Because he had no control of his body, he knew that it wasn’t one of those older models, but one of the newer Shaped Pulse generators. The way they interrupted muscle control in addition to causing pain was enough to take down an angry bull. He could hear the snapping, clicking sound of the electrical discharges.

There was nothing he wanted more than for the torment to stop.

After a five-second eternity, it finally did.

When the voltage abruptly cut off, the pain also vanished. When it did, Alex lay on his back, panting, trying to recover not just from the physical ordeal but the sudden shock of it. Mere moments ago he had been absorbed in painting the quiet beauty of a forest scene. Now he was flat on his back, disoriented, trying to catch his breath, and scared out of his wits.

He knew that a Taser could deliver countless hits. He moved his arms a little just to make sure he could, but not enough to look threatening. At that point, he didn’t know what Bethany was capable of. He saw that she still had her finger on the trigger. With the darts already stuck in him, she had but to pull the trigger to deliver another charge. Until he decided what to do, he thought it best to do nothing and let her think he wasn’t going to put up a fight.

Glaring flashes of lightning illuminated her figure standing over him. When the bright flashes flickered out and the rumble of thunder died away, only the faint light of the streetlamp off through the rain beyond the open door softly lit the curving edge of her figure.

“Hello, Alex,” she said in a silky voice.

Alex thought that she looked remarkably calm. She looked like she had complete control and knew it.

“Bethany, what do you think . . .”

Two big men stepped out of the dark night and through the open doorway into his living room. A few cracks of lightning backlit wisps of vapor, like mist rising into the humid night air off the heat of their hulking forms.

Alex didn’t recognize the men, but they certainly looked like a nightmare come out of such a night. He noticed that, despite the rain, none of the three was wet.

“Now, Alex,” Bethany said, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll be a good boy and not cause me any trouble—you’ve already caused me enough. If you’re good, I think you will find this far more pleasurable than you ever imagined.” She flashed him a self-satisfied smile. “And I bet you have imagined it often enough.”

Alex couldn’t make sense of what she was talking about. He wondered if a Taser could scramble a person’s mind. He didn’t think so. Everything else seemed ordered and logical. Up was up, down was down. He recognized her. It was only what she said that didn’t fit into any context.

Bethany glanced briefly at the men. “Get him into a bedroom.”

Alex couldn’t imagine what in the world Bethany and the two men intended to do with him. But whatever they intended, he had no illusions that it was going to be anything other than bad. He wondered if Bethany, in her anger over his rejection of her, had hired a couple of thugs to beat him senseless.

He wondered if it could be something worse than a beating. He wondered if she intended for them to murder him.

Such a vendetta carried to the point of violence would be absurd, but people did absurd things all the time.