Ransom X Read online



  Ransom X

  I. B. Holder

  Ransom X

  Copyright 2009 I. B. Holder

  All Rights Reserved

  Special thanks to Jenna for her skills, time, and generosity.

  *******

  Prologue

  A group of men took their positions around a young woman. They wore colored costumes all shades of the rainbow. From afar with bright stage lights burning around them, this pinwheel effect made it look like the set of a children’s show. Up close, however, it was pornography. Not the polite kind that connoisseurs of Playboy imagined the Hooters’ girls engaging in on their off days. It was the kind that made them flinch, quickly look away, and then more often than not, look back again.

  On the woman’s face was a mask that looked like a boxer’s training helmet. She was on all fours on top of a wooden crate, wrapped in a skimpy leatherette costume that suggested the sluttiest side of biker chic along with the sensibility of washable attire. This business was not the place for any natural materials or fibers.

  A single wall-mounted speaker in the room crackled into life through a charge of static and feedback. The intercom cast out a voice with a sadistic quality, stripping words down into metallic fragments. If the voice had either warmth or breath when it left the lips of the person speaking into the microphone, it was long gone by the time it entered the room through the frayed mesh speaker cover. It sent chills down the girl’s spine as she looked at the one-way glass separating her from the speaker in the control booth. She had come to think of the “Controller” as the local representative of Hell on earth.

  “We’re live in ten seconds.” It didn’t sound like a threat, but the men dressed in the costumes reacted as if it were.

  They scurried into position around the girl, her eyes darting everywhere looking for a seam in reality where she might escape; it was impossible, like trying to focus on individual raindrops, never quite settling on one before the opportunity vanished. The men all wore vinyl coverings, painted onto their fat or slender, squat or tall bodies sinking into the folds or pulling over the muscles like a second skin. The purple one spoke to her in a growl.

  “This is something in the business we call sky diving.” They pulled her into a position where her legs and arms were spread out like a skydiver’s, her stomach resting on the crate. “It’s supposed to be a real trip, but real pleasurable for the men.” A grin widened across his violet face. “Isn’t that always the way it is?”

  As soon as the intercourse started, he kicked the crate out from under her and she hung suspended, she was now ‘sky diving’.

  The yellow one spoke, “I actually heard from a girl that this wasn’t that bad.”

  Green responded, “I don’t care what your mother told you.”

  Their laughter filled the room. The girl’s eyes began to water. The true professionals in the industry learned how to relieve the strain by shifting some of their weight onto the stomach of the man angled beneath, but this girl was no professional.

  In fact, up until two weeks ago she hadn’t even seen images like the one she was currently caught up in, except on a television screen at a frat party in college. She was way out of place, out of her depth back then; how far and foreign from any depth she felt now. She was an unwilling participant, having been abducted ten days before, as she was returning home from a rally. She had been protesting the unethical treatment of animals. The irony was not lost on this sharp graduate student. She tried to find further meaning in what was happening to her, but her mind quickly slipped back into the body’s hell. The laughter all around her made her retreat further inside where her boiling anger was a ruby contrast to the fading white pale of her skin.

  A barked command from the speaker, and the levity was turned off, a tap gone suddenly dry as the metallic voice re-entered the room. “Shut your fucking mouths - everyone who can. The audience doesn’t want to see your mouths moving.”

  The controller knew what the audience wanted. He was the one behind the glass, the mastermind of a sustainable, profitable abduction scheme of which the financial rewards were approaching the point of unbelievable. He was also almost completely anonymous, or so he believed, as he sat behind a bank of monitors skimming the camera angles along the girl’s body. He watched all of the monitors at once. He somehow always knew what men wanted to see, his lean fingers punched the keys on a control panel, switching between cameras and broadcasting the images to his waiting customers.

  He glanced at an open web page where the action in front of him came streaming across the net on a ten second delay. This was not a simple abduction; it was a marketing enterprise. The tender was sex, fear and pain - who could possibly get enough? A glint in the eye of the controller hinted at an internal deception - he was careful not to let himself identify which of the elements of his sex show he most preferred. The acid in his throat threatened to come up into his mouth when he spoke to the “actors” in the room. He kept them moving just like the cameras. The audience loved change.

  The broadcast he was producing was on transmit only and to protected sources, making the direct risk of discovery slight. He’d considered the statistical probability of getting caught and his estimates fed his arrogance. He wasn’t a kidnapper. The controller didn’t demand ransom for the girl’s return; there was no drop, and nothing to be traced back to them.

  The ransom came from the accounts of the perverts of the world. Nobody ever went broke marketing to that segment of society. The controller punched up another one of the websites that marketed his video feed; live in progress, for ten dollars or DVD compilation of 24 hours for fifteen. The webmaster had gone so far as to post a scan of the police report of the abduction alongside the target goal or ransom at which the girl would be released. A graphic indicated the ransom progress, and right now, she was at 65 percent. She’d started out strong, and sales from her hometown drove her into the territory of twenty percent after a few days, but business had slacked off recently.

  The man in the booth knew why; the girl was angry, always requiring forced situations. There was only so much market for that. People wanted to see her change.

  He zoomed the camera shot in on her eyes. She hadn’t changed since she’d walked in that room for the first time. Anger, unfiltered by the mask of civility, burned in her eyes. He was as tired of her anger as the customers were, but instead of being frustrated, he practically quivered with anticipation. If she did not meet her ransom, she would be his. He would give her every chance, put her in every position to make the required amount of money, but he secretly wanted her to fail.

  Two hours later the girl stood in the room apparently alone, when an arm reached into the pool of light and slipped under her shoulder. She looked at him and threw her arms around him. “Blue.”

  Blue was not involved in the sex acts. For whatever reason, he was charged with taking care of the girls. He quieted her gently, adding, “You’re way behind dear, we need to do everything we can, there’s only two days left.” He saw her eyes sink inward, there was little left for her to give. He quickly corrected his course, “But we’ll do it. We’ll get you out early I predict.”

  “Really?” She brightened, “Where am I?”

  “Close.” A noise in the control room and she pulled closer to Blue, expecting the controller’s voice would uncoil and strike out at her like a snake. She kept her distance from the box speaker carving an arc shuffling toward the door.

  “Does he ever come out?”

  Blue looked at the mirrored glass with an odd look, “you don’t want him to.”

  She stood between him and the mirror cutting off his reflection and replacing his face with hers inches in front of him. “Thank you – for taking care of me.” She looked for a momen
t every bit as beautiful and innocent as the girl next door, provided that one lives in a neighborhood where there is a girl next door who has the time and resources to be wholesome and idealistic. They took a few halting steps for the door, then her body shook with a new thought. “Will I ever meet him?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and let the stray strands fall into her eyes.

  Blue clicked his teeth like he was urging on a horse, and smiled.

  As it turned out, she was fifteen percent below target on the last day of her captivity, and she did get to meet the man in the control room.

  Her body was found two days later after an anonymous tip. Her eyes remained fixed on an imaginary point far beyond where they could have seen, features etched in disbelief. Still beautiful, but angry no longer.