Minnows In The Shallows - Part I

 

Part I: Party In The USA

It was 7pm and James was sitting in a booth in the diner that he’d been frequenting lately, nursing a cup of black coffee. His head was killing him, he was sweating profusely, and he felt freezing cold despite being in a small southwestern town at the ass end of summer and wearing a denim jacket. James was at the end of a hardcore bender, one that he wasn’t even sure you could recover from.  

He knew the name of the town he was in, Rancin. And he knew that the name of the diner he was in, simply called ‘Diner’, but had no idea what state Rancin was in. He’d been wandering the country for a while now-Weeks? Months? He couldn’t remember- a drug fueled trip around and right through the heart of America. 

Rancin was in the southwest, he knew that much. How could one think otherwise? It was a dusty little strip of land surrounded by desert. Calling it a town was being generous. There was the diner (DINER in big bold weathered letters on it’s rusted out chrome and wood exterior), a gas station, a motel and a general store that dotted a quarter mile strip of the freeway-was it 66? 59? He couldn’t remember-and in the distance one could see several houses, presumably situated on several gravely cracked and aged blacktop roadways that snaked off the main highway, like the dark legs of a tremendous spider.

Exactly how James had found his way to this sad sack town in the desert he didn’t know, but he did know how it all started. He was living with his father after flunking out of his 3rd semester of college. James wasn’t a bad student, but all the partying he did in college had gotten in the way. He had barely hung on his freshman year and it all caught up to him by his sophomore. He moved back home to his father’s lavish three story home in Montclair, NJ.

He was mad at James, most certainly, but the old man’s fury was subdued by his narcissism and hubris. James was Mark Norton’s son, and Mark Norton was a winner. No, a GOD DAMNED winner. His son, by proxy, was a winner too. The kid was just going through a rough period. Mark reminisced to his son, after giving James a what for once he was informed of his son’s collegiate failure, that even he, the great Mark Norton, had failed a semester of college due to hard partying. He knew his son would pull it together. He WAS a Norton afterall.

Of course, Mark would never see his son “pull it together,” not only because James had no interest in anything other than partying, but because Mark would drop dead of a ruptured aneurysm shortly after his son’s homecoming. A combination of decades of cocaine abuse and a 9-5 job on Wall St that was usually more like a 7-10 job proved to be the catalyst.

James inherited all his father’s money due to his father having a tendency of driving all friends and family members away from him with his violent temper and overbearing and obnoxious personality. The first thing James did was throw a kegger. 

He invited every person he knew at college in addition to all of his high school friends that still lived in the area. Naturally, all his friends brought friends and it quickly spiralled out of control. Miraculously the police were never called, mainly due to the dense distribution of trees between plots of land in the area muffling the sound somewhat, and it being summer and many of the neighbors being away on obscenely expensive vacations.

James woke up the day after the kegger on the floor of the living room of the immense house drenched in what smelled like dried piss and beer and laying in a shallow puddle of what he could only assume was his own vomit. He sat up and a wave of nausea passed over him and he knew he would puke if he didn’t get two things quick: alcohol and something greasy. 

He found the closest alcoholic drink he could, which turned out to be a glass of vodka mixed with Sprite, a cigarette butt floating in it. He picked the butt out and chugged the liquid, it turned out to be mostly vodka and burned harshly going down. It sated his nausea and perked him up a bit, enough to stand up and survey the carnage around him. 

The room was a mess: furniture had been moved, almost every piece being lopsided. Someone had torn apart one of the couches, quite literally. Cushions littered the floor and stuffing billowed off several of them like fog in a monster movie. A lamp was on it’s side, the bulb shattered. Drinks were scattered everywhere, as were cigarettes, some smoked, some unsmoked. 

Among the debris were four bodies. Two he could identify, two he could not. His best friend from high school, Jake (whom he found out the previous night before getting wasted had decided not to go to college and instead work at a gas station pump), was on his back on the floor, head propped on one of those destroyed couch cushions, hands crossed on his chest, snoring softly. His best friend from college, Rick, was laying on the cushionless couch curled up in the fetal position, saliva dripping from his open mouth onto his arm. Although he wasn’t snoring, he would occasionally twitch and snort.

The other two, the ones he didn’t know, were a man and a woman. The man must’ve been in his 50s, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room against the wall, he had a crop of scraggly gray hair and a gray mustache and mutton chops. The woman was about James’ age, a young and pretty blonde, makeup smeared, sitting in an armchair with her head over its back, mouth open and pointing at the ceiling.

James nudged Jake with his dirty sneaker and the kid woke with a start. He looked around the room, confusion written on his face, then looked up at his old friend, a smile spreading.

“Dude…” he said.

“I know,” James replied.

Jake wiped his mouth with his t-shirt sleeve and then rubbed a sleepy eye with his hand. “What’re you gonna do?”

James shrugged. “Let’s wake the rest of them up, I need to eat something or I’ll puke,” he said, motioning to his other guests.

Together they went around the room. First they woke Rick, who promptly shouted “Oh god!” and ran from the room, presumably to find a suitable place to throw up. Then they woke the old stranger. They found out his name was Trevor and he was a friend of a friend of a friend. He’d didn’t seem hungover, but he stank of hard liquor and unfiltered cigarettes. Then, three strong at this point they went to wake the girl, but they couldn’t. Jake shook her by the shoulders, softly at first, then stronger. Getting annoyed, James grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet where she fell face down in a crumple on the floor, a trickle of foamy vomit formed under her head. 

That’s when Jake voiced what they were all thinking. “Uh, I think she, uh, might be dead.”

As they deliberated what to do Rick stumbled back into the room, a beer in hand. “Hey, what’s going on?” he said, turned to Trevor and pointed with the hand holding the beer, “Who’s this guy.”

“Does anyone know her?” James asked and took a look around the room at the other faces. None of them did. He then walked to the couch where a small pink purse sat. He picked it up and rifled through it. Inside was enough room for a few cards, some cash ($120 in small bills) and a cell phone, all of which he pocketed. He pulled out a driver’s license, the purse belonged to the dead girl alright. Veronica Montague. The name didn’t ring a bell. He dropped the purse on her. A muffled nasally “Hey” came from the girl, and Jake breathed a sigh of relief.

“Alright, good. She’s not dead. Let’s go get some food, I feel like I’m gonna die,” James said.

“Right,” Rick replied as he slurped up the last of his beer and dropped the empty can on the floor.

They left the house and piled into James’ BMW, which was a gift from his dear old dad on his 17th birthday. They drove to the nearest diner and feasted on eggs, pancakes, grits and meat. They all stayed quiet while eating, concentrating on getting the sloppy, greasy food down to kill the sickness that was tearing at their intestines and heads. After they all finished, Rick was the first to speak.

“What now?” He asked

“I dunno,” James replied. “Whatever we want. I got fat stacks from my dad. We can just keep fucking partying for the rest of the summer if we want.”

“I got a better idea,” Trevor interrupted, leaning over the table, glancing back and forth between them. “Let’s take a road trip.”

“Are you fucking kidding old man?” Jake spoke. “I’m not taking a road trip with you.”

“Then go fuck yourself you pissant!” Trevor yelled.

“Whoa, relax, the both of you,” James said, putting a hand lightly on each of their shoulders. He turned to Trevor. “What did you have planned?”

“Well...I got a friend in pee aye, up in the mountains. He’s got some grass that he was gonna give me for super cheap, thought maybe you boys might wanna come along, get a little wild.”

A toothy grin spread across James’ face. “Alright, that sounds rad. What the fuck are we waiting for? You down?” he asked, pointing to Rick.

Rick sat back in his chair, a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. “Always,” he answered.

“What about you?” James motioned to Jake.

Jake sighed and looked at the floor. “Fuck it. I don’t gotta be at work for another couple days anyway.”

“Alright!” James shouted, pumping his fists in the air. The entire diner stopped and stared. “Let’s get outta here!”

James paid the check with Veronica’s stolen money and they all piled back into his BMW and started heading west for Pennsylvania.

It had been a couple of hours, and a stop off at a hole in the wall liquor store on the way, when Trevor slapped James’ knee a few times, pointing to the right of the road where there were seemingly endless trees that the headlights of his car ricocheted off of.

“It’s up here, the driveway. Slow down or you’ll miss it,” Trevor slurred.

He wasn’t wrong. A moment later James slammed on his breaks, only noticing the turn off by the car’s headlights illuminating an ancient mailbox barely sticking out of a bramble thicket. He put his blinker on and slowly turned up the driveway

It felt like ages that they were driving up the overgrown and unpaved driveway, dry primeval tree branches periodically scraping against the car’s finish and making unbearable screeching sounds. Eventually out of the woods rose a giant victorian style house. If it were day time James might have remarked to himself about how it was clearly in a state of disrepair, that it looked unlived in, he might've even turned his car around, scraping off more of the finish of his relatively new car attempting to turn around on such a narrow road. But at night all of that was hidden, the peak of the house only looking like an obsidian dagger piercing a grey and lonely sky.

James parked on what used to be the front yard of the house, now only dirt and rubble, parallel to a white windowless Astro Van and an El Camino. As the 4 men got out of the car James started to notice the details of the house. The porch was rickety and several of the steps leading up to it were missing, the railings surrounding the porch falling off on the left side of the stairs and completely nonexistent on the right. The large oval window in the center of the front door cracked in half, the top part missing and the bottom part filthy with soot or dust, crystalline no more as it once had been. Most worrying of all, not a single window was lit up in the entire house.

James turned to Trevor to ask if this was the right place but the man was already 20 feet ahead of him, walking to the porch.

“Uh, hey, Trevor, man,” James said in a low shout. “You sure about this? It doesn’t look like anyone’s lived here in ages.”

Trevor stopped in his tracks and did an about face. “Hell yeah, man! This is the place!”

James looked at his friends and they were already looking at him, the same confused look on their faces. “What’dya guys think?” James asked 

There was a pause.

“I mean...we came all this way,” Rick said in a hushed tone, not dissimilar to that of a child trying to convince his mother to give him a cookie. Jake said nothing.

James licked his parched lips and ran a hand through his close cropped hair. He had built up a buzz on the beer they had bought that liquor store while he was driving and now it was fading fast and the long tendrils of a waking hangover were starting to grip his head. He hated that feeling, he needed some intoxicants.

Just then Trevor shouted “Hey guys, let’s get the fuck moving! They’re gonna run out if we don’t get in there soon,” punctuating the last sentence with a single dry, sharp cackle that could've easily been mistaken for a cough.

James reluctantly started walking towards the house, his friends following behind him as if they were in a daze. When the four men reached the front door Trevor knocked 3 times with the side of his fist, a hollow, booming report after each knock.

DUNG...DUNG...DUNG

He paused, turning his ear to the door, and waited a moment. There was silence.

James opened his mouth to voice his concern but before he could make a sound Trevor shouted “Alright, we’re good. Let’s go!” turned the doorknob  and they were in the house.

The interior was no less shabby than the exterior, but at least it looked lived in. Old furniture, some of it covered by white tarps, was dispersed throughout the room they were in, a metal garbage can overflowing with take out containers, potato chip bags, and beer cans sat next to a table with a high end multimedia laptop on it, a free standing industrial work light illuminated the room.. 

“Welcome home, fellas,” Trevor said from the relative darkness of the unkempt foyer, a shit eating grin plastered on his greasy face.

“So...is someone here,” James asked. “I mean, I know you knocked, but I didn’t hear..”

Rick cut him off then. “Man, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m ready to get fucked up! Where’s your guy at?”  

“Right this way,” Trevor said, doing a come hither motion as he walked into a darkened room to the right. 

The three friends looked at each other, Rick shrugged and was the first through the door, with the other two reluctantly following after.

CRACK!

The door slammed shut behind them and bright, blinding lights came on in the same instant. 

“Lace your fingers behind your head. Don’t try anything stupid, we’ve got guns trained on you,” a voice said from behind them. 

They did as they were told. One by one the boys had their hands zip tied behind their backs, James cursing himself their entire time. Of course this was a sting operation. A guy shows up to your party promising cheap drugs? How could you be so stupid?! 

After the three had their hands secured behind them & they kneeled at the request of their captors was when James’ eyes adjusted to the light and he noticed the room. It was about 20” x 20”, gilded fleur de lis wallpaper peeled from the walls in strips, sticky and wet looking from years of moisture. Cigarette tar and unknown stains covered it. Four stainless steel cages sat in each corner of the room.

James felt his stomach sink. This was worse than cops.

“Listen, man. I got a lot of money, but my pops is dead. You can ransom me but…” James stuttered but was cut off by the same deep and raspy, yet calm, voice coming from behind him.

“I’m gonna stop you there, we’re not ransoming you. I have no idea who you even are nor do I care.”

The man who belonged to the voice strolled from behind the boys. He was tall with a slim muscular build. He wore khaki work pants, steel toe black Dr. Martens, and a plain black t-shirt, his medium length slicked back salt and pepper hair, and matching salt and pepper beard, framed his weathered, tan face. He could’ve been in his 60s, but the way he comported himself made James think he was at least a decade younger.

He crouched in front of the boys and spoke. “My name is Garreth. I would shake your hands, but you seem a little indisposed at the moment.” A faint smirk graced Garreth’s face and left as quickly as it had come.

“I gotta tell you, you guys are in a lot of trouble. Probably, nay, definitely, more trouble than you've ever been in. The next couple of days are going to be the hardest of your life. You’re going to have some terrible things happen to you. You may even do some terrible things. But you gotta keep in mind, we’re partners in this endeavor. If you guys play it cool, don’t try anything dumb and we’ll make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Rick spewed. “What ‘endeavor’? Have you lost you fucking mind?! We came here for weed and now we’re in business with you? This how you treat all your partners?! Fucking untie us, man! Then maybe we’ll talk”

Garreth stood with a sigh and in a single fluid motion kicked Rick in the face, catching him right below the chin. Rick doubled over onto the floor, a thin stream of blood and saliva flying through the air and splattering on the filthy ground. Facedown, Rick sobbed wheezingly, several teeth hit the ground with a tinkling pitter patter sound, like someone trying to play a piano with all its strings cut

Garreth turned back to James and Jake who were silent in their shock. He pulled a pack of filterless Pall Malls out of his pocket, pulled a cigarette from the pack with his teeth and lit it with a brass Zippo produced from his other pocket. He took a long drag from the cigarette, sighing as he exhaled. Rick moaned rhythmically into the floor.

“See,” Garreth pointed at Rick as he spoke. “Something like that shouldn’t happen again if you guys just stay. fucking. Cool.”

He took another drag from his cigarette.

“Wha-wha-wha…” Jake stammered, slowly coming to his senses.

“What is going to happen to you? What am I talking about? Something along those lines? Even though you can’t get the words out, understandably so, I can already tell you’re more eloquent than your shitbird friend over there bleeding out of his gob right now,” Garreth said, as he examined his Pall Mall, leisurely spinning it between his thumb and forefinger. He took another drag and spoke as he exhaled, “I can also already tell that you’re smarter than him and aren’t going to give me or my cohorts any more trouble.” Garreth motioned past the boys 

How many of them are there? James wondered, panicked by the thought. He knew for sure of Trevor and Garreth, but were there more?

Just then Jake started wailing, crying with the ferocity of a small child, snot and tears running down his face nearly instantaneously. Garreth grimaced and rubbed his temples. “Will you gag him, please,” he said. “I can’t fucking think.” 

A man came from behind the boys. He was of slight build and wore overalls over a flannel shirt, a ratty looking Coors Light trucker cap adorned his head, stringy, greasy sandy blonde hair poured out from under it, nearly touching his shoulders. His upper lip obscured by a horseshoe mustache. He forced a formerly white rag, now splotchy with brown and black spots, into Jake’s struggling mouth, tying a rope around his head to keep it in place. Defeated, Jake’s still kneeling body crumpled, face pointed toward the floor.

Garreth took a final drag off his cigarette and snubbed it out under his toe. He squatted again, this time exclusively facing James.

“What’s your name?”

“Juh-juh-James,” James stammered.

“James, I’m gonna talk to you and only you now. You’re clearly a smart boy, brains of the operation it seems. You and me, we’re a lot alike. I’m the brains of my operation, too.” He motioned then to the men standing behind James. “Not that they’re not good at what they do, they are, but people like me and you, we’re big picture guys. We’re the idea men, we make the plans, y’know what I mean?”

James nodded even though he had no idea what he was agreeing to.

“So, as I was saying before I was interrupted,” Garreth continued. “Basically what we’re going to be doing is making a few films right here in this house. Not in this room, of course, we have a film set down in the basement. You’ll be rooming up here and when we shoot you’ll be brought downstairs. It shouldn’t be more than a couple days, and then the three of you will be out of here. Got it?”

James’ head was swimming. Films? This guy couldn’t be serious.

“What...what kind of films?” James asked timidly.

Garreth looked at the floor and pursed his lips for a moment. He looked back at James. “James...you like pornos?”

James instinctively nodded his head. He had a subscription to Bang Bros. since he had sprouted his first pubic hair. His father had seen to it.

“Well,” Garreth continued, “you’re gonna be in one. Possibly a couple depending on how much time we have this weekend.” 

To Be Continued...