Rude Awakening 2 – Adrift and Aboard

I remember that I found the cloth covering me a bit harsh and I thought ‘Marty is playing games again?’, and then I realized that I hadn’t went to bed with a bra and that my breasts were getting a hard feeling with their contact with the... canvas?? Marty has gone too far this time. I was moving rhythmically and it took a while for me to realize that I was in a small boat, perhaps a canoe, which was on the water and was fully covered with a canvas.

‘OK Marty, you got even for last April Fool’s day!’, seriously, that’s what I was thinking when I decided to pull the top of the canvas so I could take a look around and see where I was. My mind was getting clearer and clearer now so I all needed was to take a good look around. I had already realized that I wasn’t in the sea thanks to my nose.

But I couldn’t lift any of my hands from behind me, they were trapped together in the small of my back... and when I tried to say ‘What the...’ it came out as ‘mmmppphhh?’. I was gagged and bound and half naked under a canvas, somewhere.

I had been kidnapped!

After the initial shock and useless panic, that almost got me hyperventilating, I tried to remember what had happened to me. Since there was no use on keeping my eyes open, the orange canvas barely let me know that it was still day out there, I closed them and focussed on what I remembered. It started to come back after a while.

Since this crisis started I never woke with Marty’s body next to me, my husband used to have a little above 16000 people working for him in six states and two European countries, but now he had a little less than 7000 in four states and tons of problems! He was working hard to keep the company afloat and the only thing that I, his former trophy wife and now best listener/friend/supporter and wife, could do to help him was to be out of the way. He married me only for my looks not my brain, we both knew that very well.

So I woke up, had a shower and went to the kitchen to have a breakfast right at the time that Jolene, my assistant/secretary/friend/keeper, was chatting with Aileen, my masseuse, while they had theirs. So it was Thursday, the day in which Aileen used her magic fingers on me.

Since it was summer, and we would all hang out by the pool in a matter of minutes, they were wearing bikinis while I was covered with a pink silk rob that hugged my body very seductively. Jolene and I grew up together in Chicago, I sort of ‘imported’ her to sunny CA when I got married, and while I always had the looks, she had the brains. Not that she was ugly, plain-jane or whatever. It’s just because I still am drop dead gorgeous...

But as I was saying, Jolene and I are two African American women of... (OK)... 37 years of age. She’s a couple of inches smaller than me, standing at 5’7”, and is about fifteen pounds heavier. She has to use glasses and always wear moderately conservative clothes, except on Thursdays in summer or hot days of course, has a Hulk of a boyfriend who’s doing service in Iraq and knows enough of self defense skills to my bodyguard if needed. She... was... wearing... the white with red dots two piece one that day.

Aileen was an Army brat whose father had spent too much time in the Orient, she knew more about the Japanese and Korean cultures than our own, which made her an interesting person to chat and be around. The fact that she was a permanently tanned brunette with killer legs and a nice pair of breasts put her into troubles more than helped her. She really was a masseuse, and not a ‘masseuse’, and more than one of her ex-clients (mostly men but also a few women) had to be introduced to her extensive knowledge of tae-kwon-do and carate to understand the difference... Me? I am a lousy boxer... good punch but lame speed.

Aileen was wearing her cherry red string two piece if I am not mistaken.

We chatted, Aileen showed her 7^th tattoo, and then she went down to business, by the pool. At the same time that she put the tan lotion all over me (I had then removed my robe lying on a towel by the pool with only a flimsy thong bikini cut panties to cover me), Aileen (who was inside the pool) was making me feel really good and relaxed. At the same time Jolene, lying down on a inflatable lounge in the middle of the pool, was discussing something with a guy called ‘Chuck’ on the phone when she stopped in mid sentence and something fell on the water (the glass with orange juice she was holding in her right hand).

Then I raised my her and together with Aileen, who had just got out of the water to grab more tan lotion inside the house, I looked at her... she was asleep?

Then I felt a stinging feeling on my left cheek...

And there I was.

I had been probably darted, then bound and then taken to... wherever I was now. I was a very small canoe, and I was starting to sweat. The air was hot and damp and it was easily 95° F outside, perhaps even 100° F, but that didn’t meant that I would have any slack on my bonds. They had wrapped tape over the rope! Ankles, above the knees, around my waist to trap the crossed and bound wrists and a weird pattern below, above and crisscrossing my breasts to help to trap my arms. And tape, lots of tape around my head and over all the knots. It was futile and completely useless to try to get free by myself.

But what else I could do?

As I writhed, tried to shift my position to a more endurable one and started to feel some cramps, I tried to remember if there was anything that could give me (and hopefully to the police when it would be all over) a clue about my kidnappers.

As I told before, I was Marty’s trophy wife. He wanted me first because of my 38-24-34 measurements and I wanted his wallet to get out of the model agency. Business deal plain and simple. He had many ‘one night only’ experiences and to be honest we soon got a bit more distant from each other than in the beginning, then he had a series of problems (both in his health and in his business) and... well... he still have some ‘fun’ but as long as he is discreet, use condoms and doesn’t bring their perfume home... and they have become very rare as the years passed. We might not be deeply in love, more like a little above best friends, but he would not leave me behind in their clutches, whoever they were.

I couldn’t remember anything after the stinging feeling, nor could remember any change in Marty’s behavior that could indicate that the usual bottom of the sea pressure he was enduring for the past months had suddenly become very personal, as in that ‘I’ (who once got lost in his building when I tried to make a surprise visit for him and was a complete dead weight when it came to talk about his businesses) had become part of the pressure.

We had a good security system that hadn’t been suddenly improved, no one had been hired to become my official bodyguard and I hadn’t received any weird or threatening letters, e-mails or phone calls. Actually things were starting to get better, FINALLY!, and he was even talking about re-opening a few facilities here and there...

No, no warning signs whatsoever.

In the middle of the futile struggle I felt something, something like a pull, from under me. The canoe barely moved, but it did go down an inch or two, against the wave movement, and then it shifted back to its former position. And I resumed my struggles.

After a couple of hours I gave up... and then it happened. A shoot-out!!!

First three shots in quick sequence, then a cacophony of shots, some very foul words being shouted (one of them was a offensive form to refer to Latinos, the one of the few clues I have of my savior), then... a car was trying to get away from outside where I was (?), I heard a door being opened and the engine being started... then an explosion.

Yeah I know, too ‘hollywoodsie’... but I heard a big BOOM and glass breaking, things getting shattered, everything shaking down and even the canoe received part of the shock wave! That’s when I realized that the canoe was attached/tied to a support of the likes, because it started to move (very little) like a hammock.

Needless to say I now was deeply scared and in full panic mode!

I wanted to get out! I needed to!

Then I heard the sweetest and loudest sound I had ever heard in my life. Sirens, police and firefighter’s sirens all around and getting closer and closer...

The image was almost perfect.

The equipment she had used might have been a very professional one, which at the same time infuriated me, made me feel safe and even... well I am 37 years old and there was this 22 years old brunette with a very great body in a very skimpy string bikini (with a thong) and right next to me, and yet her lens were focussing on me...

Besides me and Marty, the others that were watching the footage for the first time were Jolene and her boyfriend, Aileen and her mother, HER lawyers, an ADA and the police.

The image showed when Jolene was hit by a dart and let the glass of juice fall into the water; I raised my head and quickly was out when the second dart hit me. Then Aileen raised her hands, a couple of guys with Ronald Reagan and Nixon’s masks and their commando-like military clothes appeared and one of them shot the dart on Aileen’s belly at close range while the other laughed. Then Jolene (whose plump – NOT FAT – body was managing to resist a bit better to the dose of drugs each dart had) slipped out of the inflatable lounge and went underwater. None of the masked men did anything to save her.

Suddenly a third and a fourth guy appeared (their masks were of Lincoln and Clinton), and also did nothing, but then a thin and big JFK jumped in the pool and brought Jolene’s head back to the surface. The others were apparently saying to JFK to let Jolene drown, but he managed to take her out of water completely. Then, as he started to bind Jolene’s hands behind her back, ‘Lincoln’ got closer and it was obvious that he disagreed with his acts, to the point that he removed his masks to better shout at JFK and he was...

‘YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!!’

Marty’s reaction was the loudest among all of us.

But how couldn’t he use his proverbial effusiveness when the mastermind behind my kidnapping and our attempted murder had its alibi destroyed by that video?

Jules ‘Rambo’ Drethienz, a Canadian neonazi that never accepted the fact that there were ‘black people making much more money than real human beings’. He, his wife, his three sons and a whole bunch of friends swore that he was with a group of his followers doing some ‘survival exercise’ in Michigan. Said followers backed his story and so did a number of people (all white) from here to Michigan. And now we had just seen the undeniable proof that he was lying, and so were the others. We couldn’t help but celebrate!

The images went on with ‘JFK’ binding and gagging Jolene with a roll of tape and leaving her besides the already trussed up (and now naked) Aileen (besides removing her bikini and use rope a bit too freely on her body, they hadn’t done anything else with her). Two of them were making me the impotent salami that I woke up having been turned into, ‘JFK’ was ordered by Drethienz to carry me and they were out of the reach of the camera for a couple of frantic minutes in which the camerawoman, and our hostess, searched the kidnap party.

Then the image of them removing their disguises and putting back some ‘normal’ clothes appeared on screen. ‘JFK’ was busy binding me inside the trunk of a 2004 Chrysler, only my legs appeared at one moment, and then he removed his mask. Phil Clark, probably the last record of him alive, then Drethienz closed the lid and sat on the driver’s seat.

‘I want to see him say that shit about his car have been stolen and he’s being framed again!’

The camera went to super-hyper-zoom and focussed clearly on the license plates of all three cars. Then they were off, and a couple of seconds later the record ended.

We all turned our heads to our hostess.

‘About seven months ago I found out that every Thursday morning you three enjoyed the pool and had a chit-chat while wearing swimsuits, then I discovered that you enjoyed a swimming session every day around 5 p.m.. After a while I bought the camera, the lens and started to record it. These…’ – and she pointed to a pile of twenty + boxes of DVD behind her – ‘…are everything that I have managed to record from you, Mrs. Thompson, including the Thursday mornings with you two, Ms. Brennan and Ms. Chapelle, and these…’ – Her young Latina maid handed her two plastic bags. In one was a disposable pre-paid cellphone and in the other a gizmo of sorts – ‘…are the phone in which I called 911 and the voice synthesizer that I used to hide my identity a bit better. My attorney…’ – A mid-thirties Irish woman who now stood behind her – ‘…really would like that I made a deal with the DA office but I won’t, no strings attached. I had to hire a new maid since Maria, my last one, did not wanted to be around when this, my voyeurism, becomes public, after all she fears ‘La Migra’ as every illegal alien in the country. I will accept any legal punishment for my actions and Ms. Trent, my lawyer, would like to discuss with you or your lawyers the terms for a sizeable compensation for my invasion in your…’

I didn’t let her finish that phrase. For one, she had saved me and Marty’s lives, as well as Aileen’s! Drethienz was planning to kill me and Marty with a bomb attached to the canoe where he put me, of the six men that were guarding me in that boat repair shop (owned by one of them) only one had not been killed by my unknown savior, and before he died at the hospital (due to his wounds when the car his partners were exploded in front of him) he implied Drethienz (who quickly came out with his now defunct alibi), explaining how Drethienz would press the button to detonate the bomb as he heard the sound of the crane (to which the canoe was attached) being used, which would meant that Marty (who was supposed to deliver 2 million in person for my safe return) was in close range to the bomb, and cursed the ‘small **********’ who had shot him (the only other clue to the identity of my savior). For another…, well we knew that at least four of my neighbors spied on us when we went to the pool (we could see the reflex of the Sun on their lens)…

So I hugged her while I said ‘Thank you’ over and over. But Ginny Daniels paid some money to Jolene and Aileen, who stopped from being my masseuse (which was bad) and became my full time friend (which is very good). Jolene and her boyfriend are going to use her share of Ginny’s indemnity to open a restaurant (he’s a great cook).

The judge was benevolent with Ginny, no jail time + a fine + 600 hours of community service, after all she had admitted her voyeurism without any provocation from the police, and thus helped to prevent Drethienz’s plans of racially induced terrorism that he was going to fund with the ransom money. The reporters still speculate if she knows the identity of my savior, five were arrested while trespassing her property or stalking her for clues on that subject, but it’s been over six months now and it’s a cold story anyway, even with the trial of Drethienz and his gang scheduled for the next month.

The young Latina who was her maid for a semester couldn’t have saved me because she still was doing time in Chino (where the California Institution for Women is located) when I was kidnapped. The other older maid, Maria, reappeared after a six/seven months of being under the radar, but the idea that a middle aged, fat and very homely lady like her could be my savior is laughable! I will tell her tonight, when me and Marty are going to attend one of her more ‘vanilla’ (as she says) parties is going to happen.

We’ll have a great laughetr with that one!