Mickey needed some more meth, more cocaine, more anything to take the edge off his pain. He needed to chase away the feeling of ants crawling under his skin and the compulsion to clench his teeth until his jaw throbbed and his teeth felt soft in his gums. He swam in and out of consciousness. His body hurt in places new to him as though the pain were introducing him to previously unknown parts of his body for the first time. He couldn’t move the fingers on his right hand. The skin felt hot and swollen to the touch and no matter how often he swallowed, he couldn’t get the taste of blood out of his mouth. He heard Violet talking to him in the night. He knew what she wanted. She wanted his help to get out of this place. Mickey was of two minds on that. One part of him thought they had a shit-ton of drugs here and if all he had to do was give a blow-job and take it in the ass then, that wasn’t so bad. The getting hit part sucked but the drugs man, they certainly sponged away most of the pain and they had so much of it! Just sitting in a flimsy old lockbox, waiting to be taken and indulged in. The drugs were calling to him, glowing from inside the metal box and to get them, all he had to do was stick around and collect them. The guys were handing them out freely last night. He knew the reason for their generosity. They didn’t want him thinking too much about the situation he was in. Out in the middle of nowhere. No phone. No help. They wanted him placid. They wanted Mickey to be quiet and easy to handle. Drugs made him docile and they knew it.

In the back of his mind, the part of him that was concerned with self-preservation, arose questions and doubts. But those thoughts were unpleasant and if he concentrated on them and gave them attention, well, then he might have to do something about it. That scared him more than anything, having to decide for himself. It was easier to let someone else tell him what to do, how to do it and to reward him with a bit of crystal in a pipe. He was the horse, the meth was the carrot. He didn’t want to think about why they tossed his phone out of the window. He didn’t want to think about why the man, after Mickey did everything he was told, stomped on his hand and laughed at Mickey when he cried out. Mickey knew the bones in his hand were broken. He didn’t think it. He knew it. He felt and heard the crack when the man’s heel crushed his hand and from the swelling and his inability to move his fingers, yeah, it didn’t take a genius to know that his hand was broken. And why would the man do that? After he did everything he was told to do?

Violet bothering him all night didn’t help anything either. Didn’t she get it? What were they going to do? Overpower three men and run off into the woods? To where? No. They were redneck assholes. They would take their fun and let them go…right? Maybe they would pay Mickey off with drugs. Drop him off at a train station with a bag full of drugs and a ticket to who cares. They wouldn’t kill them. How could they expect to get away with it? When that thought slid into his brain he shook his head and redirected it. In a few hours, when they let him out of this little room, he’d get some more drugs. The best plan was to try to sleep, ignore the pain in his hand and await the wake-up call and the promise of more drugs.

The wake-up call happened to be a loud bang. The noise jerked him out of his sleep. He turned round eyes to the sound and the bright light blinded him. He squinted against it and saw a shadow pass in front, followed by brightness. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light, he blinked and shook. Not from the cold. The room was surprisingly warm. Mickey was shaking because he was scared. He heard feet climbing stairs fast. The slapping of feet receded with distance.

Mickey peered out the open door. The sole of a man’s foot greeted him. Following the foot was a leg and the rest of the man lying on the ground. The man’s arms and legs were star-fished on the floor. Mickey crawled to the door keeping his swollen hand close to his body. Upstairs the front door banged open and Mickey’s eyes floated to the ceiling towards the sound. A man yelled, “Hey! What the fuck!” After that followed silence.

The man on the floor had been the one who stomped on Mickey’s hand. The one he had been intimate with last night. A line ran down the centre of his forehead and down his nose. Blood leaked from his nose and a spot on his forehead. The gash was swelling. If the guy woke up, he’d have one hell of a headache. Mickey smiled and then it faded. Mickey felt a little sad. How was he going to get more drugs?

His head swivelled towards the bar. The lockbox was behind that, wasn’t it? He crept out of the hole, like a rabbit scenting the air to make sure no wolves were around. The man breathed heavily on the ground. His stomach rising and falling. Blood bubbles ballooned from his nostrils. Mickey cleared the low doorway and stood massaging a spot on his lower back. He grimaced at the tightness when he straightened. Dizziness made him sway on his feet as flashing stars peppered his vision. He put his hand against the wall. Once the world steadied, he walked to the bar gingerly, mindful of his hand. Behind the bar on a shelf sat the lockbox. Mickey smiled and then coughed. He swallowed something (a bloodclot?) and retrieved the lockbox and put it on top of the bar. He pulled at the lid. It wasn’t locked and when he could see all the goodies lying inside, he moaned. A bag of meth, maybe half an ounce, hell yeah! What was that? Light brown powder? Looked like heroin to Mickey. Some pills, some weed, a veritable goddamn drug user treasure trove. Mickey was so happy he thought his heart might burst. Using his good hand he crammed all the wonderful goodies into the pockets of his jeans. They slid down with his movement and he kept having to pull them up because he was so skinny and the jeans were so baggy. He bought bigger clothes because in the winter he could bundle up in multiple layers. Under the jeans, he sometimes wore two pairs of cotton track pants in the colder months when he had no place to go and hadn’t made enough money tricking to get a warm place to stay and do drugs. When it came between a choice of drugs or warmth, drugs won every time.

Having stuffed his pockets full, he held his jeans up with his good hand and fast walked to the stairs. He paused at the bottom and stared into the dark room he emerged from moments before. His shirt was in a pile on the floor. The man on the floor snorted and coughed. Mickey twitched and walked up the stairs, his breath short and hot in his mouth. At the top, he paused and listened. Nothing. No creaking steps behind him or in front of him, no banging doors, and no voices near or far. Mickey stepped into the hallway, saw his shoes where he had taken them off yesterday, said, “Oh,” and slid them on.

He walked out the front door with no plan and his only concern was wanting to use the drugs that were weighing his pants down. The van they arrived in reflected sun from the windshield. Birds chirped. Animals rustled. Mickey, inhaling the strong scent of pine and earth, began trekking down the road.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Mickey turned as a chill ran down his spine. Beside the small cabin was a shed. Mickey hadn’t noticed it when they arrived in the night, but he noticed it now. In front of it stood one of the men who had taken him. The one who had sat on the middle bench during their long ride. The one who had smacked him in the face. Growling on the end of a leash was a large black dog. A Doberman if Mickey wasn’t mistaken. It pulled on the chain. The muscles in the man’s forearms bulged and writhed. The dog bared teeth.

Mickey turned back to the road and started running. He clenched his teeth and pressed his bad hand to his stomach. His good hand flew out in front of him like he’d seen sprinters do as though they were trying to row their arms faster to help propel them forward. The good hand had been holding up his pants. Within ten feet of his flight, his pants slid down. The added weight of the drugs made them slide too fast for Mickey to correct the problem. His jeans slid down past his knees and he tripped on them. He fell to the ground hard with his bare ass pointing to the sky. Behind him, he heard laughter. Dazed from the fall and his broken hand screaming in protest with its collision with the ground, Mickey rolled onto his back and pulling his knees to his chest, closed his eyes and waited for the pain to pass. The man continued to laugh. A real knee-slapping kind of laugh.

Another man’s voice said, “Jesus. What happened to him? How’d he get out? Has anyone checked on Greg?”

“You should have seen…” More laughter, “His ass…hahahaha!”

“We don’t have time for this shit. We ought to get rid of that clown and get on after the girl. You see how fast she ran?”

“Alright, alright. Give me a second.”

Mickey’s bones in his hand felt as though they were crushed glass under his skin. The dirt road had cut him up along his chest, hip and knees. That pain was dull and controllable. In his hand, the pain wouldn’t abate. It kept on and on, a constant metronome of agony. He held his breath, letting it out between compressed teeth. A molar cracked and a piece of it was like a stone on his tongue. He heard the men say get rid of him and he knew what that meant. It sure as shit didn’t mean call a cab and drop him off at home. It meant Mickey would never be going home again if he didn’t do something. If he could get into the woods, maybe he could hide. He put a hand under himself to push himself up and had to stop with sweat now streaming off his face and coating his body. The pain wouldn’t allow him to move and he crawl-squirmed on the ground towards the tree-line with rocks, roots, and branches sharp against his skin.

“What do you say? Should we let Hank here have at him? We haven’t done that in a while and it may get his blood up to better track the girl.”

Hank? The dog was named Hank? They were going to let the dog have him? Understanding brought new terror. Mickey, groaning, got his feet under him. His pants were bunched at his ankles, he reached down with his good hand to pull them up and in doing so, brushed the knuckles on his broken hand. He screamed.

Behind him, he heard, “Yeah. Why not?”

“Hank. Attack.”

A jingling collar, claws on dirt, a deep growling and then pain as the animal slammed into Mickey. Hot breath, fur, and growls overtop of him. Claws raked him, teeth ripped at his flesh. Screaming, Mickey was swatting with his healthy hand and when the dog’s teeth sunk into his stomach, he squealed and without thinking, he used his broken hand to whack at the relentless head tearing and pulling at his flesh and compounding his agony. To Mickey, the attack was never ending. The pain and terror were so much, Mickey was grateful at the end when the dog clamped slathering teeth around his neck and crunched into him, silencing Mickey forever.