Unlucky Scratch by Sot Touch
23 photos
“Hey Darnell!”
It was PJ and Lennie, two of Darnell’s sometime friends. They both seemed to be in a good mood and Darnell wanted to keep them that way so he smiled and waved them on into the living room.
Darnell’s two friends were carrying six-packs of brew and soon bottles were being opened and passed around while PJ and Lennie teased Darnell about his good fortune. “We heard about that lucky scratch ticket you hit on so we came by to celebrate.”
“Yea, twenty-five thousand dollars!” Lennie put in. “What are you going to do with all of that cash?”
“I don't know,” Darnell told them as he drank deeply from his beer bottle. “I'm still trying to believe that it really happened to me.”
“You got to buy a new car,” PJ told Darnell as he handed him a fresh beer.
“No man, you got to put a down-payment on a nice house and move out of this dump you've been living in.”
Darnell laughed with his friends and took another long drink.
"No, what you got to do is to take a long trip, go someplace where there’s nothing but nice sunshine and cool water,” Lennie decided.
Darnell looked over at Lennie and suddenly he was seeing two Lennies. Then he began to hear a buzzing sound in his ears as he turned to look over at PJ, but PJ wouldn't sit still. He kept swimming back and forth in front of Darnell’s dazed eyes. And then Darnell touched his tongue to his lips and tasted something funny.
“Did you…did you put something in this beer?” he asked.
“Now Darnell,” PJ smiled at him. “Why would we do that?”
“Don’t know…but I feel so funny….” Darnell was having trouble talking.
“Yea, you look pretty funny, too,” PJ laughed at him.
Then the darkness fell over Darnell’s eyes like somebody had pulled a blanket up over his head.
Some time later Darnell struggled to open his eyes again. The first thing he saw was that he was now wearing some kind of strange white bracelets on his wrists and there was some more white stuff wrapped tightly around his chest. What was going on here?
Slowly the haziness left Darnell’s eyes and the other senses returned to his body. With a sickening shock he realized that the white things on his wrists weren't bracelets. That was adhesive tape and now his hands were taped together! And there was more of the white tape wrapped all around his arms and chest.
“What're you doing to me?” Darnell shrieked in fear, but no words came out of his mouth because now he realized that there was more of that adhesive stuff wrapped all around over his lips.
“Hi Darnell,” Lennie smiled. “They had a sale on adhesive tape down at the store. I hope you don't mind.”
“Yea,” PJ laughed. “We thought that maybe you wouldn't want to cooperate with us, but you're going to start cooperating now.”
PJ and Lennie grabbed Darnell’s legs and Darnell could only watch helplessly while his two friends wrapped more and more of that awful tape tightly around his ankles and his thighs until he couldn't move his legs at all. Why were they doing this to him?
“You see,” PJ finally explained. “Tomorrow you're supposed to go down and collect the cash for that winning ticket, but you ain't going. Lennie’s going to do that for you.”
So that was it! They were going to steal his prize money! Darnell began to struggle angrily and made all sorts of protests behind his taped-over lips, but they just laughed at him and pushed him back down onto the couch.
“Don’t be like that Darnell. Ain’t you forgetting you still owe me money?”
Yea, Darnell thought. He owed PJ about two-hundred bucks – not twenty-five grand!
“Yea, you just better chill for awhile while we raid your food box.”
“Maybe,” PJ looked at Darnell with hard eyes. “If you're good, we might feed you, too. And then maybe, if you're really good, we might let you use the bathroom some time before tomorrow.”
Darnell groaned as PJ and Lennie laughed at him and wandered into the kitchen.
Darnell waited until they were out of sight. Then he very carefully rolled his bound body down off of the couch and onto the hard floor. He had to get out of here!
And then Darnell struggled and strained and inched his way across the carpet on the floor.
One inch, two inches, three inches then Darnell stopped to rest. His body was hurting all over and his breath was coming hard through his nose. Then he set off again.
Another inch, and then another inch, and then he realized that he wasn't really moving anywhere. After all of that huffing and his body had moved less than three feet. At that rate it would take him all night to make it to the door. And then what…?
Darnell didn't know. For the moment he was completely beaten. But he wouldn't be tied up forever. Sooner or later PJ and Lennie had to let him go. And then it would be Darnell’s turn.
So Darnell lay there on the floor drenched in his own sweat and fighting for breath through his nose while he began to plan what he would do to PJ and Lennie when they finally let him go.
And then Darnell began to smile behind his mouth tape. He had a plan!
THE END
Darnell played by Sammy
Photography by Caitiff
Date of Production: 01/02/2006