Rescue

Write about getting saved by a superhero--a precreated hero, or one of your own imagination. Thirty minute time limit.

I woke up in the dark, the rough sound of an old engine and of tires on pavement buzzing through the course fabric of the floor. A trunk. I was in a trunk of all places, and with no idea how I had come to be there. It didn’t occur to me to panic at that point, or to feel even a little fear. I was busy contemplating myself as luggage, wondering how I’d come to share company with a spare tire and jumper cables and wondering why my toes were tingling. Rope, probably, or maybe tape. The car hit a dip in the road, though not a deep one; we must have been going quite fast, though, because that little dip sent me slamming into the roof of my very small home. A groan escaped my lips, and muffled voices filtered through the back seat of the mysterious car.

“Slow down asshole. If he dies on the way there, we don’t get paid... and if we get pulled over, we’re fucked proper.”

The driver’s response was too faint for me to decipher over the sudden revving of the car’s modestly sized (and obviously unmaintained) engine, though I imagine it was something along the lines of “Fuck you.”

The lack of stops meant we were already outside of the city. I had little hope of attracting attention, even if I were to make a fuss. I began shifting around, trying to free my arms from their bindings when a voice spoke into the trunk. One of the men must have turned around and put his mouth to up to the seat back.

“Hold still and keep quiet, or I’ll put a bullet in you.”

This one voice had a British accent—the well educated kind, not the My Fair Lady kind. Three men? They must have gone through a good deal of trouble to get me.

I began to wonder at that point how they got me. Needless to say, the curiousity had been nagging at me, but I hadn’t been capable of considering it until that point—the same feeling one might feel about complex thought after smoking a large quantity of marijuana. The haze was clearing. I had been at a fancy dinner of some kind—a fundraiser for my reelection. Damn. That means I’m wrinkling my good suit. I’d just finished addressing the gaggle of wealthy attendees, kissing asses and bending over backward until I thoroughly hated myself. I was on my way to the restroom to wash my face, to wash my hands. I felt dirty. I wasn’t, I’m not a natural politician, and I only play politics when elections roll around and I take on the role of incumbent.

There were people in the restroom. Three of them, actually. One in the handicap stall—you know, the big one that looks like its made for group sex—one at the sink, washing, and one standing at a mirror examining himself. I acknowledged this one as he looked at me, and made my way to the empty stall. I didn’t need to use it, but I needed to be alone, and thought the threat of a hefty shit might persuade the other men to leave me in peace. The water turned off. The door to the sex stall opened and closed, and the bathroom door hissed open, and closed again. I grinned. Nobody wants to stick around when Mayor West decides to take a shit.

When I stepped out, still grinning, I was greeted by three grim faces, two of which I recognized as the men from earlier. I frowned. The third man stepped forward, pulling a handkerchief, or maybe it was a napkin… it didn’t look like a rag… anyway, he roughly grabbed my head and forced it into the wetness. I’m glad the rag is clean, I remember thinking as I breathed in the burning vapors, because he didn’t wash his hands.


I began wondering how they made their escape, imagining all sorts of escapades (of course, right? Escapades, get it?) like getting stuffed in a large duffel bag of some kind, or pushed under one of those cloth covered food carts and calmly removed from the building. Or maybe they painted eyes on my eyelids and carried me out like a giant puppet. I hope they didn’t have me speak to the press. I hire my own puppeteers for that. They’re quite good.

It was then that I realized that I might die, that I was in very real, very serious trouble. Too bad I’m not the mayor of Gotham. I thought, and then immediately thought better of it. Gotham smells terrible—The whole city smells like stale piss and fish. No, that trunk was much nicer.

Suddenly, there was a huge crash, a crunching of metal and shattering of glass and shouts of confusion. I was slammed into the front of my little cave hard enough to break my ulna. Or is it my radius? One of them snapped, though, I’m sure. Glad my head wasn’t faced that way. Lucky thing. I might have crushed my axis. Or my atlas, or any number of thoracic or cervical vertebrae, and then I’d be dead, or confined to a wheelchair like Christopher Reeve.

There were gunshots, and many umphs and kapows, and even a biff or two outside, and much scuffling.

And suddenly the trunk door was torn off and thrown clear, and well muscled and well spandexed arms lifted my free of the wreckage.

“Are you okay, Mayor West?”

The Other Side