Damon was towering above him as eight-year-old Joey rounded the corner on his BMX bike. The overweight high school dropout stood in the middle of the sidewalk in his Windy City Deep Dish Pizza delivery uniform, his van idling at the curb, and the passenger door swung wide. He leered coyly at little Joey with a lecherous scowl on his face and a cruel gleam in his eyes. His smile was even more threatening. It was the predatorial rictus of a hyena approaching weakened prey.
Joe tried to steer around him but the fat teenager stepped right into his path, causing Joe to slam on his brakes and skid out, nearly flipping over the handlebars. He was just about to cuss the chubby loser out when he felt the boy’s fat fingers close around his throat and lift him from the bike. Joe tried to call out, but he could get no air in or out of his lungs. He pinwheeled his arms and legs in the air as if he were trying to swim away from an onrushing shark as the boy carried him across the sidewalk and into the idling van. The fat kid smelled like pepperoni and ammonia.
That’s the last thing Joe remembered thinking before the van doors slammed shut, sealing out the midday August sun and the joyful cries of the kids playing just yards away in the park.
Joe woke up with his fist clenched tight around Alicia’s throat. Her eyes were bulging out of their sockets, her tongue lolled stupidly from her mouth, and her complexion was turning the prettiest turquoise blue. He jerked his hands away from her neck and jumped back, scooting to the other side of the bed, startled by what he had done. Alicia was gasping and choking as she sucked air back into her depleted lungs. Joe was breathing hard with sweat bulleting down his face.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I-I was having a bad dream. I didn’t mean to-I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘You almost killed me! You’re crazy! Oh my God! You’re fucking crazy! Heeelp! Heeeelp!!!’
Joe shook his head in exasperation and reached down to pick up the restraints from where he’d tossed them on the floor. He seized one of Alicia’s legs and slipped the leather cuff around her ankle. This time she did try to kick, to fight back. She aimed a kick at his face and her heel caught him in the jaw as he reached out for her feet, causing his head to spin and his lip to split open and run red. Joe barely seemed to notice. He grabbed both of her ankles and flipped her over onto her stomach.
Joe’s breath caught in his throat as that perfect ass rolled into view, wobbling temptingly in the moonlight. The hunger came rushing upon him urgent and insistent. He sat on Alicia’s back as she continued to scream and struggle, seizing her ankles and placing the leather cuffs and leg spreader back between her ankles. Then he turned and cuffed and chained her wrists again as well.
‘Noooo! Nooo! Don’t do this!’
‘I said I wouldn’t hurt you and I won’t not if I can find the cure.’
Joe trussed her up, reinserted the ball gag into her mouth and reattached her to the chain hanging from the ceiling before he hurried out of the room.
