A Wager Lost Ch. 02

Krissy began to recoil in embarrassment, instinctively drawing her bound knees closer to herself. Her hands balled into fists, numb from being bound at the wrists securely. She had trimmed her fingernails earlier, or else they surely would be buried in her palms piercing the skin. The stranger continued to stand above her, smoking and smiling wordlessly.

Krissy started to squirm, her thumb of her left hand stuck out and her right hand encapsulated it and squeezed in a nervous and frightened gesture hidden from her captor. She was trying hard to master this feeling of vulnerability, but it was fast overcoming her. So much was happening so fast--and now she was trapped, defenseless and unable to get away from this situation. Her stomach was balling into knots, and the parallels between the knots in her gut and the knots that held Krissy restrained was not lost on her.

The immaculately well-dressed stranger stood over her, smoking an exotic looking cigarette and regarding her with a predatory expression that made her skin crawl. Eventually, Krissy couldn't bear to keep looking at him and lowered her gaze to the perfectly creased hemline of his silk pants and the impeccable shine of his alligator shoes.

"I must say that this is rather convenient," the stranger exclaimed. He lowered himself to kneel on the balls of his feet to get level with the prisoner before him to read the embroidery of her name on the breast of her baseball jacket. "Krissy, is it?" The stranger sucked in air through his teeth and slowly exhaled with a sound that made Krissy shudder visibly with fright. He then looked around the bareness of the room as if in some kind of reflection before he turned his attention back to her. He took another drag of his cigarette. "Little adventure to spice up the old marriage, am I right?"

Krissy returned her gaze at the stranger, trying hard to maintain her nerve by keeping herself centered with controlled breathing. At that moment, she heard a rather ponderous crunch of gravel coming toward the house approaching the porch, and then upon transitioning to the steps of the porch seemed to groan upon the approach of this new arrival with an almost inaudible but perceptive creak. This alarmed her for it was a recently built porch, made of pressure treated lumber and though she had likely much worse things to think about at the moment she knew that porch should not be groaning.

To Krissy's hearing, the footsteps slacked its pace almost to what sounded like a poor attempt at a tiptoe, or that it was trying not to put all of its weight into each step before approaching the sliding glass door and opening it. The strange well-attired man was obviously expecting this person, turning his head as she turned hers with the faintest trace of a mocking smile before turning back to regard her again as the sounds of entrance were replaced with a sudden reluctant clomping in the kitchen, yet the pace was still deliberate and ponderous as ever as it continued into the hallway where its footfalls were deadened by the carpet.

As soon as the thing stepped in view of the door and into Krissy's line of sight, her eyes widened and the stranger's smile broadened. There stood in the hallway a giant of a man, so large that he stood in the hallway stooped and could not rise to his full height. His countenance was a mass of scars, burns, and a motley of disfigurements that seemed more plastered than featured around his great snarl of a mouth. He wore a long duster-like coat, yet no hat upon his knotted bald head. His eyes moved to her, then to the stranger who acknowledged him and then returned his gaze back upon her.

The stranger turned to the giant. "Funny. She was actually tied up like this when we got here." He glanced back to Krissy. "Vigo here does the restraining usually, so he's puzzled as to why you are already prepped and ready for us when we usually have to go through the trouble of subduing and rendering our prisoners compliant."

He turned back to Vigo with a rather amused expression. "That fuckhead--her husband--tied her up and left her here, can you believe that? Left her here for us like some kind of present." The stranger looked around the room again in exasperation.

"You must be wondering by now about what kind of man you married, and I assure you you being trussed up and ready to be shipped like a country ham is just the tip of the iceberg. And since you're a captive audience, let me fill you in about that fuckhead you married since he literally roped you into this jackpot you're in. I know that man better than you, and you're the one that's been fucking and fighting with him."

The stranger spent the next several minutes telling her about Aiden, or who she knew as Aiden. How he was a ex-government spook turned freelance operative who was doing shady deals with organized crime and using his cover as a hand-to-hand combat instructor. How "Aiden" was also a degenerate gambler, and had managed to get himself in hock for twenty million to people you didn't want to owe twenty cents to. How the money to build this house was obtained, or in this case purloined from said dangerous people, and the stranger and this Vigo guy worked for those dangerous people Aiden owed that sum of money to. How they came to come whack Aiden, but in this case finding Aiden's sporty-looking wife conveniently bound and gagged and ready for them to use as bait to get Aiden to return back to the house.

"Only this time, we're going to be ready for him. And you're going to help us, and then maybe after we're done with him we'll let you go."

Krissy scoffed into her gag in response. She knew what the stranger really meant from "being let go," and although she managed defiance to respond, her heart was starting to sink from the weight of realization. She started the day with a workout with someone she thought she loved, took for a husband and trusted completely only to learn she'd been deceived, and with any luck end up dead in a ditch likely before the day was up.

Without further explanation, he gestured with a cocked head towards Vigo, and Vigo strode towards her and knelt down. He placed two gigantic palms upon her arms and drew her to his shoulder, slumping her over it like a sack of grain. His employer drew himself to his feet, and together they wordlessly exited the house to the driveway where a black limousine was parked. Vigo opened up one of the rear doors, and rather gingerly removed Krissy from his shoulder and placed her inside on one of the seats and then shut the door.

She heard them discuss something in muted tones before Vigo entered the driver's seat and started up the engine. Within moments, the limo lurched backward as Vigo performed a K-turn and drove them off the property. Krissy's heart was racing, her stomach taut with fear. She sought to remember her training, trying to keep herself quiet and calm and present herself as compliant while testing her restraints as surreptitiously as she could, keeping her eyes peeled for any chance to escape, knowing that Vigo was glancing at her via the rear view mirror and possibly a dashboard camera too, she reasoned.

She rubbed a finger against the area of her binding that she chafed with her wedding ring and felt some give there, which gave her a bit of hope. With some manipulation from her numb fingers, she managed to pull the wristband of her jacket in such a way as to conceal her attempt to free herself. Krissy was relieved they had at least not bothered to search her, or even get handsy or fresh. But she knew that if she blew her shot at escaping, likely there would not be a second chance.

Nevertheless, she had questions and just the act of the asking was frightening her. What kind of trouble did her husband just put her through, to be taken prisoner and used as leverage for fighting some kind of duel? Who and what had he got her into, and what was now to become of her? She scooched herself alongside towards one of the doors, slumped against the window and stared hopelessly outward, realizing that she was being driven towards the shore towards an area of an expanse of tidal flats in a somewhat remote area. Vigo had turned the limo from the paved roads to the unpaved beach access roads, somehow retaining masterful control while maintaining a high rate of speed.

Before she knew it, they were in a parking area which served as an entrance to the beach on a promontory overlooking the nondescript tidal flats at the lowest tide. There, an object in the distance on a lone spit of flat held her attention, which held as Vigo parked the car and opened the door nearest her, brandishing a fold-out knife. "You try and kick me, bitch. I'll open you like a can of beans. You'll spill all over this fuckin' limo, and that'll be the story of you." He then knelt down and began to cut her ankle bindings loose. "Get out and start walking. Don't try to run. I will catch you."

With horror, she realized at once where she was and recalled the legend of this area, when the area was being settled by Puritans who had set aside on a lonely spit of sandbar in the deep part of the shallows a gibbeting and gallows pole. There, condemned people were bound to the pole and left there until the tide rose. Sometimes, they were noosed and made to stand on a barrel or a stool until the tide came in, where they inevitably lost their footing to the shifting sand or the rushing waters. It was a kindness if their neck broke during their fall, but oftentimes they kicked as they strangled. Thieves and highwaymen were usually killed here, but then there were accused witches who were often just misunderstood young women who found themselves standing with ropes about their necks by the judgement of men in power who wished to purge these rebellious spirits from their community.

Krissy found herself in a forced march, her fear and doubt rising as she stumbled across the vast sandy expanse of tidal flat towards the gibbeting pole where a noose swung in the salty wind. At once, Krissy realized that she was going to what might be her execution, for whatever crimes her husband had committed. It made her afraid for her life, but in her deeper, darker recesses of thought there was a watchful anger brewing behind her hazel eyes.

Vigo must have sensed her trepidation and so took it upon himself to explain what was to become of her. "Your husband has until the coming of the high tide to beat me in a fight to the death. This way, he'll be forced to have to show up instead of avoiding me like he has been for the past several years." Krissy froze in place, but was prodded to keep walking by Vigo. "If he does not show up, and if he does not beat me in the time allotted you will most certainly die." He paused to light another cigarette before prodding Krissy onward.

The sun was setting, and they were not far now from the gibbeting pole. Krissy turned her head behind her to steal a glance at Vigo, who appeared to be carrying what looked like a ten pound bag of a block of ice. She glanced towards the row of beachfront houses on the shore, hoping against hope that perhaps a resident would see from a mile off with binoculars the giant man pushing the tied-up petite girl towards the place where so many people met their deaths in the past. Vigo pushed her again, a little more rougher than before, causing her to almost stumble but the giant caught her by the shoulder to steady her before prodding her until they stood under the noose.

The rope looked new and thick, as if recently put there. Krissy wanted to bolt, but her knees shook with fear. Vigo wasted no time, dropping the bag of ice and grabbing the rope with one gigantic hand and her slender neck framed by the gold and black elastic trim of her satin baseball jacket in another. He pushed them towards each other, and deftly slipped Krissy's head through the noose and cinched it quickly, placing the knot behind her left ear. The noose hung slack from the scaffold where Vigo had hung it earlier that morning. He retrieved the block of ice from where he dropped it and brought it to where Krissy stood shivering and placed it at her feet.

Taking up the remaining slack of the rope, he slowly pulled until the rope became taut, pulling Krissy to attention and goading her to stand on top of the block of ice. Krissy's eyes grew wide as she stood erect, the noose already chafing her pale neck as Vigo tied the remaining slack to the gibbeting pole.

He finished the task and then stepped back as if admiring his work.

"I sure hope for your sake your husband gets here. High tide comes in in about forty minutes. This sandbar will be underwater in an hour and a half, but that block of ice will be dissolved by then." Vigo then turned towards the beach. "I know you're likely in the dark about what's going on, but you're still guilty, you know?" Behind Krissy, the roar of the surf beginning to rise towards the sandbar they were on started to grow louder.

"But you're guilty too for being a dumb cunt. That's why I don't feel bad if you get killed, really." Vigo withdrew a cigarette and lit one in his mouth. "I'd offer you one, but its likely wasted on you. Besides," he said with a laugh. "Today's a lousy time to start." He began to start back towards the shore. "Well, gotta go kill your husband," he said with a cruel smirk. "Got better things to do than watch your dumb ass strangle!" With that, he turned again towards the shore with a dismissive wave and departed the sandbar with a setting sun at his back and his shivering prisoner to her doom.

Krissy stood shivering upon the ice block, waiting for him to clear what she judged to be a quarter mile before she began to grope around for the chafed part of the rope she was using the diamond of her engagement ring on. The wind had started to pick up, and the tide was slowly inching across the spit. Her stomach still was in knots, still terrified from her ordeal, yet she kept telling herself three things as her current mantra as the water began to creep, forming a puddle in the depression surrounding the rapidly melting ice block.

"Focus. Get free. Concentrate."

Krissy was not religious, but she swore at that moment that if she could get free then she would ask any who heard her plea in her hour of doom to grant her just enough time to free herself and then have one final chance to get even with Vigo, and that well-dressed sleazebag in his silks and alligator shoes. And then, providing she was still alive to do so, give that no-good lying bastard calling himself her husband a thoroughly sound shitkicking.