Synesthesia: Chapter Nine

serial fiction

Image: Ivan Lom, Unsplash

“They probably towed it,” Amber shrugged, as though we were discussing last week’s weather and not the whereabouts of my only means of transportation.

“Well, where did they tow it to?” I demanded, as if Amber had orchestrated the entire thing.

She shrugged again. “The lot closest to where you crashed, probably.”

Anger and frustration rose in me like bile. “We crashed in Casa Grande. Now we’re in Phoenix. If my car is in Casa Grande, it’s at least fifty miles south of here.” I was breathing too fast. I needed my car. I didn’t want to be stranded in fucking Phoenix.

Amber smiled devilishly. “Just take one.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“Just take one. You’re huge. You don’t have a problem kidnapping people in your car. Just kidnap a guy in his.”

She’s got to be kidding me, I thought. I shook my head dumbly. I felt naked and exposed without my car. That old thing had taken me all across the country. And besides, my music was in there.

“Okay,” said Amber, turning and starting off across the huge parking lot toward the main road. “We can walk, then.”

I hurried to catch up with her. “Walk? That’s crazy. It’s at least 95 degrees out,” I protested.

Amber stopped in front of a white Tesla and turned to face me again. “Then I guess you should find a car to take,” she said.

---

Twenty minutes later, I was doing my best to hide my large frame behind a saguaro cactus, feeling like an idiot. I peeked out at Amber, who was standing in front of an abandoned tire shop, posing in a strange manner that I guess she thought looked provocative. It must have come across that way to someone, because within a few minutes a red Ford Mustang pulled up and stopped in front of her. I felt my muscles tense as I watched her lean toward the rolled-down tinted window.

Their conversation seemed to last forever.

Amber’s heel hit the ground once, twice. That was my cue.

She opened the passenger-side door and climbed in, leaving the door wide open.

I ran full-speed toward the open door and threw myself into the empty passenger seat, pulling the door shut behind me. My head still throbbed painfully. In the driver’s seat to my left, a shocked middle-aged man gaped at me from beneath Amber, who had climbed on top of him as though she were about to administer her services.

I was absolutely terrified.

“Get in the back!” I shouted at the man, using my deepest and scariest voice. It must have worked, because the delicious scent of orange blossoms began to seep out of him like cold sweat.

“Get in the back, now!” I repeated, raising my fist for emphasis. The man nodded silently and scrambled to obey as Amber slid off of him to let him go. His multicolored Hoka running shoe nearly hit me in the face as he tumbled into the back seat, a heap of arms and legs.

The car was in motion before I could even register what had just happened. I turned and looked at the man we’d just kidnapped. He was lean, tan, and nearly bald, dressed in blue running shorts and a white tank top that read “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE” in huge black letters. I chuckled at that one.

“Please don’t hurt me!” the man whined from the back seat. He stank of sweat, but the scent of his fear overpowered the unpleasant smell of his body.

I relaxed into the passenger seat and breathed in the delicate floral scent as Amber merged onto the highway heading south. The only thing missing was the right music.

The man in the back began to cry, a high, whistling sound like a dejected puppy.

“Shut up!” I roared at him. The stench of urine immediately joined the bouquet of smells in the car.

“Oh, that’s nasty,” opined Amber, glancing back at the trembling man.

His fear was so strong, I barely noticed the dog-shit smell of happiness as Amber guided the Mustang south toward the Tumbleweed Inn.

---

I had been worried that the man might yell for help as we unloaded him into the little motel room, but the parking lot was empty when Amber pulled into the space closest to room 14, and I assumed the rest of the motel was as well. The man marched meekly into the room without a sound as I held my hand over his eyes for dramatic effect.

“Get in,” I ordered once we were inside, pointing to the dog crate. The man let out another high-pitched puppy-whine and did as he was told, emitting the scent of orange blossoms the whole time. God, this guy was easy. Maybe Amber had been right about choosing male targets.

Once he was inside the crate, I shut and locked the crate door and lay down on the bed, stretching my arms and legs.

Amber sat down on the opposite side of the bed and slipped off her heeled shoes that must have been shiny and silver at one point in time. She turned to me and smiled, her green eyes gleaming, her skin giving off the cinnamon spice of excitement. “Now what?” she asked, clearly ready for more.

I let out an exhausted sigh, switched on the TV, and rested my bandaged head against the headboard. On the screen in front of me, two detectives walked through the offices of the Behavioral Analysis Unit discussing evil. “You ever look at why this victim, why this day, why this crime?” one of them asked the other.

Criminal Minds, what a shitty show. I reached for the remote to change the channel when Dr. Spencer Reid’s babyish face cut in. “Evil can’t be scientifically defined,” Reid explained pedantically. “It’s an illusory moral concept that doesn’t exist in nature.”

I looked over at the whimpering man in the dog crate, his arms wrapped around his knees, his blue running shorts still wet with urine.

“Now I get my music back,” I said, changing the channel to Forensic Files.