Desperate measures, p.1
Desperate Measures, page 1
Desperate Measures
A Short Thriller
Vincent Zandri
Published by Vincent Zandri, 2022.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By Vincent Zandri
Desperate Measures (A Short Thriller)
Desperate Measures | A Short Thriller | Vincent Zandri
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Desperate Measures
A Short Thriller
Vincent Zandri
“Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful,”
—CNN Anchor, Chris Cuomo
“(Antifa) is a myth.”
—Representative Jerry Nadler on the 2020 Antifa riots in Portland, WA.
August, 2020
Upstate, New York
1
I wake with a start. Heart pounding in my sternum, stomach tight, temples pounding, mouth dry. What was the nightmare I was having? Why can’t I remember it at all? All I know is that it was a nightmare and that it’s left me breathing hard and my skin cold and wet.
I glance over my shoulder at my wife Julia. She’s lying on her side, fast asleep in her white tank, her lush, long black hair a sea of beauty, exhaustion, and anger from yet another argument before going to bed. I’m working on getting more freelance work, I insisted. But she said, All you care about is being Stephen King, and you’re most definitely not Stephen King.
Of course, that hurt. It always hurts. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not broke, but we’re not swimming in cash either like a lot of our neighbors are. I’m middle-aged, been a writer for a lot of years now and have done pretty well financially during some years, and not so well during others. But even when things are good, the money just never seems to be enough. Julia works full-time as a clerk at a downtown attorney’s office which keeps us afloat. We thankfully have a nice roof over our head thanks to my mother who left it to us after she passed.
Here’s the deal: I promised Julia the world twenty years ago when I swept her off her feet. But all I managed to give her was a world of mostly red bank accounts.
I’m not entirely anonymous either: I’ve published a bunch of books under my own name, Paul Gibbons. I won some awards, gained the respect of my peers. But here’s the dirty secret about the publishing business: Writers don’t make any money. Oh, well a tiny few do. The Stephen Kings of the world, that is. But Julia’s right, Paul Gibbons, is most definitely not Stephen King. Yet (Or so I keep telling myself as my hair grays and my belly gets softer).
But I’m getting ahead of my skis here. I heard a bump in the night. It woke me out of a sound sleep tainted with a nightmare I can’t possibly remember.
“Must be my imagination,” I whisper to myself.
Setting my head back down on the pillow, I close my eyes, and think about the story I will write come morning. It will be the one that will put me over the edge, make me the fortune I promised the sweet Julia all those years ago.
Then, something goes bump in the night again.
2
This time even Julia hears it. She bounds up even faster than I do. She does it from out of a sound sleep.
“What the hell was that?” she says, running her fingers through her thick hair.
She’s breathing hard. Maybe she was having a nightmare too.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “But it’s the second time I’ve heard it.”
Another bump. Louder this time. Coming from downstairs. Downstairs in the kitchen.
“Jesus H Christ, somebody’s in our house, Paul,” Julia says. “You’ve got to go down there.”
“Call nine-one-one,” I say.
She goes to grab her phone which is normally set on the bed stand.
“Shit,” she says, “it’s downstairs on the kitchen counter. Give me yours.”
“It’s fucking charging in my office.”
We don’t say anything for a long beat while Julia plants her face into her open hands. It’s the same thing she does when we argue.
Something drops to the floor downstairs. A plate. It’s shattered. Then comes a laugh. Someone says, “Be fucking quiet, asshole.” It’s a man’s voice. A young man.
“There’s more than one,” I say, my stomach going so tight, it’s like I swallowed a brick.
“You’ve got to go down there, or I will,” Julia insists.
She’s right, I’ve got to go down there. I’m the man of the house after all. The protector. Inhaling a breath, I pull off the covers and get out of bed.
3
My entire body is shivering. It’s summertime, and I feel like my body temperature is cold as ice. My feet are bear and all I’m wearing is pajama bottoms and what the rednecks call a wife beater t-shirt. But I’ve never beaten my wife nor have I ever so much as touched her in anger. Nor will I ever. We might argue about money, but I still love Julia with all my heart and I can only assume she loves me.
But these guys who have broken into my house, it’s possible I will kill them.
I need a weapon.
“The baseball bat in the closet,” Julia says.
It’s like she’s reading my mind.
“I’m a step ahead of you,” I say.
Something else crashes in the kitchen. This time the two intruders laugh aloud. It’s like they’re drunk or on drugs or both. I reach into the closet for the baseball bat. Gripping it my right hand, I take one last look at Julia.
“This isn’t gonna be pretty,” I say.
She’s lifted her head up and now she’s staring at me with her beautiful wide, brown eyes.
“It’s not supposed to be,” she says
4
Descending the steps gently, silently, I hear the two intruders rummaging around the drawers in the kitchen.
“Take anything that’s made of silver,” one of them says. “I’m gonna start on the dining room. Or fuck it, let’s just wreck the place. Let’s bring terror to the fucking fascists.”
“Knock yourself out,” says the second voice. “Let’s make our brothers and sisters proud.”
When I come to the landing, my hip knocks into the little wood table where we set our car keys. I stop on a dime, hold my breath.
“What the hell was that, Sal?” says the voice from the dining room.
“I dunno, Mikey. Watch where you’re going for fucks sakes.”
I swallow something dry and bitter, raise up the bat which is now gripped in both my hands, and start making my way past the vestibule along the short corridor that leads to the kitchen.
When I enter, I see him. Sal. He’s tall and thin, and wearing black jeans, boots, and a black hoodie. He’s also got one of those Scream masks covering his face like those Antifa thugs wear to hide their identities.
He turns quick, holds up Julia’s cell phone.
“Looking for this, asshole?” he says.
Julia’s phone.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“It’s our house now,” comes a voice from behind me. Mikey.
I turn and...
5
When I come to, I feel like my brains are about to bust out of my skull. What the hell truck ran me over in my own kitchen. I’m seated in one of the kitchen chairs. I try to get up but I can’t, because my legs are duct taped to the chair legs, and my hands are bound together at the wrists behind my back. Leaning up against the basement door is a four-foot length of two-by-four. It must be what Mikey belted me with. Set beside it is my now useless baseball bat.
Turning, I see something that steals my breath away. Just like me, Julia is bound to a chair. She’s only wearing her tank top and a pair of black panties.
“You okay?” I ask, my dry voice feeling like it’s peeling itself off the back of my throat.
Julia gives me one of her looks over her shoulder. “Is that a trick question?”
Sal and Mikey are in the living room presently, tearing the place apart. They’re using words like “white privilege” and “rich bastards” and “fascist pigs.” At one point they accuse my wife and I of not paying our fair share of taxes. If only they knew how broke we are half the time. Doesn’t matter that we live in a nice neighborhood in a nice house. At present, the bank accounts are dry as a bone.
When the two thugs come back into the kitchen, I see that they are not only both dressed entirely in black with matching black hoodies, they are also wearing identical Scream masks. It’s impossible to know who’s who. One of the bastards approaches my wife, runs his hands over her breasts.
“You’re a hot MILF, you know that?” he says. “Whaddaya doing with this old geezer?”
He leans in and sniffs her neck, runs his hands through her hair.
“Get off of me,” Julia spits.
I’m beginning to feel my blood boil. No, that’s not right, my blood as been boiling for a while now while my head aches.
“Why don’t you take your masks off, cowards,” I say.
The second one...I’m not sure if it’s Mikey or Sal since they’re both tall and skinny...steps forward. Bending at the waste, he gets right in my face.
“You don’t deserve to see my face,” he spits. “All you need to know is we...us, me and Sal here...we go right to where the right-wingers like yourself go. I’ve read some of your journalism...if you call it journalism. I call it hate speech. And hate speech, my white friend, is not free speech, you get my meaning.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I say.
But I’m lying. Because I know precisely what he’s talking about. In the past I’ve written for a couple of more conservative online journals that shall go unmentioned here, not because I support any political party. If anything, you would call me a right down the middle moderate. As a writer, I never believed in any one political philosophy. I need to be open minded. But I wrote what I wrote not because I felt the need to write something that might be interpreted as coming from the right and therefore hateful and deserving of the cancel culture. I wrote what I wrote because I needed the money. Simple as that. If a lefty magazine hired me, and wanted to pay me good money, I’d write for them too. But I’m not sure these intruding thugs want to hear that.
“You, sir, are endangering people with what you write and you do not have the right to do so. That’s why we have come to shut you down in protest, to place fear in you, to make sure you never write anything hateful again.”
