Dean's Lesson: Part IV
By: Sparky

Quick! There’s something under the chair!”

Enrique seized Bertrand’s collar and dragged him away as Jeremy dropped to all-fours and peered under the chair.

“It’s too dark, I can’t see anything!”

“Then I would suggest moving the chair.”

“Ah.”

Jeremy stood and pushed the chair aside. There was nothing there.

“What? If he’s not there, what was your dog barking at?” Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to him. "You don’t think he…ate…him, do you?”

Enrique gently pried open Bertrand’s mouth and looked inside.

“I do not believe so. I see no remnants of your friend. And he would have stopped barking once he had his…meal.”

“Then where the hell did he go?”

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Dean’s limbs were tangled with those of the owner of the arm that had protruded from the hole in the wall. He extricated himself as quickly as possible and stood up, backing away with caution. It was pitch black, and he couldn’t see a damned thing.

“Relax, buddy. We’re not gonna hurt you or anything.”

“We? Who is ‘we’?”

“Your eyes will adjust to the dark. There’s four of us here.” Dean still couldn’t see anything, but he got the sense that there were indeed several others standing around him.

“So you’re all guys?”

The voice snorted. “Naturally. Enrique doesn’t lure women to his place, after all.”

“What the hell happened? How did he do this? How long have you all been here?”

Above, there was the sound of shouting and moving furniture.

“We’ll chat about it later. Let’s get out of here.” Dean was gently nudged on the shoulder to start moving.

“But where will we go?”

“Deeper into the walls, to be safe. We’ll guide you, but be careful. If we get separated, you could be lost…well, for a long time. We’ve had one guy disappear and never come back.”

Dean was not feeling much better about his situation.

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His eyes had adjusted long ago, but Dean almost wish they hadn’t. while everything was colorless thanks to the extremely low light, he could tell he was in a large (well, by his current standards) space within the walls of the apartment building that the four men he was with had used as a living area. Small objects like match boxes were used for sitting on, while piles of fabric were used as makeshift beds. It was very spartan, and very unsettling, especially considering the stories of the men.

Adam, the one who had saved him from the giant dog, had been there the longest—over a full year. He was 29 years old. The youngest was Derek at 20, and he had also been there the shortest amount of time, just over a month. The oldest was Ken, at age 41, who had been in the walls for 4 months. Twenty-five year old Chris was second only to Adam for his time inside, at 7 months.

All of them had been lured to Enrique’s apartment the same way: an internet chat site. It wasn’t the same site for each of them, but the story was always similar. The alluring Caribbean man offered tantalizing pleasures, things many would believe taboo. Instead they got this horror.

The worst part was that these were the survivors. They knew of many more who had been ensnared, but had not been lucky enough to escape into the walls. These unfortunate men had met their fate at the hands of Enrique, although they weren’t sure what exactly happened. All they knew was that the victims were never heard from again.

“We could easily escape,” said Dean, rubbing his temples in dismay over his situation. “I’m sure we could work ourselves down to street level and get out of the building…”

“And then what?” Adam chuckled in a low voice. “We’d be 3-inch tall men in the middle of New York City. The rats alone would be our doom. We’re lucky in that this is a pricey high rise, so there is minimal vermin. But we’ve had to kill our share of pests to stay alive even in here. I told you already we lost one escapee that way.”

Dean shuddered. They had told him about Zach, the poor guy who had the misfortune to encounter a rat that, to him, was the size of a bus. It would have killed them all, but they were able to fashion weapons from nails and kill the monstrous thing. But that was after it had made a meal of the unfortunate Zach.

“I know,” said Dean, “but I’m just trying to keep up some…hope. There MUST be a way to get out of this.”

“We all thought that, too,” said Ken. “But as you can see, we’ve all been here for months with no change. If it were the kind of thing to wear off, it would have by now. We’re stuck.”

“Then only Enrique has the answer.” Dean stood and paced back and forth, his typical “thinking” gesture. He wasn’t going to roll over and accept this fate. There simply had to be a way. “If his…magic, or whatever it is…had the ability to do this to us, it has to be able to turn us back. He must have an antidote in his apartment.”

“Why are you so sure of that?” asked Derek. The kid was excited, Dean could tell. He could always tell when the boys were buying into his spiel.

“Because, what if something went wrong? Enrique is smart, we know that. Or else he couldn’t have gotten away with this for so long. And any smart man has precautions, especially when using dangerous things. What if he accidentally shrunk himself? Or someone he actually didn’t want to harm, if there was such a person? I’m guessing he would have an antidote prepared in just such a case. And we have to find it.”

“How in the hell do we do that?”

“We go back. We wait a bit, until it’s quiet. We sneak in, find the antidote, get back to full size…and…”

“And?”

Dean’s face contorted into a contemptuous sneer.

“And get our revenge.”

The End