Backstabbed, Betrayed and Kidnapped
Reason # 312 not to trust Brian
I was lying in my bed asleep at about 6:30 a.m. with the intention of having a nice sleep-in with my wife-to-be. The previous night was my 25th birthday party, and it was a good one. I was young enough that I wasn’t hung over, just underslept. Early morning sunlight dappled through the window of our sweet little bungalow, and our dog slept on her bed on the floor. Our 9-month-old son slept soundly in his room.
My blissful slumber was interrupted as three large men barged into my bedroom and attacked me. Heidi jumped up and wagged her tail in excitement. Useless backstabber.
It only took my sleep-addled mind a few moments to start fighting back, even before I’d identified my assailants as Brian, Chad, and Troy. Then I fought back harder. They had zap straps and a blindfold with them, so I quickly put together that they were trying to kidnap me for my bachelor party. I’d known it was coming soon, but the date had been kept a closely guarded secret.
I fought my ‘friends’ off for several minutes while feeling quite betrayed by Laura, because she had clearly known this was coming and jumped out of bed before anything started. The boys and I reached a standstill, all four of us on my bed, panting, mid-grapple. I was in my underwear, they were thankfully clothed. I was too strong for them. Even the three of them together couldn’t get my hands behind my back, and they certainly couldn’t bind me with zap straps.
I decided to make a deal. I offered to stop fighting if they’d let me get dressed and walk out of my house like a civilized person. Brian and Chad agreed too quickly, and I was a trusting dummy. They briefly let go, and I let my arms fall to my sides only for them to quickly pull my arms behind my back, while Troy applied the straps. They bound my ankles, pulled a hood over my head, and carried me out to a waiting vehicle. My protestations were ignored.
I was unceremoniously dumped on my side in the back of a large SUV, and the rear hatch was slammed shut behind me. The truck pulled away from the curb and turned around. As soon as the truck was moving, I returned to my struggling and managed to break the zap straps on my wrists, and then the ones on my ankles. I pulled the hood off of my face and took in my surroundings. A cover was pulled over the rear trunk area, so it was quite dark, but I could see a milk crate alarmingly full of ropes and ratchet straps, and a case of 24 Corona bottles. I didn’t like the look of the rope crate, but the beer was a welcome neighbour.
I opened the beer case, popped the top off a bottle, and started drinking, which was a bit awkward in my cramped position, but I made do. I tried to guess where we were going based on the corners they turned, and I wasn’t too far off. We left Ladner and headed out into the surrounding farmland.
After ten minutes or so, the truck pulled to a stop, and Chad opened the hatch.
“What the fuck? Give me that!” Chad snagged the mostly-finished beer out of my hand and I was roughly pulled out of the truck by the other two, both of whom were incredulous as to how I’d broken my bonds. They pulled the hood back over my head, and Troy threw me over his shoulder. He marched me into the bushes, still in nothing but my underwear. Proudly telling passers-by that it was my stag, not a proper kidnapping.
After a few hundred meters, Troy stopped and put me down. I was told to count to sixty and then take off the blindfold. I listened to their steps retreating into the tall grass as I counted silently.
I pulled off the blindfold to find myself alone in a grassy clearing, surrounded by a thicket of brambles, peppered with small birch trees. At my feet was a pair of work boots, socks, shorts, a white t-shirt, a paintball gun, and a paintball mask. Fuck. The assholes hadn’t given me any instructions about what was coming next, but I had a distinct feeling that it wouldn’t be good. I began getting dressed and scanned the bushes surrounding the clearing as I did so. I spotted several people ducked down, hiding, barely discernible, but all wearing paintball masks. Fuck again.
Once I was dressed and masked up, I pondered what to do. Nobody was shooting at me yet, but I could see at least six people in paintball masks. Were they just waiting for the right moment to attack? I didn’t like any of my options. I decided that I’d make the first move. I picked a person at random and started shooting while running toward the relative concealment of the bushes.
The clearing erupted in paintball fire, and I immediately felt searing pain as I was hit from all angles while wearing nothing but a thin white t-shirt. I kept running away from my assailants and shooting back at them whenever I could. I would later learn that there were a whole dozen of my closest friends shooting at me. I periodically tried to take cover behind the birch trees as I ran, but I was still getting peppered by paintballs on my shoulders, which stuck beyond the edges of the thin trees.
After what seemed like an eternity, I found myself on the road and out of ammunition. “I’m out of ammo, give me a break,” I yelled, breathing heavily, and barely containing my anger.
Frank walked up to the road, popped his mask off, and asked me if I wanted more ammo. I wasn’t about to go back into this with an unloaded gun, so I nodded. He refilled my hopper from a spare container at his belt before wandering back into the bushes. My friends seemed to be leaving me alone while I was on the road, so I walked along it for a minute, catching my breath and trying to decide what to do next.
Nobody came out to tell me any plan, so I had to assume that it was still twelve against one. I wasn’t about to lose face by asking for this bullshit game to end, so I trotted back into the bushes, doing my best to avoid the others. I soon found a small hillock with a log on top and a decent view of the surrounding area. I perched myself behind the log to take cover and watched as my opponents slowly made their way to my position. I took shots at them each as they grew near, but there were too many, and they kept coming. The sting of a multitude of paintball welts fed my anger and my determination to deliver some similar pain on my friends.
I felt somewhat safer in my newfound spot, despite the hordes approaching, and I was feeling a bit smug until rapid-fire shots about six feet behind me killed my high. Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.
My back lit up like the skin was being flensed off and burned to a crisp all in an instant. Blinding rage took over. I stood up, tore off my mask, threw my gun down, and turned to face Frank. His eyes inside the mask quickly went from a look of hideous glee to concern.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” I was going to attack my friend, and I was going to make it hurt.
“Wait, wait, wait, stop! Willy, stop!” Brian yelled frantically from down below my hillock.
Everyone else stood up from their positions and started taking their masks off. The game/torture session was over. I took a breath and began to calm down.
We walked back to the trucks, and I soon found myself relatively free from the seething rage that had briefly overtaken me. We cracked open some lukewarm Coronas and joked about the previous half hour. I stripped off the paint-covered clothes and we lost count at over a hundred and twenty welts.
Brian chose this time to tell me that they’d been planning all along to break into teams after an initial unpleasant surprise in the clearing, but somehow things just seemed too interesting and fun when I kept running and shooting back at them, so there wasn’t a good time to change the arrangement. I wondered aloud if it might have been a good time when I got up to the road and ran out of ammo. The question was met with confused looks and an awkward silence.
I asked if anyone had been kind enough to pick me up some clothing from home when they kidnapped me and was met by several pairs of shifty eyes. Someone brought out my clothing for the next portion of our day, much to my chagrin. I was to wear a full white, traditional sailor suit, complete with the silly round hat.
Our next stop was a restaurant nearby that had a liquor licence permitting it to start serving alcohol at 9:30 am. Brian always seemed to know these things.
