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Bethany Dreams — Part 1 of 3  

"It'll be funny," Suzy said, "Daddy will take our pics and we’ll tweet them like we've been kidnapped or something!"

Beth gave Suzy a look that she hoped said, 'you people are too weird for words.'  But what she actually said was, "I don't know?"

"No, really," Suzy said, picking at the end of the roll of duct tape, "We do it all the time.  It's a riot!  Tote hillair!"  The tape made a sound like "burlap!" as she pulled a strip loose from the roll.  She tore it off and stuck it over her mouth.

Beth decided to play along.  Their day was just starting, and once they got to the mall some other girls would surely be there and they could tell Suzy what a little freak she was.  For now, Beth just sat there as Suzy stuck some duct tape over her mouth too, and then wrapped more around Beth's wrist.  She wanted to tell the little spaz to be careful of her bracelets, but she already had that tape over her mouth.

And then Mr. Lutz had bent over to take her picture through the window of the car.  "Don't you trust us?" he said, with that cheesy, over-the-top smile he had.  Suzy leaned over to get into the picture, her giggling snuffled by the tape over her mouth.  Tote hillair, indeed.

But, wait, a minute.  Why didn’t Suzy need to have three complete wraps of tape binding her hands together for this stupid photo op?  And why Mrs. Lutz looking around nervously, standing there behind Mr. Lutz.  "Get the damn pictures, Al," she said through clenched teeth.

Beth was suddenly worried.  The Lutzes were weird, but...?  Mr. Lutz took a few more pictures, then straightened up and he too looked around.  Mrs. Lutz pointed at something to the left, he nodded and leaned back down.  “Just a couple more totally hilarious pictures, right girls?” he said.

Beth sagged in her seat, but then sat up when an old, once-white delivery van pulled up next to the Lutzes. The Lutz's started talking with the creepy-looking guy that got out of the van, and Beth noticed that not even the clownish Mr. Lutz was smiling as they talked.  The creepy guy didn’t really talk, even.  He just nodded at what Mr. Lutz said, and apparently ignored Mrs. Lutz, when she would interrupt.  Beth turned to Suzy, and gave her a confused look.

Suzy was easing the tape off of her mouth.  "Doan worry," she said quietly, half her mouth still covered, "thaz my unc."  She pulled the tape completely off, and rubbed at her lips for a moment before smiling a big grin at Beth.  "Tote hillair!  You'll see!"

The Lutzes moved off to the right around the front of the car, and the creepy guy came over toward her and to Beth's dismay opened her door.  He leaned down and gave her a smile that featured crooked, darkly yellow teeth.  Then before Beth could react, he reached in and grabbed a fistful of hair, at the back of her head.

His eyes wide, he studied her face for a moment as she struggled against his grip, then turned his attention to Suzy.  His eyes narrowed to a look of boredom and he asked  "What was her name?"

Beth strained to look out of the corner of her eye at her friend.  "She had such a pretty name: Bethany," Suzy said, her voice bizarrely chipper.  Suzy scootched over and leaned in close to Beth so that she could burble into her ear.

"Sorry," she said, "But it's what we do.  Besides, my uncle gets grumpy without fresh meat.  And like this one time?  I kind of chickened out?  And so we didn’t get the meat?  Anyway, so they gave, you now, gave me to my unc instead, just for the weekend, right?  Since there wasn’t any meat for him, like there should of been.  Which was tote my own fault!  Right?"  But then some hint of Beth’s grim reality seemed to penetrate into Suzy’s detached mania, and her talking got quieter, and slower.  "But still, it's either you or me.  And I just.... You were nice.  Thanks, you know, for being nice to me, right?  I know that sometimes I, you know, I can, can be a little weird, like—”

“Shut up already,” said the uncle, “I need to get going.  Okay?”

Suzy pressed her lips to Beth’s cheek, just above the edge of the tape.  The kiss was soft, but she held it for a long moment. Then she said, “I’m sorry," and fell back over into her seat.  

“Alright,” she said, waving a hand, “Take it away.  Thanks for, you know.”  She turned aside and stared out the car window.  The uncle dragged Beth out of the car by her hair.  As she fought against him she heard Suzy’s voice, once again crazy chipper, calling out, “Bye!  See you later, alligator!”

He jerked her sideways so that she couldn’t get her feet under her, instead her legs failing as he drug her along.  The knees in her jeans tore open, the gravel on the pavement grinding into her exposed skin.  As he hauled her up into the van after him, Beth heard a distant voice call out, “Hey, don’t damage it!  I already got a buyer for that one!”

“I never damage the meat,” the uncle said to himself, as he grabbed the waistband of her jeans and between that and the grip on her hair picked her up and half-set, half-dropped her down into a crate that was bolted to the floor of the van.

When he let go, she tried to kick at him, but he got hold of her legs, and bound her ankles together with more tape.  “Such thin, delicate ankles,” he said, firmly pushing her legs down into the crate.  He leaned over her.  “I never do any damage,” he said, “Well, I never do anything that won’t heal.  Eventually.”

He closed the top and Beth was in complete darkness.  There was the sound of something being dragged over the crate, but all the sounds after that were muffled, quiet and distant.

Beth didn’t know what to do.  Isn’t this when the video cuts to the hero?  Who was the hero?  How did he know where she was or that she was in trouble?  Beth started to cry, and made a sound something like a whimper, but the tape kept her mostly silent.  She snorted in air between her stifled sobs, and snot streamed down her face, mixing with her tears, as she shivered, soaked with cold sweat.

Bethany Dreams — Part 3 of 3