By Hunter Perez

I spent about five minutes trying to convince myself not to panic – which was no mean feat, considering that I was locked in a jail cell in the middle of a derelict ghost town in the middle of the New Mexican desert by a law enforcement officer with more than few emotional problems. When my anxiety abated, I began to consider what would happen next.

I came to the immediate conclusion that Nicky was not going to leave me to die a slow death. For starters, he knew I had a phone with me – we already exchanged text messages – and I would be able to call 911 for help. Yet I hesitated to immediately place such a call because I was uncertain if this was an elaborate but unfunny prank on Nicky’s part. He obviously carried anger issues about my leaving him 10 years earlier, and maybe this was his warped idea of a temporary but determined comeuppance.

Plus, he could have easily killed me when we arrived at the ghost town and hid my body. I also realized there might have been surveillance cameras back at the hotel that tracked our drive out of Albuquerque – if I was gone for too long and a police inquiry into my disappearance were to begin, Nicky would be immediately identified as the person of interest in my vanishing. He had to be aware of that.

Having calmed myself, I began to wonder if this was supposed to be some kind of an escape room routine. I stood back from the cell door, turned around, touched my hands to the ground and gave the cell door a swift kick with both feet. It didn’t move.

Then I thought aloud, “What if I was the new James Bond? If 007 was in a trap like this, how would he get out of it?” But then I realized 007 probably would not have allowed himself to be handcuffed and driven into the desert, would not have rejected an offer to be uncuffed during the ride and would not have voluntary walked into a jail cell and been locked inside.

“Yeah, some James Bond,” I mumbled. “Lazenby was right – this never happened to the other fellow.”

With no immediate answers to my dilemma, I opted to give Nicky a quickly fraying benefit of the doubt and cede him another hour before I would call 911 to report what happened. I thought of texting him, but I decided to wait for his move – if I showed any signs of being scared, then I am sure he would take pleasure in my apprehension. By staying silent, I theorized, I would force him to resume contact, either to inquire on my well-being or try to enact authority.

With time on my hands, I opened my fly and took a therapeutic piss through the bars of the cell, then zipped up and sat down on the floor with my back to the cell’s rear wall. I closed my eyes and tried to recall a meditation regimen I half-learned some years ago. For a few minutes, I found myself strangely relaxed, with the agitation sparked by my imprisonment evaporated.

But that was short lived when I thought I could hear the approach of a speeding car that came to an abrupt stop. I wondered how I should pose myself for discovery – should I stay seated on the floor in a meditative state of nonchalance, or should I appease my former lover and current captor by clinging to the cell bars? I held my phone and waited for a call or a text, but a few more minutes passed and there was nothing by silence.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on whatever sounds could be heard from outside of the old sheriff’s office. I thought I heard some grunting, but I couldn’t be certain. After another minute, I heard what sounded like a drawn-out bleating noise, like a neophyte saxophone player holding a note for too long.

My phone pinged and it was a text from Nicky: “If you should happen to run into John Holmgren, send him my love.”

John Holmgren? I didn’t know anybody by that name. Was this someone we went to school with? When we were in college, we didn’t have any mutual friends – we kept our relationship to ourselves and he would hang out on campus with his fellow freshmen while I kept mostly to the members of my junior class. Who was this guy, and why would I run into?

While I was looking at my phone, the door to the space opened quickly. I looked up but I didn’t see Nicky in the doorway – although what I saw was even more confusing. There was a large silvery object, about the size of an old-fashioned steamer trunk, with a circular vent at its center and narrow horizontal vent above it. The saxophone bleating was coming from the object. I stood up and walked to the cell’s bars, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nicky beyond this weird thing. But I could not detect anyone there.

Without warning, the narrow vent on the contraption gave forth a massive blast of white light, sort of like a photo flashbulb on a massive steroids cycle. I found myself blinded for a few seconds and fell back, trying to blink myself into vision. I looked back to the contraption and a hideous blue smoke began to billow out and permeate the space.

“What the hell is this stuff?” I yelled out. “Nicky, are you there? Nicky?”

The narrow vent gave forth an even greater blast of white light while the bleating noise grew louder. I turned my back to the contraption and rubbed my eyes, but my throat and nostrils began to absorb a horrid turpentine-type odor. I looked back and the room was filling with thick blue smoke.

“What the fuck, I’m being gassed,” I screamed. “Nicky, stop it. Stop it.”

The bleating noise was replaced by a siren that wailed as if calling out the end of the world. An even greater blast of white light burst forth, followed with a shattering boom. The circular vent spewed a torrent of blue smoke. My senses began to shut down and I desperately fell to the floor, curling myself before the far wall of the cell into a fetal position with my hands over my face. I choked and ached and felt pain across my body that I never knew was possible. before I fainted.

***

When I awoke, my eyes itched and my throat was sore, but the air in the cell was clean – perhaps a bit too clean. I rubbed my face and my forehead and wondered what the hell just happened. I looked to the wall and then glanced up to the ceiling – both were still standing, so obviously the commotion that occurred didn’t create any structural destruction. Strangely, I recalled the paint on the back wall to be somewhat more grimy – I was looking at a much brighter shade of grey paint than the cell that I entered.

I imagined Nicky would be staring down at me through the cell bars, so I tried to retain my composure as I rolled over to meet him. But Nicky wasn’t there. What I viewed, however, left me speechless.

When I came into that old sheriff’s office, the space was empty except for a derelict desk and chair. I looked through the cell bars and saw a full furnished and decorated room. There were two desks, beautifully crafted in rich mahogany, with chairs tucked neatly behind them. On the wall to my left were a gun rack with rifles, neighbored to pegs where handcuffs and ankle chains were hanging. On the opposite wall was a map of the United States, although it looked as if one-third of the states were missing, and a picture of Abraham Lincoln with tattered black bunting around its frame paired to a picture of what I thought was Ulysses S. Grant. Large wooden boxes and barrels punctuated much of the free space.

“What the hell kind of a gag is this?” I said. “Why the hell would he gas me and then go through the trouble of redecorating the room? This is stupid. I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life.”

The door to the space opened and three men walked in, all of them carrying rifles while dressed in uniforms that looked like the clothing assigned to the Union Army in the Civil War. The man in the center walked one pace ahead of the others – he was pale and broad shouldered, with a neatly trimmed ginger beard and almond shaped blue eyes. To his left was blubbery short man with a dumb face and confused gaze – he reminded me of Curly from the Three Stooges. To his right was a scraggly young man with a mustache barely occupying his upper lip. The punk viewed me with a mild contempt while the others offered indifference.

“Looks like the sheriff is getting his whisky therapy,” sighed the ginger leader in a gravelly voice. “Joe, go across to the saloon and tell him we’re picking up his rubbish.”

The Curly clone saluted and quickly exited. The punk pointed his rifle at me while the ginger removed the large keychain from the wall – the same keys that Nicky used to lock me in – and fished out a key to open my cell.

“Well, what do we have here?” the ginger said.

“Funny lookin’ clothes, corporal,” the punk answered in what sounded like a rural twang. “You suspect he’s one of them St. Louis dudes?

“Possible, possible,” the ginger answered. “They like to dress themselves up and look all lady-like. If it was up to me, you could take everything east of the Mississippi and push it out into the ocean. Them folks are the worst thing to happen to us.”

The two entered my cell, with the punk pushing his rifle within an inch of my face. I stood up and found myself raising my hands in surrender without being asked to comply. The ginger grabbed a pair of old-style darbies from his jacket pocket and used his steely gaze to motion to my hands. I put my hands forward and in less than a minute he had me secured in the antique handcuffs.

The pair stood behind me and one of them pushed me forward. We walked through the space into the open air, but I stopped abruptly when I saw what was before me. When I came to this place with Nicky, it was a few broken-down old buildings in a long-forgotten slice of New Mexico. Now, I found myself in a vibrant, pulsating Old West frontier town. The street was lined with the buildings as far as the eye could see – two- and three-story structures, all of them looking as if they were just built and freshly painted. Horses were tied to railings outside of the buildings and cowboys trotted on their steeds down the wide dirt road. A stagecoach was parked up the way, with a man dressed who looked like John Wayne in “Stagecoach” attaching feedbags to the horses’ mouths. I could hear a tinny piano playing from the saloon directly opposite of us.

Then I turned to the right and saw a wagon carrying a large cage. The ginger growled for me to get inside the cage. I stopped and looked at world before me. None of this made any sense to me. I felt myself being pushed from behind, but I refused to move ahead.

“This can’t be happening,” I yelled. “This has to be a dream. I have to wake up. I have to wake up.”

“What should we do?” I heard the punk say in his rural twang.

I spun around and looked at the punk and the ginger. “I’m dreaming,” I screamed at a volume that I never reached before. “This isn’t real. None of this is happening.”

The punk began to raise his rifle and I flung my manacled hands at him and knocked the weapon from his hands. I began to run into the road.

“Nicky, let me out of here!” I yelled with a desperation of biblical proportions.

I felt a blunt blow to the back of my head, and all went dark.

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