I'm with the Band

Chapter 31: Dead to Me

My head was pounding. I could feel the steady thump thump thump pulsing in my frontal lobe. I listened to my breathing slowly keep in time to the thump in my brain as my body began to slowly fade back into existence. 

I could feel my body but in a messy disjointed way. Like my limbs weren't all the way attached to myself. My left foot twitching as the effects of the drugs wore off. I was aware that my back was sore, my arms were still numb and my butt was cold. 

I groaned as my eyes started to flutter open. My body sagging forward at the effort. 

Grey floors. Dirty grey floors with dried, brown liquid stained across the industrial room. Metal columns stretched through the room along either side of me. Scrap pieces of metal and car parts lay in a disarray. 

My eyes flicked to my left and right as my brain slowly caught up to what I was seeing. Blurry images of partially dismantled cars appeared crisp in my line of vision. My eyebrows scrunched together. I tried to take a deep breathe but it was impossible. I choked on my panic. There was something over my mouth. I tried to get up, my foot automatically attempting to propel me up. But I realized too slowly what was happening. 

I was tied up. Arms behind my back, squeezed together so tightly with zip ties that the black material bit into my skin, drawing a little bit of blood. I winced at the pain. 

My body was tied to one of the metal columns, a rope wrapped around my chest holding me securely in place. My feet were left untied but I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. 

I was utterly and royaly fucked. 

A slight movement to my right made me jerk my head, heart speeding up as I realized that I wasn't alone. 

Leighton. 

His body slumped forward in his ropes. His arms behind his back no doubt kept together with the same zip ties that held mine. His legs were tied together though, ankles crudely taped with duct tape, squishing the edges of his Docs together. 

We had been kidnapped. 

How stupid I had been. 

In all of the chaos of the venue and the fight and the crowds I failed to see the danger that beheld us. The threats had gotten eerily quiet. Nothing had happened since Frankie. It was all a matter of time before this came crashing down around us. Levi had been right and the rest of us had been stupid not to realize how big this was, how bad this situation had become. And know I had gotten Leighton and I kidnapped. We both might as well have been dead. 

A sob slipped out of my throat but was strangled and buried in the tape that kept my mouth shut. Instead, tears came. Fast and relentless, sliding down my cheeks. I looked over at Leighton again who sat on a pillar diagonal in front of me and to my right. 

A small trail of dried blood had run down his forehead from a gash beyond his hairline. Black eyeliner was smudged around his eyes in large black circles. He took slow shallow breathes, his exposed chest rising and falling slowly. Whoever had kidnapped us didn't even have the decency of covering Leighton's shoulders. His flight suit still tied around his waist as the cold metal bit into the naked skin of his back. Several bruises had already started to form around sections of his toned stomach. Leighton must have fought back before they took him. 

"Mhmm. Muhmmm." I tried to get Leighton to open his eyes but all I could manage was mumbled consonants strewn together. 

"MHMMM. MHNMM." I said louder, straining my voice. 

Leighton's head slowly began to rise. His chest rising and falling more sporadically as he too faded back into existence. 

I watched as his eyes shuttered open, the same confusion that I had felt moments earlier echoed onto his face. I stayed silent as he scanned the room around him, taking in the car debris and filthy warehouse setting. He pulled against his restraints, panic raising onto his face. He took in the duct tape at his feet, he felt the biting cold of the cement floor against his legs and then his gaze wandered to his left towards me.