Chapter 6: The Trunk
The trunk lid slammed down with a final, air-sucking thud that was more felt than heard. Darkness, complete and velvety, swallowed them whole. For a second, there was only the frantic drum of her heart, then the chemical smell of old carpet, and maybe rubber from the spare tire in the well beneath them.
Then the engine turned over. A deep, metallic groan vibrated through the chassis, up through the floor, and into her bare skin. Cathy could could feel the soft, bare nub of Jason's cock rubbing against her ass cheek, though she hardly noticed. She curled up against herself as he held on to her.
The car reversed with a jolt, throwing Cathy sideways into Jason. They jostled together—his soft stomach against her hip, her elbow jabbing his ribs--and he yelped.
“Sorry,” she breathed.
“It’s okay,” he whispered back, but his voice was thin, frayed.
The car finished its turn and accelerated. The motion was smoother now, a steady forward hum. The trunk was not large, and with both of them inside, there was no room to do anything but lie twisted together, with her as the inside spoon. She could feel the damp heat of Jason's breath on the back of her head. There was no way his dick was hard, was there? She really couldn't tell at this angle. In the dark it was hard to be sure. But wouldn't that be just like him, to be dry humping her on the way to some miserable end.
The initial shock began to recede, replaced by a catalog of physical miseries. The carpet was rough, a cheap, scratchy nylon that grated against her shoulders and the backs of her thighs. Every seam and lump in the trunk floor pressed into her with intimate, unforgiving clarity. The air was already stale, tasting of dust and gasoline fumes.
“My glasses,” Jason murmured suddenly. “They kicked them. They’re back in the alley.”
“I know.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“There’s nothing to see.”
The car took a turn. They slid together, a single unit of warmth and damp skin. Cathy tried not to think about what would happen if the driver crashed, or they got rear ended. Everything was going to be fine, she told herself. They were just being bullied a little, was all.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
Cathy took inventory. Her cheek where she’d been slapped throbbed dully, but she didn't feel bruised. Her arm ached from the man’s grip. A deeper, hollow ache had settled in her pelvis, a cold knot of pure fear. “No,” she said. “You?”
“A little scraped up,” he said. "I'm fine."
The hum of the road changed, deepening. It sounded like they were on the highway now, the speed increasing, the vibrations becoming a constant, teeth-rattling drone. She could hear someone in the car laughing, and the sound of music playing that she didn't recognize. It sounded like the three of them were having a good time, and perfectly at ease.
“Where are they taking us?” Jason’s question was barely audible over the road noise.
“I don’t know.”
“Cathy?” His voice cracked.
“Yeah?”
"You were really going to fuck them?"
Cathy was silent for a moment before she answered him. "It's probably better than getting murdered."
It was his turn to be silent. Finally he asked, "Do you think that's what they're going to do?"
She didn't answer.
The silence that followed was heavy. It filled the trunk as completely as the darkness. Jason’s breathing, shallow and quick, was the loudest sound next to the road. Cathy could still hear the bass of the music, and sometimes the sound of muffled voices.
He shifted behind her, his knee bumping the sidewall. “It’s getting hard to breathe in here.”
“Don’t think about it,” Cathy murmured, but she was thinking about it. The air felt used-up, thick with their own exhaled carbon dioxide and the smell of their fear. She focused on the vibrations. The steady whine of tires on pavement told her they were still on the highway, moving fast.
Minutes bled into one another, measured only by the rhythm of the road. The car would slow, her heart would clutch, then it would speed up again, an endless cycle of false alarms. The initial sharp terror began to dull into a numb, enduring dread. The conversation in the car had ended, though the music faintly rolled on. Her mind, unable to fix on the horrifying future, began to slip its anchors.
She thought about the texture of the carpet against her cheek. It reminded her of her grandmother’s basement rec room, the scratchy orange sofa she’d nap on during summer visits. That smell of mildew and old glue. She hadn’t thought of that in years.
Jason’s whisper cut through the memory. “What if they just drive us into a lake?”
“They won’t,” she said, without conviction. "Stop saying the worst things."
The pitch of the engine changed, the speed dropping, and they were on surface streets now. The vibrations became a series of distinct events: a stop sign, a turn, a pothole. Each one was a fresh jolt of adrenaline. The car stopped for awhile, and then started again.
The stretches of smooth road between them grew longer. Cathy’s thoughts drifted again, unspooling in the dark. She would have guessed the security offices would have been the most interesting part of her night, but she was already wrong. Things had definitely taken an unexpected turn.
She thought about her apartment. The unpaid electric bill on the kitchen counter. The half-dead succulent on her windowsill she kept forgetting to water. The mundane details of a life that now felt galaxies away. Would anyone find that succulent if she didn’t come back? Who would go through the details of her life and clean out her things?
“Cathy?” Jason said again, his voice small.
“I’m here.”
“I’m really scared.”
“I know.”
He was quiet for a long time after that. The car made a series of turns, left, then right, then right again. They were in a residential area now; the sound of the tires changed as they rolled over seams in concrete driveways. Cathy tried to map it, to keep count, but her concentration was porous. The fear was a tide, ebbing and flowing, and in the troughs, her mind just floated.
She thought about the dumb movie they’d barely watched. The actor’s unconvincing mustache. The way Jason had giggled at a stupid joke, his hand sneaking onto her thigh in the dark. That seemed like a lifetime ago. A different Cathy. The one who thought being a secret exhibitionist was the edgiest thing in her life.
Time lost its shape. It might have been twenty minutes or an hour. The heat built up, a stifling, moist warmth from their confined bodies. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, traced a path between her breasts. She was acutely aware of every point where Jason’s skin touched hers—damp, sticky, inseparable.
She dozed, or something like it. It was a weird, semi-conscious state where the drone of the engine became a lullaby and the sharp edges of panic softened into a dull hum. Her thoughts were dream-logic nonsense: mixing the scent of popcorn with the smell of the trunk, seeing the three men’s faces superimposed on the characters from the movie.
A final, sharp turn jerked her back. The car slowed to a crawl, then stopped. The engine cut off.
Cathy felt Jason stiffen behind her, his fingernails digging into her palm. A car door creaked open outside, then slammed shut with a finality that echoed in the tight space.
Footsteps crunched on gravel, moving around the vehicle. There was a low murmur of voices, too indistinct to make out words. Then, clearer, came Carrey’s voice, bored and practical. “Hold up, I gotta piss. My bladder’s about to explode.”
“Yeah, me too,” Drew’s voice replied.
The mechanism above them clicked. With a metallic groan, the trunk lid sprang open a few inches, letting in fresh air that tasted like pine and dirt. Cathy squinted, her eyes watering after the long darkness. Before she could process the relief, the lid was wrenched fully open.
The three figures stood silhouetted against a deep black sky, zippers already down. “Bathroom break,” Carrey announced, his voice light, almost cheerful.
There was no other warning, no further taunt.
A hot, arching stream hit Cathy’s chest with sudden warmth. She gasped, flinching back into Jason. Another stream, pungent and acidic, splashed across her thighs. A third struck Jason in the face as he tried to turn away. The three men laughed and jeered as they pissed, cheering themselves like they had successfully dunked a touchdown.
It was a deluge. The hot liquid soaked their hair, ran in rivulets over their shoulders and backs, pooled in the hollows of their collarbones and the small of Cathy’s spine. The trunk filled with the sharp, ammonia reek of urine, overwhelming the stale air. She squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth clamped tight as the warm piss trickled behind her ears.
David laughed, a high-pitched giggle. “You're right,” he said. "This is better."
“See if you can piss in her mouth,” Drew grunted, adjusting his stance. His stream spattered against the trunk lid above them, raining back down in a fine, hot mist. Cathy gagged as piss sprayed her nostrils.
Carrey chuckled, finishing with a satisfied sigh. Drew wiped his hands off on his pants, and David was already drinking from another bottle. They had picked up more alcohol, at some point.
“There. Marked our territory.” The last few drops pattered onto Cathy’s knee. "You got a little something in your hair, sweetheart."
The torrent stopped as suddenly as it began. The three men stood there for a moment, shaking off and zipping up. Their laughter was casual, effortless, the sound of sharing a dumb joke.
“Don't go anywhere,” David snickered.
The trunk lid slammed down. The lock clicked close, shutting them in the steaming, wet dark of the cramped trunk. The heat of their bodies mingled with the sticky residue that soaked the carpet and their skin.
Cathy trembled, a full-body shiver that had nothing to do with cold. The warmth of their piss was turning clammy. Jason made a wet, choking sound beside her, spitting. He had been shielded from the worst of it, crammed in the back of the trunk behind her.
“Oh god,” he whispered, his voice thick with revulsion. “Oh god, oh god. I got some in my mouth.”
She could only breathe in shallow sips, the air thick with the scent of humiliation. It was in her hair, on her lips, everywhere. Very much in her mouth. She hadn't known it was coming.
But Jason was hyperventilating, his chest shuddered against her back in ragged, wet bursts.
“Breathe through your nose,” Cathy whispered, her own throat burning.
She spat, a futile attempt to clear the taste. What was it with men and bodily fluids that made them want to paint everything with themselves?
He gagged, then spluttered. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You have to.”
They lay there marinating in the foul dark, the silence outside the trunk now more terrifying than any noise. Cathy listened for clues—crickets, distant traffic, anything. There was only a dense, rural quiet, broken by the muffled sound of the three men talking near the front of the car. Their voices were casual, relaxed.
A lighter flicked. The faint, acrid scent of cigarette smoke teased through the seam of the trunk lid, mingling horribly with their own stench. Cathy focused on the smoke, a tiny anchor to a world where people did things like light cigarettes after taking a piss. The smell of the smoke reminded her vaguely of that dreadful security office at the movies, but it was still better than the urine smell that was choking her nasal passages. She could still taste it, no matter how many times she clacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
The car doors opened. The chassis rocked slightly with weight. The driver’s side door clicked shut with a solid, well-made thunk. Jason’s breath caught. Cathy braced herself, every muscle coiled against the expectation of the trunk opening again.
"I can't believe this is happening," Jason said.
Cathy said nothing.
The ignition turned.
A mechanical whine, a cough, then the engine roared to life. The vibration buzzed up through the metal floor, through the pooled filth, and into their bones. Jason jerked against her.
The car reversed, tires crunching over gravel, then found purchase on asphalt. It surged forward. The movement was different now—purposeful, faster. They were back on a main road, accelerating with a force that pressed them into the sodden carpet. The sound of the humming road resumed. The acrid smell of dirty piss, now churned and agitated by the car’s motion, seemed to thicken. Cathy turned her face, pressing her nose against the slightly less wet shoulder of her own arm. It didn’t help.
Behind her, Jason was shivering.
"It's okay," Cathy said. "It's fine. They're not going to hurt us. You heard the one. They're not rapists or anything."
Jason coughed. "Yeah," he said. "They seem like real cool guys."
The hum of the road continued to drum on.