The Misfits

Elias

Sometime later, Elias started to regain consciousness. He felt the vibration in his left cheek and a distant hissing. As he started to wake more, he realized that he was lying face down on something hard and metal.

Whatever he was laying on bounced, lifting him up slightly before gravity took over. When he landed, he realized that whatever he was on wasn’t flat since his face landed partially on a raised spot and partially in a recess. The hiss kept going on while he was airborne as well.

He decided that he must be in a vehicle, probably a van.

Elias tried to open his eyes and they felt like they’d been somehow weighted together. He managed to open the one farthest from the floor, but everything was blurry, and he couldn’t make out much.

Elias tried to rub his face in his hands only made at a few inches before being yanked to a stop. e turned again and realized that his hands were cuffed together and those in turn were tethered to something else, preventing him from moving much. Presumably to stop him from getting away.

He blinked harder, trying to clear his eyes and things begin to clear up. It looked like he was in a van of some kind.

From what Elias could tell he was near the rear doors facing the front.

On each side of the van there was a bench seat running along the side. On each side of him was a man in black. Possibly one was the man who shot him, and now had him captive going who knows where.

He struggled to sit out given that his hands were tethered by a change or ring set in the vans floor. Neither man paid any attention to him.

“Hey,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Kidnapping is a serious crime you know.”

The men still didn’t pay any attention to Elias.

“Hey asshats, I’m talking to you.” Still nothing. Raising his voice, he said, “I said you can’t d-” and abruptly stopped as one of the men pointed a gun he had drawn at Elias.

Not sure if it was a gun or whatever they had shot him with before, he held up his hands and surrender, as far as they would go at least, and the man turned back away from Elias and holstered the weapon.

Elias decided it was probably better not to upset his captors, at least not right away. Not until he knew more and could plan better.

As he sat waiting for something to happen, he was going over scenarios in his head one after another, trying to come up with a plan that had the best odds of surviving.

Lost in thought, going over one losing scenario after another he almost didn’t notice the van come to a stop.

Thankfully, he did because he sat straight up. Had he not, he might have fell out of the back when the doors opened – or at least as far as the chain would have allowed.

After sitting in the darkened van for who knows how long, the bright light streaming in blinded Elias.

The two men got up, one going past Elias and out of the van, the other stopped at the end of his restraint to the van. He unlocked the chain from the ring in the floor and tossed the end to Elias.

“Get any funny ideas and I’ll just shoot you again. Makes no difference to me. Now out,” he said, gesturing behind Elias.

Elias figured it was easier to just stay sitting and slide around until he was facing the other direction. He hopped down from the van and his legs wobbled slightly before taking his weight since he had been sitting for so long.

No one made any attempt to help him.

His eyes were still adjusting to the light, but he had to try to look around to see if he could figure out where he was. Unfortunately for him, the land around him was mostly open space for as far as he could see. For several hundred feet in all directions, it was all either asphalt, concrete, or dirt.

Beyond that, it was low cropped fields that gave him no clues. It could be almost anywhere in the U.S. Or the world for that matter.