Serge worked industriously with the rope and tape. Repeated loops and triple knots, between their legs, around chest and necks, up behind their backs, threaded under arms, circling chair legs and ankles, until little of them was left showing. “Fairness is very big with me. Give everyone a chance, I always say. So if you can get free from your bindings by morning, before my plan has a chance to fully bloom, you’re free to go. My word of honor. Except the odds are against it. You never want to get tied up by an obsessive-compulsive. We over-engineer everything.” Serge finished the last knot, fastening them securely to the chairs, which in turn were rigidly held in place with ten large loops around the giant TV cabinet. Then mouths were finally silenced with another excessive amount of duct-tape head wrapping. “Stay here. Have to make a quick trip to the hardware store.” He ran out the door.
Coleman returned from the bathroom and sat on the edge of a bed with a beer. He smiled at the men, then turned on the TV with the remote. Three’s Company. “Could you move your heads?”
A half hour later, Serge burst back through the door with shopping bags, two large cardboard boxes and overflowing zest. “You’re in luck: found everything I needed.” He dumped the bags on the bed, grabbed a pair of scissors and the cardboard.
Serge’s ensuing labor was dedicated, furious and made no obvious sense. Soon, the captives found their heads resting inside the boxes, poking up through round holes in the bottom Serge had cut, their necks sealed to the openings with tape. Then more tape held the boxes fast against the entertainment cabinet. The men looked straight up through the open cardboard tops. Serge looked back down. Something was in each hand, which he enthusiastically thrust in their faces. “Know what these are? Bet you do, if you think hard. Take a guess! Coleman knows. People usually don’t even notice-and now the people on the top floors of this hotel can’t, because I snatched all the automatic air-fresheners from the walls. Internal timer triggers an actuator that presses the button on top of an aerosol can at olfactory intervals predetermined by focus groups.” Serge gave them each a manual squirt. “Lilac.” He popped covers off the dispensers and discarded the cans of freshener. “Have to modify these so my replacement cans fit. Be right back.” He disappeared from view. The hostages heard a high-pitched buzzing sound and struggled without result.
“Dremel hobby tool if you’re curious,” said an unseen Serge. “Sands, polishes, drills, cuts. Million and one uses. Now, million and two.” More buzzing. Then, abruptly, quiet.
Serge appeared again at the top of the boxes, literally bouncing. He held up a prototype of his new device, which had been sliced in half and reassembled with a cardboard stent to accommodate the new, taller cans.
“And I replaced the batteries with the super-alkaline ones in those commercials that show someone narrowly averting a horrible death, and tearful loved ones say, ‘Thank God for these batteries!’ Don’t want an operational failure at the crucial moment.” The device was stuck in their faces again. “Recognize the product? It’s great stuff. That’s really its name: Great Stuff.”
Serge pulled the dispenser back. “Revolutionary breakthrough for the do-it-yourself home improvement crowd! Seals wall fittings around pipes so roaches and rats can’t squeeze through, insulates voids in walls and under baseboards. But you ask, Serge, how on earth can such a reasonably priced product do all that? I’ll tell you! Revolutionary chemical breakthrough! These cans slowly squirt an innocuous gooey liquid foam, like whipped cream except yellow. If whipped cream ever comes out yellow, take shortcake off the menu that night. Where was I? The foam! When it first dispenses from the pump, it appears useless-and you look questioningly at the can: I got fucked! But then something miraculous happens. The yellow slurry eventually expands until it’s ten times original size! And after reaching full volume, the foam begins to cure until a few hours later it’s hard as a rock. I see the question in your eyes. I don’t know how it works either. But I don’t understand cathode rays, and I still watch TV.”
Serge went back to the bed and returned with an armload of his newly customized air-freshening dispensers. “Figured three per customer should do the trick.” He taped them around the lips of the boxes. “One for you, and one for you. Another one for you, and another … hey, look, one of the timers already went off and squirted.”
The captive on the right felt something wet against his neck and strained to look down. A small worm of goo expanded into a giant, thick snake. Frantic eyes shot up toward his captor.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” said Serge. “Next renovation, I gotta get me a case of this shit. Hides a multitude of sins … Coleman, you ready?”
“Where are we going?”
