Several other people lay sprawled across the room, all semi-conscience and moaning in the same hung-over way that he was. Crumpled beer cans and quarter-full bottles of unbranded vodka littered the floor, making it look more like a landfill than a home.
Must have been one hell of a night.
Davie rolled off the sofa onto his knees. The carpet was wet beneath him, soaked with what he hoped was spilt alcohol. He seeped unpleasantly through his jeans. Rising to his feet, Davie took a couple of unsteady steps forward. His vision struggled to focus as he moved across the lounge. A half-naked girl slept in his path, uncovered breasts pointed at the ceiling like beacons. Davie stepped over her like a speed bump and pushed through a door in front of him.
It led into a kitchen. The room was just as much a chaotic mess as the lounge; only this time, pizza and discarded snack food littered the floor in addition to beer cans and vodka. There was only one other person present: Dominic. He was passed out on the breakfast bar with his legs hanging off the edge. It was strange to see Dom without his twin, Jordan, as the two were usually inseparable, but then Davie noticed him lying under the breakfast table, as paralytic as his brother.
Like pissed-up peas in a pod.
Davie wondered where his own brother was. Frankie had disappeared around 3AM, but promised to make it back to the party before daylight. Davie hoped he was okay and just shacked up with some bird – instead of seeking out trouble as he’d been doing almost none-stop since he got out the nick two months ago.
Davie left the twins sleeping and exited into the next room. If his fuzzy memory of last night served him correctly, he should find a staircase. It would no doubt lead to a bathroom.
If I don’t piss soon I’m going to burst.
Sure enough, Davie found himself in a hallway featuring a beige-carpeted staircase. He hurried up the steps two at a time, his bladder almost releasing itself as it anticipated imminent release. The toilet was on the left, if he remembered correctly, so he pushed open the nearest door. When he saw a toilet in front of him, he made a mad dash for it. The bowl was already full of bright-yellow piss but Davie was happy to add to it, sighing orgasmically as his bladder expelled its salty contents.
It was then that he heard shuffling beside him.
Davie turned his head, still peeing too heavily to turn around fully. The noises seemed to be coming from the bathtub, from behind the shower curtain. There was someone there.
Davie was powerless not to finish urinating, so that’s what he did firstly. Once he was finished, though, he hastily pulled aside the shower curtain.
The boy in the bathtub was bound and gagged, secured to the unit’s mixer tap by a series of linked-up cable-ties. A sweat-sock filled his mouth and that, too, was secured by a cable-tie pulled sadistically tight around his head. Completing the boy’s restraints were several more cable-ties bound around his ankles. The boy looked weary – like he’d been there all night.
Davie reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife. The boy’s eyes widened with the helpless panic of a trapped rat, but it wasn’t Davie’s intention to do him harm. He slid the blade underneath the cable-tie around the boy’s face and began sawing back and forth.
Eventually, the cable-tie snapped free.
“You’re all fucking crazy,” the boy yelled.
“Calm down,” said Davie. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Who the hell am I? This is my house you’re in.”
Davie found that surprising. “So what are you doing tied up here then?”
“Because some psychopath crashed my birthday party and beat me up.”
It was then that Davie noticed the bruising around the boy’s face. Someone had given him a birthday to remember. “Who beat you up?”
“I did,” said Frankie, entering the room. “I told him to chill his beans but he insisted on trying to call the police.”