Billy

 

DOUBLE CROSSED

The sunset painted long shadows across the cornfields as Billy Anderson tightened the last fence post. Wiping sweat from his brow, he adjusted his cap and rolled his sleeves higher on his tanned forearms. At eighteen, he knew every inch of his parents' farm like the calluses on his palms.

"Hey, farm boy!" The voice carried across the field. Three pickup trucks rumbled down the dirt road, kicking up dust clouds in the golden hour light.

Billy recognized the vehicles immediately – the Harper brothers and their cousins from the neighboring property. He'd grown up alongside them, but things had changed since the poker game last weekend.

"You got our money?" Travis Harper, the oldest at nineteen, leaned out his window. His eyes held none of the friendly rivalry they once shared.

"Already told you, I won fair and square." Billy stood his ground, though he felt the tension crackling in the air. "Five hundred dollars. You agreed to the bet."

What happened next came in a blur. Four doors opened simultaneously. Five young men surrounded him, faces hardened with purpose. Billy managed to land two solid punches before a crushing blow to his stomach doubled him over. The taste of dirt filled his mouth as they pinned him down.

"You should've just given back the money," Travis muttered, cinching zip ties around Billy's wrists.

Hemp rope bit into his arms as they bound him tightly. The rough fibers caught on the fine hairs of his forearms where his sleeves were rolled up, each twist of the rope scraping against his skin. A bandana stuffed in his mouth silenced his protests, followed by a blindfold plunging him into darkness. Rough hands heaved him into the bed of a pickup truck.

The drive was endless, every bump and turn disorienting him further. When they finally stopped, Billy's shoulders burned from the tight bindings. They dragged him into what smelled like old wood and gun oil – a hunting cabin, he guessed, from the creaking floorboards and musty air.

"Take a video," someone instructed. "Show his face."

The blindfold lifted momentarily. Harsh light blinded him as someone held a phone camera to his face.

"Your boy's fine, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson," Travis's voice came from behind the camera. "For now. Ten thousand dollars by tomorrow night, and we'll tell you where to find him. Try anything with the cops, and you'll never see him again."

Days blurred together. Billy discovered that Caleb, the youngest Harper at seventeen, took particular pleasure in tightening his ropes whenever it was his shift to guard. Every few hours, Caleb would appear, wordlessly checking the bindings, finding any slack Billy had managed to create by flexing his muscles during application. "Getting comfortable?" he'd whisper, yanking the hemp cords until they cut fresh grooves into Billy's exposed forearms where his sleeves remained rolled up.

The hemp fibers dug deeper with each tightening, creating raw rings of blistered skin. When no one was looking, Billy would strain against the restraints, feeling the burn as the rough texture abraded his already raw flesh. Several times, he managed to work a quarter-inch of slack into the binding around his right wrist, only to have Caleb discover it during inspections.

At night, the temperature drop made the ropes contract slightly, cutting off circulation to his hands until they tingled and eventually went numb. By morning, he'd wake to the agonizing pins-and-needles sensation of blood returning to his fingers. His wrists now bore permanent red bands from the constant pressure, with patches of skin rubbed completely raw, occasionally weeping clear fluid when the scabs cracked open with his subtle movements.

Through careful listening and observation, Billy learned their patterns. They worked in shifts, never leaving fewer than two watching him. They argued sometimes – about what to do with him after, about whether they'd asked for enough money. Billy played compliant, nodding when they permitted him water, never fighting the bindings while they watched. But alone, he constantly tested the rope's limits, memorizing which knots gave even slightly under pressure, which sections had begun to fray from his subtle working.

On the third day, his parents paid. He heard the celebration, the counting of money.

"What about him?" One voice – Mark, he thought – sounded uncertain.

"Take him out to Crawford Ridge. Far enough he'll never find his way back."

The truck ride was longer this time. His restraints, tightened for transport, had cut off circulation to his hands completely. He couldn't even feel his fingers anymore. When they finally stopped, they cut only his ankle bindings. Arms still secure behind his back, they marched him deep into the woods before shoving him forward.

"Good luck, rich boy," Travis sneered. "Don't come back if you make it out alive."

Then they were gone, leaving him alone, miles from anywhere, arms bound behind his back, mouth still gagged.

Billy oriented himself by the setting sun and began walking. Without his arms for balance, every slope and ridge became treacherous. He stumbled often, unable to catch himself, his shoulders screaming from the unnatural position. The constant pull of gravity on his bound arms sent waves of fire through his shoulder joints. He slept fitfully that night propped against a tree, the cold seeping into his bones.

By the second day, his lips were cracked from dehydration behind the gag. Finding a stream, he knelt awkwardly to drink, soaking his shirt and face in the process. The rope burns on his wrists had begun to fester, sending shooting pains up his arms. The once-white hemp had turned a disturbing shade of red-brown where it contacted his open wounds.

He followed the stream downhill, knowing water always led to civilization eventually. When darkness fell again, he heard it – the snap of a branch that wasn't his doing.

The man emerged from the trees like a specter, rifle cradled in his arms. His beard was wild, his eyes wilder.

"Well, what do we have here?" The stranger circled Billy, taking in his bound arms and exhausted state. "Someone tied you up good. Must've had your reasons."

Billy shook his head desperately, trying to speak through the gag.

"Don't much care for your story," the hunter decided, prodding Billy forward with his rifle. "You're trespassing."

The cave entrance was hidden behind a thick growth of bushes. Inside, the temperature dropped immediately, the darkness absolute. The hunter pushed him deeper into the cavern, where the walls glistened with moisture and the ground grew treacherously uneven.

"Stay put." The hunter secured Billy's ankles to his already bound wrists, hogtying him in a painful arch that made his spine creak with protest. The new position pulled the existing ropes tighter, reopening scabbed-over abrasions. "Got to check my other traps. Decide what to do with you later."

As the hunter's footsteps faded, Billy fought rising panic. The cave's cold seeped into his bones as he tested his restraints. They held firm, but the hogtie position had changed the tension points on his wrist bindings. He discovered that by flexing his ankles, he could create minute shifts in pressure against different parts of the rope.

Hours passed in the pitch darkness. Using his last reserves of strength, Billy began rubbing his bound wrists against a jagged rock formation he'd felt near his head. Each movement sent daggers of pain through his shoulders, but he persisted. The rough stone bit into his flesh alongside the rope, creating new wounds as he worked to fray the fibers.

The rope fibers unraveled agonizingly slowly, one strand at a time. Blood from his raw wrists made his hands slippery, each twist bringing fresh pain as salt from his sweat entered the open wounds. But he continued grinding against the stone, feeling each individual fiber snap with a tiny vibration. After what seemed like eternity, he felt the bindings give way—first one strand, then another, until suddenly his hands separated with a rush of excruciating relief.

Freed but wounded, Billy stumbled through the darkness, feeling his way along the cave walls. His arms hung limply at his sides, too painful to use properly after days of restriction. Air – he needed to find where fresh air entered. With his fingertips guiding him, he detected the faintest movement of cool air and followed it upward through a narrow passage.

The night sky had never looked so beautiful as when he finally emerged from the cave. Stars oriented him as he pushed forward through the woods, his arms hanging nearly useless at his sides, streaked with blood and dirt. The deep circular wounds around his wrists pulsed with each heartbeat, the exposed flesh vulnerable to the night air.

He walked through the night and into the dawn, legs moving mechanically even as his consciousness began to fade. When his feet hit pavement instead of forest floor, he almost didn't believe it. The rumble of an approaching truck registered dimly as his legs finally gave out.

The trucker found him collapsed on the shoulder of Route 16, nearly sixty miles from home. "Jesus Christ, kid," the man breathed, immediately calling 911. "What happened to your wrists?"

In the hospital, his parents clung to him, their tears falling on his bandaged arms. "We thought we'd lost you," his mother whispered, gently touching the thick white gauze that covered the full circumference of his forearms.

The detectives were patient, recording every detail as Billy recounted his ordeal. Within hours, they had the Harper boys and their cousins in custody. The stolen ransom money was recovered from Travis's bedroom closet.

The hunter was never found, though search parties combed the woods for weeks afterward.

Six months after his rescue, Billy surprised everyone, especially himself, with an unexpected response to his trauma.

"Tie me up again," he told his older brothers, Mark and Ethan, one Saturday morning. They stared at him like he'd lost his mind.

"You need to see someone, Billy," Mark said, concern etching his features. "That's not normal."

"I know what I need," Billy insisted. He'd already tried therapy, meditation, medication. Nothing worked like reliving the experience—but on his own terms.

Eventually, they relented. Using soft climbing rope instead of hemp, they bound his wrists behind his back—loosely at first, then tighter at his urging. The familiar pressure against his scars triggered not fear but a rush of calm. This time, he was in control. This time, he knew he would survive.

Now, once a month, his brothers drive him to a remote section of woods on their property. They bind his arms, sometimes blindfold him, and leave him to find his way back home. The controlled re-enactment has become his ritual, his way of reminding himself of his own resilience.

"It doesn't make sense to anyone else," he explained to his worried mother. "But out there, tied up, having to rely completely on myself—that's when I feel most alive. That's when the nightmares stop."

His parents consulted three different psychologists. The consensus was unexpected: if controlled and consensual, Billy's unusual coping mechanism might actually be therapeutic—a way of mastering his trauma by repeating it under safe conditions.

The scars around his wrists have faded to thin white lines. But each time the rope presses against them, Billy remembers what he survived. The fear that once consumed him has transformed into something else entirely—a strange confidence that comes from knowing exactly how far he can go to make it home.