Free Sleight by Tom Twitchel

lay still.
    Using my knack I could easily get him downstairs but where to? I wanted to know why the hell he had jumped me before I got rid of him, and I didn’t want him coming back for another try.
    Flipping open his wallet I checked for ID and received another surprise: Trey Canty. He was a junior at my school. The date on the ID was for the current school year, so he was busy mugging fellow students during the holiday season in between shopping for gifts. Getting a shoulder under one of his arms and using my knack to take up some of the weight I half dragged, half carried him up the remaining flight of stairs to the fourth floor and my apartment.
    I knacked open my door, pulled him in and dumped him on the floor. Grabbing a chair from the dinette I carried it over to where he was sprawled. I grabbed a roll of duct tape from a cabinet in the kitchen. It took me less than ten minutes to get him in the chair and securely tape him to it. I wrapped a piece of tape around his head and over his mouth, just about the time he started to come around.
    His eyelids fluttered and he shook his head, groaned and winced. After a few minutes of fuzziness he looked up, and his eyes went wide. Then he started struggling. The tape held fine and reduced his attempts to get free to little more than scooting the chair along the floor. His eyes snapped back in my direction and were so wide I could see white around the iris in each one.
    “I Tased you bro’,” I smirked.
    No reaction. I figured he must not watch YouTube or Cops on TV.
    “Stop jerking the chair around, you’re gonna scratch the floor.”
    He stopped moving.
    “Before I let you go we’re gonna figure some stuff out together. ‘Kay?”
    Eyes still registering a significant level of freak-out, he nodded his head.
    “You’ve probably seen this routine in the movies: I’m going to remove the tape over your mouth, but if you start hollering I’m going to jam this,” I raised the stun gun and pulled the trigger once releasing a bright spark and a loud snapping noise, “into your armpit and we’ll have to start over. Understand?”
    He nodded again. It seemed almost too easy.
    Removing the tape, not worrying much that some hair and skin came off when I did it, I stepped back to get another look at him. Short sandy-colored hair, muscular build, big features including a pair of ears that would have looked better on a water pitcher, and a wide thin-lipped mouth. Then I realized who he was. He played on the varsity football team.
    “Okay, Trey. Tell me why coming to my apartment building and jumping me in the hall was such a good idea.”
    He looked down and took a deep breath. Shaking his head he glanced up but wouldn’t make eye contact. “I was just supposed to mess you up a little and give you a message,” he grumbled.
    “Message? From who?” I asked, although I thought I knew where this was going to lead.
    Not immediately responding, he looked around, and then hung his head again. “I’m not supposed to tell you that.”
    Now it sounded even more like the movies. This was the part where the rogue cop would torture the bad guy and eventually get the info he needed. Problem: other than another zap from the gun I wasn’t prepared to torture him.
    But he didn’t have to know that.
    “You might want to rethink that; you have bigger problems to worry about,” I said, trying to weave a little melodramatic menace into my voice while I waggled the stunner near his face.
    Heaving a heavy sigh he looked out my windows and grimaced. “He’s got stuff on my girlfriend. Photos. If I tell him how this went down she’s screwed, and so am I.”
    “Let’s try this a different way then, what was the message?” I asked feeling even more certain that I knew who had sent him.
    Looking up he stared at the ceiling, trying to recall something. “He said to tell you to remember to mind your own business and that he hoped everyone you cared about was okay.” He shook his head in