Padlock by Remmy, admin
Stirrings by Remmy

September, 1977



“Damn Bastard!”


Bobby screwed his eyes up in concentration as he picked the lock to the handcuffs holding him fast to the wall of the shed. Rather, that should be attempting to pick—it was not working. The paperclip he had smuggled out here was twisted beyond repair, the tip had broken off inside the lock and now Bobby was tearing his fingernails until they bled trying to get it out.


He had to get them off. He couldn’t just sit in the corner here and wait to die. If he was going to survive, then he needed to move. He couldn’t move while he was stuck steadfastly to the wall.


What if he never got the cuffs off? What would happen if Mr. Lyle came out here and couldn’t unlock them? They would probably have to call in someone for help, a locksmith or somebody, and then the inevitable question- “Pardon me sir, but... Just what the hell is your boy doing shackled up in your
woodshed?” If Mr. Lyle didn’t just leave him in here-- that was always an option… for Mr. Lyle anyway.


He had to get them off.


July, 1975

“Mom! The doorbell’s ringing!” Bobby bellowed from where he lay on the couch, looking backwards over the armrest at the closed kitchen door, where he could hear her. He listened as she rummaged around in the cabinets, the pots and pans clattering against each other loudly as they were pushed back and forth.

The doorbell rang a second time, sending reverberating dings
throughout the house and further adding to the din. With a
sigh, Bobby unfolded his lanky frame, brushing his scruffy, sandy-brown hair off his forehead with one hand, and stretched. He dropped the book he had been studying from back onto the seat cushion and walked over to the kitchen, looking in the door at Mom.

“Someone’s at the door.”

Martha Bowman looked up at him with a harried expression, flyaway brown hair slipping free in small strands from the bun at the back of her head. She sat on the tiles, a mess of cooking apparatus surrounding her. Cabinet doors seemed to be open at random, revealing their now disorganized contents to the world.

“I’m a little busy here Bobby. Did it ever occur to you maybe
you could answer it?” She asked with a scowl.

“It has now.” He smirked at her cheekily. Mom would never do anything to him for it. She was the safe one.

She shook her head, pointing at him violently with a wooden spoon. “I can’t do everything around here you know. Honestly-- you and your father, sometimes I wonder about you two.” He scowled at that. He was nothing like Mr. Lyle. Nothing. But he’d already schooled his expression back to pleasantness before she returned to her cabinets, a look of consternation on her face. Bobby remembered when he was younger thinking that Mom was the most beautiful woman alive. She still was; even when she was mad.

The doorbell rang loudly throughout the house once more and she gave a significant look down the hall towards the
front door.

“Bobby! The doorbell’s ringing!” She cried, teasing him.

He sent her a mock glare, making her laugh.

“Get going you young scamp!” She said, shooing him from the kitchen. He heard her turn back inside and mutter under her breath. “Now, where did that saucepan go?”

He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling as the bell pealed
through the house once again. “I’m coming!” He hollered, though he doubted that anyone outside could actually hear him, not through the heavy front door; closed
to keep the insects out despite the heat of the day. The screen was broken, and they just didn’t have the money to replace it. The small trickle of sweat running down his spine was a testament to that fact. He looked through the peephole in the door curiously, knowing any of his friends would have just walked right in. Jimmy probably would have started helping himself to the food in the refrigerator as well, but that was just Jimmy - worked like a horse; ate like a team.

The peephole offered Bobby a distorted view of the front porch, so that the nose of the man standing there looked larger than most of his face. He wore a grey suit with a starched white shirt and a tie. His hair was slicked back with oil from a quickly receding hairline, making his forehead look overly large. As Bobby watched, he took a drag on a cigarette, twin columns of smoke escaping his nostrils as he exhaled. Flanking him stood two other men, dressed in matching black suits. One of them looked like he’d been in the army, if he wasn’t still, for the militaristic-like stiffness of his posture. The other one wore the same bland expression, and was looking around the house, beyond the porch without any real interest. One of the dogs came up and started sniffing
around his legs, and the man tried shooing her away, he
nudged at her with his toe and Bobby quickly pulled open the heavy oak door, before he could do anything more forceful. Bobby wanted to tell him to get the hell away. He scowled at the man shooing his dog, scratching her around the ears before letting her run back around the house, the way she had come.

“Can I help you… gentlemen?” Bobby asked, feeling a tingling
distrust travel up his spine. The suits were setting of warning bells in his head. They looked like they worked at a bank. That couldn't be good. The middle man gave him a creepy smile which Bobby assumed was supposed to be friendly, and
dropped the smoking butt, grinding it down with the toe of his shoe. It left a small black burn mark on the wood of the porch steps. Bobby pulled a face, but didn’t say anything.

“Hello Robert. My name is Dr. Raines, I work with the adoption agency.”

Bobby's stomach did a mild flip-flop that left him feeling
nauseous. The adoption agency?

“No one’s ever come before.”

He realized how rude that must have sounded, but didn’t do anything to make up for his mistake. There was something about the middle man’s, Dr. Raines’, demeanor that made Bobby falter. He had a manner, a way of walking and talking, even standing, that didn’t quite fit with everything else about him, like a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong slot. The man in question gave Bobby a thin-lipped smile; it wasn’t reassuring, even if it was supposed to be. There was something just oily about it.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Uh… right.” Bobby looked around himself in hopes that the surroundings might lend some inspiration. He scuffed his shoe against the welcome mat below him...
Welcome... “I, uh, I’m sorry, would you like to come in?”

The G.I. Joe standing off the side from Greaseball, Dr. Raines, gave a small cough that might have been covering for a chuckle at the paltry attempt at civility. Bobby felt like making a rude gesture at him—so sue him for having never read a Red Book etiquette lesson. He stepped aside to allow Dr. Raines to enter, expecting the other two men to come as well, but instead they began to head back to their car parked up at the beginning of the drive. It was a
large, black, Cadillac, this year’s model. The paint gleamed in the sun and reflected the glare from the road below it. Bobby flushed inwardly and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the beat-up red pick-up truck parked by the side of the
house, not ten feet away; caked in rust and mud, with a crack steadily creeping, like vines on a wall, down the windshield.

There was a brand new 1975 black Cadillac parked in his driveway, and good god but wasn’t he jealous. Bobby walked in after Dr. Raines and let the door slam behind him.


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