Just Hangin’ Around

He was pretty badly cut up, he knew, but for some reason, the one that hurt the worst was the one down by his bellybutton. It wasn’t the longest, or the deepest. Those awards were reserved for the long slice down his arm which was currently dripping blood into his hair, and the one by his right ankle that he was pretty sure was caused by a bit of bone sticking through.

Being blindfolded and strung up like Grandpa’s Christmas goose kept him from a definitive answer, but the fact that he felt like passing out and throwing up when he tried to put weight on that leg pretty much laid out the whole story before him in jagged red letters.

That one cut, though, even if it wasn’t the longest or the deepest certainly hurt the most. Every time a bead of sweat—or, to be honest, a drop of blood—wandered down into it, he felt like he was being seared with hot pokers.

A sort of Inquisition for WASPs.

“Well, Starsk, it’s hour…nine, I think, and I’m still just hangin’ around.” His laugh, like his voice, was like a rusty hinge. Or like nails on a blackboard. God, he’d hated that sound as he was growing up. His second grade teacher, Miss Pendleton, had a penchant for using that maneuver to shut the more boisterous of her charges right up.

Hutch thought he could trace his on-and-off tinnitus back to those long autumn afternoons when it seemed the echoing screech of painted nails down a blackboard was the only thing he heard. It rose above the hive drone of sleepy, cranky seven year olds, and even above the steady tick-tick-tick of the wall clock whose hands never, ever moved.

“I sure wish you were here, buddy.”

Then again, maybe he didn’t. He could deal with himself being hung out to dry, but if Starsky had been here, beaten and cut and left for dead like he was, that would be intolerable on every level he knew.

“I guess it’s just as good you’re not.”

He tried to think back over the day, but things were kind of fuzzy around the edges. Starsky’d gone to court, he remembered, and the call to pick up Little Jimmy Spencer before he took off for parts unknown had been too hot to pass up, even without a partner to watch his back.

“Wrong.”

Yup, it was just about as wrong as wrong could ever be. ‘Wronger than horse snot’, his grandfather used to say. He’d never really understood the reference, but today…today he’d gotten a firsthand look at the definition of the idiom very up close and very personal.

“I miss you, Granddad.”

Seen through the eyes of Hutch-as-child, his grandfather had been the biggest man he’d ever known. Hell, the biggest man on the planet. Bigger by far than Little Jimmy Spencer, that was for sure.

Of course, Little Jimmy wasn’t little at all, but that hadn’t worried him. The Python hid a multitude of sins, and he wasn’t exactly on the small side himself. Unfortunately, he was just one man with just one gun, and by the time he’d realized that Little Jimmy had picked himself up an army of Even Bigger Jimmys with Even Bigger Guns, the gig was up.

“Took a couple of them down with me, though.”

By the smell of things, hot and sweet and ripe, they’d been left behind as grisly souvenirs of his unplanned trip through Ambushland. He also thought that maybe one or two more wouldn’t be thinking of having any children in the near future, if ever again. He felt a certain level of satisfaction in that.

Kenneth Hutchinson: Supercop. Not only gets his man, but stops him from breeding in the process.

He thought that might be a pretty good epitaph. Too bad there was no one around to tell.

“God…Starsk….”

None of that. Tears wouldn’t solve anything, and he needed the moisture anyway. No sense in wasting it on something no one would ever see.

For some, crying was like masturbation, something only done furtively, in the dark. It always made more sense to him to cry when he had someone around to share his grief and to provide support. It made the effort worth the cost, somehow.

He wondered if he’d ever cry again.

Damn.

These maudlin thoughts were getting him nowhere. Of course, nowhere was exactly where he was destined to go, what with the chains restraining him and all. Even if he’d been completely free, he doubted he could make it far on what remained of his leg.

Had he been transported after they’d ambushed him? He thought so, but couldn’t remember fully, and that worried him. Or would have, if worrying would have done him any good.

“Dead means never having to say you’re worried.”

Well, his sense of humor wasn’t damaged by today’s adventures. That was something, anyway.

“God. My mind is going like a hamster in a cage.”

Louise.

Funny how he remembered that.

Yet another of Starsky’s get rich quick schemes.

Poor Starsky. Gullibility thanked the gods the day his partner was born. A wise man and an innocent all tied up in a dark-haired, blue-eyed bundle of energy.

“I miss you, buddy. Are you ever coming home?”

Home. Now there was a word. How long ago had it stopped being a ‘where’ and started being a ‘who’?

Not long enough, he decided. No, not nearly long enough.

“I’m thirsty.”

He doubted the walls cared. He knew the corpses didn’t. He wondered if there were any rats sharing his current sanctuary. If so, he hoped they went for his friends first.

Did rats get thirsty? He thought he remembered that they did. He hoped they didn’t decide that his blood made the perfect rat nectar.

Now beer, on the other hand….

A six pack of beer. Yeah. He could go for that. He could imagine opening up every single one of those bottles, feeling the cool sweat as it dripped down the slick, brown sides, tilting his head back and drowning his tastebuds in smooth bitterness.

If he got buzzed enough, even the pain would seem far away and unimportant. His thoughts would slow and grow indistinct.

A six pack, a bellybutton, and a hamster in a cage. What else, really, could a man ask for when it came right down to it?

What, indeed?

“Starsk,” he rasped. “Please. Hurry.”

FIN