Between Friends

by Brad Willis

“What does this smell like to you?”

Carl held the rope up to his nose and breathed in through his one good nostril. The braid was frayed, rough, and stained. Carl’s eyes almost looked closed as he leaned over the length on the table. To Hank, Carl looked like he was inspecting a ladybug or getting ready to snort a line.

“Is it burlap?” Carl said without looking up. “I know this smell.”

Hank watched his friend sniff again and then sneeze. A spray of watery blood fell on Hank’s arm. He didn’t bother to wipe it off.

“Jesus,” Carl said, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. A ribbon of blood slid over the stubble on his upper lip. “Pretty sure you broke my nose. Surprised I can smell anything.”

“Maybe you can’t,” Hank said.

Carl nodded and offered half a smile. He put the rope on the table between them and sank into his folding chair. He nodded at the rope. “I think it’s burlap.”

“It’s hemp,” Hank said. He stood and tested his ankle. It tingled, but he could walk. He considered the danger of turning his back on his friend, but decided Carl was spent. In the corner, next to the half-door, Hank saw one of his teeth. He moved slowly to pick it up.

“I mean,” Carl said, “what if we just don’t do it? What’s going to happen?”

The smile on Hank’s face was unconscious. It was rueful and missing a couple of teeth.

“No, really,” Carl said louder. “What if we just sit here? What are they going to do?”

Hank rolled his tooth around in a swollen hand and then slipped both in his pocket. With his back still turned, he said, “I’m sorry about your nose.”

The end of the rope sat on the table. Hank figured he could see about 50 feet of it in total, about half of which came uncoiled the last time Carl had tried to wrap it around his neck. The friction burn on Hank’s throat was the closest he’d come to having a hickey since he was in college. Carl was there then, too, and usually made sure there were enough girls to go between them. Carl was a friend like that. “Make sure your wingman keeps his wings,” he always said.

Carl almost had a noose tied taut when Hank came to. The bigger of the two been so concentrated on the rope, he didn’t see Hank’s eyes open or Hank’s fist coming for his face. By the time Carl stopped screaming and holding his nose, Hank had pulled the rope off his own neck. His mouth tasted like pennies and dirt when he said quietly, “Fuck you, Carl.”

Carl had sat cross-legged for five minutes before Hank realized his friend was sobbing. “I’m sorry, Hank,” he said. “I got scared.”

“You don’t get scared, Carl,” Hank said and walked back over to the little door.

On the other side of the coil sprouted the opposite end of the rope. It led up to and inside the half door—an opening just big enough for a child to walk through standing upright. Hank let his eyes follow the cord until he couldn’t see it anymore. He could bend over and follow the rope into the dark half-hallway, but he wasn’t going to do it. The only way he’d see the other end of the tunnel would be if Carl ever managed to get the rope around his neck.

The instructions had been clearly written on an index card in the middle of the table. Hank had woken up first and had been the first to read:

Attach rope.

Don’t kill.

“What does it mean?” Carl said that morning. He was hungover and smelled like the scotch they’d been drinking the night before. “Don’t kill what?”

Hank hadn’t spoken then, but he thought he knew what the note meant. He was hungover, too, but he didn’t know why. He knew Mary had to work the next morning and even though he’d agreed to go out for a couple of drinks, he wasn’t going to get drunk. He had to watch the girls and 7am was going to come earlier than he wanted. He didn’t want to go anyway, but Carl said his so-called Divorce Party wouldn’t be the same if his best friend wasn’t there. There were lots of people at the bar, but Hank didn’t know more than a couple. For being Carl’s best friend, Hank didn’t know many of the people his childhood pal kept around him.

“Did I pass out?” Carl asked after they had both determined there was no way they were getting out of the room except through the small door. The big metal door on the other side of the room was locked firm.

“I don’t think so,” Hank told him, “because when I pass out, it’s usually in my own bed, or at worst, in the driveway. I don’t remember anything after you sang La Bamba for the third time.”

Carl had gone about banging on the door, shouting into the tunnel, and offering whoever was listening a thousand bucks to let him out.

“We have instructions,” Hank reminded him.

Carl had nodded before his eyes lit up. He stood quickly, grabbed the end of the rope, and tied it around a table leg. He almost strutted to the doorway, grabbed the braid, and gave it a sharp tug.

Nothing happened.

Carl tugged again and got the same response.

“Hey, mother fucker!” he screamed. “We played your game. We did it!”

Silence.

“Let us the fuck out!”

Hank sat back down. “Don’t kill, Carl.”

Carl outweighed Hank by 30 pounds, all of it muscle, so when he wheeled around on his left foot, he looked like a linebacker taking a bead on a running back. He stopped himself. “What did you say?”

Hank softened. “Listen, man. Whatever this is, it’s not a puzzle. It’s not a test to see if we can figure out the instructions.”

Carl didn’t speak.

Hank thought about his baby girl for a second before saying, “I’m just saying, it’s pretty clear what this is.”

Attach rope.

Don’t kill.

They were hungry, thirsty, and hurting, but neither slept the first night. Carl had spent most of the day testing every theory he could conceive. Tugging on the rope with nothing attached resulted in nothing. Pulling hard on the rope only made Carl’s back hurt. And, as it turned out, throwing shoes into the dark hallway served only the purpose of making Carl’s feet cold.

Though he had no way to prove it, Hank knew when it felt like morning. He knew Mary would probably have moved past angry and onto worried. He knew she would be home from work and his mother-in-law would be watching the kids while Mary spent the day “solving the problem.” That’s what she did. She didn’t sit and cry. She solved the problem until there was no solving it. There wouldn’t be a police station or hospital in a three-state area that she hadn’t called and there wouldn’t be a TV station that hadn’t been e-mailed her husband’s picture. Hank wondered how she would solve the problem with the rope.

Attach rope.

Don’t kill.

Hank was trying to remember his oldest daughter’s birthday when Carl hit him from the side and drove his head into the edge of the table. Hank couldn’t breathe. He could only see white light. The last thing he thought before Carl hit him in the jaw and knocked him unconscious was, “August 26th. That’s Teresa’s birthday.”

Carl had gotten scared. Or, that’s what he said. And then big Carl cried.

“August 26th,” Hank said aloud and just so he could hear his voice saying something.

“What?” Carl had pulled his swollen eyes up from his knees.

“That’s Teresa’s birthday.”

“That was two months ago, Hank,” Carl said.

“I know, but I couldn’t remember before.”

They didn’t talk for a few minutes while Carl stopped his nose from bleeding and Hank moved back over to the table. Carl eventually joined him. Hank looked for shame in his friend’s eye. The last time he’d seen it was 15 years before. It was the last time they’d ever thrown a punch at each other and less than a year later, Hank couldn’t remember the girl’s name. In any case, Carl had been ashamed when Hank walked in on them. Today, Hank saw nothing.

“I’ve been thinking,” Hank said, “if we do nothing, that may be one of the right solutions.”

Carl brightened. “What do you mean?”

“You must have tugged on that rope in a hundred different ways,” Hank said. “Hell, you must have tugged on it a little when I was attached to it. Nothing happened, right?”

Carl nodded. “Right.”

“What if the answer really is to do nothing? Like testing our friendship?” Hank said.

“You think?” Carl said.

Hank shrugged. “Hell if I know, man. I’m just thinking out loud.” He paused. “I’m fucking exhausted.”

Hank laid his head on the bare metal table and thought about the baby. Anne had been premature by six weeks and spent three months in the hospital before making it home. She still wasn’t big and the doctor said she would probably need drug therapy when she was older. Mary had solved that problem, too. She did it with the same efficiency she had after Hank’s DUI, after the credit card company filed suit, and after the car was stolen. They were problems, and Mary didn’t just manage them. She solved them.

Hank’s shoulder muscles tensed when he felt Carl move on the other side of the table. He braced himself for Carl’s fingers on his neck, but they didn’t come. Within a few minutes, Hank heard the ragged and slow breathing on the other side of the table. He felt Carl’s warm, sour breath slide across the table’s metal. It smelled like scotch and vomit.

Hank waited for 30 minutes before pulling his head up slowly from the table. He stood slightly, pulled the chair legs up from the ground, and stepped back. The noose Carl had fashioned still sat on the table.

Hank didn’t look back at the half-door, but walked over the coil of rope on the floor and carried it to the table. He checked the end going into the tunnel to make sure it was taut. Then he turned, took the noose in his hand, and lowered it over Carl’s sleeping head until it was around his throat. Hank looked at his steady hands as he moved the noose’s knot around the nape of his best friend’s neck. He felt the small beads of sweat on Carl’s throat, and the quick gasp as the big man awoke.

Carl’s hands reached for his collar as Hank stepped back, took the rope in his hand, and tugged it. Only one second passed before the coil started to let out and track down the long dark hallway. Hank watched it until it was almost tight, then turned to look at Carl. There was no shame in the man’s eyes. There wasn’t even any fear. There was only surprise.

Just before the rope tightened around his neck and jerked him off the metal chair, Carl looked at Hank and asked, “Why?”

Hank watched Carl’s head go first into the swinging wooden door, then his arms, then his legs and feet. Carl was gone. Hank bowed his head and looked again at his hands. They were still.

The scream was unlike anything Hank had heard before, but there was no question about its source. It was Carl screaming. It went on for five minutes before there was again nothing but silence.

Hank heard the big metal door clank as it came open. A flood of white light hit Hank in the eyes and blinded him long enough for a tall man in a suit to appear in the doorway. Hank said nothing, but walked slowly toward the light.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad it wasn’t you,” the man said. “But we had to make it fair.”

Hank looked at the back of his hand, still speckled with Carl’s blood and snot. He didn’t speak.

The man said, “You’re free to go.”