Used Against You

Oldest trick in the book.

You hold something out for someone to reach for, and when they do, you grab their wrist and slip handcuffs on. Or rob them. Or kill them. Everybody knows it. It's what he tried to do, and I saw it coming.

I rolled down my window, he held mine and Amy's drivers licenses up a few inches outside the window without saying a word. I couldn't be completely sure this wasn't a cop, despite the oldest trick in the book, so I was stuck in a stalemate. I just looked at the two licenses in his left hand, then up at his shadowy face. I kept my hands inside the car.

"So am I a kidnapper or no?" I asked, unmoving.

He grinned, and moved his hand closer into the car. It felt a bit safer, so I reached my right hand up and pinched them from his hand. Like a spring his hand twirled around and grabbed mine, at the wrist. Oldest trick in the book, alright.

This was it. He had my right hand in a death grip and as my left arm shot forward I kept my eyes on his right arm. Amy gasped. Was she reacting slowly or am I just thinking fast? Watch his hand, watch his hand.

His right hand drew quickly toward his belt, where his gun perched. Time seemed to slow to an even slower crawl as I eyeballed that hand floating toward the gun -- no, he didn't grab the gun, he grabbed the mace canister. Or was it pepper spray? I hoped it was pepper spray, because by the time I realized what he was grabbing and yelled "Up!" to Amy as loud as possible without seeming ridiculous, I'd already taken a blast of it to the eyes.

It was definitely pepper spray, for although the entire northern territory of my body was now in hot searing pain I could be certain that my eyes weren't boiling down my face.

Regardless, I was gripped in a pain like flaming gasoline was being poured into my eyes and my face was entirely out of commission. My left hand was working fine, though, so I grabbed the man's right arm and lunged it forward into the frame of my door and heard the bottle rattle around my windshield and dash as I felt a radius or ulna snap. The man screamed, I was still blind.

Still pulling his right arm through my open window, I found the door handle with my free hand and released it, then with my knee pushed the door open and into the man's body. I yanked back on his arm again, which slammed his body into the car and what sounded like his jaw crashed into the roof. I felt his body go limp and let his arm pull away. I was still in the dark, my eyes had daggers in them and red flashes of light were piercing the black of my vision. My nose burned too and my throat felt like it was closing.

I started my engine and pulled the shifter into reverse from memory, and called to Amy.

"You can look," I said as best I could.
"I already am!" she screamed. "Was that mace?"

"Pepper spray," I said. "Can you see the guy?"
I felt her lean across me. "He's on the ground but he looks mostly ok."

Wouldn't be time to change drivers then. "Alright," I said. "You'll have to direct me."
"What?" she asked, but I'd already pressed down on the gas.

The police car was about 10 or 12 feet behind me, I knew, parked sideways. My car took off in reverse, and I tried my best to turn the steering wheel so I'd hit his front axle. I couldn't even try to open my eyes, they weren't responding. The pain was only getting worse. I tried to say "Hold on" but got stuck on a cough. The impact was harder than I expected, my car's trunk collided with the front end of the police car (if it was a police car) and kept moving slowly as it pushed the other car away. Metal and fiberglass scraped against eachother violently, but soon enough I was clear and somewhere on the street. I shifted to drive and gingerly moved forward.

"Is he still there?" I asked hoarsely.
"He's getting up!" Amy said. "Well, slowly."

I swore. This situation refused to get any easier. I felt my face for a second, my skin was dry save for the tears dripping from my eyes. My eyelids were tender to the touch, and everything still hurt. My nose and throat felt as if I'd just snorted a line of cayenne pepper. I needed some water. No, water is bad.

"Direct me so I don't hit anything," I managed to say as I leaned on the gas.

I was soon at the end of the small neighborhood road and turned sharply onto the main road. Traffic was light as I remembered it, but I was literally flying blind.

"Car in this lane."

"Move left."

"Slow down."

"Where are we going?"

My mind was racing, my eyes and face were killing. I kept thinking of the words "capsaicin" and "emulsify" but I didn't know why. I didn't even know what capsaicin meant and all I knew about emulsifying is that it's what soap does. Why was I thinking about soap? God it hurt. Capsaicin emulsify, capsaicin emulsify, what did it mean? Emulsify, soap. What does soap do? It takes away dirt. They used to make soap out of fat. Fat. Emulsify. Capsaicin. I must have been going insane. I'm driving a car at night down a road and I cant see because a fake cop sprayed me with mace and I didn't know why. No, not mace. Pepper spray. Pepper spray -- peppers, that's what capsaicin is, it's the stuff that makes peppers hot!

"Where's your milk?" I asked suddenly.

"What?" Amy asked, between directions.

"The milk you got at Wendy's? I need it." I held my left hand out. In a few seconds there was a cold, plastic bottle in it.

"What for?" Amy asked, mid-panic.

"Fat emulsifies capsaicin," I said. Still driving, I ripped the cap from the bottle, forced my eyes to open, and dumped the cold liquid straight into my eyes. I screamed and jerked the car to the right. It felt like going from sunburn to frostbite, or like icicles digging into my eyes now. The milk ran out faster than I expected, it was after-all just a single serving bottle.

I shook my head and wiped at my eyes with my wrist and blinked a few times. The pain was still there, but I could at least open my eyes. My vision was blurry, shapeless forms and blobs of light all around me. Better than nothing.

"Where did you learn that?" Amy asked, still mid-panic.

"I don't know," I said, "but I need more. Isn't there a grocery store on this road?"

"Yeah, right there," Amy said. That didn't help much.

"Where?" I asked.

"Right--- HERE!" she said as I felt the steering wheel cut to the right without me. The car turned sharply right and slid to the left, I pumped the brakes but the car went into a full spin then stopped suddenly when the wheels hit a curb.

"Ok," Amy said, "I wont do that anymore."

We got out of the car and she said we were on the street in front of the large grocery store I remembered from the drive up here. She led me by the arm through the parking lot and through the automatic doors. All a fuzzy blur to me.

Amy grabbed a teenage employee and asked where the dairy was. I must have been a sight. He led us both to the back and I felt the air get colder and could smell the butter, eggs, plastic, and milk.

"Here's the milk case," Amy said to me.
"Where's the whole milk?" I asked. More fat meant more emulsification, I figured.

The young clerk said "here" and I felt a gust of chilled air as one of the milk case doors opened. I lunged forward between him and Amy and grabbed two one-gallon jugs by the handles and pulled them out. I unwound the safety tabs and peeled the caps off with my teeth, stood back, forced my eyes open as wide as I could, and up-ended the two jugs right above my eyes.

Two gallons of ice-cold milk poured out into my eyes, down my cheeks, over my shirt, and onto the floor. The pain from the pepper spray was dulled by the pain from freezing liquid being poured onto my eyeballs. I'm sure I screamed. I fell forward onto my knees, kept pouring. Fell backwards onto my back, kept pouring. The jugs emptied and I tossed them aside as I lay in a pool of milk. My eyes felt wet and raw.

"Ugh," I said weakly. "I should have found some wood."

"What?" the teenage employee asked.

"Nothing," Amy and I said in unison.

Everything went black again, as I felt my body and mind slip away into sleep.