When I was a police officer, I had life changing experience that to this day I have found myself never able to forget, or forgive.
I was the first one on the scene, responding to reports that a robbery had taken place. The home was in one of those suburban HOA neighborhoods, and the call came that the Millers, people of whom I knew personally, had seen strangers in their home and required assistance.
I entered through the back door. All the lights in the house were on and didn't seem like anything was actually happening. But then I rounded the corner into the office den, and I saw the man in the black mask rifling through the open safe.
I removed my service pistol and said, "Stop what're you doing right now. You're under arrest."
The man spun around and stared at me through the eye slits of the mask, hard cold grey eyes, and he didn't even flinch, or say a word.
"Let me see your hands," I shouted. "Get them up, now!"
Then from behind me I felt a presence, and felt the barrel of a pistol press against the back of my head.
"No, officer," the voice said, a gruff smoker's voice of a hard man. "You drop your pistol, and put your hands behind your back."
I thought of my training and thought I should react, but in the short time frame the man in the black mask before me had drawn his pistol and had it trained on me.
I was outmatched, afraid, and not sure how to respond, but instinct told me to just do what they say and I might, I might, walk away from this one. After all they could have already shot me, but they didn't. I went with that thought.
I dropped my pistol, and reluctantly put my hands behind me back. I felt the cold bite of handcuffs pierce my wrists as the man behind me locked them together. They weren't my cuffs, I knew that. This fellow had his one pair.
"Don't speak, officer. I'm no interested in what you have to say," the man said. "I don't want to shoot you."
I complied, and keep my thoughts to myself, but inside of me a battle was raging, my heart was pounding, and I felt a little quiver in my knees.
"Sit in that chair," he ordered, pushing me forward with the barrel of his gun.
I sat, suddenly facing the man and seeing that he wore no mask, and he was none other than Mr. James Miller himself, the owner of the home, the one who made the call about the robbery, the one who I just then realized sprung the trap!
He smiled at me when he saw the realization on my face, proud of his plan, but what his plan was, what the end game to all of this was, I could not say.
"Gag him," James Miller told the man in the black mask, who by this point still had not said a word. He was a quiet giant of man, and he stepped up behind me and gagged me with massive ball gag that he buckled roughly behind my head, real tight too, and he grunted with delight the whole time he did so.
The ball gag had a chin strap, which he quickly pulled tight, forcing me to clamp down on the big ball now lodged deep into my mouth.
Now I knew I was fucked.
"Now," James Miller began. "I've had my little eye on you since you were just a cadet, officer. Always wondered what it would be like to kidnap a little boy cop like yourself." He chuckled. "You're too pretty to be a cop, has anyone ever told you that before?"
"Phuck yoo!" I protested, through the big red ball. "Phuck yoo!"
Both of the men laughed at me.
"Awe, he's getting all hot and bothered. Don't worry. So are we."
Then, the big silent man in the black mask pulled my face, and held me against a giant bulge protruding from his jeans. It was hard and thick and he pressed it into my cheek. He held me there, and waggled his hips so that I could feel it's girth.
"That's right, officer. Like I said. I've had my eye on you for quite some time."
I moaned, helpless and hopeless and crying inside with what might happen to me next.
"Let's get him in the van, and be on our way, but first," James Miller said.
"Pwweease," I cried. "Pwwease, wemme wo!"
"Hush," James Miller said, as if he was speaking to a child.
And then I watched him take out a length of white rope from his pocket. I had the urge to kick him in the face, but the big man put his thick arm around my neck and squeezed until I nearly passed out. I was seeing red, and by the time I shook it off, my ankles were tied tightly together.
As an officer, I carry handcuffs, but I also carry zip ties.
James Miller took two sets off my belt, and handed them to the big man.
The big man cinched my wrists together despite the fact I was wearing handcuffs already, and with the second pair he cinched my upper arms together just above my elbows, forcing my back to arch and my chest to stick out.
I was fucked. I wanted to cry, but I had to keep my resolve in the eyes of these men. Me breaking would give them more joy than it would give me release from all the tension and anxiety I was feeling at that moment.
But it didn't matter much in the end, because this was just the beginning.
"Time to go," James Miller said, grinning at me as he left the room.
The big man lifted me up like I was his favorite toy and threw me over his thick shoulder as is my five-nine, one-eighty build meant nothing to him.
I whimpered like a little girl as he carried me out of the room, through the house that wasn't being robbed at all, and to the garage where an unmarked work van awaited.
With a grin, James Miller opened the sliding door, and the big man rolled me inside. I grunted as I landed and rolled into the van wall inside, but the big man wasn't done yet.
I noticed inside of the van there were metal O-rings drilled into the floorboard in what appeared to be very specific places. The big man used some more rope and tied me down to the O-rings, most likely so that I don't roll around and hurt myself as the two bastards made their getaway.
I felt the Stockholm syndrome I have heard so much about from captives starting to kick in. I was grateful they thought of me not hurting myself as they kidnapped me, which is ridiculous, but true. They could have been savages, and not have given a damn about what happens to me in transit, but this, while reassuring, only told me that they wanted me to stay pretty for what was to come, which brought on a whole other fear.
The van door was slammed, and I was cast into a pitch-black steel box.
I heard the men climb in one at a time, and soon felt the roar of the engine rumbling beneath me. And then we were off, and me, an officer of the law, laid captive in the back, bound hand and foot, gagged and drooling with a big red ball gag in my helpless little cop mouth.
As I was being taken to God knows where, I was at least happy for the fact that the big man didn't climb in the back of the van with me. With all of his grunting and strength and his obvious enjoyment of manhandling, and that bulge jabbing from his jeans, it would have been one hell of ride with him fondling him in the dark of the back of the van.
Alone, me helpless, him aroused, who knows what he might have forced me to do to him.
For that I was thankful, at the very least, I supposed.
When the van finally stopped, it must have been a good hour's drive, I figured. It was hard to grasp the reality of what had just happened to me, or what was going to happen to me, so my sense of time just sort of drifted from my mind, but it felt like an hour.
The van door slid open, and the light was blinding, but when my eyes adjusted, I stared up into the face of James Miller, the orchestrator of my kidnapping, and I just glared hard at him.
"Don't look so glum, officer," James said with a smile. "You're gonna ruin that pretty little face of yours."
The back doors of the van swung open, and the big man cut my ankles free from the O-ring embedded in the floorboard. James cut the rope that secured my torso to the floor, and then the big man dragged me out the back of the van.
He didn't throw me over his shoulder as I had expected. No, he cut my ankles completely free so that I could walk myself into the hollow hay covered bard that we had arrived to.
He shoved me, which in his silent language meant walk. Which I did, taking in the nondescript looking barn, with its bales of hay, tools hanging from the walls, wood plank walls all around. It was a barn, and I hadn't a clue what the hell we were doing here.
James followed in line behind us as the big man guided me toward a tall and bent wooden door that I assumed was an exit, but when the door opened, I was shocked to my core.
If I wasn't ball gagged so effectively, my jaw would have dropped.
Before me I saw guards, with guns, patrolling up and down an aisle where to each side of the aisle were about six men, bound and gagged and hooded with leather masks, a real horror show, I thought and they were restrained to strange looking machines that propped them up, and kept their backs arched, and their legs pulled back, with each one's arms secured in leather gloves behind their backs.