Written purely for laughs for a girlfriend. But she wants to see her name on Literotica, so here goes. Don't expect great literature in this one.
Gary Farnham paced back and forth across his living room, with cell phone in hand. He knew full well that neither the inquiries he was making nor the rut he was trampling into his carpet would accomplish anything at all, but he was unable to sit and wait passively for what he was certain would be tragic news.
It had been merely worrisome when his live-in girlfriend Tammy was two hours late returning from work. He'd told himself that she might be having car trouble in one of the many urban canyons that are cell-phone "dead zones." Maybe she simply stopped to do some shopping and had lost track of the time. Or perhaps she'd had an appendicitis attack and rushed to the nearest hospital.
Deep down, Gary somehow knew the truth was far worse but he forced himself to cling to hope that the truth wasn't as dreadful as he knew it really was.
The phone call on his landline changed all that.
"I have your slut," a fiendish voice announced. "Listen carefully to my instructions if you want to get her back unharmed."
"Who is this?" Gary shouted. "What have you done with Tammy?"
"The cops have labeled me the 'Big Banger'," the disconnected voice said. "It is as good a designation as any. I haven't done anything to your toothsome wench...yet. And I won't harm a hair on her neatly-trimmed litte pussy if you place 100,000 $20 bills in an antique Athenian urn decorated with the verses of Pindar. Set the urn adrift down the Chicago River precisely three hours from now.
Precisely three hours
!"
"But I don't have $100,000!" Gary shrieked. "I might be able to raise that much by hocking everything I own, but not in three hours. The banks are all closed."
"It's not $100,000, stupid!" The Banger snarled. "It's two million. Can't you fucking multiply?"
"I don't have two million dollars. I can't get that much. And I've never seen one of those Athenian whatchamacallits.
"Not a whatchamacallit, dipshit! An authentic Athenian urn—specifically an Urn to a Grecian Ode. You have until the stroke of midnight, or else I'll detonate the stick of dynamite I've jammed into your lady friend's pussy! You try to cheat me out of even one dollar, kaboom! Foist off any reproduction urns on me, kaboom! Call the cops, kaboom! Got it?"
Then the line went dead.
And so did Gary.
OK, in truth he was merely dead to the world for about five minutes, the victim of the kind of fainting spell normally reserved for little old granny ladies who drive 1959 Rambler station wagons and raise African violets.
Cursing himself for wasting even a few precious minutes, Gary started to call the Chicago police. Suddenly fearing that the Big Banger might have tapped his phone, he grabbed the untraceable "burner" cell he used to place bets with offshore casinos.
"It's some kind of sick joke right?" he asked hopefully, after delivering a truncated version of the bizarre phone call.
"Probably not," Detective Fennstermacher replied cheerfully. "The Big Banger has been exploding cunts all over Cook County. We've been keeping the story away from the media because failing to catch him sorta makes us look bad."
"My God," Gary breathed. "What should I do?"
"That depends," the cop explained patiently. "You got two million bucks in cash and one of them fancy Greek flowerpots?"
"No!" Gary wailed. "And there's no way I can get them!"
"Well, then, you'd better find yourself another squeeze, cuz this one's snatch is gonna be permanently out of service."
"There must be something...anything..."
"Make a donation to the PPP—that's the Police Propaganda Project. We're in the middle of a media blitz to convince the suckers—I mean the citizens—that the Chicago P.D. isn't just a bunch of parasites sucking workfare paychecks out of the taxpayer. How much shall I put you down for?"
"Put me down for three good kicks to your worthless ass!" Gary snapped. "I'll solve it myself!"
The question was
how
? Only two hours and forty-one minutes remained.