Party sounds wormed their way through a cracked window down onto the street. The low thrum of bass pulsed from a JBL speaker while with the lighter sounds of conversation and merriment floated above. The party had been going for a few hours, and it didn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. In fact, it seemed like it was growing.
Inside the party was a man named Ted Bensby. He knew a girl who was friends with the girlfriend of the tenant who lived here. He had come to talk to the girl but had instead found himself stranded in a sea of strangers. He stood in the corner, clutching his red solo cup like it was an I.D. badge, identifying his clearance to the party.
A girl walked up to him, perhaps noticing his discomfort.
“Hey,” she said, “Who do you know here?”
Ted had feared this moment. He swallowed, looked her in the eyes, and said: “Liza.”
“Oh,” the girl said, she glanced over her shoulder at Liza. Liza was currently attempting to suck the face off of some guy. She looked back at Ted,
“We’re about to play two truths and a lie if you want to play?”
Usually, Ted didn’t care for games like that, but he cared even less for standing in the corner like a loser.
“Sure, that sounds fun.”
They all sat in a circle facing each other. An invisible line cut through the middle, separating the girls from the boys. It was very sophomoric. Ted kept that thought to himself. The girl who had brought him over, Eleanor (they’d introduced themselves to each other on the walk over) spoke up first.
“Okay, so mine are: I’ve never left the country, I love strawberries, and uhhhhh, I have eleven toes!”
Everyone laughed at that. Ted did too. Having eleven toes would be crazy. Eleanor was clearly a very funny person.
Everybody guessed. Turns out, Eleanor actually did have eleven toes and in reality, hated strawberries. She showed everyone her foot with six toes. Ted was kind of grossed out.
Eleanor turned to Ted, leaning towards him slightly. Ted leaned away slightly, still repulsed by the whole six-toes thing.
“Okay Ted, you’re up now!”
Ted thought for a minute. What could be a good combo? Then he smiled a slight grin.
“Alright, I am a universal donor, I can’t whistle, and…” Ted paused for dramatic effect, “I am physically unable to take a bad picture.”
A finance bro scoffed at the last one.
“That isn’t fair, they have to be objective truths.”
Everybody ignored that guy since he was kind of a douchebag. The entire group guessed that the lie was about not being able to take bad pictures and waited in rapt attention for the reveal.
“I am “A” positive actually,” Ted said triumphantly. The crowd groaned in complaint. Somebody asked Ted how “the whole can’t take a bad picture thing could be true.”
“Well,” Ted began his speech, “I was diagnosed with ‘Faciem-Semper-Spectat-Bonum‘ but the more popular term is Barney Stinson disease.”
Confused faces stared at him. Ted continued.
“Remember the blonde guy from How I Met Your Mother?”
Heads nodded.
“Remember that episode where they can’t take a bad picture of him?”
More nods.
“Well, I have a medical condition that more or less means the same thing happens whenever people try to take pictures of me.”
Nobody believed him. Ted was used to this. Eleanor pulled out a camera. Ted was used to that too.
“Okay close your eyes and make a weird face.”
Ted did as she asked. He could hear the camera click. He opened his eyes as the crowd gasped at the digital recreation of the photo. Despite Ted’s certifiably dorky pose, his photo was nothing short of stunning.
After that, the party devolved into somehow trying to take a bad picture of Ted. Every endeavor was of course unsuccessful, but at least Ted felt a bit more involved with the crowd. Even Liza seemed to regret ditching him.
Eventually, Ted had enough of the attention and excused himself from the festivities. He walked down the steps towards his car and stumbled a bit on the dismount. He was drunker than he thought he’d been. Ted stowed his keys in his pocket, he was close enough to walk home if he cut through the alley.
Ted began his walk home. Halfway through the alley, he heard terse whispers to his right. He turned to locate what he was hearing: but saw nothing. Ted kept walking.
The whispers continued.
Ted stopped again. Walking a bit closer to the sounds now. The whispers stopped.
“Hello?” Ted called into the darkness. Nothing responded.
Ted turned back towards the street to continue walking, however just as he turned his back on the darkness, a sharp pain split his skull and his entire world went black.
Ted woke to a bright light searing through his eyelids. The back of his head ached, and there was a tightness around his wrists. He woke to see silhouettes outlined by light. They were speaking in a foreign language. He looked down at himself; he was covered in dirt and mud and his arms and legs were bound to a wooden chair.
“What’s going on?!” Ted shouted at the dark forms. One turned towards him.
“So, you are finally awake.” One said in a vaguely eastern European accent, “it appears you stumbled into the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
Ted’s face grew ashen. He began to stammer an apology but his captor cut him off.
“Now is not the time for apologies.” He went quiet for a minute, “Do you have a wealthy family?” Ted panicked. He came from about a middle-class background as one could imagine. Then, he remembered,
“My cousin made like a million dollars in crypto in 2016!”
“That will have to do.” The voice said. Then the lights shut off, and the pain began.
Ted wasn’t sure why they were beating him to a pulp, maybe they were bored? Or maybe they felt like they were expected to beat him up since they had kidnapped him. The beating lasted for ten hours, and the goons took shifts so that they were always fresh. It was incredibly efficient. Ted might have even given them props if it wasn’t being used to torture him.
After a while, Ted’s face was reduced to a bloody mess, his eyes so puffy he could no longer see out of them.
Eventually, the earlier voice called them off and the lights came back on. Ted found himself staring at the lens of a camera. Uh oh, thought Ted.
“Must take picture to show proof to family,” the voice explained from behind the camera.
Snap.
The shapes looked at the screen on the camera, whispering in low Eastern European murmurs. Another shape came forward and socked him with a heavy right cross.
“No posing,” said the voice.
Ted tried to tell him he hadn’t been, but his mouth was too filled with blood to speak.
Snap.
Murmuring again. The only word that could describe Ted’s picture was “brilliant.” Some of the guards whistled in appreciation.
The voice gestured again, and another shape came forward, this time a flying knee into Ted’s nose, instantly shattering the entire thing. Ted blacked out.
Snap.
Ted woke up to the sound. He heard muttering again. Ted’s picture looked even better than before. Guards gasped. Ted heard breaking glass as a guard dropped his vodka bottle onto the concrete floor.
What followed was a perverse version of the party Ted had just exited; Guards would pummel Ted in a multitude of different ways and then try to take his picture. Each time, they would gather around the camera, and “ooh” and “ahh” in appreciation. Ted, for his part, was more or less in a state of comatic oblivion. Head lolling from side to side as he was beaten.
Nonetheless, Ted remained stunning in the photos. No matter how terrible he looked in reality, his headshots retained an almost ethereal quality.
After about twenty-three hours and some change of continuous torture, a guard snapped a picture right as another man roundhouse kicked Ted in the face. They gathered once more around the camera.
The photo loaded, and to all of their surprise, it was completely average. Maybe Ted looked slightly better than someone getting kicked in the face would, but definitely worse than he usually did.
The guards cheered in joy.
Another guard went over to Ted’s limp form, shaking him by the shoulder.
“We got it ya freak!” he said, “Now it’s time to send it to your folks!”
Ted did not respond.
The guard shook him again. This time more roughly.
Others started to notice now. Their cheering grew more subdued.
The voice put his fingers to Ted’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“He’s dead.”
Adam Rimland's Portfolio 