Rider by Peter J Merrigan

the car for home. As he drove, he thought about the possibility of moving house. The flat wouldn’t seem the same any more, an empty container with nothing to fill it. He knew all his memories were there, but he could easily pack them up with the furniture and take them with him. A house was just a building. It was love that made a building a home.
    There was a mild chill in the air when he stepped out of the car and triggered the central locking system. He walked through the empty parking lot and into the building, picking up the small amount of junk mail from his box.
    When he slotted his key in the door and opened it, he was struck by how dark it was. Across the room, the clouds were banking up outside the window. He flipped the light switch and dropped the post on the table. Then there was an immediate and audible oomph and a searing pain at the back of his head.
    He fell.
    Someone was on top of him. He tried to turn around but was hit on the head again. His right ear rang from the collision. He didn’t know what the object was but he was sure it wasn’t a hand or a fist.
    He tried to shout for help.
    ‘Shut up!’ a muffled voice ordered.
    Two pairs of hands grappled with his body and roughly turned him onto his back. He could feel a knee on his stomach, just below his breastbone, then a pair of hands around his neck.
    His mind was strangely alert as he could feel his lungs labouring for air. The men’s faces were hidden in balaclavas. The man on top of Kane, the only one he could see clearly, was wearing a dark green hoodie.
    For seconds—minutes even—he struggled against his assailants, and for a moment he thought of Ryan. What would he look like in Heaven?
    And just before he blacked out, the room went crimson and purple.

Chapter 6
     
     
    It was pitch black. Even before he opened his eyes he could tell he was in a vast, open space, like a warehouse or something similar. His shallow breathing echoed back across the room. He could feel his hands between his back and the cold floor he was lying on, the rope or twine that held them together cutting deep into his wrists.
    It took him a minute to remember what had happened. There had been someone in his apartment, someone strangling him. He swallowed saliva and coughed.
    He wondered what time it was. Something told him it was night, something beyond the darkness around him. As he let his eyes adjust to the lack of light, he twisted a kink from his neck and tried to position himself so that his hands weren’t pressing into his back so much. Overhead, some fifteen foot above, he could just about make out a corrugated ceiling.
    There was a distinct smell of wet and rotting wood that clung to the stale air around him. His stomach churned and, without realising the consequences, his cracked and hoarse voice shouted for help, the words grating in his throat. He lay his head back down and breathed through his nose. There was a soft scuttling noise not far away. A rat, he thought.
    Soon he heard a key turn in a lock and a door swing open. The blinding beam of a flashlight fell on his face. He could see nothing, but over the sound of the blood pounding in his ears he could hear footsteps coming towards him. He squinted against the light, the glare hurting his head.
    A sharp pain exploded in his hip when someone kicked him. ‘Get up,’ a rough and surly voice ordered.
    Kane tried to move. ‘I can’t,’ he breathed.
    The man kicked him again. ‘Get up!’
    ‘P-please, I…’
    He crouched and gripped Kane’s hair. The pain in his scalp was agonising. ‘We’ve got company,’ he said evenly. ‘I want you on your best behaviour. Now get up .’ He pulled on Kane’s hair and forced him into a sitting position, then let him go.
    Kane’s head span. He coughed and twisted his legs around so that he could get some leverage to rise. The man stepped back and watched. Using his hands behind his back, Kane pushed downwards against the sweaty concrete and forced his body