Beats Entropy

(See PART 1 and  PART 2 and PART 3 for the beginning of the story.Continued in PART 5 )

Danny awoke restrained. His arms were tied behind his back, his ankles to separate legs of the coffee table. He was unsure where the hedgehog had gotten the twine. Metaphorical cotton filled his mouth; a numb fog filled his brain, dulling his panic to flat curiosity. The hedgehog was lounging in a hooded sweater Danny was sure he’d lost two years before. He needed answers.

“What are you” Danny asked.

“A concerned denizen” said the hedgehog.

Danny didn’t know what denizen meant.

“Is that some kind of Hedgehog” asked Danny.

The hedgehogs clicked its mouth shut, started to say something, stopped, shook its head, and then started again.

“Look…I’m here to help. I’m a helper. Just go with that”.

Danny considered the creature glaring up from his sweat shirt: while he was strangely unable to raise an acceptable level of alarm, the reality of a talking animal was beginning to wear at his edges. He figured it best to tackle it head on.

“Are you real?” asked Danny.

The hedgehog pressed at the sides of his head hard enough the temples touched.

“I just tied you to a fucking table; what do you think?”

Danny tested his bonds.

“These are pretty loose; I’m pretty sure I could just pull my hands out”

Danny pulled his hands out to prove the point. A score of tiny puncture wounds and abrasions covered both wrists.

The hedgehog bent into a sullen curl.

“Yeah, I don’t have thumbs…it’s hard to tie a good knot. Anyways, I just wanted you in one place until the Xanax kicked in. You were kind of freaking out there for a while”.

Danny noted the pill bottled on the counter with a hole chewed through the top. A large number of tablets were spilled out on the table beside it.

“Jesus, how many did you give me? I still have a ton of booze in my system. Holy shit, I need to go to the hospital!”

Danny clawed at the twine around his ankles. The hedgehog had done a better job on those knots. After a couple failed attempts Danny took the more expedient route of snapping the legs off the coffee table and clattering about the apartment with them trailing like busted snow shoes.

The hedgehog was laughing.

“Shut the fuck up!” Danny shrieked. “You poisoning son of a bitch”.

The hedgehog was now laughing so hard he’d curled involuntarily into a ball.

Danny searched frantically through his newly organized apartment for the phone: it was on the wall by the fridge. The “9” and “1” had been gnawed off, the holes filled with rubber cement. Danny glared at the Hedgehog, and then pressed “0” so he could get the operator to call an ambulance for him. There was no dial tone. Danny noted the cord had also been chewed in half.

“Why would you wreck the numbers if you were going slash the cord anyways?” Danny demanded. Furious.

The hedgehog’s laughter had progressed to inaudibility; Danny considered kicking the silently vibrating ball of quills through his front window.

“How many did you give me?” Danny shrieked.

The hedgehog uncurled enough to get an arm free, and held up two fingers. Danny collapsed into a kitchen chair, weak with relief and spent rage. The hedgehog scrambled up onto the kitchen counter to be roughly face to face with Danny.

“All right, if you’re done playing Heath Ledger sing-along can we get down to business?”

***

CONTINUED IN PART 5