Off the Wagon, Part 3: Having it all Means Nothing.

Joey looked down at the girl in his bed.
She was beautiful, tall, blonde, deviant. She fucked like the whore she was, using her sex like a drill to mine for gold. Her name was…unimportant. She was as hot as Cara, only Cara was a brunette. They were all the same really, he felt no connection with any of them. This one was not the first, last, or only girl to sleep under his gaze. He had the best one there was, Cara was certainly what any sane man would kill for, and having her made Joey happy, even if she herself did not.
Joey wondered if he was capable of feeling an emotion as complex as love. Certainly it was a feeling that begged for inspiration, but he found human relations to be too sinister to allow any sort of trust.
Joey reached over and shook the blond girl awake. He eyes opened groggily and she smiled.
“I don’t know if I can take it again,” she said, pulling back the covers with practiced purpose. Her naked body was half lit by the rising sun, and she knew it was a striking image. Her posture did not indicate that she was in any doubt of her ability to fuck again.
“Go home,” Joey said flatly and got out of bed.
He felt, rather than saw her smile fade, along with her alluring pose. She would fuck him all day if he said so, all night too. She would probably do anything he told her to if she thought he might buy her something.
“Is your girlfriend coming home?” she said, a slight scorn accented her tone.
“Yes, so get the fuck out of my house.”
She got up and dressed without another word. Joey went into the bathroom and got in the shower before she was even out of his bed.
The hot water did nothing to cool his mood. There was something deeply wrong. He no longer found pleasure in any thing he did. There was no reason to complain, he had everything any person had the right to ask for. But just like everyone else on the planet he wanted something more. It was an awful feeling when he realized that he already had everything.
Joey was stuck in a rut he needed a break in the routine. He needed to get out of his skin, do something crazy. He needed to feel alive.
The bathroom was hot with steam from the shower. Joey stepped in front of the mirror and wiped the condensation away with his towel. He looked fine. He might need a shave, but otherwise there were no problems. He would have given all the money in the world to have a mirror that would reflect what was wrong with him.
The phone rang.
It was Travis.

It had been Joey’s idea to kidnap the girl.
The girl was dead, there was no reason to let it be a senseless event, with no good to come out of it. What would be the harm in making a few dollars?
“What the fuck does that mean?” Travis had asked.
“It means shut up, take my truck and tow that wrecked piece of shit into the fucking lake,” he had answered.
Travis had done as he was told, knowing that something was amiss. He had chalked it up to nerves, but…
Travis had returned to Joey’s house to find that he had just been fucked, his nerves had been right. Helping out a friend was one thing. Given the circumstances and possible misinterpretation of the situation, helping Ryan was the right thing to do for a friend. Then Joey took it too far. He always took things too far. Maybe just a tiny step at first, but by the time he was done, you had taken an Olympic long jump into trouble. That was the problem with rich kids. They had no parents, no morals, and a lot of time to think up ways to get their friends in shit. Idle hands where the devils playground.
Joey seemed to like to watch people suffer. It was strange because Joey and Travis had been friends for as long as either could remember, and Joey would die for Travis, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to help him. He had demonstrated his loyalty more than a hundred times. Travis trusted him with his life. There was a powerful bond between the two, but Travis had yet to see even an ounce of compassion in Joey for anyone else. Joey could be very charismatic when he needed to be. He was very good at acting like a nice person, compassionate and gentle. That was not his true nature. That was the lie everyone believed was him.
Half the reason they were such good friends was that Travis admired his misanthropy and bitterness, even shared it. But he did not revel in it. Not like Joey did. But part of being friends was taking the good with the bad.
Now the bad included seven tiny fingers and a wad of bloody blonde hair.
Joey knew who the girl was, and said her family was rich enough to afford a sizeable ransom. Ryan was all for the idea in a second. Lazy and greedy as fuck, Ryan would do anything easy for money. Travis wanted nothing to do with the plan, but they needed his help. Joey needed three people for his plan. He needed one person to make the demands, one person to collect the money, and one person, unaffiliated with the plan to launder the money while the heat was somewhere else.
There was no reason why Joey needed any of this money, Travis knew. He was doing it just to fuck with people. To squeeze every last drop of pain and heartbreak out of this tragedy. His eyes were venomous with hate, and Travis wasn’t sure what was going on here. Come to think of it, this was extreme even for Joey’s psychosis.
But Travis said ok. He said goodbye, the plan called for him to be unaffiliated with either of them for at least two weeks. Besides, part of his plan was to keep Cara busy, and that would not be so bad. Not so bad at all.