Excerpt: Imagine That

The two men manhandled me into a bare room. Coffee-coloured stains on the roof and walls. Well look, I have no idea how so much coffee went to waste, but was I really in a position to ask?
“Stay put now!” said the first one. He was some kind of European. Well not French anyway. And definitely not Spanish. I’m talking EUROPEAN. Heaven’s above. Anyway, the second one was obviously a talker because he followed it up with a well-timed and extraordinarily unique “YEAH!” As if there was anything else I could be doing. I guess I can’t really hold it against them or anything. I bet their job satisfaction is really low, like those plebs who work at the supermarket.
“Look,” I said, “I’ve just finished 16 years of schooling. Are you really going to cut short my enjoyment of that level of education after just six months of backpacking?” They looked at each other with their beetle eyes. “I’m not from here!” I said. “And I have no money! Seriously. And I don’t know anyone who does have money. My parents are definitely not going to come through with anything.” They looked at each other. “Not saying that my mother doesn’t love me or whatever. Look, they were very specific when I left on this trip that if there was ever any trouble with kidnapping or anything they would definitely not fuel the industry by giving into the extortion.”
“Extortion?” said the first pleb with his thick accent, “I am unfamiliar with this word.”
“Bribery,” I clarified, “Blackmail. Coercion… there’s no ransom money okay?” For goodness’ sake, my synonyms were getting rusty. It must be all the pressure I was under. At any rate, they seemed to understand what I was getting at. I was a hopeless cause and my superior powers of intellectualism and diplomacy were going to mean this situation would turn out fine.
“No money?” The second pleb actually looked kind of upset. Still, he was catching on. What a bright one he was.
“Okay here’s what I’m going to do. Here’s a tenner. Buy yourself some ice-cream or something and abduct some other poor dude.” I reached into my pocket and threw a scrunched-up 10 Euro note at them. Then I confidently strolled forward in-between them. They were stunned. I pushed past them without incident. I am so awesome sometimes. Then I turned around and quipped, “And get real jobs you guys, for crap’s sake. You’re so painfully cliche.”

And then my daydream ended. I know right? I had you going there. Well don’t get angry at me or anything. If you wanted to read some sort of European kidnapping action-drama you would have picked a book with a black cover with some kind of harassed-looking girl superimposed on top of a whole load of explosions. Oh, and there would be a silhouette of a guy running out of a the explosions and you’d definitely be able to see a gun clasped in his hand, like he’s the hero that manages to save the kidnapped girl from sexual slavery through a whole lot of action and badassery when really the dude on the cover turns out to be the bad guy who blows up the brothel in the very last scene DUN DUN DUN! Hell, I should probably write that book after I finish writing this one. It would become a movie starring some sort of sexy action-movie star and I would make a packet. But you didn’t pick up that book. You picked up this one with whatever the hell sort of cover it has. This book will never be made into a movie; unless it stars that guy who always half-smiles and mumbles all his lines. That guy is me, by the way. Hi, my name is Mark.