The Darts Dodge

Hans ever so carefully reached for the pocket of the man’s cloak behind his bent arm. The fold of the cloak was just hanging there, not even touching the man’s body. This would be the easiest extraction of all. Hans had his hand in the pocket when he felt the grip like a vice on his wrist. He looked up into the jet-black eyes of the dark man in the cloak who now was looking into his face with a sneery sort of smile-scowl.

The man pulled Hans away from the gathered crowd and into the shadows of the area underneath the stairway to the upper level. He had Hans enveloped in his cloak and turned from the other men and a hand over his mouth before Hans could utter a cry. And he was slowly propelling Hans through the very door by which Hans had planned to make his escape.

The man pushed Hans into the darkness of the storage room and to a large, waist-high wooden box in the back corner of the room, where he bent Hans over on the top of the box, belly on the box, and crouched over him, the man’s barrel chest pressing down on Hans’s back. They were both covered by the cloak, making them invisible in a dim-as-night room.

“Promise not to scream and I’ll take my hand away from your mouth,” the man whispered into Hans’s ear. “But I have a knife here and you will not make a second scream if you try the first.”

He took Hans’s muffled whimper as an assent. He tentatively removed his hand, and when he’d done so Hans remained panting from fear but silent and trembling.