You know that feeling you get when you think something is a great idea, so you agree to do it and you get all excited about it, but then when it comes time to actually do it, you find out with a sinking feeling that you have absolutely no idea what to do?

Oh stop it, I'm not talking about sex. Perv. I'm talking about guest posting. It's like walking out onto the set of a talk show as a guest, but the host isn't there. Oprah? Dr. Phil? Anyone? I have to do this thing myself?

Okay then, let's do it. Again, I'm not talking about sex, so stop it. I'm not Dr. Ruth dammit. All right. As you all know (and if you don't, shame on you, where the hell have you been?) The Fish is on vacation. It's well deserved and I'm happy for the guy, but they had the nerve to not invite me. I mean, don't I deserve a vacation too? Shut up, of course I do!! I'm every bit as entitled to go to Hawaii. Or Florida. Or Idaho. Aw hell, where are they going anyway?

Oh forget it. I don't want to go anymore. They can lug their own baggage. They're not going to make me their little slave girl! Not that that would be a bad thing… that Bunny is kinda cute. But still, I have principles you know. (And a girlfriend who would beat my ass if I ever vacated anywhere without her.)

You know what? (Please don't say chicken butt!) There's something really important missing in this post. Something that would help me figure out when I should stop writing and say this thing is finished. Yes, a point… I'm missing a point. This whole post is pointless, like a broken pencil. Like a Seinfeld episode. All right then. It ends here. No I mean it, right here. I kinda suck, don't I?

Thank god I have a day job.

[Ed. note: republished with permission from Jenna's blog. Part 1 can be read here.]
 

"Mrs. Isashrew. It's good to see you again," he said without a trace of cheer.

Jenna said nothing.

"The bag, Mrs. Isashrew. Give me the bag."

She took the bag from her shoulder, very slowly, and handed it to him.

A quick glance into the bag caused the man to frown. "Where are the tapes, Mrs. Isashrew?"

Jenna smiled then, the sour look on his face truly entertaining her.

"We'll find the types, Isashrew. You know we will. We always do." He made a hand gesture to the assembled SWAT types, who closed in on her with a black cloth bag and several secure ties. Now these guys know how to keep a captive, she thought morosely.

About twenty minutes later, by Jenna's best guess, the ties were cut and the hood removed. Rough hands forced her into a chair. She was in the center of a large and mostly unlit room, an empty warehouse maybe. A few feet in front of her sat the thin agent, his face still sour. Jenna smiled at him.

"Where are the tapes, Mrs. Isashrew?"

Jenna gave no answer, but looked around the room. In the dim light she could make out at least four other people, and there were sure to be several behind her. They would all be armed and highly trained. She wasn't going anywhere.

"Mrs. Isashrew, I asked you a question. Didn't your mother teach you manners?"

Jenna stared at him.

"The tapes, Mrs. Isashrew."

"I don't have them."

"Of course you don't have them. But you know where they are."

"Go to hell," she spat at him.

"You know how… damaging… could be the contents of those tapes, Mrs. Isashrew. You can't honestly think we'd allow you to take them public."

Jenna smiled. "I wasn't exactly asking your permission."

"We cannot allow that information to become public. You know this."

She did not respond.

"What do you imagine would happen if the public knew? Do you really think your path is a wise one?"

"The truth is always the right way."

The man leapt to his feet. "Dammit, Isashrew! Why can't you understand this?"

"The people have a right to know!" Jenna shouted back.

"This issue is of great personal interest to the president."

Jenna glowered.

"You know as well as I do, the president considers the production of The Dukes of Hazard 2 to be our highest national priority. That movie will never be made if the American people know the truth about Jessica Simpson's extraterrestrial origins."

"That's the whole idea," Jenna replied. "I don't think you realize the damage The Dukes of Hazard 2 could inflict on the American people."

"Of more immediate concern to you, Mrs. Isashrew, should be the damage we can inflict on you," the man said quietly. "Where are the tapes?"

Jenna turned away.

"You know what, Isashrew? I'm tired. And I hate Philadelphia. I cannot wait to get out of this place. Just as soon as we get those tapes we can all go home."

Jenna ignored him.

The man stared. He broke the silence with three words that would stick in her mind long afterward: "Thomason. Hurt her."

One of the men behind her stepped out of the shadows. He grabbed her arm with powerful hands and twisted savagely. She cried out in pain as something in her elbow gave way. The man twisted her arm back and forth as Jenna screamed. She fell to the floor when the man released her.

"Oh, Mrs. Isashrew, look at that. I believe you've broken your elbow. That looks painful." There was no trace of sympathy in the man's voice.

Out of the darkness appeared another suited man, who leaned to whisper into the ear of her tormentor. Both men broke into a grin.

"Well, Mrs. Isashrew, you'll be pleased to know that I no longer have to suffer through Philadelphia. I'll be back in Virginia in ninety minutes."

Through her tears Jenna mumbled, "I'm very happy for you."

"We found your tapes, Mrs. Isashrew. That was an excellent hiding spot, by the way. Inside the light fixture in a maintenance closet. Local cops probably would have missed that. But of course you know that we are much more thorough."

Jenna groaned in both exquisite pain and bitter disappointment.

"It's a shame we were interrupted so soon. I was looking forward to Thomason breaking your other elbow. But since our operatives have already destroyed all three tapes, I see no reason to keep you any longer. And I do so want something to look forward to in our next meeting." Without another word, the man rose and retreated into the darkness. A shuffle of boots and shoes told her the others were leaving along with him.

When the last of their noise died away, Jenna finally cracked a smile. Three tapes, she thought. She tightened her Kegel muscles securely around the undiscovered fourth tape. She cradled her battered elbow as she struggled to her feet. I'd better leave that tape right where it is until I know it's safe. I don't know if I can stand what those men might do to my knees.

Jenna shuffled in the direction the anonymous agents had left, each step causing little needles of pain to radiate out from her elbow. A big fat cast is really going to take the shine off my summer, she thought. But if this tape prevents The Dukes of Hazard 2, it will all be worth it.

[Ed. note: republished with permission from Jenna's blog.]
 

Jenna grimaced as she touched the tender spot on her forehead. I hope that doesn't look as bad as it feels, she thought. She stayed where she was on the floor and looked around. It was a small room, maybe 6' by 10. The room was dirty, but empty. There was an old looking wooden door and a small window with sunlight streaming through. There were no furnishings, no decorations. Storage room? she wondered. Convinced there was no security camera, she finally stood, although with more difficulty than she'd like to admit.

She looked closer at the window and judged it a little too small for escape. She turned to the door. It was old, but looked heavy. The frame looked a little weak, but it opened to her side, and she doubted she'd be able to kick it open. She tried to look through the old school keyhole, but couldn't see anything of interest. She dropped to her belly to peek under the door. In the room beyond her dingy cell she saw two pairs of feet and the legs of one table and two chairs.

She waited, peeking under the door, for nearly 30 minutes. Neither man left the room and no one came to join them. Only two guards. They should have known better. They didn't even bother to tie me, she thought. Amateurs.

She pressed her ear against the wall and made a moaning noise. The sounds of her captors' activity ceased immediately. She waited until she heard the newspaper rustle again and moaned once more. She heard one man speak to the other in a language she didn't understand. Is that Bulgarian? I should have studied more languages. There was the distinctive scrape of a chair being pushed away from the table followed by the equally distinctive sound of a round being chambered in a semi-automatic pistol. She moved beside the door and tensed.

The man who came to check on her opened the door slowly and stuck his gun hand into the room. Jenna grabbed his pistol and pulled. The man did not release his grip, but he was pulled off balance. As he stumbled into the room she smashed her elbow into his face. He let go of the pistol as he fell into a heap inside the door. Jenna heard the other man bark something that must have been a curse as he cocked his own weapon.

She crouched to knee level as she moved into the doorway. The other man fired, but his shot was at least two feet above her head. Definitely amateurs, she thought as she fired two quick rounds into the second man's chest. He fell back into his chair and twitched a few times before he went still. Over the gunsight she saw her black messenger bag lying on the table.

Jenna quickly dragged both men into the storage room. She made sure the unconscious man with the shattered nose was lying on his side, head down slightly. She didn't want him to choke on his own blood before he woke up. Jenna always did what she had to, but she was no killer. She would have locked them both in, but the door had no lock. There was no handy way to bar the door.

She checked her bag and was pleased to see all four DV tapes were right where she left them. These two men didn't seem smart enough to sell them on their own, so they were probably shopping for a buyer. She put the second man's pistol into the bag and threw its strap over her shoulder.

Almost three minutes had passed since the brief gun battle. No alarm had been raised. No one had come to investigate. These are freelancers, she concluded. Cheap thugs. They're too sloppy to be anything else. It looked like she was in a rundown apartment. The few items of furniture were decrepit and filthy. Given the state of the place, she determined the two thugs were probably hiding her in an abandoned building. The apartment's only window showed a narrow alley and a windowless brick wall on the other side of it. There was no fire escape, nothing to jump to, nothing to climb. She guessed she was five floors up.

I guess I'm going out the front door, she frowned. She hated the thought of traveling through five unknown floors. Just because her captors were sloppy amateurs didn't mean there weren't more of them, and even idiots get lucky now and then.

To her great relief, she found the rest of the building unoccupied. From the omnipresent newspaper scraps in the stairwells, she was in Philadelphia. You know, someday I'd like to visit this city without arriving in the trunk of a car, she grumbled. What remained of her playful good humor evaporated completely on reaching the first floor.

Stealthy looks through dirty windows revealed the neighborhood to be a beehive of quiet activity. She counted six plain white vans of varying sizes. There were two dark blue sedans that could only belong to a government agency. A man dressed as a utility worker was atop a light pole down the street. She could barely make out the binoculars where his tool kit should have been.

They must have been closing in on the thugs upstairs. This is bad. She knew those vans contained armed government agents. Scattered all over the neighborhood the way they were, it would be nearly impossible to avoid them all. Her mind was racing now. She quickly formulated a plan. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than nothing.

Ten minutes later she was sneaking out one of the windows at the rear of the building, her bag securely over her shoulder. She crept down the alley, away from the worst of the activity, her pistol held in front of her like a talisman. She almost made it to the street before she heard the disturbing sound of several engines roaring to life. They've made me! I'm in trouble!

She stood to run when the crack of a high-powered rifle caused her to hug the wall. Over the pounding of her heart, she heard the unseen sniper chamber another round. The sound came from above her. She looked up to find a man in black Nomex pointing a very large gun at her. Dammit. I never even looked at the roof. Jenna was very fond of keeping her head attached to the rest of her body, so she stood motionless for the twenty seconds it took for the first of the federal agents to arrive. A moment later, several men in suits pulled up in one of the dark sedans. A thin man on the undesirable side of middle age walked through the crowd of SWAT types pointing machine guns at her.

To be cont…