Chris Marlowe, Denver Nuggets commentator, woke up disoriented. He was in a cell-like room, tied to a chair. A bare fluorescent tube provided blinding light that yielded no shadows. He looked down and noticed that a hastily-applied blindfold had slipped off his eyes, down around his neck, where it hung like a noose.
His head was killing him. He tried, and failed, to remember how he had come to be here. The last memory he had was walking out to his mailbox to get the mail. Then, blackness. And now this. He could feel panic begin to rise in his chest.
His thoughts were interrupted by two men entering the room. They had clearly been expecting their captive to still be blindfolded; once they saw that Chris was watching, they drew their guns menacingly.
“Don’t move! Don’t move or we’ll shoot!” the taller man yelled aggressively.
Even in his distress, Chris found this funny. How was he supposed to move if he was lashed to a chair? He avoided stating the obvious and instead asked, “Who are you?”
The shorter, fatter man answered, “Names don’t matter. Just know that we work for Miller Brewing Company, and that if you cooperate with us, we won’t kill you.”
Chris tried to make use of this information, but couldn’t figure out how it fit. Miller was a sponsor of the NBA. Why would they abduct one of its commentators? “State your demands,” he said, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt.
“Don’t get funny with us! We’re not afraid to hurt you!” The tall man yelled, clearly put off by the calm demeanor of their prisoner. In a rage, he kicked over the chair. Chris felt his head rebound painfully off the tiled floor. “We have a little proposition for you.”
Chris nodded, afraid that words would prompt further violence.
“You have a player on your team named Quincy Miller, correct?”
“Yes.” Chris answered.
“It was a rhetorical question, dimwit!” the short man shouted, planting his shoe firmly in Chris’ chest. “No funny business!”
“Okay, okay, no funny business,” Chris agreed.
The tall man squatted down so he could talk with his captive face-to-face. “Here’s the deal, loser. Whenever that scrub Quincy scores a basket, we want you to say ‘It’s Quincy Miller Time’.”
“That’s it? I thought you were going to ask me to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia or something,” Chris joked. He immediately regretted his glibness, as he found a gun pointed right between his eyes.
“I told you, idiot! You don’t want to get funny with us!”
“You don’t want to get funny with us,” the short man echoed.
When Chris didn’t respond, the tall man put his gun down. “If you agree to say ‘It’s Quincy Miller Time’, we’ll let you go. If not, well, you might end up in the bottom of the harbor with the other commentators who refused us.”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” Chris gasped, still reeling from being a slipped trigger-finger away from death.
“Good man,” said the tall man, who had gotten a baseball bat from somewhere. “We’ll take you home now.” Taking careful aim, he swung the bat like a golf club, right into Chris’ face.
The next thing Chris knew, he was lying on the lawn next to his mailbox, and his face hurt like hell.
“It’s Quincy Miller time,” he whispered.