There was a moment when it felt real. I wish I could tell you the exact time, but I was stuck in a frigid basement and they had taken my watch, along with everything else I was carrying when they grabbed me. I think it was around 3 a.m., but I'm only guessing. It felt like someone had torn open the minutes between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. and stuffed ten more hours inside. I was not on regular time. I was on Being Kidnapped time, which lasts far longer. Call it 3 (b)a.m.

I was duct-taped to a chair in three separate places: at my ankles, my thighs, and my chest. There were two henchmen flanking me. Romeo, on my right, was a black guy in a ski mask and no shirt. His torso was larded with tattoos and tiny pockets of baby fat, as if he'd never picked up anything heavier than five pounds. To my left was a white dude named Cody, who sounded like every grown man named Cody.

In front of me was a table piled with assorted instruments of torture—a blowtorch, a drill, a stun gun—plus two glaring floodlights. Romeo had removed my blindfold temporarily so that I might have the privilege of staring directly into those floodlights. Behind the floodlights was nothing but darkness, and a voice.

"So, Drew," I heard a man say, "I think it's time that we stopped bothering to make you comfortable."

Would You Like Fries with Your Abduction? Extreme Kidnapping's Adam Thick e-mailed me a series of questions to tailor my experience, and I wrote back with answers filled in. Here is an excerpt of that exchange.

Could you be slapped if it came to that?

Oh sure. Count me in on slapping.

Verbal abuse?

You bet.

Waterboarding? Stress positions? Stun gun? Fire?

I've never been waterboarded, but it sounds horrible. I guess we could maybe explore it. I dunno about a stun gun. Probably not.

Beaten with a trout? Battered with a summer sausage? I'm not kidding.

Oh sure. Can I eat the summer sausage when you're done?

Piranha?

HOLY SHIT. I guess so. Just don't have them actually bite me.

Duct-taped to a wall off the ground?

Probably not.

Suspended from the ceiling? Are you flexible enough that you could be stuffed into a closet or a confined space for a while?

Please don't stuff me into small spaces.

Any phobias? Allergies?

No allergies that I know of. I ain't telling you my phobias, because I'm a pussy.

Romeo slapped me hard across the face, much harder than I had been slapped all night. Then he shocked me with a stun gun. Then Cody doused me with cold water, which was the worst part by far. When you get hit with a stun gun, it lasts a second. When someone throws cold water on you, it makes you miserable for hours. I hadn't thought about cold water before this. I had thought about guns and billy clubs and knives. It never occurred to me how desperately I would want to stay dry. Now I would have gladly taken another jolt from the stun gun in exchange for a fresh T-shirt.

"I know this was originally meant to be a fake kidnapping," the voice said.

That's right.

"And I know that you guys did your homework on me, and that you know I went to prison for a while."

I do know that.

"But there are other things about me that you don't know, Drew. And the reason you don't know them is because you never asked."