a gruesome tale-chapter one

The tall, tanned, crew cut American stirred in a fitful sleep. His eyes flickered and he squinted under the harsh light, he shifted his head to the right and felt a stabbing pain, he frowned and tried to touch the sharp object, he realised he couldn’t move his hands and felt a surge of panic.
He struggled and tried to shout help, but his tongue wouldn’t move, it was swollen in his mouth to the extent that he could hardly breathe, another wave of fright washed over him and he struggled more, but he was bound tightly and he quickly realised that there was no hope of breaking loose. He moved on the strange surface he was bound to and realised that he was shirtless.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the practically blinding light and he could make out a single light bulb pointed directly at his eyes. He slanted his eyes to the left, and then to the right, he was in a dilapidated empty room, obviously not occupied. He smelled a strange odour, like petroleum, or something like that. He noticed a small candle hanging from the ceiling at the end of the room, and a penknife of some kind attached to a timer, it was counting down from thirty minutes, filling the room with its ominous ticking. He squinted harder at the wall, there were some crudely written words written on the wall in a luminous yellow pen. They read “act like the rats you deal with, and you will leave alive ps I love barbecues, don’t you?”
These words blasted the harsh reality of the situation at his face. This wasn't a prank or anything, he had actually been kidnapped. He stared at the message for a few minutes before seeing the wire dangling just below his chin; it was attached to the timer at the far end of the room and ran into the wall on the other side, it came across him and it was within reach. A tear rolled down his cheek, for his wife and child, at home, they probably didn’t know where he really was, and they thought he was at a conference. He tried to remember how he came to be in the cold dank room, but he must have taken a blow to the head. He spent another ten minutes sobbing to himself, thinking about what he had done in his life, his dirty secrets, and why someone would do this to him.
He thought about the message, and realised what he had to do. Easy, he thought. Rats, bite through the wire! He marvelled at himself and his own ingeniuty before attempting to reach the wire. He opened his mouth and strained towards the wire, but it kept moving away from him. He tried over and over until it dawned on him.
He had to get his tongue out of the way. His tongue was way too big for the wire to get inside his mouth. Oh my god, he thought. He had to bite his own tongue off.
Shifting aroud on the wierd surface he was strapped to, the barbecue comment on the wall hit him like a brick, he realised what he was lying on, it was a giant grill. He screamed, or rather, tried to scream. The time read eight minutes left, and the clock was ticking.
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