You wake up, stirred by what feels like vibrating screws knuckling into your temples. Your eyes fight their way open, piercing halos of light around everything, the late afternoon sun glaring through your dusty bedroom windows. You feel like a newborn seeing the world for the first time, except you reek of tequila, taste the partially digested remnants of a pre-outing Taco Bell run stuck behind your teeth, are badly scraped and bruised on your shins and forearms, and are wearing someone else’s distastefully embroidered Ed Hardy jean shorts. You sit up, straining to remember what the hell happened last night, coming to terms with the new low your life seems to have come to.
The last blurry memory you can summon is at the bar your best friend Blake brought you to, drilling three tequila shots in rapid succession with a tan tattooed woman you met there. You and Blake made the age-old pact of virility to get completely hammered for your birthday, and it appears that you lost him midway through your night. “Goddamnit,” you say to yourself, finally realizing that today is your birthday.
You stand up, waddle over to your dilapidated cell of a bathroom, crushing several Doritos between your toes, and begin to take the longest, most magnificent pee of your life.
Your moment of nirvana is stopped mid-stream, however, when you see what is taped to your mirror: a Polaroid of Blake, bound and gagged, gazing into the lens with lost kitten helplessness. Underneath it there is a note: “There is a package waiting for you at P.O. box 4732 at the 125th street post office. Bring it to the address written on the package by 6:00 and he lives. No cops. We’re watching you.” 
You’re hyperventilating, head still pounding, knees weak and feeling as if you could collapse at any moment. Then you realize that you’ve been pissing all over the floor under your sink for several seconds now. You hop back over to the toilet in a daze, repeating “What the fuck? Holy shit!” like its the Hare Krishna mantra.
Trying to wrap your head around the situation, you find two obvious options of what to do: call the cops or get your ass over to the post office pronto, it’s closing in 10 minutes.