Last Step (Story in works)

[deadpie]

I'm lost on East Hastings, so I've finally decided to work on this story that I've thought about for a damn long time. Now I'm quite sure that I won't take long pauses from writing it because my importance for writing this is big to me, so I want to just dig right into it.

The story comes from multiple points of view from characters that are somewhat connected to each other. The more you enter their lives the more you'll see the plot itself unwrap and the mysterious inside of it grow. This is the story I plan to actually publish online eventually, so now I give you Last Step.


LAST STEP


One.



CODY WYKOFF


Outside my bedroom window firetrucks and ambulances crowd around the streets blocking off people near a certain apartment complex not too far from mine. I grab my cellphone from out of my pocket checking the time and noticing that it's about midnight now. There's a few missed calls from Dexter that I've missed, but I'm not going to call him back because he knows that I'm not working tonight.

I grab my red jacket off my bed, toss it on, grab my pistol out of the dresser and walk out of my bedroom and straight out the door in front of it out of my apartment. My home is pretty small and consists of my tiny bedroom, a decent sized bathroom and a miniature sized kitchen. My mothers apartment room is across from me, so allot of my friends find it strange we live in separate places, but it's for the better. She's been taking things allot harder after Dad got four bullets to the face. Me on the other hand, I kind of expected something like that to happen to him over time. There's no way I could grieve over the bastard. After his death his last will was that he'd hand over his 'family' to me and I would have to carry on in his place. To him he thought it was a gift.

Forcing your son to become one of the leaders of a gang is not a gift.

Mom was literally losing her mind after Dad died and she decided it'd be best if I wasn't living with her, so instead I just live really close to her. I check up on her about once a week, but other than that she's nonexistent to me. Really, I don't even like thinking about her right now. She always tries to start a fight with me or convince me to kill her and put her out of her sadness, so it's not really something I want to always be around when I already have my own personal problems that she'd probably never give a shit about.

I close my front door while stuffing my gun in my pants and hiding it well enough, then look over to my mothers door. Probably better that I don't go in. I go down the stairs and go out onto the sidewalk walking closer to the ambulances. The closer I get the more I can feel my own heart beat. Everyone's standing out of their vehicles and swearing at police officers that are trying to hold them back from seeing what's going on over at the other apartment. Getting closer to the yellow tape I tell myself that it's probably nothing too bad involving me, so I just keep walking down the sidewalk towards downtown.

My name is Cody Wykoff and I turned sixteen about a month ago. Many people's first guessing of me is that I'm some sort of hyper overjoyed annoying brat, which is actually somewhat true. The only reason I'm ever in a happy hyper mood is when I'm high, so about most of the time during school. I'm only five foot four, but I don't need to worry too much now about getting hurt by anyone now that I have the Black Blood on my side. I guess that's one positive aspect of controlling this gang; that now I don't need to constantly look over my shoulder in paranoia.

Finally I've reached the streetlight I typically go to at night to relax. This very place in the downtown gives a perfect view of the moon and the stars when you look up and the weather is always calm. Doesn't matter what type of disastrous storm that comes by, this spot always brings comfort.

There's a scream nearby me. I turn around, looking around to try to find out where the screaming is coming from, but can't quite catch the spot. Suddenly, I can hear another voice, that of a man and I know exactly where it's coming from. I pull my pistol out from my pants and run down the alley across the right of me. When I finally get a glimpse of the two people I walk slowly, trying to make myself as quiet as possible.

“You dumb bitch”, the man says pulling a knife to the young woman’s throat. “All you had to do was give me your fucking money and virginity, now I'm going to have to fucking rip your throat apart.”

I get a head on target and yell out, “Move” to the girl and fire my shot, which sends him falling straight down. She shrieks out in fear and backs away as I come up closer to her. The bullet went through the back of his head and he's bleeding a puddle from the exit wound. Dammit, by the bandana around his neck I can tell he's part of a different gang. I fit my gun back in my pants and tell her, “I'm not going to hurt you, but if you need any help or need to get home, I'll get you home.”

“Uh, I live on the other side of the town.”

“Of course you do”, I mumble to myself. “Well, you can stay over at my place for the night until we get shit sorted out. Everything is going to be fine, alright? None of this is your fault, just trust me and follow me and I'll protect you.”

She nods her head in agreement and I grab her hand tightly guiding her out of the alleyway and pass the streetlight. The ground starts to shake and we stop, noticing a large crack form in the middle of the road. A beacon light shines out from it and I close my eyes trying to avoid it as if it were the Sun attempting to blind me, but then the light had gone dim and when I opened my eyes the light was gone. Although, the crack was still in the ground, but it wasn't growing anymore. The two of us ran pass it and we got back pass to where the ambulances, police cars, and firetrucks were gathered. She pulled off my hand and went up close to the tape asking an officer what happened and for a second I thought about grabbing her, but my curiosity got in the way. The officer informs, “Nemeseia killed again. A group of child molesters were hanging in this apartment and were found with their limbs pulled off like a wild animal had charged inside. He wrote his name in blood on the wall and now we're out on a search for him. It's best that you kids get home, even though he only targets people like this. In my opinion, he's the best damn hero this town could ask for. Don't tell your mother that though, Melisa.”

The officer knew her name, which means they must know each other. Was he joking around when he said don't tell your mother? Police make me paranoid. I guess that makes sense because my gang is on their target list.

“Yeah, let's get going”, I tell the girl. “My apartment is just across the street.”

We walk over to my place and I lead her inside, letting her overview my place. I say, “I know, it's a small place but it's not bad either. You can sleep in my bed and I'll just watch television on the carpet. The bathroom is near the closet if you need to use it.”

“You could just sleep in your bed with me.”

I place my gun down on the dresser and reply, “I don't sleep next to people and I don't want to sleep tonight, so the bed is all yours.”

She cuddles under my sheets into my bed and stares at me as I flip through the channels trying to find something good to watch. This girl, Melisa, she's a strange one. It's not typical for someone who just witnessed a murder to shrug it off and decide to sleep in a strangers house. Does she even notice the reason I'm wearing red? No, I'm not going to tell her I'm in a gang. That would scare her off. I ask her, “How old are you, Melisa?”

“I guess you got my name from the cop. Well, I'm almost seventeen. You look pretty young too. May I ask you what you were doing by yourself downtown with a gun? How did you kill that man in perfect aim without feeling a thing?”

“The only reason I don't feel bad is because I'm used to that stuff”, I tell her. “And I'm sixteen for your information. My father taught me how to shoot a rifle when I was only eight. Years of training is how I learned perfect aim.”

Melisa grips onto my pillow and closes her eyes and I smile, finally hitting a good show to watch. Once she drifts into sleep I go the kitchen to look for some food to make. The time is about one am now and I haven't been to school in a month. Clayton probably thinks I'm dead. Maybe he hasn't noticed that I've been gone sense he hasn't answered any of my text messages yet.

After making some sausage and scrambled eggs I go back to my bedroom and put the plate on the television. I peak out the window as another light shows up, but it's not as bright. Another crack has formed exactly where we were standing when Melisa and I went up to the police officer. The light fades out again and I close the blinds. Maybe it's just my insomnia and I'm hallucinating the light, but when Melisa and I stopped and saw it, that was real. Something strange is happening here and I need to understand what it is.


MELISA AGUIAR


“I've made pancakes”, the young man says to me. “If you're wanting any, just go get a plate in the kitchen. I'm guessing you have school today, right?”

Shit. I thought it was all a dream. He's actually real and everything that happened actually happened. My mom's probably been driving all over town looking for me now and I'm in some random guys house.

I pull the bedsheets off of me and walk out of the room towards the kitchen. The pancakes smell and look like some of the best pancakes I've ever seen. I grab a plate and pull two off the plate with the stacked pancakes and grab a fork from out of the sink. He comes into the kitchen and says, “Yeah, I didn't sleep at all last night, so I went out and bought you some new clothes, a pair of shoes, and found a new recipe on chocolate chip pancakes. You'll need to change soon because I'm going to have to dispose of the clothes you're wearing right now in case the anyone goes looking out for evidence over that man last night.”

“But it was self defense, right?”

“That excuse doesn't work around here.”

He's not that bad looking; long dirty blonde hair, about my height and has a nice smile. I wonder if he thinks I look like a slut or something. Hopefully I didn't attempt to seduce him last night because I can barely remember a damn thing other then the man who tried to attack me getting shot and the crack in the ground.

After cleaning the plate of food I went to the restroom where I saw a pair of clothes sitting next to the sink. They're girly clothes, so I'm guessing this is the clothes that he bought me. I strip down and turn on the shower, climbing in and relaxing myself. When I look down in the shower I notice a large dark red stain close to the drain that seems like blood. I keep my feet from being close to it and try to ignore whatever it is. Maybe he's a cleaner and tossed a body in this bathtub to chop to pieces? No, I'm sure it was some accident like shaving.

I get out of the shower and grab a towel out from under the sink and clean up fast, trying to rush myself. This kid is starting to scare me now. Once I get my clothes on I ask him, “So you're not going to school?”

“Well, I plan on going today”, he replies. “I go to the high school a few blocks away. It's a private school called St. Alena, but it's not a bad place. The issue is if I don't show up at school for a while my friend Clayton gets bothered and scared.”

“We go to the same school and I've never even seen you. Well, you going to drive me there? Do you own a vehicle?”

He laughs to himself, “No, I've got a friend picking us up and he'll drop us off there. Maybe I can introduce you to some of my friends or you could introduce me to yours. That's if I don't know them already.”

“Sure, that'd be nice. By the way, I haven't asked you what your name is. So, what is it?”

“Cody”, he answers grabbing a pair of shoes and handing them to me. “These are yours. You should probably take good care of them sense I paid about four hundred bucks for them. Don't freak out on the money, I've got tons of it.”

“Then why are you living in this place?”

He doesn't answer and opens the front door, giving me the hand motion to come and follow him. I do as he says and close the door as he turns around as we walk down the stairs so he can see me. It's quite obvious he has a thing for me, but then again I have somewhat of a thing for him too. When I look into his eyes I see that they're extremely dilated and his right eye is dark yellow. Once we get to the ground I follow him to a black truck where the driver is some black man smoking a joint. Cody opens the passenger door for me and I scoot in the middle as he scoots inside of the truck.

“This is Xavier”, Cody says. “Don't be alarmed by him. He's a really nice guy and pretty chill.”

He hits the pedal and the car starts speeding down through red lights. I close my eyes biting down on my lip hoping the cops don't pull us over or we crash, but we get to the school safely somehow. Cody craws out of the truck through the window and opens the door for me. Once we get out I say, “Wait, aren't we supposed to be in uniform today?”

“It's Friday”, he says. “You don't pay attention to the days much do you? Anyhow, I'm going to introduce to my friends.”

I smile back at him as we enter the school and go towards the cafeteria where most students go before class starts. He takes me over to one of the tables surrounded by empty tables and says, “Well, the black haired guy is Clayton. You should know who Roland is by now. The other two guys I don't know.”

Clayton turns around and yells out Cody's name in surprise. I sit down next to Roland and ask him, “So why do you sit here? Shouldn't you be sitting with all the other jocks?”

“No thanks”, Roland says. “These guys have been my friends for years, so I'm not going to ditch them over those other guys. How did you meet Cody? Are you his new girlfriend or something?”

“We met last night over something random and I think he's pretty cool, so I wanted to meet his friends sense I think he's a pretty awesome guy.”

One of my friends, Mallorrie comes up to me and says, “Hey, you're mother called me and said she's been looking for you sense last night. She's at the front office of the school and looking for you right now, so if you're hiding from her you better go.”

“Thanks, but I think I'll just go up and talk to her.”

I say goodbye to Clayton and his friends and Mallorrie walks off from me as I leave the cafeteria. When I get to the front desk I look around for my mom, but I can't find her. A hand grabs my arm and I turn around, seeing my mother and she says, “Dumb bitch, I've been trying to find you sense last night. You realize how much shit you're in?”

“Mom, I was going to tell you that-”

She lets go of my arm and slaps me right in front of the school staff and says, “Save it for later. When you get home I want you gathering everything out of your room and out by tomorrow. Today's the last day your having school here today. You'll have to sort everything out yourself; find a friend to stay with and all of that. I'm done with you running around sucking off guys for money. You can come back when you're not a slut, which I'm sure won't ever change.”

My mom walks off from me, leaving me here by myself. I fall to my knees starting to cry, but pull myself back up and wiping away at my tears. The staff and students around me stare without making a sound and I walk off keeping my head down trying to bother them.


AMY AGUIAR


“You can come back to me when you're not a slut, which I'm sure won't ever change.”

I look at her eyes and I know she's hurt by my words, but I decide to turn away from her and walk off. When I leave the school I pull out my phone and see I've got a text from one of the officers on my team saying they have a lead on where Nemeseia is. I get to my car and go to grab my gun from the back when I realize that someone is in the back of the car. The man grabs my arm, pulls a gun to my forehead and says, “You shouldn't treat your daughter like that.”

“Let go of me. If you leave right now I'll pretend like this never happened. You realize I'm a police officer, right?”

“Of course I do, Amy. Now do you realize I'm a serial killer that goes around killing people who hurt young ones?”

I get a better look at him and notice he's exactly what people say he is; young adult, brown hair, skinny and a scar that runs down the left side of his face down his neck. He lets go of my arm and puts the gun down.

“Start driving and I'll tell you the directions onto where to go.”

He jumps up to the passenger seat and keeps the gun down sticking at my side. I don't know why I'm not fighting back, but I follow the directions he gives me. We stop at a two story house in a nice neighborhood and he says, “Get out of the car and go up to the door. Also, you really don't want to try to do anything stupid because I promise that people will get hurt if you do so.”

I turn off the car and step out walking towards the door. He follows me up and once we reach the door he tells me to knock, which I do. We wait for a few seconds and the door opens where an older woman answers, “Hello?”

Nemeseia grabs my arm and points the gun at her head saying, “Get the fuck to the kitchen and sit down. If you don't do as I say I'll blow your fucking brains out.”

She moves out of the way and I'm still let him take control of me as we move through the house into the kitchen. Once we get there he throws me down to the ground and fires a bullet in each of my kneecaps. I scream out and reach for the phone in my pocket, but he fires another hole, but this time right into my right hand.

“You said you wouldn't hurt me if I did what you said!”

“You're a dumb-ass for trusting a serial killer, honey.”

He grabs my phone out of my pocket and tosses it into the sink and points his gun back at the woman. She's bawling her eyes out and says, “Please, take whatever you want. Don't hurt me. I'm a mother with a beautiful daughter.”

“Shut up and sit down on the bar stool over there”, he commands. “The reason I'm here is because of what you did to that beautiful daughter of yours.”

She forces herself to walk over to a bar stool by the kitchen counter and sits down. He goes through the drawers until he finds something amusing to him; a meat clever. I try to move my legs but I can't and it only hurts more when I do. The blood is spilling out fast and I can't do anything to stop it from continuing to bleed.

Nemeseia says, “Amy, did you know this mother punched her six year old daughter so hard in the chest that her liver was damaged? CPS did nothing and the police weren't interested to investigate. That's a sad story isn't it? Now lady, what do you have to say for yourself on this subject?”

“I would never hurt my daughter.”

He walks over to her, pulls her left arm onto the counter and slams the meat clever right down with all his strength on her arm. She screams louder than any scream I've ever heard as he yanks the dismembered arm away from her. She falls down crying out and begging for it all to stop, but instead he walks back into the kitchen over to the blender.

“Just to make sure you don't get this hand back”, he says. “I'm going to blend it. Sure, you can replace your hand with something else, but this is the hand you used to hit your daughter, so I don't think you deserve it back.”

Oh my God, he's literally going to blend her arm. I push my feet over to her and tries to push herself up to face him, but she can't. Nemeseia chops the hand into smaller pieces and puts those pieces into the blender smiling at us. My head grows light weight and I try to keep myself awake, but I don't think I can.

A loud exploding noise went off from outside and all three of us looked over to the windows as a large light shined up. He looks over at me and says, “Well, I didn't expect that to happen that soon today, but whatever. We have to get you to a hospital so you don't bleed out though. Don't worry about the poor mom. Her husband will be home any minute now.”

He lifts me by my arms and drags me out from the house and pushes me into the back of my own car. I look down to find my taser on the floor. Reaching for it I fight back the pain and grab it, then try to pull my arm to Nemeseia and try to tase him, but I'm too weak to reach far enough.

My eyes roll back and the darkness moves in, leaving me to the unknown.


CLAYTON MANIAULT


A vehicle stops in front of me and a man pulls out a woman from the backseat of the car and drags her over to the sidewalk next to me. The man looks at me and says, “Check your phone”, then walks back into his car and speeds off.

I run over to the woman, who has these rags wrapped around her ankles and her right hand and check her pulse. She's still alive, but losing tons of blood. There's a police badge hanging off of her waist, so I'm suspecting the man that dropped her here was a cop killer. I pull out my phone and dial 911, telling the person on the line exactly what happened and she told me I needed to stay with her on the phone until an ambulance got there.

The ambulance took a solid five minutes and a group of paremedics pulled me away from her as they took her into their truck. One of the men asked me I was alright and I can't answer. I'm at a loss of words for what to say, but eventually I say, “I don't know.”

“There's a police car on the way here”, he says. “They're going to ask you some questions and maybe you can talk to them if you need any help. You did a good thing calling in quickly.”

Just like that they leave and leave me here. It feels like it didn't even happen because it happened so quick.

Really, what the hell just happened?

I grab my phone out of my pocket and go back into my messages remembering what the guy said to me a few minutes ago. There's a new text message from my mother telling me, “There's a woman at the house claiming she knows you. She's wanting to move in with us temporary. Get home as soon as possible.”

My day is just getting stranger. The only girl I remember just meeting today was Melisa.

Dammit. I was just on my way to hang out with Cody and of course stuff like this happens.

I walk the rest of the way home avoiding to talk to the police and find Melisa at my kitchen table with two boxes next to the chair she's siting in. She looks up to me and says, “I know this is strange, but you were the first person I thought of. My mom kicked me out of my house and I need a place to stay for a while until I can figure out what to do now.”

“How did you figure out my address?”

“You told it to me”, she answers. “Don't you remember when you said we could hang out after school?”

No, I don't remember. Maybe I did, but I decide not to keep bugging her on that. Instead, I ask her, “Why did your mom kick you out?”

She looks away from me for a second and says, “She's just a very angry woman.”

Mom comes over to us and sits down at the table handing Melisa a glass of tea. She says, “I've decided to let Melisa stay with us after talking to her while you were still walking home. Would you be ok with sleeping on the sofa, Clayton?”

What kind of stupid ass question is that? Why would I let some girl I just met sleep in my bed for who knows how long while I have to sleep on the sofa?

I don't know why I say it, but I answer, “Sure.”

“Alright. Well Melisa, you can make yourself comfortable here for as long as you need to.”

This is so stupid.

My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, noticing that it's
another text message. It reads, 'Cain was shot last night. Get here ASAP.'

“I've got to go”, I say. “Subway says they need me right now, so I should probably get going.”

Melisa says thank you and my mom gives me a hug before I leave. Once I step out of the house I pull my green bandana over my neck, tie it, and walk over to the house next door to the left. I walk inside and walk into the living room where about twelve people are gathered around a television.

“You hear this shit yet”, says Niko. “On the TV they're talking about these random cracks that keep showing up in the ground. Nobody knows what it is really, but it's attracting allot of attention.”

“That's great and all, but it doesn't bother our job so I don't think we should be concerned.”

I walk to the hallway, open the door to the basement and go down to it. There's a load of tables gathered around where people are packaging up heroin into smaller packaged bags and stacking the bags near the wall. A few of my friends are gathered around one table that Cain is sitting on and I go up towards it. I ask Cain, “So what happened and who shout you?”

“It was some kid in a red jacket”, he answers. “He came up to me and shot me in the back of the head. I was still awake for about thirty seconds after he shot me and I saw him running away with some girl. Somehow the bullet didn't go through my skull. It just stuck inside. When I woke up I went here and had someone pull it out. It stopped before it could damage my brain. It's a fuckin' miracle, man.”

He turns his head around to show me the back of his head where I can clearly see the bullet sized hole where he was shot. There's no way the bullet could of just stopped inside of his forehead. He should be dead or at least have partial brain damage from that. I say, “You're a lucky man. If he was wearing red that could connect him to the Black Blood gang. I don't know what they would have against us sense they're for weapons and we're for drugs, but if they want beef we'll give it to them. Tomorrow I'll go into looking more into this gang and find more about them. I still want you to help carry out the heavy deal later tonight going on with the spanish crackheads. If they pull off anything fishy just kill them and throw them in the lake. Now if everything goes out alright, then I guess we have someone who we can export our shit to. I'll be back tomorrow morning, but I've got business to take care of elsewhere.”

By business I mean hanging out with the friend I remember telling I was going to hang out with.

I leave the house, start walking back down the street, then pull out my phone to call Cody and tell him I'm on my way. We plan a meet up downtown where he usually hangs out at. He's got this random fascination with a certain spotlight on this one street where he always goes there to hang out. Although, I have my weird complications too, so I can't bother him too much about it.

Finally, I reach him and he's sitting down at a bench where he's been waiting for me. I sit down next to him and say, “Sorry that I forgot. That woman, Melisa, she came to my house wanting to move in. Apparently her mom kicked her out of her house. It's annoying as hell because she's sleeping in my room now.”

He's quiet, which isn't usual. When he's not talking that means something serious is going on. I ask him, “You're not burning yourself again are you?”

“No”, he says, choking on his words. “If I was I'd tell you. It's just, something strange is going on.”

“You're telling me? Today some random man dumped a shot up police officer out of her car right in front of me and drove off. I don't know about you, but this town is just getting crazier by the minute.”

Cody pulls out a few pills from his pocket and throws them into his mouth, swallowing them like candy. He looks at me and says, “It's strange that the girl decided to sleep in your house. I mean, not to sound like an ass, but she met me first. Maybe I'm not interesting or maybe I'm too weird. Shit, she's probably scared of me.”

“Don't say that. You're a good person.”

A tall man comes walking up to us and says to us, “You kids should close your eyes. There's about to be a ripple in a few seconds.”

I open my mouth to speak, but he turns around as part of the ground in the middle of the road starts shaking and cracks open. A large light shines up from out of it and I cover my eyes as the light grows, but it disappears a few seconds later. The man is gone when I open my eyes and the crack in the road has stopped forming. Cody stands up and walks out into the road and I can't quite tell if he's staring at the road or someone that's petrified of what just happened, so I go up to him and say, “What the hell just happened?”

He looks at me and says, “Look over to the right. There's a man over there near that parlor. Last night I saw him. He tried to attack Melisa last night and I scared him off. That's why she stayed at my place, because I wanted to keep her safe. I think I'm going to follow him.”

I look over to the man he's talking about, only to realize he's wearing all green and has a gun hanging from the side of his pants. Before I get a chance to stop Cody he's already gone from me and on the other side of the road.

Telling from the hole in the back of his head I can tell that man Cody was talking about is Cain. How the hell did he get here? Was he following me? No, I would of noticed. There's no reason for him to follow me.

Wait, Cody is always wearing red clothing. He said that last night he ran off with Melisa. Wait, did he shoot Cain? No, that's just stupid.

But it fits perfectly.

Shit.

---------------------------------------------------

Now, if anyone that's reading or gives a shit, I'd like to hear your theories on anything from the story. Such as, what do you think the light is? Why isn't Cain dead? Things like that.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. There should be a new chapter sometime in the next ten days. Maybe sooner.

[Magus]

That's my first story with multiple point of view.

Some cracks on the floor and lights. Might be aliens, or even demons from outer space, or may be it is a natural phenomenon that occures in that particular area, or even an Indian curse.

Why isn't Cain dead... I mean, he got a deadly shot in his head... Man, it's mind-fucking.

Also, you keep on mixing between 'sense' for 'since', and 'allot' for ' a lot'?

[deadpie]

Also, you keep on mixing between 'sense' for 'since', and 'allot' for ' a lot'?

Fuuuuuu-- Yeah, I have a gigantic issue with mixing those words. I really need to fix that issue with me sometime soon. I'm sorry for that though.

[deadpie]

Going to remind anyone reading that this chapter and so on contains some content that can be "triggering" and disturbing to some, so if rape and self puking bothers you, then you probably don't want to read this chapter. Just keep that in mind. This is your warning. I've tried to edit the gritty details in one part, but I'm still making it to where you know what happens, so don't bother me if it's still pretty detailed.

Two.

CLAYTON MANIGAULT


A crowd of people run out in the middle of the road stopping to look at the new crack in the ground. Being uninterested in it, I decide to start chasing after Cody. I catch up to him across the street and say, “Dude, what the hell do you think you're doing?”

“I'm going to stop this guy and beat the shit out of him. Did you not listen to a word I say?”

He's going to get himself killed if I let him try to attack him and if Cain sees me with the guy who shot him then everything will just back fire on me. The only thing I can really do is just keep trying to talk him out of it.

“I don't want you getting hurt”, I say grabbing his shoulder. “You can go out getting the shit beaten out of you when I'm not around, but we came here to talk, not to chase some guy around who got in a fight with some girl you just met last night. Look at me when I'm talking to you. You're my best friend and I'm sick of watching you get involved in fights and always popping pills in front of me. Could you at least for once just hang out with me like you used to?”

He gives me a hard long grin and says, “Do you not have a problem that he could of killed Melisa last night?”

“Yes, I do, but she's safe now. The chances of them bumping into each other are low, so let's just let it go. Please, just stop for once.”

Cain is already out of eyesight from us. I let go Cody and he responds, “I'll bother him, but what happens now?”


CAIN


My name is not Cain. Anyone who says it is must be lying. Yes, I'm wearing his skin and I'm speaking with his mouth, but this is not my body. Truly I don't know what my other body looked like or who I once was before, but I know that this is not me.

I woke up last night in an alleyway with a bullet stuck in the back of my head. A man stood above me and grabbed my arm to help me stand up. He pulled the bullet right out of my head, placed it in my left hand, then ran off from me. I decided to keep walking around the town to find out where I was.

The first thing I noticed was something off a newspaper an old woman had; I’m in Toronto. The next thing I saw that came out important to me was a man that drove by while I was walking. He was me. This man was wearing the same exact clothes I was wearing and we had the same exact face. I know that it was only a four second glimpse, but I know what I saw.

I'm pretty sure some teenager was just following me a few minutes ago, but then again I might just be paranoid. I reach a gas station and go into it looking for something to eat. The man at the cash register looks at me strange, probably because he notices the dried blood on my back and the hole in my head. I grab a bag of cashews and pull out the wallet from my pocket and give the cashier five bucks, then telling him he can keep the rest of the money. I bite open the corner of the bag with my teeth and take a handful of cashews into my mouth while walking out of the gas station. A man calls out at me at the gas pump saying, “Hey man, can I get a hand here?”

He opens the passenger door as I walk up and before I can ask him what he needs he pulls a pistol to my chin. I say, “You can take my wallet or whatever. Just don't kill me. I think I have amnesia, because I don't even know who I am. Please, just take my money so I can try to get to a hospital or something.”

“Do you know who I am”, he asks grabbing the collar of my shirt and tossing me into the passenger seat. “You remember when you broke into my house with a shotgun and blasted my mothers head off? I was eight at the time, but I see your face every single day. Do you remember me? Come on. Look in my eyes and tell me you don't recognize me.”

His eyes don't look familiar at all to me.

“Look man, I seriously don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

He keeps his gun pointing at me as he walks back into the drivers seat of the car. I think about making a run for it, but my body is frozen from utter shock of confusion and being scared. The man slams his gun to the side of my face and my head slams into the window, causing me to faint.

I woke up being tossed out of the truck into wet grass and mud. He drags me by my legs into the middle of the woods somewhere and forces me on my knees. Trees cover the distance and shroud the scenery where the occasional bird chirping flies by. The man above me pulls his gun the front of my head and says, “Before I kill you, I'm going to tell you who I am, describe in detail of what you did to my mom, and tell you what happened afterwords. My name is Xavier. People around here know me as a nice and honorable man. There's only a few times I've ever had to use this gun on someone and those times were to protect my fellow brothers. When I was eight years old I remember sitting next to the television with five of my brothers and sisters. Dad was at work and Mom was making some food for us at the time. You busted the door down and told us to get on our stomachs with our hands on the back of our heads. My mother ran out the kitchen and you shot her head right off her shoulders. She fell down headless a few seconds later and I ran over to her while you were running through the rooms of the house looking for valuable things to steal. I remember you running back out the house with one of my pillow cases full of things that I would later find out to be jewelry and money.”

The end of his gun is still pressing against my forehead. Sweat is running down my hair and starts burning my eyes, but when I try to move my hands to itch them he presses the gun harder to my skull like he thinks I'm going to grab his weapon.

“Shoot me already”, I yell. “What the fuck are you waiting for? I know I didn't do any of this shit, so just kill me and cover your hands with the blood of an innocent man. Pull the trigger you fucking nigger.”


XAVIER ARQUETTE


I pull the trigger, sending him falling backwards. His head slams against a pile of mud which makes this 'plop' sound and I can't help myself but to laugh.

This is what I've waited for for ten years of my life. My dreams consist only of him dying in the most brutal ways possible. Now he's literally dead and I'm not dreaming it. This feels almost too surreal to even be happening right now.

He has this smile on his dead face like as if he wanted to die. It would bother me if I was doing him a favor killing him, because I wanted his last seconds of living to be something to not look forward to.

I walk back to my truck putting the gun back in the glove box, grabbing the mans cashews out of the passenger seat and start the vehicle. Young men with green clothing are scattered around down town as I drive by and I try to bother them, although they've never made me feel safe. Being a member of Black Blood I've always feared that we'll end up in a war with the Green Dragons. Even though our gang consists of selling and weapons and their group consists of selling drugs, things could easily get out of hand quickly if just one of us were to attack the other. Two years ago there was another gang called the Vultures who were trying to take over the town, but they got involved in a war with the Green Dragons. A few months later every member of the Vultures were either dead or had disbanded.

My girlfriend, Delores, is sitting on the front porch of my house as I pull up to the garage. I've been dating her for almost a year now and things have been complicated sense she found out I was part of Black Blood. Not because I could get busted, but because I could easily get killed. What I typically do is lie to her and say that we're smart about we do so we'll never get hurt, but the truth is no matter how smart we are there's always injuries we're facing.

She comes walking up to the truck as I pull the keys out of the keyhole, open the door and speed into my house. I know she's going to be suspicious why I'm rushing inside, but she'll get extremely worried if she see's me in this shirt covered of blood. Her footsteps echo down the hallway as I walk to my room and I lock the door before she gets a chance to come in and stop me.

“Open this door now”, she says. “Don't turn away from me like that. I'm sick and tired of having you do this to me all the fucking time!”

I pull my shirt off and run to the bathroom and look for a place to hide the shirt, but can't find anything. There's bags in my closet, so I go there and turn on the light. A tall middle aged white man is in there staring right at me with a smile. He pulls one hand out from behind his back handing me a plastic bag and says, “You're confused why I'm here. Don't be. You'll need to listen to me very closely and I'll also need your cooperation at this time. Right now you're thinking about pulling that pocket knife out of your back pocket, but you won't because I'm telling you exactly what you're thinking which is confusing you, which also means you're interested in what I have to say. Now you're about to ask me, 'Who am I', but first you will take the plastic bag I have in my hand. Go ahead, take it.”

His smile is long and malevolent, but I do as he says and take the bag, shoving the shirt and side of it and tying it up in multiple knots.

“Good”, he says. “Now the next thing I will tell you will come out as a surprise, but you'll have to trust me on this one. Cain is still alive and the person you thought you killed wasn't actually the same Cain. No, that man was just an unfortunate side effect of the ripples. The reason I'm here is to somewhat help you.”

The tall man puts out his other hand which holds a hand sized knife. I take it from him and he continues, “This is a very sharp razor edge knife. You will use this to kill Cain, but you can only kill him the exact way that I tell you. First, you will cut his throat with that knife and then you will behead him with it. After you have beheaded him you must take his head and destroy it. You may do so in any way such as smashing it with a hammer, driving over it, burning it, and so on. After you have done this I will visit you one last time in which I will take my knife back from you.”

“So who exactly are you? I know you knew I wanted to ask that, but you can't really expect me to not wonder that when you come busting into my house giving me all this information.”

He chuckles to himself while holding onto his sinister smile and says, “I am what you say I am; The tall man. Wouldn't you agree?”

“How did you get here?”

“That's the thing. I'm not here anymore.”

“What?”

With one blink the tall man was gone from my closet and in another blink I could hear some type of explosion from outside. I ran out from my bathroom, unlocking the door and Delores grabbed my arm before I could run outside. I push her off me and yell, “Get off of me!”

She falls to the floor sobbing and I decide to ignore her. The closer I get to the front door the more I can feel the presence of something unwanted coming from nearby. I walk outside and see the tall man walking out to the middle of the street where a large crack has formed. A luminous light comes out from above the crack and the tall man walks towards it, falling down the crack and the ground as the light suddenly dies out. Once the light is completely gone the crack fixes itself. There's a car on the other side of the road that appears out of nowhere parked exactly where the crack is. I run out towards it, but it suddenly goes speeding off.


DANIEL BASSANI


“Slam on the fucking pedal.”

My twin brother Jonathan speeds down the neighborhoods punching the horn obnoxiously to wake anyone up who might be sleeping right now. It's about thirty minutes until midnight, so right now would be the perfect time to find some random whore on the street and beat the living shit out of her.

I pull my phone out and read another recent text message from Melisa which reads, 'Mom kicked me out of the house. Call me.'

“Is that my dealer”, Jonathan asks. “If it is just tell him I'll give him the money tomorrow.”

“No, it's my ex girlfriend. She says her mother kicked her out of the house and now she expects me to feel bad for her. The thing is that the cunt cheated on me, so she'll have to fuckin' deal with it.”

Jonathan and I are just the typical seventeen year old nihilistic Dahmer obsessed teenagers that anyone would expect us to be. We're both blondes and make sure to match our clothing every day. We've often thought about trying to share the same name, but we don't want to chose one birth name over the other, so for the past few months we've been trying to debate what would make the perfect name for both us. My pick would be something like Kyros or Pelagius, but Jon thinks a generic dumb name would work better; something along the lines of Steve, Bob, or Joe.

As much as we have in common being twins and being close, we're different in many other ways. Jonathan is skinny, tall and likes to make sure his cigarettes are unfiltered. I'm a few inches shorter than him, somewhat overweight, and I brush my teeth after every death stick I smoke. While he's more an enraged leviathan who cares about nobody other than me, I actually have feelings for people – It's just that people make me feel anxious and scared, so I kill them.

Even though I've killed many people I've never hurt anyone without their permission. Every person I've killed was letting me put an end to their lives. They didn't have to say it, but I could sense it in them that they wanted to die, so I would just kill them. I don't feel much shame over it because I know they're happy I ended their shit existence, but I guess I do feel bad for their families and friends. Although, every one dies eventually, so I guess killing people really isn't that big of a deal. Personally, I believe murder should be legalized.

My brother and I live in an apartment together downtown. He's been making allot of money by selling molly, so he tells me not to worry about anything right now. Our mother killed herself two years ago after dad had beat her up pretty bad. He has another two years in prison right now. Sense we don't have grandparents CPS wanted to put us in some type of fosters home bullshit or whatever, but we made a deal with them. They come by to visit ever three months to make sure everything is good and so far we haven't had any trouble on our hands.

Jonathan stops the car where some young woman is standing on the street. He rolls down the window and says, “Hey, we'll pay you two hundred each.”

She looks around making sure nobody was listening, then opens up one of the back doors and jumps inside. I unbuckle my seat belt and turn around to see her face as my brother starts up the car and starts driving back to our place. The woman lights a cigarette and says, “My name is Mallorrie, but you can just call me Mal. I'll do anything for you handsome boys, but I'd like to have my money right now.”

“We'll give you the cash when we get to the apartment”, Jon says. “I can't pull out my fucking wallet right now. Can't you see I'm busy focusing on the god damn road? Trick, do you realize the statistics of teenagers in car crashes? It's unbelievable. I know you want your money right now, but there's no fucking way I'm going to die becoming another fuckin' statistic. You got that?”

Mallorrie is about my brothers height, brown hair and decent size boobs. I don't really want to do anything to her though. She probably thinks I'm a fat perverted fuck. Prostitutes make me feel embarrassed, except my ex. Well, she still thought I was fat even though I didn't feel strange around her.

My brother parks the car and we all get out. He pulls out his wallet, hands her four hundred dollar bills and says, “I didn't mean to burst out on you in the car. Really, I'm a nice guy. You have to understand the dangers of driving though.”

We get up to the apartment and immediately as I shut the door Jon punches Mal in the face and drags her my the legs to our bed room. He starts yanking her clothes off on his bed and I sit down on my bed watching, but frankly I'm kind of bored, so I grab the television magazine. I inform, “There's a new episode of House next Monday. Did you remember to set the timer to record on that?”

“Don't know.”

He's fucking her while violently beating her. I pull the sheets over me and send a few messages to some friends saying that I'm going to kill myself. Obviously I'm not going to, but I need some attention because I'm bored.

“Are you going to fuck her”, my brother asks. “After we finish her I'll just stab her in the chest and toss her back on the street.”

“No, I don't want to. Plus, you're not fucking her – you're raping her. She's fighting back, so it's not consent. You know how I feel about that stuff. I'm not going to hurt people like that. I only hurt people if they want to be hurt.”

“Don't be such a baby. You seriously feel bad for her just because your little friend came to you whining that he got butt fucked by his grandfather? Get over it dude. I didn't pay that fuckin' money for nothing.”

“But she probably thinks I'm fat.”

He gets off the bed completely naked and grabs his rifle from under the bed and yells, “You think my brother is fat? I will fucking stick this in your cunt you fucking whore! Tell him he looks good!”

She looks at me crying and bruised and whimpers, “You look good.”

I pull the sheets off my head and walk up to her, putting my hands around her neck and choking her. The bitch was lying to me and she just wanted to make me feel better. There's no way she doesn't notice my fat fucking blubber. Her face is turning purple and she sticks her tongue out while gasping for air, but I let go and slap her back down to the bed.

“Sorry for that”, I say. “I didn't mean to hurt her like that, Jon. It's just she was lying and you know what dad said about liars.”

Our father always told us that people who lie to your face deserved to be ringed by the neck and spat on. When we were ten years old I remember him kicking mom in the chest and saying that's how we're supposed to treat women. Everything dad has said seems to be accurate though. All women do is lie and suck dick.

My brother puts his rifle back under the bed and says, “I'm sorry, Daniel. I'll return her right now. Why don't you get some rest while I take the royal slut back to her home on the streets?”

I nod my head and he grabs her arm, dragging her naked out of the apartment. Once they've left I run to the restroom and grab my toothbrush out of the sink, kneel before the toilet with the seat up, stick the toothbrush down my throat and puke myself until I can't puke anymore.


NEMESEIA


“So why won't you kill Jonathan”, the tall man asks. “Wouldn't he be considered another one of the rapist scums you want to castrate?”

I walk over to the Bassani's apartment door and stare at it thinking of a response and I answer, “I don't necessarily feel like it's their fault they are the way they are. They learned all of this from their father while he was beating his mother, so they think all of this is normal and the right thing to do.”

“So you're just going to let them continue to beat up and rape women?”

“Maybe. I might have to figure out a way to help them, but I don't know yet. You'll have to cross them off your list now.”

The tall man walks over to the next apartment door and says, “Maybe he would be best for the job. What do you think?”

I smile to myself and reply, “Cody would be perfect. His tragedies and personality would fit right onto who you need. All he needs is a little more sadness on his shoulders and everything will work out fine.”

He looks back at me and pulls out a hand for me to shake and I do so, but keep my other hand in my pocket holding onto a razor. This man isn't someone I can trust and I feel like at any minute he'll turn his back on me and kill me. I have to be a few steps ahead of him at all times or else he'll know exactly what I'm thinking. He lets go of my hand and says to me, “Well, I guess we have the winning candidate. Let's start the process immediately.”

[deadpie]

I'm quite sure my writing is steadily getting worse due to my insomnia, lack of inspiration and my self criticism. It's possible I'll end up just stop writing this because I'm guessing it will only grow. I don't know. My writing is shit now. I keep repeating things I've written before. The plot is obvious and I just feel like this is a big heaping pile of fucking shit. But here you go anyways. This is for you three people who might be reading this. Please remind me how horrible my writings are, how offensive, immature, badly written, plain, and obvious it all is. Thank you.


THREE


CODY WYKOFF


The burn on the end of my wrist is turning purple and feels like hundreds of pins are being pushed through it. I toss the lighter out at the sink and push myself under the bathtub letting the cold water rise above my head. The sound of trains and honking cars echoes through the water in my ears and I imagine the sounds under the water with me like as if a flood came and took the town with it.

When I bring my head up the silence of the bathroom comes back and my right arm still aches. I open the drain and sit down until the entire bathtub is empty, than wrap a towel around my waist. The skin around the recent burns blister up and when I rub the skin it feel so soft that I'm sure if I pushed down hard enough blood would squirt out.

My phone rings, so I run out of the bathroom to my room, grab it off the night stand and answer the phone asking, “Who is this?”

“It's Clayton. Are you coming to school today?”

“Yeah, I'll be there as soon as possible.”

“Are you taking my advice I gave you yesterday?”

He wants me to take a few days off drugs just to stay clean and see if I can handle it. I don't think he realizes that if I'm not high then I'm going to be burning myself. I answer his question, “Yes, I took it. I'm thinking about going clean too. You know, just to push the extra mile. Today seems like a nice day to try and make a change in my life.”

“That's good man. I'll see you soon.”

I hang up the phone, pull my towel off and dig through a pile of clothes in my closet. My mother said she was going to come over to pick up my clothes so she can do the laundry sense she's the one that has the washing machine and dryer, but I guess she's not leaving the house any time soon, so now I'll have to wear more dirty clothes. There's a pair of pants that has a ketchup smear on part of it, but it fits so I put that on. Like usual, I also add on a red polo. It takes me about ten minutes to find my shoes and I realize that the right one has a gigantic hole right in the middle of the bottom of it.

There's something in my head telling me I should be spending my money on clothes instead of uppers, but the clothes don't bother me when I'm high. Nothing bothers me when I’m high really. That's pretty much the point of doing it all – to escape.

Before leaving I stuff one of my smaller guns in my pants and grab a jacket. Xavier is parked outside and I run out to him, get in the passenger seat of the car and ask, “Thanks for getting my call last night. I'm going back to work tomorrow though. Don't think I can take this going to school bullshit much longer.”

“You've only gone about twenty days in the past four months”, he says driving out of the apartment complex. “If you need to take a break you can hand your position over to me temporarily. You trust me more than anyone else, so I don't see why it would be a problem.”

“Look – if I walked away from these people they would think I've betrayed them. We're a family and all of the members think of me like I'm their father. If I leave they'll turn against me and probably kill me. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what would happen. Once you’re in there's no safe way out.”

He stops the truck at my school and I give him five bucks for the drive. I drag myself barely standing to the school and to the lunch room, and then realize that the entire cafeteria is empty, which means that class has already started.

Why the hell am I here again?

I walk to the restroom and unload myself in a pisser, zip up and wash my hands. There's nobody in the bathroom so I pull up the sleeve on my right arm to reveal the burns. They've started to bubble and swell up pretty bad now. It'd probably be a good idea to put some type of cream on it to stop an infection, but I'm too lazy to go somewhere and get that.

Just as I'm about to leave the restroom Clayton walks in and says, “Why aren't you in class? When I said you should come back to school I didn't mean skip every class in the bathroom.”

“Actually, I was just about to leave”, I say moving past him. “I'm going to my Economics class right now.”

He grabs at my arm and tries to get a look at the burns, but push him off and point my gun out at his chest.

“Are you seriously pointing a gun at your best friend?”

I put my gun back in my pants, leave the restroom, and keep walking even though I can hear him yelling out my name down the hallway. He gets my attention and I stop walking when he says, “Melisa is gone. She left this morning and I don’t know where she is.”

“Maybe her mother changed her mind”, I answer with my back still turned away from him. “I’ll look into it and see if I can find anything on her.”

The bell went off and I rushed myself to the other side of the school as the hallways filled up. I walked all the way to the Gymnasium, went inside and sat down at the bleachers next to Roland and his adopted brother. The gym is empty except for the kids underneath the bleachers smoking pot. I pull out my wallet, hand fifty bucks to my friend and say, “The sobriety thing I was talking about when I killed you last night was just a joke.”

“You think I didn’t know that? You’re the last person I would expect to ever get sober.”

Roland pulls out two different bags; one with a shitload of Percocet and the other filled halfway with a thick white powdery substance. He hands both to me and says, “That other bag is a gift from me to you. You remember when you were trying to find something heavy like Fentanyl? Well, this shit is twice as heavy as that. It’s not that big out here but he guy I got this from calls it ‘White Death’. The man said it’ll keep you on the longest nod of your life and when you come back from using it you feel like a completely different person.”

White Death? Should I really try taking something I’ve never even heard of before? Although, I trust Roland more than anyone else with this type of shit, so I don’t see why it should be a big deal. There’s enough in this bag to last a few days I’m sure, unless this shit really does last that long.


ROLAND


“Don’t worry man”, I say digging through my backpack. “I can hook you up with some more of that if you end up enjoying it, which I’m pretty sure you will. Not in the next few days though, because I’ve got football practice and someone invited me to a party. Unfortunately, the school district here and around us isn’t going to pay for next year, so this year is the last year. But whatever man. Keep in contact.”

Cody smiles up at me, walks down the bleachers and leaves the gym. A few cheerleaders come in, which means that they’re about ready to use this room, so I throw my backpack on and tell my brother Anton to follow me. Both of us run out the gym and sneak to one of the janitor rooms, which also has this secret door that leads to an underground part of this school. Nobody really goes down there because it’s not a clean place and most of it is for storage. Although, a few of my friends and I have been hanging out down there just to do stupid shit.

We carefully go down the stairs and go to inside one of the abandoned classrooms, which has nothing but school merchandise inside of it and a large desk with stacked chairs. As soon as I turn on the lights the twins Daniel and Jonathon and some random blonde girl look up at us sitting on the table. Jon lights up a cigarette and says, “This is Mal. She’s my new girlfriend, but my brother seems to have some issues with her. I mean, she’s kind of a fucking slut sense I did pick her up last night downtown, but we made amends towards each other, had some dinner and she tends to really love me. Now if she didn’t love me, I’d fuckin’ pull her stomach wide open and cook her fuckin’ insides up on a fuckin' frying pan. Isn’t that right, fat cunt?”

The girl brushes a tear off her cheek and itches at a bruise on neck. I lay my backpack down on the table next to her and say, “I'm thinking of joining the Green Dragons. They can offer me safety and I can make more money selling then how much I'm making right now. Do you think it's a dumb idea?”

“No”, Jon answers. “But it's a dumb name for a gang. Sounds like a name someone our age would make up.”

Anton puts his schoolbag down and says, “I've gotta piss. Be right back.”

I take a square out from my bag, put a cigarette in my mouth and Daniel lights it for me. While I’m sorting through my money I constantly look up to Jonathon as he’s rubbing his girlfriend, but she looks like she’s about ready to break down crying. Daniel makes some noise to show off his disgust and walks out of the room and I ask my friend, “Could you just stop what you’re doing right now and notice that you’re a sick fuck? She’s obviously not giving consent for you to slip your hand in her pants, so just stop; or at least stop by me. Your brother doesn’t want to see it either and that’s why he just walked out. Seriously, I’m getting sick of you always doing this shit. Do you just smoke allot of angel dust or are you naturally fucked up like this?”

“Fuck you. The minute I saw Mal I knew she liked me and I don’t give a damn she’s not in the mood right now, but she really needs to confront her emotions that she’s hiding from me. You know that she likes me, but because she’s a female, which also means she’s a slut, it’s quite obvious she just wants me to do this to her. So I don’t see how what I’m doing is wrong. She’s made to be fucked and touched, so I fuck and touch her.’

“Not all women are like that. Cody’s ex-girlfriend was a virgin and she always respected him even when he was hurting himself and popping pills.”

He stands up to me and angrily replies, “She’s a bitch for trying to help him because it’s none of her God damn business in the first place.”

My phone buzzes and immediately as I pull out it out I feel like I already know what's happened. It's Clayton calling me, so my guess on what he's going to tell me probably has something to do with Cody. I answer the phone, “Let me guess – he ended up overdosing and you need me to drive you to the hospital.”

“No”, he pauses. “Well, he did overdose in the front office of the school, then they were able to get him conscious, and I do need a ride to the hospital, but that's not the point. I need you to help me convince him to get into rehab. There's no way he's going to stay alive if he keeps doing shit like this. Please, I don't ask for much from you.”

I throw my cigarette down, zip up my bag and say, “Just meet me out in the parking lot and I'll find you. You owe me big for this though.”

The dumbass was so impatient that I bet he snorted a shitload of that white shit before trying to leave the school. Now I'm trying to think to myself who is the bigger addict – him or Jon? Well, at least Cody doesn't go out raping people for fun.

Jon asks, “What was that all about?”

“Well, I have to visit Cody at the hospital”, I say. “He OD'd right here in the school and I'm guessing it happened about ten minutes ago, so we came down here about fifteen minutes ago. That has to be a new record for him now. You can come along, but I'm going to bring my brother and there's only five seats available in my car, so I think it'd be best if you just let your so called girlfriend here.”

“We can bring her. If the trunk of your car is empty she could just sit in the there and I could give her a banana out of my backpack in case she gets hungry.”

Mallorrie tries to make a run from the room, but Jon grabs her by the arm, throws her to the ground and immediately kicks her right in the stomach. I squint at the thought of what he does to her and other women when I'm not around him, but then I think that it's better that I don't know. I help her up off the ground and say, “We should probably go get my brother and Daniel.”

As soon as we leave the room the two of them come up to us from down the hall. Daniel asks, “Already leaving? I thought we were going to blast some music and roll down here.”

“It's an emergency. Cody's in the hospital after an overdose and you guys are coming with me so I don't have to have some dumb awkward moment with Clayton where he tells me all this depressing shit about his mother and how she might have a brain tumor.”

Jonathan looks at me with a confused face, then looks at his brother and says, “You guys can go out to the parking lot and I'll meet you there. I need to talk to my brother in privacy.”

I can tell something isn't right just by the tone of his voice, which resembles something of confusion and curiosity. He lets go of the grip on Mal's arm and I tell Anton and her to follow me. As soon as we leave the the basement of the school and get out into the hallways my brother yells, “Shit! I need to go back down. My backpack is down there and that has all the weed we were going to sell tonight.”

“Leave it. We'll get it tomorrow. I'm pretty sure we can go a day without selling to make sure Cody's ok.”


JONATHAN BASSANI


“You're fucking Anton, aren't you?”

My brothers face grows pale and he takes a few steps back from me after I've confronted him. He looks down at himself and notices he's not wearing his shirt, but Anton's instead. A few dull silent seconds pass by until he admits, “I'm sorry.”

This can't be happening. My own twin brother is a faggot. No, he's bisexual because I've seen him fuck girls before, but it still doesn't make sense. I'm good to him and I would of noticed something wrong with him a long time ago. Maybe he's even lost interest in girls. He wouldn't fuck Mallorrie last night.

Daniel falls down to his knees crying and I look at him not knowing what to do. Am I supposed to somehow help him or just fucking kill him right now? Faggots make me sick. There's nothing erotic about putting your dick in where someone shits. This is some I'm living with on a day to day basis and he takes it in the ass. How the fuck are you supposed to get over that thought?

I turn my back from him and say, “We'll talk about this later. Let's just go so we're not making everyone else wait.”

He rushes up to me as I start to walk away, then says, “You forgive me, right?”

“No”, I answer opening the door to the hallways. “It's just the way you are and I'm the one that should be blamed for not knowing any sooner. You have a problem and it needs to be fixed, but I haven't found a solution yet. I'm sure I'll find one though.”

We sneak out through the back doors of the school to the parking lot and look around for Roland's car, which takes about five minutes to find. Once we meet up I give Anton a long stare and he looks back at me frightened. He knows that I know what he was doing with my brother. The fear in him excites me because I can tell he's scared.

Clayton and Roland take the front seats and I put myself in the middle of the faggots while Mallorrie is stuffed in the trunk. She willingly got inside without me having to remind her. Maybe women aren't so stupid after all.

I nudge Anton on the shoulder and ask, “You want to hear something funny?”

“Sure”, he mumbles. “Depending on what you define as funny.”

“Well, last year this kid named Jacob was talking shit about my brother; calling him a fatass and such. Now being the overly protective guy that I am I took great offense to this. I tried to bother it and be mature. You know, let my brother handle the situation himself, but then Jacob ended up hitting him in the back of the head with a crowbar. He could of fucking killed him, but luckily all he got was some brain damage. So I followed Jacob home one day, broke into his house and killed one of his cats with a crowbar. After that I said to him that if he ever touches my brother I'd kill him. I took that fucking cat home, chopped it up and fucking ate it with some catfish.”

Everyone in the car goes silent and Clayton asks, “Was there a reason you had to tell that story?”

“Not really.”

Anton gives me a hard stale look and I smile back letting him know the story was directed right at him. It's true that Jacob attacked my brother and I killed his cat, but the catfish part isn't. Although, I don't have a problem pushing the extra mile scaring people because people will believe anything I say.

Unlike Roland, who's athletic and well fit, Anton is just some lazy piece of shit. I've felt that way sense the day that he started going to our school. Not only is he a fat fuck and ginger, but now he's a faggot too. The anticipation waiting for him to lay a finger on my brother is growing right now. It would be so much to me if I could bash out his brains with a sledge hammer.

We reach the hospital, park next to the ER and go into the ER in search of Cody. Clayton goes to the front desk and asks, “My friend Cody Wykoff should be somewhere in the hospital. He's short, long blonde hair and was probably wearing allot of red when he came in.”

“He just got moved to the other side of the hospital”, she informs. “We got in contact with his mother and she's on her way to pick him up. We tried to convince her over the phone to try to get him into our psychiatric care or somewhere for help, but she strongly disagrees with all of that.”

“Thanks, Ma'am.”

The five of us run over to the right side of the hospital and up to the second floor. We get another doctor to direct us to his room and when we enter he's on a hospital bed with a Nurse taking IV's out of him. She leaves once she sees us and I close the door to make sure nobody listens.

Mallorrie isn't with us. I guess I left her in the trunk. Oh well.

Cody looks at us shocked and says, “What the fuck is this bullshit? Get the fuck out of here.”

“Just give a minute”, Clayton says. “We all just skipped school just to come and see you. All of us here are worried about you.”

He looks around at us, then puts his eyes towards me and says, “You're worried about me? What about Jonathan and how much PCP he does. Fuck, you realize he's absolutely insane? Oh, and why the hell is Roland here? He's the guy that dealt me the shit. I mean not to be mean or anything – I really appreciate the fact that he deals to me, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want me to just get sober. And I don't know why the hell Anton and Daniel are here. Seems to me like the only person who wants me to get sober is you, Clayton. I bet you dragged all these people here to make it look like there's people who give a shit.”

I turn away from him and leave the room, going down the hallway until some young woman stops me. She's blonde, soft skin, fragile looking, but the second she looks at me she shows this touch of wickedness. No, I can't actually have a positive reaction to a woman. There's something about her that's saying something to me. I grab her arm and she grabs me by the waist kissing me and I let her tongue in. One hand goes up her shirt, but she pulls back from me and says, “Not here and not right now, but soon. You'll see me again and when you do I will change you. At first the change might confuse you, but let it happen. What you're thinking right now is normal. The tall man will tell you more. Goodbye.”


MELISSA AGUIAR


I take a right to where the restroom is and close the door, counting to myself slowly – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...

Just as the tall man says I leave the restroom where Clayton and his friends come walking down the hallway. Mallorrie isn't with them though, which is strange because she said that she would be with them. I run straight across into Cody's room, closing the door and say, “I need to show you something.”

He's changing into a new pair of clothes and looks at me for a second uninterested, then goes back to pulling his pants up. I walk up to him and push him back into the hospital bed, rubbing one hand up his leg. Immediately as I do so he pulls away from me and tries to get off the bed, but I keep my other hand on his chest.

“Stop”, he demands. “I'm not interested in anything you have to show me. Why the hell are you here anyways?”

“Because I see something special in you.”

The true reason I'm here is because my mother was shot and when I found out this morning I got here as fast as possible. Unfortunately, she survived from the gunshots, but I put a pillow over her head while she was in a coma. After she died I met the tall man. He told me what would happen to Cody and what I would need to do, so I've done exactly what he's told me. Now the thing about me seeing something special in him – that's a lie. The only thing I want from him is to get fucked. I'm a whore. He found me in an alleyway because I was prostituting. Sex is my addiction and I need it from anyone.

A knock comes to the door and a police officer enters. He sits down and asks for me to leave, but I refuse and say, “I'm his ride home, so if you wouldn't mind I'm staying here.”

I take a few steps away from Cody as the officer sits down next to him. He pulls out a pen and a small notebook and asks, “Did you realize you had an illegal weapon on you at the time you overdosed?”

Cody looks directly at me like he's ready to scream. It's obvious he's lost in words and now everything is starting to make sense to me. His closet was filled of nothing but red shirts, hoodies, and even a few pairs of red pants. Not only that, but he had a gun on him and he's a drug addict. I'm pretty sure he's a member of the Black Blood gang. There's no way I could be wrong and just by the look on his face he can't deny it. He shuts his eyes and says, “I'll pay you two hundred thousand dollars if you pretend to you never saw that weapon. You can either take the money and agree to my deal or things will tend to get messy.”

That was unexpected. Seeing from the self inflicted burns on his arms and the possibility he might of overdosed on purpose I was thinking he would just make up some fake shit. Maybe he realizes how important the gang means to him. Hell, I've got it all wrong. If he's part of a gang it's obvious he's not going to be some pussy. It might look like he's just a child, but now I see it in him. He's as violent and cruel as the man who killed my mother. Somewhere, I can tell that he has this hidden jewel in him; that of an emerald made of hatred. His puzzling personality is exactly what I need. I want to see his darkest secrets and I want him to take all of his anger out on me through sex. It's only a matter of time until he falls for me.

He pulls out a card and hands it to the police man saying, “Just call this man and tell him what I told you. He'll give you the money and then we can all go back to living normal happy lives. You might not know who I am, but I know who you are, Officer Murrey. Did you know that there was footage on you of that woman you battered and put in jail a month ago? She was a member of Black Blood. If you want to save your career, you'll get rid of the gun and forget you ever met me. The end.”

I look blankly at him with no response, then he stands up, grabs my arm and the two of us leave the room. The Officer stays there sitting in his chair and my guess is he's probably more shocked then I am. Cody stops me in the hall and says, “There's many things you don't want to know about me, including what you just saw. Please, just walk away from me and pretend you never met me. It's better if you do. If you were here for a few minutes longer you would of ended up meeting my mother and trust me, she's the last person you'll ever want to meet. So just forget me. I never existed. No, I never have existed in the first place. I'm already dead.”

With that he turns back around and starts sprinting down the hall. I stand here by myself biting my my lip trying not to cry, but I can't stop myself to do so. Why am I even crying? All he ever was to me was a penis. Now he's gone from my sight and I feel like I just lost someone close to me. No, I did lose someone close to me today. In fact, I killed that person.

So what does that even say about me? What am I exactly? I'm worse than him.

The tall man comes through the hall towards me and smiles, then a second later he vanishes into thin air and the floor cracks wide open, splitting apart in two. I try to run to a different side, but instead, I fall down the crack. The light from the ceiling becomes further away as my body grows light weight falling down this unknown hole.

And then I die.

[dead]

The thing I liked most about that was how the timeline of the story never stopped, you never had multiple views from the same time period in the story. I mean I feel like some parts of the story did lack some detail compared to other parts of the story, but either way I quite enjoyed it.

[deadpie]

FOUR


THE TALL MAN

This planet is alive and breathing death and nobody else has learned to understand or control it, but I have. In the basement of my mansion is a machine I’ve constructed that’s been looking for the sweet spot; this certain place where a door is hidden. When these cracks happen, anyone that falls down falls straight to their death next to this illusion of a four walls that never end and some of that is true, but it’s complicated to really explain what it all is. Of course anyone could just open the door down there if they fell, but the fall itself is impossible to survive.

When I do find this spot I’ll throw down my ladder and I’ll have my chosen candidate go down there for me. He’ll go through the door for me and kill whoever inside there. Once the job has been done, then I will take control of this planet and I will be the consciousness of it. Yes, my plan is to kill God and take his place for the greater good.

It’s very possible that he doesn’t even know that he’s a higher power and there’s also a theory that he hasn’t even awaken yet. This is a hard gamble based off information and knowledge passed down to me from a man who I trust very well.

Melissa isn't completely dead. Yes, she did fall down that crack and tumble to the bottom dying, but sometimes when something like this happens their body comes back to this planet. I don’t completely understand it yet, but I do have a few theories.

The instance of Cain suggests that maybe even when someone has died and a crack has opened, then it’s possible their entire body multiplies itself, but the copied version of them has memory loss mainly due to because they only were transferred the persons soul. My problem with that theory is that it doesn’t explain why this second Cain can still speak English and French. If he only took the soul then he should just have a brain equivalent to a baby.

Another theory of mine suggests that when someone falls in a particular spot they’re more likely to come back to this planet because they somehow pulled themselves out from another universe. This theory doesn’t make much sense, but I think what just happened proves it.

Before I came here to the hospital I told her that she would need to say those certain things to Jonathan, where her mother was located, and that she needed to try to turn on Cody as much as possible. The hospital seemed to be an important spot because it seemed the closest to the door. Maybe the closer you are to the door when falling the more likely you are of coming back from another universe to here.

I button up my black suit and fix my hat walking out of the hospital slowly to note the weather down in my notebook. Because I’m practically trying to take control of the planet I have a fear that I might end up causing something disastrous. Nothing too strange has happened yet.

Cody’s mother passes by me just as I expected she would at this very moment. She’ll pick him up, take him home and do his laundry, then go without speaking to him for a few more days. That’s unless someone kills him, but him dying would ruin my plan and then I would have no reason to live either, so I would just kill myself. Hell, I would just attempt to destroy the entire world somehow if my only candidate died.

His friends are getting into the car trying to fit in while Clayton is yelling about the woman in the trunk. I’m not really worried about them, but they are important to the process in bringing my candidate to his breaking point. I walk up the front door of the car, open it up, pull Roland out and throw him down. He grabs my tie, tries to hit me while I make myself close enough to whisper in his ear, “Your brother is going to light your entire house on fire if you keep bothering the fact that he’s playing with fire again. This is your warning. The next time you see me it will either be because you failed to listen to me or you have saved Anton from killing you and family, along with the countless others he would eventually probably kill in arsons.”

Like everyone else he gives me a strange look confused that I would know so much about his personal life without even knowing him. That’s the funny thing though; all these people do know me, but they just can’t remember yet. Maybe they never will remember. Well, maybe its better off they never do remember.


DANIEL BASSANI


The tall man sprints off and Roland gets back in the car. He starts the vehicle up and says, “Don't ask me who that was, because I don't fucking know.”

I breathe out on the window of the car and make a dead face with the fog. After it disappears I make it again and put my arm up against my brother, but he pushes me off. He's probably disgusted of me. Instead, I pull my legs up, wrap my hands around them and force myself to sleep.

Jonathan's nudging on my shoulder to wake me up and when I do he tells me that Roland is dropping us off. Everyone else has already been dropped off I guess because they're not in the car. I open up the car door and run up the apartment, up the stairs and to our place. My brother's probably going to beat the living shit out of me, so I lock myself in the bathroom, turn off the lights, and hide in the bathtub.

His footsteps are loud, slow, and the closer he comes to the door the more my heart races. He stops and knocks on the door, waits for my answer, but I say nothing. The sink is still dripping from when I left it on last night. I told him I would turn it off, but I didn't. Fuck, I have to get out and turn it off before he finds out, but if I do he'll know I'm in here. Either way I'm getting the shit beat out of me.

“Open the door. I know you're in there”, he says. “I'm not going to hurt you. That's a promise. Just come out so we can talk.”

Well, alright. He's never broke a promise anyways.

I step out of the bathtub, turn off the sink, and open the door. He lets me pass by him and we go to our room. Jon sits down on his bed and I sit down at mine looking right at him. There's a shiny glass glow in his eye like as if he's about to cry, but he probably doesn't want to show it off to me. He demanded, “You're leaving unless you can help me pay for the apartment. I can't have you living with me, even if you're brother, if you're with that guy. If I see him over here or any other man, I'll kill them in front of you and then you'll be forced to live somewhere else. Don't make this sound like it's my fault. All I want is a thousand dollars by the end of next friday. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to grab my shit, head out and get some leak. Remember what I told you.”

Fuck you. That's all I can say in my head. There's only a few ways I can make that much money and I'm pretty sure most of that money won't go towards paying this place, but for his addiction. A few seconds after he's left the apartment I scream out at the ceiling, get up and smack my head straight into the wall.

Cody might be home by now sense I'm guessing the drive was about two hours. I leave the apartment and go next door, knock, and Cody opens up. He smiles at me with twitching eyebrows handing me a beer and says, “What's up faggot?”

He doesn't know that I'm like that, but I'm pretty sure he's just joking. There's no way he could find out that fast if only my brother and Anton knows. I grab the beer from his hand, open it with the bottle opener attached to my keychain on my belt and walk in. The apartment is perfectly clean, which means his mother must have been here. This place is typically a hell hole with naked fourteen year olds gathered around in the kitchen doing coke. Well, I haven't seen any of the girls for a few months now, but that's how it used to be. I almost forgot about how small his place is compared to mine even though we live right next to each other. The two of us go to his room and I pull up a chair from his computer desk while he sits on his bed. I ask him, “So was your mom just over here? She picked you up right?”

“Yeah man”, he slurs. “My mom picked me up, cleaned the place up, gave me about a hundred bucks and left. There's a shitload of hydro's in a bag over in the kitchen if you want any. Don't worry if you take a few. I'm going to make more bank in the next few days anyways.”

For a second I almost want to ask him if he even gives a shit that a few hours ago he overdosed, but then again by the looks of him he probably doesn't give a shit. I down my beer and tell him, “I have to make a thousand dollars by next Friday or else my brother is kicking me out. You make allot of money with your job and I want in.”

“Depends. Can you fire a gun?”

“I can make a headshot with a blindfold on.”

He smiles at me and keeps slurring, “Alright, man. Meet me here tomorrow and I'll introduce you to my family at the warehouse. Just remember to dress nice and wear a red tie. I'm sure you can make about three thousand with us with our next deal. There's only one problem; typically when you start with us you can't leave, but I'll try to talk to Xavier and a few other people about it.”

The door slams open and some random black guy walks inside. He says, “Who's this nigga in your house?”

“That's my neighbor”, Cody laughs. “He's going to help us with tomorrow's deal. I haven't found the right job for him yet, but I'll find one. Hey Daniel, you mind if he and I talk one on one? Come back tomorrow and remember what I said about the clothes.”

I get up, leave his room, and grab a few hydro's out of the kitchen. The deal has been set and I have nothing to worry about. Everything will work out fine.


XAVIER ARQUETTE


“His name was Cain”, I say. “The man who killed my mother. I found him today out of a phonebook, went to his place, and cut off his head. Then I dumped the body in a river a few miles away and kept his head.”

“Damn dude. I always knew you were brutal and shit, but you like... literally went into his house and just chopped off his head? With what? An axe or some shit?”

I smile back at him and tell him to follow me to my car. He lights a cigarette and follows me down to the truck. The seats of my truck are still bloody, but not really noticeable. I open up the passenger door and hand him the knife.

What I've learned about this weapon is when you slice at anything with it whatever that's being sliced cuts like butter. That moment after I broke into his house, ran to him through his living room to his room and slashed his throat I realized there was something different about this knife. Then when I pushed the blade down against his neck, the blade sliced right down through the skin, bones and tissue like a wedding cake. It was a bloody death and I'd be a liar to say it only took a few minutes to clean the mess up, but I was in his bedroom and down the halls for hours cleaning at the blood stains.

Cody gives me back the blade and says, “I noticed there's some acronym or something on it spelling TTM. Any idea what it means? Where'd you buy it?”

“That's the thing – I didn't buy it. Someone gave it to me. Now I have to give it back to him, but I don't even know where he is or who the hell he is. All I remember him being is this tall white middle aged man in a suit smiling devilishly at me.”

He jumps up inside of the truck and grabs the black bag out from underneath my seat, peaks in and coughs out smoke putting the bag back down. I take the bag from him and say, “I'm going to destroy is head. There's some sheets in the trunk. Just put those down under the front tires.”

“What? You're not going to fucking do what I think you're doing are you? In fucking public? What if some old lady walked out and saw that?”

“She's an old lady. Everything she looks at can be linked to some mental disorder she's gotten over the past years due to old age. Just do as I said so we can get this over with.”

I pull Cain's severed head out from under the bag, place it under one of the front tires, and then start the vehicle up. Cody walks away from the car, gives me a thumbs up, and I slowly reverse the car. His eyes were the signal that the head must be destroyed. I drive the car back up, turn it off and jump out.

“Couldn't you of just burnt his body or something? I think I'm going to be sick.”

He goes over to the sheets and starts rolling them up and ends up puking on the side of my car. Before he can apologize I tell him it's alright. There wasn't even a particular reason for me to bring him into this in the first place. Maybe it's just nice to show how badly I wanted revenge to someone for once. Cody throws the sheets at the bottom of the passenger seat and says, “So was that all you wanted to do? Just come over, run over a guys face and then leave?”

“Pretty much”, I say. “I'll see you at the warehouse tomorrow.”

The sheets are leaking blood out of the truck and I slam the door shut and drive off from Cody's apartment. There's barely any gas left, so I pull up to a gas station. I pull open the glove box, grab some cash, and step out of the truck, but some masked man grabs me by the neck and throws me down. He grabs my pistol out from my pants, points it at me and says, “Fill up your truck then get in the passenger side. If you run I'll splatter you're brains on the ground.”

I get up slowly, thinking of a way I could get out of this. There's not many ways to stop someone that's aiming a gun at you from shooting you other than run at them hoping they're not serious, but this man looks like he'd rather pull the trigger on me than let me live. Because I'm not an idiot, I do what he says and fill up the truck then get inside of the passenger seat while he takes the wheel.

“That was disappointing”, he says throwing the gun out of the window. “You can give me my knife back now.”

He pulls off his black mask, revealing himself as the man that was in my closet. I grab the knife from under the sheets and hold it to his throat while he's driving. The tall man looks back at me smiling, pushes his head back and grabs the knife out of my hand by biting on the blade with his teeth. I ask, “Why the fuck did you point a gun at me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn't hurt me, so it looked exciting. You're not bothered are you? I gave you what you want and the Cain situation is done for. So now that I've helped you which also means you have to help me.”

“And how do I do that?”

The tall man parks my truck next to a candy store, turns it off, and steps out. I move myself up to the driver’s seat and he says to me, “You're looking for a woman. She's blonde, sixteen years old, and she'll be freaking out about how she's gone blind. When you find her you'll have to figure out a way to help her. You'll never see me again after this.”

“How do I help her? Where are you going?”

“Like I said, you'll have to figure that part out. I'm going to get some candy.”


THE TALL MAN


Anton is at the cash register sipping on his homemade energy drink trying to stay awake. I grab a bag of twix candy, approach him and say, “What is it about fire that amuses you?”

He looks up at me with widened moon eyes, blinks them a few times and remembers who I am from earlier today. Another woman enters the candy store dressed in a provocative dress like she’s not just hear to buy gobstoppers to suck on, but more so like she’s meeting someone. It’s strange; why would someone want to meet here? She’s onto me. I need to get out of here as soon as possible and find a way to get someone to kill her for me. If this woman keeps following me around then she might expose my plan.

“Can you just pay for the fucking twix already and the fuck out?”

I hand him my wallet, which is filled with thousands of dollars and attempt to run off, but instead I slam right into the woman. She lends a hand to help pick me up and I push it away from my face, pulling myself up instead.


ANTON


That strange man that just franticly walked into my shop is the same tall man that stopped my brother when we were about ready to leave the hospital. Before he handed me his load of cash he asked me why fire amuses me. Maybe this guy is some type of messenger, reminding me that I’m still some faggot who plays with fire. This morning Jonathan was about ready to kill me for letting his brother bang me. After that I’m dragged in to ‘help’ Clayton’s junkie friend that doesn’t give a shit about getting clean.

Somehow, I feel like everything that’s happened today is like the world calling out to me reminding me how pathetic I am. Hell, I’m working at a candy shop earning about seven bucks an hour. Life can’t get anymore stupid than this.

A nicely dressed woman comes up to the front of the cash register, lying down about ten large bags of mixed candy. One thing and the only real thing that turns me on about her is she’s black, which are the only type of girls I can stand. She says, “I’ve got one of my friend’s kids birthday party to go to later tonight and my husband Xavier was supposed to be picking up all the candy, but now I have to do it all. He’s always busy doing something crazy somewhere.”

“Xavier, eh?”

“You know him?”

“Hell yeah”, I say. “He’s good friends with one of my friends named Cody. Well, I’ve only talked to him a few times but your husband’s a pretty chill person. Tell you what; sense I’m friends with him, you look exhausted, and I think you’re beautiful I’ll let you pay for just three out of the five bags.”

She smiles at me and I can tell I’ve gotten some response from her. Maybe my life isn’t so useless after all if I can make at least one person feel better. The woman hands me ten dollars and moves herself pass the cash register, kissing me on the lips, then stumbles away in the darkness by the door like fog fading out in the sunlight.

No.

Her reasoning of showing up was to remind me everything that I touch, love, or even have emotion for will eventually fall away from me. It’s probably best if I don’t start anything with Daniel then. Does that count for my brother to? Technically he’s not even my brother. All because his parents adopted me doesn’t mean I’m fully connected to them no matter what.

It’s better for me to not be connected to anyone though. Once people come in to close to me, they’ll see what I’m really capable of and the true colors show. Scottie learned that when after he broke up with me a year ago I burnt his entire house down, blew up his parent’s car, and burnt their pet pig alive.

Yes, I was disturbed from Jonathan’s threats today, but he’s not too different from me. The only real difference is that I’m afraid of death and I actually feel bad for the horrible things I do. He’s cold blooded and would probably slit the throat of a dying cancer patient and call it funny. Who’s to say he hasn’t done that already? Is it wrong that I care that his brother doesn’t end up too influenced by him, so I try to comfort him in any way he needs? Well, I guess that goes back to what I said about how I shouldn’t get close to anyone because I’ll hurt them.

It’s about eight at night now and I’m typically closing the place by now. The manager isn’t here because she’s busy getting butt fucked by some random man she’s met online because her husband divorced her over spilt milk. No, I’m not kidding. She literally spilt milk on him and he divorced her over it.

I grab the keys from out of a drawer inside of the front desk, pull out a pack of cigarettes from my pockets holding it with my mouth, and leave the store locking the three separate locks key by key. We’ve had a couple break-ins from idiot teenagers that are probably just like me, but the most they’ve taken is a few bags of jolly ranchers and handfuls of the banana flavored runts.

My brother has his car right in front of the store parked ready to pick me up and I signal at him with my hands to wait as I light a cigarette. He rolls his eyes dramatically and I get into the passenger seat, close the door and toss the square at his face, which bounces off and falls over to the backseats. There’s this certain stressed look he likes to give me when I’ve done something that he can’t understand. Obviously, it has something to do with Daniel, because I wouldn’t be surprised if Jon already told everyone on the planet his brother fucked me.

“You’re going to stop using lighters, matches and anything else that can start a fire, ok? When I get home we’re going to go to your room and you’re going to give me everything you have or else I’m going to have to tear apart your room looking for everything.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I already told you that I stopped using lighters and matches.”

“Then what did you just light that cigarette with and put in your pocket less than forty seconds ago?”

I’m a pyromaniac and an arsonist. My original parents called it quit on me when I was ten years old because of several incidents involving fire. A few for examples are like when I set my parents closet on fire, lit my bed up in flames after a nightmare, put gunpowder wrapped in tin foil in the microwave, and blew up my mother’s truck. Destroying cars is what I’ve done the most; mainly because the explosion it causes is shocking, loud, and gets the adrenaline going.

No, I don’t really remember how I started, but I know that just seeing fire itself makes me feel a tad bit calmer. I carry a lighter in my pocket at all times just so I feel safe with myself. I’ve also learned to modify my lighters so I can make the flames larger and spark more. My brother doesn’t know this, but I was carrying a blowtorch in my backpack for a few months during last winter of school. Now sense it’s spring time I’m more into holding onto my boxes of matches in my bag.

The car is completely silent, so I turn on the radio to a news station. The reporter goes on about how Toronto is the worst place to live in Canada, some woman gone missing after her mother gets shot to death, and the random cracks that’s been going on here. They’ve reported at least twenty today and allot of people are theorizing that it’s the spark of the end of the world. Who would of thought of it first; Toronto would be the birth place of the apocalypse. Makes sense to me actually.

We pull up to the garage of our house and Roland turns off the car, yanking my lighter out of my left pocket and runs into the house. I put out my cigarette on the concrete and chase after him into the house, running up the stairs to my bedroom. He pulls out a box from underneath my bed of nothing but match boxes and says, “You’re such a fucking liar. Tell me where everything is right now or I’m calling the cops telling them about those three cars you blew up yesterday. I know those were you the minute I heard it on the news last night. I’m not going to just keep letting you dig deeper into your problems. You said you want help, but you have to let me help you first.”

I freeze up, defrost, and sprint into my closet and use a heavy wire to wrap around the two opening doors so he can’t get in. Next, I move one of the shoeboxes next to a bunch of dirty towels, pull back part of the torn carpet and take out my baby sized red lighter. I clench it in my hand and start sobbing to myself as my brother starts kicking at the door.

Roland finally kicks it open and grabs me by the shoulders, picking me up just to throw me back down to the floor. He stands up at me and says, “Just fucking tell me where they all are already. We can fight each other for a few hours or you can get it over with. Make up your mind.”

“I’ll tell you where they all are”, I weep. “But you can’t take this one from me. This one means too much to me. There’s some things, at least one thing, that all of us can’t let go of. I’m sure there’s even something Jon can’t let go of in his twisted rapist mind.”

He sits down next to me, lets me squeeze in next to him, and I place my head on his shoulder. I say, “One of my friends from the foster home I was at gave me this. He said it was the only thing in his father’s pocket when his parents were both shot to death in their own home. Well, he told me this lighter was the only thing he really had left of theirs and said he was ready to move on. I’m carrying onto it because I can’t move on yet. You don’t get that I’m just weak. You’re stronger than me. He was the best damn friend I had ever met.”

I pull out the shoebox, take out a pen from my pocket and write where all my lighters, matches, gasoline, and etc on the shoebox. He smiles at me and stands up, but I grab his leg and tell him I’m not finished talking, so he sits back down next to me.

“You don’t have to keep talking. You’ve already done enough just writing all of this down and talking about your friend.”

“No”, I say back to him. “You don’t get it. Every time I start a fire I grow a little calmer. I’m an ugly person; ginger, bad long hair that takes an hour to uncurl, a growing beer belly, and that’s just my physical attributes. Aside from that, everything I once cared about is dead. There was a time I actually thought Jesus was the answer to every problem, including pyromania in my life. I gave up on religion because of the only reason I believed in a higher power is because I was scared of dying, but I’m not scared anymore. I could die right now and be happy with it. And I’m ready to move on, but I’ll need you more than ever. That means you can’t keep insulting me. See, you make me feel like the most useless idiotic piece of shit on the planet. Do you realize that? You have to give me a chance. I do have problems, so you don’t need to confront them to me to remind me how sick I really am.”

Roland nods his head and leaves me in the closet by myself. I open my hand and look at the lighter, scraping at it with my nails in frustration, pull one of my shirts down off a hanger, bite down on it and scream into it so he can't hear me. Then I lean my head down into the shoebox and shut my eyes. I can never give up the fire and it doesn't matter if he takes all of it away from me, because eventually I'll come back to it all and the process will repeat itself again and again. But for now, all I can really do is sleep. That's all that's left for me.

[deadpie]

FIVE


CODY WYKOFF


Anton is in his closet hugging at a shoebox and mumbling gibberish to himself. I nudge my foot at him to wake him up, kneel down and ask, “Jonathan said you would know where Daniel is. Can you tell me?”

He puts his hands in his pockets, then looks at me disturbed and tries to sprint out, but I grab him by one foot and he falls over. When he does he keeps yelling at me about lighters and fire, so I just take out mine and hand it to him, guessing that he must be craving some nicotine or something.

“Thanks”, he says flicking the lighter. “I was going to meet him this morning at this coffee shop near where I work at.”

“Well, then I'm going with you.”

I help pick him up and he tells me he needs to get into some new clothes, so I leave his room to give him some privacy and go downstairs to the kitchen. Roland walks over to me with his bowl of apple jacks and hands me a full bundle wrapped with a rubberband a few syringes taped to it. He smiles to me and says, “There's your breakfast, but don't come for me later today asking for lunch and dinner.”

“Does that mean I can't get any xanax for desert?”

My hands are twitching and I shove the junk into my pockets, grabbing out my wallet and throwing at him a fifty dollar bill. Finally, Anton comes down the stairs and the two of us exit the house. I introduce him to Xavier and let him sit in the middle of the truck while I sit on the end going through old cassette tapes with backpacker rap. By the time I've found a tape that I like we're already at the coffee place, so I tuck the tape in between the seat cushions so I remember where it is exactly when we get back to the truck.

The three of us leave the vehicle, run in, and look around for Daniel where we find him sitting by himself at a table opening a pack of cigarettes. He looks up to me before I sit down and says, “Didn't expect you or Xavier to be here.”

“Well, we're doing the job a little earlier today so we were wanting to get to you as soon as possible.”

“How soon?”

“A few hours. You and your boyfriend can hurry up and fuck underneath the table if you want. After that we'll have to talk about what you're doing and such nonsense.”

Daniel hands each of us a smoke and I light mine, passing my lighter to Xavier. Anton is still holding onto the other lighter I had given to him a little earlier flitching it like a mad man and I notice barn marks on his fingers. No, he doesn't do what I do. Self mutilation doesn't seem like his type. The way I'm seeing it as if he's a pyromaniac of some sort. We used to have a person like that in our gang, but he ended up blowing himself up a year ago because he wanted to experience the ultimate explosion, or in other words exploding inside a convienience store. It's surprising how the people you think are sane tend to be the most driven to madness.

Such as I, maybe.

Anton asks the waitress for some coffee and puts his cigarette out on the table. He asks me, “So what job do you guys do?”

“Well, it's a rather interesting one”, I smile exhaling smoke through my nose. “We're in the business of selling weapons and blowing shit up. It's not as fun as it sounds, but it has it's kicks here and there.”

He looks at me like I'm joking, so I lift my shirt up a little to show him my gun, then he half-smiles back at me and realizes how serious I really am. The ginger grabs his coffee from the waitress and hands me back my lighter.

Guess my suspision on him was wrong. Maybe I'm the only fucked up person here and I'm just trying to make myself feel more comfortable with the fact of it by pretending like everyone else I stumble upon is a monster too.

Xavier asks, “So we going to talk about the plan here or we waiting until we get to the warehouse?”

“We can talk about it here. Anton doesn't look like he would go out telling anyone anyhow.”

I look at Daniel and think about him dying for a brief second. Not like I feel like it'll happen, but there's always a precaution that every single job we do could be the last. This is his first and his brother would rip my ass to shreds if I got him killed. Of course, we've barely had anyone in our family ever killed, but being a leader I have to be suspicious at all times. Suspiciousness is a key part to his job.

“You're going to be behind me ten floors up inside of a building with a camera and a walkie talkie. My men and wemon are going to be surrounding the area to make sure I'm not about to get my head blown off. The deal that we're doing is with a returning customer who we've seen three times before. Typically these people only see us once and they're gone for good. Anyone that's came to us three times has ended up getting themselves caught because they have so much fire power on them. Now being so that this is going to be our fourth deal with this man, I have to learn who he is now and get in sight on his men. So the idea is my men will tell you where everyone of his men are around the area, you'll get there pictures, the deal goes on, it's done, we return to the warehouse, and everyone is happy with money. Later on I'll find out who these people are with my sources and if they're going to cause us or someone really important, then we just kill him and his men. Now if he's just some typical gang leader like he says he is needing weapon to fight off territory, then alright. He can take his weapons and leave me alone.”

The four of us look around at each other nodding our heads and walk out of the coffee shop standing next to each other outside. Clayton is parked next to the truck, staring directly at me. I don't know how he found me or why he's giving me that look, but I'm already pissed off that he's here. Daniel asks if I know why he's here and I cut him off walking to my friend.

“What are you doing?”

“Just making sure you're alright”, he says. “And I was wondering if you've seen Mellissa. She's been missing sense you got out of the hospital and she's been on the news. Her mom was literally shot to death and know people think she's been kidnapped by that guy Nemeseia.”

“Cool. See you later.”

He grabs onto my shoulder before I can continue walking and says, “What the hell is wrong with you? Aren't you worried about her?”

“No. I hung out with her one night and the morning after. She's not a big deal to me. Now I can get why you think she's important. You probably found some type of importance in her while digging your head in her beaver one night, huh? Probably the night before she went missing. Just forget about her, find some other girl and move on. I'm sorry if it dissapoints you that I don't care about every random whore that I meet.”

I walk away and Daniel gets inside the middle side of the truck. He throws his keys to Anton and says, “You can take my car to get home. I'll pick it up tomorrow morning. Just don't damage it in any way shape or form.”

My cellphone has been buzzing nonstop for the past ten minutes. It means we don't have much time to waste and this needs to happen soon as possible. Xavier starts up the car and we drive out to the road where I put the tape in, putting my head back on the window and shut my eyes.

For a few seconds I think about my father. One of my last memories of him was in a church when I was nine years old. Over the preachers voice my dad looked right at me and gave me this smile like he wanted to tell me something, but he couldn't. For some reason, I think I know what he was thinking. Maybe he was sorry for being such a pathetic father and thought it was the right place to tell, but maybe he also saw the irony in it all and thought it was best not to say it. When we had left the church we were being driven back home in a limo and I asked him, “Why does God kill that who he creates?”

“He doesn't just kill them”, he says clenching my mothers hand. “There's always a justification for what he does. After all, he is God.”

That was my final moment of being part of Catholicism. After that, I tossed religion out of my mind like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Nine might be surprisingly young for someone to call themselves an atheist, but I guess I was stubborn and always needed something better as an answer.

Dad's death was not a justification. It was him getting in the way of a gun and getting shot. And with what I've seen and gone through in my life; there's no real reason to why it all happened. What Grandpa did to me – is there really any good reason for someone to something like that?

Either way he's dead. They're both dead. Eventually everyone will be dead. Not right now of course, but it doesn't matter.

“We're here.”

I open up my eyes, pull the door open and throw myself out of the truck falling straight down on my chest caressing my face against the floor like a cement pillow. With the typical count to five I force myself up and shake my arms and legs to wake myself up a little bit. My body is starting to get cold and I'm craving that warmth feeling again.

We're parked outside of the warehouse, which is a large facility that was abandoned twenty years ago, but we've taken it over. A few dirty cops we know make sure this place doesn't get investigated, so this three story place has been the facility of where we make our weapons from scratch. Yes, every weapon is crafted by hand and machines we've designed. Most of our men are made for building these weapons, but only a handful are specially trained for going out for the deals making sure nothing violent happens. Although, everyone knows how to handle a gun, but I've never been a man that likes to resort to violence immediately. Being a leader, violence is the last thing on mind.

Xavier pulls out his bandana and ties it around his neck and I smile at the guards as they let open the door for us. Just as I suspected Daniel gives out a long 'wow' at the sight of the warehouse. The sound of machines clacking and screeching is our music here and the inspiration of workers. When this place is nothing but pure loud noise, that's when we know we're doing our job right.

Everyone in our gang excluding me and now Daniel is over the age of eighteen. Most range from late twenties to early thirties, but I won't bring in anyone else that's young because I want people that take this family seriously and not as some showoff gang. We head over to my office where I call in Tommy to follow in. He pulls out his hand to Daniel and they both greet each other.

“Now let's go over a few things”, Tommy says. “Me and four other of my men will be in a triangular route around you in different buildings with snipers. We'll signal Daniel when we've spotted someone and he'll get each one of there pictures. After that we'll keep our eyes out on them while Daniel leaves the building and goes into a car back to the warehouse while the deal is carried out. Do you mind taking it from here Cody?”

The three other men who are to be the snipers come in and stand around. Before I continue I hold back my breath, trying to focus on talking, but the cold feeling is making my arms ache. I look back up and continue from where he left off, “Now I'll be dropped off near the black building where our buyer, Mr. X will be. I'll give him the sheet of paper telling him first where the guns are and he'll hand over the money, where in my driver will put the money in the trunk. After that I'll wait for him to leave first allong with his men. Once they are gone we'll drive out to the parking lot, steal a car and throw the money in there, drive off back to the warehouse and everyone's happy. It shouldn't be too difficult so let's make it simple. We ready?”

My men nod there head in agreement and I tell them to leave me. Once they do I dig through the drawers of the computer desk and find a few xanax bars. A few minutes after I swallowed them down I left the room and pulled Daniel away from one of the machanics. He asks me, “So when exactly are we leaving?”

“Right now. Well, you and the team are leaving first and then I'll be at the sight in about thirty minutes or so.”

I call out to Tommy and tell him to gather all the men, get a truck and go to the spot. Before him and the rest of the people going leave I tell Daniel not to worry, then head up to the second floor to one of the changing rooms. In there I pull out a suit my size, strip naked and throw those clothes on quickly.

Once I'm dressed I get back to my office and take my pistol out from my locker next to my computer. This weapon was my fathers and it's not special because it's painted gold, but because this pistol has a handle on it with a button that releases a small razorblade from the end of it, which comes in handy from time to time.

Everything was ready and I got my call from Mr. X on an unkown number saying he was expecting me now, so I run out of the warehouse to my limo, get inside and tell the driver, “Drive fast and put in the album 'Vespro della Beata Vergine' by Claudio Monteverdi.”

Before any mission it's important for me to be completely comfortable before risking not only my life, but also my families. There's many things I do before one, including having renaissance music playing. Another thing is to make sure my weapons loaded and ready to fire, because I feel that at any second I should be ready for a thousand zombies to pack around the limo wanting to eat my fucking brains, so it matters to at least have whatever on you loaded. That comes to the next important thing, which is to be fit and ready. Luckily I'm a good runner and I've been trying to lift weights recently, but I'm somewhat lazy these days too due to this drug habbit I have.

The limo stops on a side of an abandoned building where another limo is parked across. I step out and get the paper with the address from my driver, then walk over to the other car where Mr. X steps out and greets me with a handshake. He's a middle aged french man from Quebec who slurs his words like a heavy alcoholic, but tries to hide the sweat dripping down his face with a hat.

“Tell me”, he says. “How does a young fucker like you end up leading one of Canada's largest illegal arms industries?”

“You get a shit father, that's how. Now let's get this over with. Do you have the money?”

I look to my right to one of the buidings around to see a sniper on the roof, but I can tell he's one of mine. Things seem to be going alright so far.

He opens the trunk of his car and pulls out each briefcase one by one stacking them on the ground, which eventually holds up to twelve briefcases. I smile, hand him the paper while examining inside one of the cases and say, “All four hundred of your weapons are inside of a truck at this location with tons of bullets too. I even threw in a bazooka just as a gift. You take care and we'll keep in touch. It's nice working with you, Mr. X.”

“You too, kid.”

Once he leaves I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Xavier. After the second ring he answers, “Everything is good. His men are leaving now. This was probably the easiest sell we've done in a long time.”

“You guys get back to the warehouse. I'm going to take the long way back just in case.”

I place the briefcases in the limo with me and use them as a foot rest. The driver asks me which way we're taking and I tell him to just drive around wherever for an hour and then go back to the warehouse. My pockets are overflowing with garbage and I start pulling everything out of them laying them next to me, then I stumble upon the bundle I bought earlier this morning.I pull up my sleeves and study the burns on my arms, then rub my finger over track marks near collapsed veins. Then I look over at my phone, thinking about Clayton and what he thinks of me.

Clayton probably thinks of me as some wasted junkie now and I don't get why he keeps trying to help. At this point staring at my arms maybe help is something I need. I've tried to deal with this garbage myself, but it's not working. Obviously, this wasn't how I expected everything to happen.

My phone starts ringing before I get the chance to call him, so I pick it up and hang up on the person, then call my friend. He answers with a small mumble and I tell him the words he's been longing to hear - “I'm ready to get sober.”

After saying it, I hang up on him because I already know what he's going to do. He'll be inside my house by the time I get back ready to help me, but like the past few times I'm sure I'll end up yelling at him and regret saying what I just said. It's typical, because I'm a shitty friend.

I pull open one of the briefcases to examine the money again. Each three thousand dollars was wrapped tightly with rubberbands like I asked for Mr. X to do. There's only one hundred and nine members of us, making the pay nine thousand dollars for each person today.

By the time I've gone through every case to make sure all the money is real we're back at the warehouse. I stuff all the junk back in my pockets and start carrying the money in straight to my office room, where everyone in the entire place has gone dead silent. Once I've finished moving them back and forth I call out for everyone to make a line by my room so they can get there pay. This is the way I hand out money here, which sounds incredibly stupid, but I find it nice getting to hand the money over to my people and personaly talk to them. The first person into my office is Daniel. He hands over the camera to me and I place it next to my computer.

“Thank you”, he says. “I hope everything on the camera turned out well for you.”

I hand him over stacks of bills wrapped up and reply, “Don't worry about it. I know you asked for three thousand, but everyone here is getting three times that. You take that money and use some of it for yourself. I hope things with you and your brother go along better sometime soon.”


DANIEL BASSANI


My brother would never fuck with me again after I showed him what I've made. I stood outside of the warehouse until Xavier came out. He told me earlier he was willing to give me a ride back to my apartment sense I live right next to Cody. When I entered his truck he asked me, “So are you going to be permenant with us? Everyone was freaked out by you today because we're not used to new people without a long notice before hand.”

“To be honest, I don't know right now. I'll find out later tonight.”

It was only three in the afternoon but the sky was growing dark. You can feel the thunder in your chest as it roars from the sky and lightning stretches out spider webs across the clouds. Once we pull up to my apartment I run out into the rain and up the stairs to my apartment floor. I open my room where my brother is standing right in the kitchen finishing off a bottle of whiskey. He puts the bottle down in the sink and says, “Didn't expect me, did you?”

Today's saturday and he should be working today, but he isn't. My brother lights a cigarette and I walk over to him, pull out the three wads of cash and stack them next to an empty cereal box. His eyes widened and I can't help myself but to laugh to myself at his surprise.

“There's your money”, I yell out at him. “Now you fucking listen to me for now on. I'm not scared of you because I live with you every single damn day. Your done insulting me, what I am, and any of my friends. If you have beef with anyone then it better not be anyone I'm close to.”

He stares deep into my eyes trying to get me to twitch or regret what I've said, but then he takes a step back realizing how serious I am. I pull his pistol out from off his belt buckle, walk into our bedroom and point it at the naked woman on the bed. She's bruised, beaten, and bawled up in my bedsheets sobbing. My brother runs in and screams, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“She wants to die. Right now, in her head she's telling me to blow her brains out right. Either you kill her right now or I'll shoot her in the face.”

“Stop”, he says coming closer to me. “You don't mean that. I know you. You're my twin brother and you'd never hurt someone. What you're saying about her talking to you through her head; that's just--”

“Just what?”

Jon goes silent and I take a step back from him, jump on my bed standing up and pointing the gun downwards at her. She's still crying, whispering in my head to kill her already. I ask my brother, “You think it's because the Doctors said I became mentally impaired after what that one kid did to me? I'm not stupid. So fuck you, buddy. Kill her right now.”

He won't kill her because I'm telling him what to do. Eventually, he would do it, but not right now because he's a sick sadist. All this time I've loved my brother, but right now, I see something else in him I should of saw long ago. He's a fucking reincarnation of Dad. Everything our father said was mad-hatter bullshit because our father is mad-hatter bullshit. Even with him gone I can see him in my brother. Does that mean he sees him in me too?

My brother turns his back from me slowly and puts his hand against the doorknob breathing out loudly, then sprints out towards us pulling out a switchblade from his pocket and jabbing it right into her chest. I fall over and slam against the window, drop the gun and start crawling away from him in fear.

Now this is the first I've ever been scared of him. I've seen him kill people before, but right now, I feel something completely different. He pulls off her clothes with his hands, throwing them across the room and starts yelling out random jibberish while stabbing her some more in the chest. I want to run out the room and call out for help, but I know he'd come at me with the knife and slash my throat, so I watch as he sticks the blade right into her neck.

Why haven't I closed my eyes yet? And why can't I close my eyes? He's in the bed that I sleep in, violently fucking her corpse and his screams turn to loud howls like wolves. There's a knock at the door and I yell out to my brother, “Shut the fuck up! There's someone at the fucking door!”

He throws himself off my bed, starts wiping the blood off himself with his bedsheets, but I stop him from leaving our bedroom and say, “I'll get it. Just stay in here and... I don't know. Just quiet the fuck down.”

I close the bedroom door, pull my shirt off which has some bits of blood splatter from it and put on a dirty one from off the tile in the bathroom. Then I finally get to the door, creaking it open slowly and peaking out. It's Xavier. He pushes back the door and I take a few steps back.

“This is going to sound crazy”, he says dragging a teenage woman inside. “But Cody couldn't answer and I found this lady right before I was about to leave this place. Some guy told me that I would need to find this girl and now that I have I'm supposed to take her to a guy named *Clayton. She's alive, but I can't wake her up.”

My brother pulls the bedroom door open, still completely naked and asks, “What in the hell is that black man doing in our house with some teenage trick?”

I close the front door and help Xavier carry her to the living room where we sit her on the couch and tell my brother, “This is the guy that helped me get the money. Don't fuck with him or this girl. Just clean up what you did in the bedroom and stay quiet like I said. Everyone in the whole fucking apartment facility could probably hear you and are probably trying to figure out where all that damn noise was coming from.”

Jon grins at me and walks off to the bedroom slamming the door. I ask Xavier, “Well, she looks kind of familiar. I think I've seen her at my school before. Does she have anything on her that could reveal a name?”

The blond teenage girl is pale as could be and her clothes are torn up like a bear attacked her, yet she has no bruise marks on her body.

“She had a wallet on her”, he answers. “Inside, I found an ID card saying her name is Mellissa. If I'm correct, I think she's the one that everyone has been talking about on the news and radio broadcasts. She's the girl that went missing after her mother was shot to death.”

-------------------------

Edit: I had to fix a few errors; one was where I mixed up a name and few grammar errors even though I'm sure there's a hundred more. This was all written mostly under the influence of benzo's anyways.