A Vulnerable Broken Mind

by Gaetano Brown

  John began to walk the length of the hall. He knew that Amber was behind one of the doors. However, he also knew that Hunt lurked behind one of them as well. He held the gun tightly in his hand, his finger ready to pull the trigger at any given moment.

  As he walked the hall, he listened intently but the silence was as cold and haunting as the darkness itself. He reached the end of the hall and looked up into the painted eyes of Ralph Hunt, which eerily looked back at him.

  He was getting ready to turn around when he heard another creak. He turned, ready to point the gun, but was far too late as he went eye to eye with the real Hunt who shoved him against the wall, holding the arm with the gun.

  “I knew that Ken would fail to kill you. Oh well, I’ll do the honors.” He looked at the gun. “What do you think you’re going to do with that?” He said savagely. “Are you going to shoot me? I wish you luck with that but I have a feeling that luck is not on your side.” He punched John hard in the stomach, forcing the air out of his lungs. He threw John to the ground.

  John was not given any time to breathe as he was then kicked hard in the face. His vision was full of colors as the pain overwhelmed him. His vision was barely recovering as another kick rained down upon him, breaking his nose.

  “What’s the matter with you, boy? Are you too afraid to fight me?” Hunt asked with sick smile. John was overcome with pain and crawled to get away from Hunt. “Where are you going? There’s no turning back now. You had your chance, now it’s time for you to see the error of your ways.”

  Before John could even get more than three feet away from him, he was kicked hard in the face once more; John nearly blacked out from the pain and lay motionless on the floor. He gasped desperately for air. Hunt turned him over to look him in the face.

  With little strength left, he could look at Hunt but couldn’t do much more than that. “Why did you come here, John?” Hunt asked, looking at John as though he were pathetic. “You care for her that much, don’t you? You’re a brave man, I’ll give you that but that’s not even going to come close to saving you.

  “You’re no different than Tony. He did everything he could to save Mary but look where that got him. I’m pretty sure you saw the rope. I’m not going to lie, I felt slightly bad for what had happened,” Hunt said, not looking like he meant a word of it.

  “What about Jennifer?” John finally spoke.

  “Oh, you read the article downstairs, you’re very observant.” Hunt arched a brow, impressed. “I’m knew that Mary would leave that part out. Yes I know you spoke with her. Only she and Ken know of this location. Since you’re a dead man anyway, I guess I can amuse you with a story.” Hunt took a pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at John. “Just to keep you from thinking about moving.

  “Mary is a very beautiful woman. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I envied Tony for being able to go home every night to her. When she started working for me, I couldn’t have been more excited. I loved the honor of seeing her beauty every day. How could a man resist?

  “I planned everything carefully, the drugged water and I had bought the chains to cuff her with. Her stupid husband didn’t suspect anything. Soon enough, she was mine. However, much like your wife, she was defiant. So, I found a little more persuasion, and that persuasion was Jennifer.

  “I gave her an ultimatum, her or Jennifer. She eventually agreed but I knew that letting Jennifer go would lead to the cops showing up at my front door, so I kept her locked up. I didn’t keep her locked up in a cell, though. She stayed in my closet. In a place like Tuxton, no one would hear her cries.

  “I had sworn to keep my hands off of Jennifer but I couldn’t get over how beautiful she was. She looked just like her mother. I couldn’t help myself. When Ken was busy with Mary, I was busy with Jennifer.” John paled and bile rose in his throat. He grimaced in disgust. “Aw, was that a little tough for your poor heart to hear John?” Hunt laughed at this. “Poor Jennifer gained an infection from our little sessions and died a month later. Ken placed the body in the dumpster when no one was around.

  “I showed a picture of Jennifer’s dead body to Tony. It drove him to hang himself. I personally dumped his body into the river.”

  “You’re a sick man,” John spat.

  “Oh please,” Hunt replied. “You have to be sick to survive in this world. The good always die young. I plan on living forever. There’s no point on living in this world just by following the straight and narrow. Rules have to be bent.”

  “But to destroy someone else’s life?” John asked astonished.

  “A small sacrifice has to be made at times,” Hunt replied easily.

  “You view murder as a small sacrifice?” John asked.

  “If it means getting what I want, than absolutely,” Hunt replied. “I will not be outdone by anybody. If that means I have to kill someone or force someone to do something against their will, then so be it.”

  As Hunt continued to talk, John tried to find any way out of this situation. He searched with his hands for anything that he could use to distract or hit him with. It was too dark for Hunt to see so he took no notice of what John was doing. He felt his hand close around something.

  It was a small, cold, hard item, he felt it and knew that he found his gun. He tried to grip onto it without being seen.

  “In your case though…” Hunt continued as John fumbled with the gun. “…you’re a tiny sacrifice. However, I do have to give you credit, you tried and I might as well reward you for that.” He then reached for the door behind him, while still pointing the gun at John. With his free hand, Hunt opened the door.

  The door opened to reveal a small bedroom. What the room looked like meant nothing to John as his eyes fell upon the large queen sized bed with Amber tied to it. “Say goodbye to your wife, John.”

  Amber lifted her head as she heard and began to whine loudly through the gag. She struggled and tried to break free from her restraints but soon stopped when she knew it was impossible. She looked at John through tears. This drove John to the absolute brink of insanity. A trigger had been pulled and it wasn’t from the gun.

  “Goodbye, John,” Hunt said and John quickly raised the gun.

  BAM!

  Both guns fired but John’s shot went off first, striking Hunt in the shoulder. He screamed in pain and the force caused him to lift the gun further up, causing the bullet to strike the wall.

  John got up as Hunt curled over, holding his shoulder. As he stood up, John’s anger boiled over. He couldn’t see straight anymore. The blood pouring down his face from his nose was small compared to what John wanted to do to Hunt.

  John raised the gun again and pointed it at Hunt’s right leg.

  BAM!

  “AHHH!” Hunt’s scream vibrated through the room. John expected the windows to break. He fell to the ground with both his shoulder and leg oozing blood on the floor. Even having done this, John was not done.

  A teary-eyed Hunt looked up at John in fear. John raised the gun again and Hunt began to crawl with his good arm and leg. Hunt did his best to distance himself from John. With nowhere to hide, he crawled into the corner and stared with an expression that John reveled in.

  Hunt sat in the corner just below his own painted portrait, greatly contrasting his expression at that moment. John raised the gun again, pointing it at Hunt’s heart.

  “Please, don’t kill me,” Hunt pleaded. The once frightening and evil Hunt was now a coward in the corner and begging like a baby. “Please, have me arrested but just don’t kill me, I’ll go quietly.”

  When seeking justice, you try not to stoop down to the level of your enemy. You try to find the good guy’s way out, to be the hero. A hero does everything right and never kills another soul like the enemy would…This was not one of those moments.

  BAM!

  He found himself pulling the trigger not once or twice but until the clip was empty. Even after it was, he continued to pull the trigger. While the clip was empty, his anger was not. H
e vented every emotion in that one moment.

  When his finger finally relinquished the trigger, he lowered the gun and threw it to the ground. Hunt’s body was riddled with bullet holes. The blood flooded the wooden floor, creating a puddle that only grew bigger. Despite the horrific sight before him and what he had done, John had absolutely no regrets about his actions.

  He turned away from Hunt’s body and didn’t look back. He ran to the bedroom where Amber was. Despite the gag, her relief was obvious. John began to untie Amber, removing the gag first.

  The sight of John made Amber’s heart jump as relief swelled over her body.

  “Oh God, I thought you were…I thought…” Despite Amber’s joyous feeling, she was too lost for words to speak.

  “I’m here,” John soothed. Through all of the blood on his face, a smile was noticeable; he could finally smile again. Amber smiled back.

  Once all of the ropes were untied, John pulled Amber up carefully and embraced her. Neither he nor she could hold back their tears as an overwhelming sense of happiness flooded them both. “I wasn’t about to lose you,” John said.

  Deep in the hug, John opened his eyes and in the corner of the room, the little girl appeared once more. A smile blazed across her face. The sight of her made John break away. Curious, Amber turned to see what John was looking at.

  Amber gave a bright smile back to Carol. “How did you know?” Amber asked. John looked in shock because Amber could see her.

  “Because I knew he wouldn’t quit,” Carol said happily.

  “Who are you?” John asked. “Why did you help us?”

  Carol’s smile grew brighter and her blue eyes glistened in the light. “I told you both that you would soon find out and you will, Mom and Dad.”

  Shock consumed the both of them. They both had questions they wanted to ask her. “So you’re our…” John began to ask but couldn’t quite finish it.

  “I told you, you had to live for me to survive,” Carol said joyfully.

  There were more questions, but before they could be asked, Carol’s expression began to change. The smile slowly faded from her face and her blue eyes were no longer glistening. Both John and Amber watched as she began to disappear. “Goodbye,” she said softly as she faded away completely.

  Amber turned to John in confusion but her eyes shifted behind John. A look of terror went across her face as she screamed, “NO!”

  BAM!

  Before John could turn around, a gunshot went off. John blinked in shock. In that brief micro-second that he closed his eyes, a bullet had shot by him and had struck Amber directly in the chest. She collapsed back onto the bed, gasping for air and bleeding.

  John turned around to see where the bullet had come from. Standing at the doorway, with blood still pouring out of his chest and staring at John with the devil’s grin, was Ken Sparks, obviously weakened as the gun he held slumped down to his side.

  John ran up to Sparks before he could lift the gun again. He grabbed the arm that Sparks was holding the gun with and wrestled him to try and relinquish it from his grasp.

  Sparks fought but it was apparent that the loss of blood had taken a great toll on him. John easily took the gun away from him. Even in his weakened state and being disarmed, he gave an evil laugh that any normal person would have found chilling.

  John was not that normal person anymore. A bullet into the person he loved meant that more went into the person that fired it. John would never fire that bullet as Sparks slumped down to the floor, the loss of blood finally overtaking him as his body went motionless.

  Sparks might have been dead but his expression never changed. The devilish smile never left his face; his face expressed how happy he was for what he had done. John stared and then threw the gun to the side.

  “John?” Amber said in a strained voice from behind him. He looked back and was mortified. Blood stained both Amber and the white blankets that covered the bed. Amber’s eyes expressed every bit of pain she was going through.

  John sat on the bed. He took her in his arms. Blood was now pouring onto him from her chest. John tried to think of anything he could do to save her.

  He stared into her eyes, which were slowly fading away from him. She looked at him but with a very glazed stare.

  “Stay with me,” he shouted, trying to keep her alive, his hands drenched in her blood. The warmth of her blood was a contrasting feeling as her body became cold.

  “I love you,” she replied back, having lost all hope.

  “I love you too but…but.” As John began to break down, so did his conscience and his soul as Amber’s eyes closed and her body went lifeless in his arms.

  John couldn’t move. He remained on the bed and clutched Amber in his arms, as if she would open her eyes somehow if he did.

  He then lifted his head up and surveyed the scene around him. He looked at the lifeless body of Ken Sparks slumped in the doorway and looked out into the hallway, knowing that out of sight and in the corner was the body of Ralph Hunt.

  All of this was meant to save his one and only love. Despite all of his strength and effort, she lay dead in his arms. Everything he had gone through led him to an ultimate failure.

  He had never felt so hopeless and meaningless in his life. What was his reason for living now? He knew the answer before even asking the question. He looked over to the side of the bed, to where he had thrown the gun.

  He set Amber’s body gently back on the bed and shut her eyes. His clothes and hands were now drenched and dripping with her blood.

  He climbed off of the bed and walked to where the gun had landed. There was no reluctance or even the slightest bit of hesitation as he walked back to the bed, with the gun now firmly planted in his hand.

  Before walking to the bed, he looked over to the nightstand. Two items sat on the nightstand next to the bed. John looked very closely at them, not able to take his eyes off them. Amber’s and his wedding ring were sitting on the nightstand. He grabbed both of them and held them in his other hand as he walked back to the bed.

  Once back to the bed, he stared at Amber’s body. He ignored the bullet hole in her chest and all of the blood that now painted her and the white bed red. His only focus was on her beautiful face. With her eyes closed and with John focusing on nothing else but that, it appeared that she was only sleeping.

  John wanted to sleep with her as well. He crawled into the bed. He could feel the dampness of Amber’s blood.

  He scooted closer to Amber and grabbed onto her hand. He looked over to her and stared at her.

  “Until death do you part?” But who said that love had to stop at death? Can you not love someone for all eternity? Why can’t love go on beyond the grave?

  “Now, we’ll be together always,” John said as he raised the gun up to his head. He didn’t take his eyes off of her as he did it. He held the gun to the side of his head. There was no hesitation or regret as he pulled the trigger.

  BAM!

  The loud and intense gunshot screamed in his ear as he journeyed into the real abyss. While he would never be able to turn back or change his decision, his conscience and his soul would never want to.

  Epilogue

  Tom Morrison had grown tired of waiting and would go back to the house himself. He would discover the bodies nearly thirty minutes after John’s fatal decision.

  After calling the police, he would search the house himself before their arrival, discovering two other wedding rings in the bedroom across from where Amber was located; the two wedding rings that had belonged to Tony and Mary Stanton.

  Morrison had seen the wedding rings before when first meeting them. Not wanting the police to take them as evidence, he put them in his pocket and quickly walked back outside as the sound of the approaching police boats were heard.

  He flagged them down and, after an extensive search from the police, all bodies were taken from the site.

  Morrison would return to Tuxton and would promptly return Mary her wedding rings, proving
that, despite John’s decision, he had lived up to his word. Mary was now free.

  Ken Sparks and Ralph Hunt were buried in private. Their story however, spread across the entire country. Their reputations were posthumously destroyed in a New York minute. Hunts house would be demolished and the cells filled with concrete a week later.

  John and Amber would be flown back to Clinton, New York. John’s story had labeled him as a hero for the deaths of two murderers. He and Amber would be buried side-by-side, with their tombstone reading “Always & Forever”.