by Shaun Hupp
My parents, I thought. How do I explain this?
Chapter Thirteen
I stared down at the woman as the life left her eyes. Such a waste, I thought as I tucked my penis back into my pants. I guess my sort of lifestyle doesn’t really jive well with having a long term relationship.
The sound of footsteps coming from the kitchen grabbed my attention. I gripped my hammer tight and waited to see who came through the door. It could have been a neighbor or maybe the police if I somehow missed a silent alarm. The door swung open and a familiar face stepped forward.
“Aww, shit, Devin! Seriously? This is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to work with you.”
My sister, Nikki walked over to the body on the floor and then, noticed the body on the couch. She stormed off and vanished back into the kitchen. Shit. I chased after her.
“Nikki, please! It just sort of happened.”
She stopped and spun around in front of the refrigerator. “When I agreed to work with you, I didn’t think it would be like this. I’m not. . . into all that.”
I reached out to take her hand, but she moved back. Then, I felt stupid when I saw the blood on my palm. I loved my sister with all my heart, but I had these urges. I couldn’t control myself sometimes. She couldn’t accept who I was.
“I’m sorry, Nikki but you told me no one was going to be home,” I explained, finally standing my ground. “That’s your fault.”
“My fault? It’s my fault there are two dead bodies in the other room and one is missing his dick!”
“Yes, it’s your fault. You’re supposed to be the one ‘researching’ these locations. I’m the one that does all the dirty work. It’s just that this time. . . I got dirtier than usual.”
Nikki stared me down, but I wasn’t flinching this time. I’m the older brother. I’m the one that mom told her to listen to before she died; Not that she ever listened to mom. She wasn’t going to win this argument.
“Fine, Devin. Fine. You know what? Let’s get whatever valuables we can find and get out of here. You know the police will be putting all their manpower into finding whoever did this. If it were just a simple burglary, they’d barely bat an eye. It looks like you left plenty of DNA for them to go off of too.”
I shook my head. “Not after I torch the place. I always have a plan, sis. It’s shameful for you to think I wouldn’t.”
“Fine. Burn this fucker down, but next time, things are going to be different. I’ve been scouting a place for a while. It’s in the middle of nowhere, the guy owns a bunch of factories, and the family always goes out for hours Saturday afternoon.”
“As long as no one is home, I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“No. I told you, Devin: things are going to be different. I’m going to be the one to go in.”
“Then, what am I going to do?”
“It’s, as you would say, shameful for you to think I don’t have a plan. We’ll both go to the location as usual, but instead of me being the lookout. You’ll be doing that. I’ll call you when I need your help with the loot. If I don’t call you in like thirty minutes after I go in, then you can use your big macho hammer and come rescue me. Deal?”
I didn’t like it. My baby sister could be walking into all sorts of dangerous situations, but I also knew that she knew how to handle herself. She was tough. It ran in the family. And as pissed as she was, I didn’t have much of a choice but to trust her.
“Deal.”
Chapter Fourteen
A man appeared in the doorway. He wore camo head-to-toe, which was a lot of camo because this guy was huge. It was then that I noticed the giant hammer in his right hand. I didn’t know what he wanted, but it couldn’t be good.
“Where’s Nikki?”
I realized that even with his great height, he still couldn’t see behind my fat frame. I thought about trying to lie to him, but with my clothes, skin, and hair drenched in blood, I didn’t think he’d believe whatever I told him. I quickly turned and ran around the bed, putting it between us.
“Nikki!” he yelled, as he rushed over to her face-down body. The man put his weapon on the bloody mattress and knelt down. He cautiously brushed the hair away from her face and when he lifted her head, he gasped and fell backward. Tony appeared behind him.
“Oh, shit, Fatty Matty. I think you’re in serious trouble.”
If the man hadn’t fallen in front of the door, I would have made a break for it. He didn’t seem to be even paying attention to me anymore. He looked to be in shock so I knew I had to act fast. I considered going for the window, but I’d have to crawl on top of the bed and it was difficult to open. Not to mention the second story drop. I looked for other options and that’s when I saw Nikki’s switchblade on the carpet by my foot. I checked to make sure he was still on the ground. I crouched down hoping the man wouldn’t notice, grabbed the knife, and when I stood up, he was also standing.
“You killed her,” he said, as he picked his hammer back up.
“Here we go!” Tony clapped with excitement. “It’s about to go down.”
I held up my hands. “No, no, no! She attacked me and-“I realized he was staring at the knife in my hand. Shit.
I ran for it, but in two big strides, he was on me. I slashed at him and he easily grabbed my wrist. He slammed it down my dresser, but I didn’t let go of it. It was my only weapon, my only hope. He lifted my arm up and slammed it down again. Somehow I managed to hold on. Then, he held my wrist down with his left hand and raised the hammer over his head. He smiled as he brought the hammer down. But instead of hitting my hand, he struck the blade. Releasing his grip, I fell backward. He ignored me and stared at the switchblade. Then, he smashed his hammer into it over and over again, sending wooden shrapnel in every direction. I covered my face and eyes with my hands, and when I finally thought it was safe, I peeked between my fat fingers. He just stood there, admiring what he had done to the bent and broken blade in his hand.
Suddenly, he threw the knife to the side and rushed at me. I covered myself, preparing for the worst, but he just stopped and crouched down in front of me. “This scar,” he pointed to his forehead. “That knife did that. SHE did that. All my life, I protected her. I guess you could say I was the typical big brother in that sense, but I knew something about me was different. I made the mistake of telling a school counselor about my unique urges and she suggested that I join the Army. It would let me act on those urges and hopefully, straighten me out. I gave Nikki that very knife for protection and left the next day to fight for Uncle Sam. When I came back, I had learned that that knife was useless when she was attacked by a group of five men. They gang raped her and left her for dead. She survived and when I came back, I didn’t get a hero’s welcome and it wasn’t a warm embrace I received upon my arrival. It was this scar. She blamed me. The family blamed me. I blamed me. From then on, I swore to her and everybody else that I’d never let anything happen to her ever again, but at the same time, I knew that something inside of her had changed. She wasn’t the same defenseless, little girl I had left. There was something dark hiding within her that had come out. I saw the darkness in myself reflected in her.”
He stood up and walked over to Nikki’s corpse. Then, he raised his hammer high and brought it down over and over again on the back of her head. Her skull collapsed inward with each blow and instead of wood fragments coming my way, I had blood, bone, and brain matter. I looked away again. When I looked back, there was nothing left but a neck stump and a pile of gore. Even Tony looked speechless.
“Before our mom died, she made me promise that I’d protect her for the rest of my life, no matter what. I could never break that promise, even though I wanted to so bad. She treated me like shit. She didn’t understand my urges. Now, because of you, I’m free. I don’t have to do these silly burglaries anymore. I can be exactly the kind of person I always wanted to be. No more holding back. The leash is off.”
He turned and stared at me. “Thank you.”
&nb
sp; “You’re. . . welcome,” I barely managed to spit out.
“It’s a shame I still have to kill you.”
My heart stopped, my lungs emptied, Tony laughed. I thought I was free. I thought I had done this great thing for him and he was going to go on his merry way.
“It’s nothing personal, but if I’ve learned one thing from my sister, it’s how to avoid getting caught and with that, eliminating loose ends. YOU are a loose end.”
He walked over to me and I burst into tears. It wasn’t fair.
“I’m sorry, kid. It has to be this way. Just put your head down and I promise I’ll do this as quickly as possible.”
I lowered my head and I felt the top of the hammer pressed against it. This is it. I looked over and saw Tony. He was grinning ear-to-ear.
“Any last requests? You’ve earned it, kid.”
I couldn’t think of anything and then, I saw my closet. “Yeah. . . I have one. My grandfather was in the military. Before he died, he gave me the medals he earned in combat. I always kept them in that closet because I was ashamed that I wasn’t the man my grandfather had hoped I’d become. I was hoping you’d let me wear them when. . . when you kill me. Maybe that way I’ll die as a man somewhat. I don’t know. I guess it sounds stupid when you say it out loud.”
I sat there, waiting. Finally, I felt the hammer come away from the back of my head. “No. It’s not stupid,” he said. “Go get them.”
I looked up at him and nodded. I slowly rose and walked to the closet. Tony gave me a weird look. “You never met your grandfather. What are you up to? What do you have in that closet anyway?”
I opened the closet door and reached inside. When I found what I was searching for, I grabbed it and pulled it out. I turned back to the man and his eyes went wide. I raised the LAR-47 assault rifle to my shoulder and pulled the trigger. Bullets burst forth, throwing me back into the closet. I had never shot the thing before and wasn’t expecting that. Despite my inexperience, I couldn’t miss at this distance. As I continued firing until the magazine was empty, the man’s body danced with each hit until he finally fell onto the bed, next to Nikki.
I looked over at the inside of the closet door. There I had pages of my yearbook tacked. There were red circles around pictures and names; people like Leah, John, Tony, and all the others. There was a map of the school normally reserved for marking fire exits. This version marked where each student would be during second hour.
“You were going to kill me,” Tony said, as he stood in front of the carnage. Somehow my subconscious version of him was as oblivious to my plans as the real one. “You were going to kill all of us.”
“Monday,” I said, out of breath. “Monday, it would have been all over.”
Tony stood there in shock and slowly, a smile crept up on his face. “But not anymore.”
“What?” I didn’t understand.
“Don’t you see, fat fuck? It’s over. There won’t be any class for you on Monday. Even if you somehow managed to clean all this up and hide it from your parents, your messed up face will give you away.” He laughed. “Do you get it now? I win. I WIN!”
I threw the now useless gun down and reach behind me. I grabbed the Mossberg 500 shotgun. I aimed and emptied it at Tony. Every bullet just went right through him while he pointed and laughed me. I tossed it aside and grabbed one of my handguns. I took aim but realized it was useless.
I had been planning my revenge for a while. I managed to sneak the guns out of my uncle’s house. He had quite the collection and would have never noticed them missing. All the ammunition came from different locations. I had been slowly stockpiling it.
Tony walked over to me and knelt down. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you could kill your parents and then, nothing will stop you until Monday. Wrong. You’re not that far out in the boonies. You don’t think your neighbors heard all that shooting? Hell, you probably gave Mr. Myers a heart attack. The police will be here soon, fat fuck. It’s over.”
Ignore him. You can fix this. You can run away and hide until Monday.
I crawled forward, still with the gun in my hand. I didn’t want to see the mutilated corpses on my bed. Tony appeared next to me, yelling in my ear. “You can’t run, Fatty Matty. When the police show up, they’ll see your plans. They’ll search everywhere. The school will be closed until you’re found. It’s over!”
I stopped crawling. Now, Tony was directly in front of me. “You know I’m right. And guess what? When the police arrest you, you’ll be put away forever. Think about it. No more porn. No more fast food. Just a small, gray cell. Just you and me for the rest of your life.”
“No.”
“Yes,” Tony said in my right ear. I looked over and he was there, but he was also in front of me. He had never appeared to me before in multiple versions of himself.
“You know what you have to do,” a new Tony on my left said. “You need to finally end it.”
“No.”
“You don’t want to share a cell with me, do you?” asked the Tony in front of me. “Just do it. There are no other options.”
“Kill yourself,” the two Tonys on either side of me said in unison.
“No.”
The Tony in front said, “I can hear the sirens in the distance. You need to act quickly.”
“Kill yourself,” they yelled.
“I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can. Just put the barrel of that gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.”
“Kill yourself!”
“Please, just leave me alone. I can’t think.”
“They’ll be pulling up soon. They’ll surround the house. There will be nowhere you can go. You have to do this now!”
“Kill yourself!”
I sat down and slowly raised the gun to my mouth. I closed my eyes and put the barrel in my mouth.
“It’ll be over in an instant. Just pull the trigger and all the pain will go away.”
“Kill yourself!”
My finger found the trigger.
“I won.”
I pulled it.
The cane dropped from Emrys’s hand. Luke shook off his hypnosis, knocking candies out of his hair. Emrys was barely breathing, but the story was finished. There were just a couple more things that needed to be done. He reached into his impossibly deep coat and pulled out yet another antique box.
“This is for you, son. It’s going to help you save my life.”
He handed it to him and then, reached down to get his cane. He felt dizzy. He knew he not only had to act fast, but he had to put himself in the middle of the action to absorb everything. After retrieving his cane, he carefully stood up and walked back the way he came. The group of teens was still joking around when Emrys put himself between them and Luke.
“Hey! Get out of the way, old man.”
“Yeah. We were just trying to give him some candy. As soon as we get off at our stop, you know he’s going to crawl on the floor and eat every one of those.”
“ENOUGH!”
Emrys’s bellow took more out of him than he anticipated. He collapsed on the floor. Not one of the teens moved to help him. They just laughed at him. Emrys’s eye was inches away from the globe. The red at the bottom was nothing more than a pinprick. He grabbed the sphere, raised it a couple of inches off the ground, and tapped it twice on the floor of the train car.
His knocking awakened the very seed he had planted in Luke with his story. Luke rose from his seat and faced the group. A blank expression never left his face as he opened the old box and pulled out two handguns.
The teens screams were soon drowned out by the echoing shots as Luke opened fire at his tormentors. He wasn’t a great marksman. They tried to hide behind the seats, but with every shot, Emrys was able to help Luke’s aim little by little. Soon, the screams died down and blood spilled out into the aisle way, creeping towards Emrys. He reached out his cane and smeared red all over the globe. He felt a surge of energy throughout his body. His b
ones and muscles strengthened, allowing him to stand. Luke was still firing at his now deceased bullies. Emrys was still in the middle of the shooting, but he was now completely in control of the environment. No bullet would touch him if he didn’t allow it. The gunmetal grey projectiles flew past his head just as the grey of his hair started to recede, leaving behind its original jet black color.
Both guns were empty. Luke suddenly dropped the weapons on the floor and rushed away from Emrys. The box that had been on the floor had vanished.
“What did I do!? How did you make me do that!? What are you? Stay away from me!”