Disclaimer

The following is one of many installments for a story designed specifically for my blog.  While it does step out of my usual genre, there are some things still not suitable for a younger audience.  Violent/Graphic descriptions, strong language and sexual situations may be found through different sections.  Each entry will tell a small portion of the story during different times and may not directly follow the one prior to it.  

This story follows the direct interactions, as well as the deteriorating thoughts of a young man who is struggling not only with the relationships he has with those around him, but with the relationship he has with himself as well.

Finally, all work is strictly fiction and does not reflect the views of the author.  Any resemblance to actual person(s) is only a coincidence.

If this isn’t your cup of tea, then avoid these excerpts and hopefully I’ll see you around my other posts and webseries!

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The shadows from the den chased him as he fled through the tunnel.  There was only silence where he came from.  No more crying, no begging, only the absolute of nothing.  He could feel the ground falling out from beneath him, crumbling away into the void of his mind where everything else he knew had gone.  He would not be returning here, not later, nor tomorrow.  This part of his life was forever gone.

The young man who birthed from the tunnel’s exit was the living definition of his last name and there was only one purpose for him in this existence.  He slowly crawled into the dim light of evening, cautious of anyone who might detect him, and carefully sealed the exit behind him.

With a sigh, he looked to west.  In the end of every story he enjoyed, the hero always rode off into the sunset.  There was never any conclusion.  It was implied that said person moved on to face a new evil.  But this was no story, and he was no hero.  He knew there would be no celebration for the acts he had committed.  Nobody would cheer for the death of those who had fallen before him and in a few years, nobody would even remember his name.

It didn’t matter.  His was a life of neglect.  His father had left for selfish reasons, leaving him to deal with the first feelings of being unloved.  Soon after, his mother had taken on extra hours in order to maintain the bills.  He had rarely seen her over the years and when he did, she only treated him as if he was still the same age as when ‘he’ had left.

Megan was usually in charge while she was gone and he didn’t mind at first because she had left him alone.  But as the days stretched into weeks, she began to deal with her feelings by aggressively taking them out on him.  It started with an occasional jab here and there.  Even this wasn’t so bad, just the usual sort of brother/sister stuff, but it soon grew into something more humiliating.  She began to tease him in front of her friends.

She taunted him with barbed words meant to draw him into argument and when he flushed with anger, when he couldn’t form an intelligible come-back, she struck.  She was cold, she treated him as if she hated his very existence and at times, she seemed to enjoy it.

He had thought things changed on that day that Tommy had run into him with his truck.  He remembered lying on the porch, each facing another direction with their heads side by side, and talking as if there was nothing bad between them.  It was a dream.  It had to have been.  One shining light in the darkness because there had been the possibility of him getting laid?

A deep, feral growl made its way from his core as he thought about how false it had been.  Just as he had promised her in the basement, after that day, she had gone back to the being the Supreme Queen of all Bitches.

“Noo,” he moaned.  He was wrong!

He shook his head, trying to clear the darkness from between his ears, but it wouldn’t let go.  It was firmly rooted and would not be budged from where it feasted on food so rich.  For a moment, he felt his stomach clench.  It was the second time in an hour, but this time it was a memory that threatened to evacuate the acid and bile that had built up inside of him.

Even at his breaking point, he had still felt regret.  For nearly a week, he had cowered in his room thinking that he had crushed her head in the refrigeration door, then later buried her in the soil where Tippy lay hidden.  He didn’t know if it was love that caused these feelings, but there was some part of him that held onto it as tightly as it could.

“Whoa!  Get a load of this loser!”

The words yanked him back into reality as sure as a smack to the face.  Since leaving the hidden exit to the tunnel, he had been running.  His mind had retreated into itself while the ‘other’ guided him to his final location and he hadn’t been aware of where he was until this very moment.  He had come to be downtown, in an alley which was behind some of the less reputable establishments.  He had walked through here a dozen times during the day.  He had even rode his bike down here in the early morning, but never had he come when the bars and dance clubs were actually open.

Before him were two older men, one dressed in leather, the other wearing only a t-shirt and jeans.  They easily could have been bikers, and perhaps they had such transportation in front of the building, but here they were only a couple of people in his way.

“Damn,” the man in the t-shirt said.  “When did the Renaissance Festival come to town?”

Scott rested his left hand on the pommel of the wakazashi, carefully judging the distance between them and himself.  They had been leaning against the wall of The Bouncing Bunny, a gentleman’s club where he heard a dollar went a long way, when he had realized where he was.  Now, they walked three feet apart, filled the alley and blocking his passage as they approached.

“Move,” he barked.  His voice was firm, threatening, and it promised an outcome that wasn’t peaceful.

“Or what,” the man in leather asked with a laugh.

“Are you going to poke us with your little knives,” the other added.  As he spoke, he lunged toward Scott, reaching for the latter’s shoulders in an attempt to secure his arms against his sides.  It was something he had done dozens of times against older, larger men, and certainly something that should have worked on someone younger, but he didn’t understand the deadliness of the situation.  He only saw the person that was there before him.

Scott stepped quickly to the side.  As if it were one movement, his hand also drew the blade from its saya and into the air.  The action was impossibly quick, and certainly much easier than he expected it to be.  The blade of his flea market bargain passed through the man’s wrists cleanly, dropping his hands to the ground and sending two geysers of blood flying through the air.

With a snap of his wrist, he redirected the blade and sent it into the man’s mouth, widening it well beyond the point of his largest yawn and ending his life before he could even begin to scream.  The blade briefly caught against the back of his throat, but as the body dropped to its knees, its head flipped backward one hundred and eighty degrees, freeing it from its fleshy prison.

Scott placed his right hand on the bottom half of the sword’s handle and turned the blade before his eyes so that he was looking across it at the remaining attacker.  Or was he a victim?  Did it matter?

He narrowed his eyes and adjusted his stance as the other continued his approach. The man in leather was screaming, but he couldn’t hear him.  He could only hear the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.  He couldn’t see him.  He could only see the face of Tommy leering back at him.

The man in leather had drawn a switchblade at some point and led his attack with it in his right hand.  He was fast, much faster than Scott, and the blade got past his guard.  Unfortunately for the biker, he came in at an angle, rather than with a thrust.  If he had only thrust, he might have stood a chance.  The blade glanced off of the chain links, the impact jolting it loose from his grasp, and he stumbled.

The wakazashi shot up into the air and before the other could turn around, it took the man’s left arm off at the shoulder.  It fell to the ground with a meaty thump.  Scott flinched as the blood sprayed from the man’s shoulder, covering him from his face to his belt-line in the seconds that followed.  The other screamed, but only once before he lost consciousness.  Scott didn’t know it, but he was dead with-in minutes of closing his eyes.

He was at the end of the alley when he heard the screams behind him.

“Damn,” he spat, but the other only wallowed in the adrenaline rush that coursed through his veins.  He may have been discovered, but it wasn’t over by a long shot.