MISTAKEN

By: Jesse Abundis

MISTAKEN

© Jesse Abundis 2022

A Word From The Author

What a road it's been. I finished writing and polishing Mistaken in late 2019. I had my sights on an October 2020 release. Then the pandemic struck, and everything went down the drain.

With the delay, I went back, wrote new paragraphs, added more dialogue. I just went back to rebuild this novel for the fun of it.

So after a two-year delay, here it is. My finished project. My psychological thriller Mistaken. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Acknowledgements

I dedicate this book to my love Maria. Who has always been my number one fan and continues to support me in everything I do. Without her, I am nothing, and I'm blessed to have her by my side as we go through this journey of life.

To my mother Rosa, who always told me to keep fighting and ignore the critics, write what I feel is right and never look back. I could not have asked for a better mother.

My brother Angel, who has always been reading my strange new creations, and I want to take this time to congratulate my big brother on becoming a new father.

I want to thank all my friends who continue to support and read my newest projects. You know who you are, thank you.

My last shoutout to the reader, whomever you may be. Thank you for picking up your copy, and I hope you'll join me in the next book and the 100 more to come. If I ever get to 100.

To The Loving Memory Of My Late Tia Alicia and Tio Miguel.

PROLOGUE

Life sits perfectly still, untouched, unharmed. You always live with the notion that it will stay the same. There’s nothing out there that could dare fracture it.

“Please listen to me, please.”

Till you get blindsided one idle afternoon, and everything you ever knew comes crashing down.

“I know you’re mad.” An understatement.

“You have every reason to be mad.”  I’m glad to know my hate and anger are not misguided.

“I know there’s nothing I can say that will make things right, but you have to believe me when I say I love you.”

Words that used to soothe my soul; now light a fire in me.

“I’m sorry, Darren. I am. If I could take it back, I would. I know that’s the most cliché shit to say, but it’s true. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, please come back. We can fix this.” Can we?

CHAPTER 1

HERE ALONE

“Oh my god, no.” It feels like my soul is lost somewhere in the abyss, trying its hardest to cling to stay alive, “This can’t be happening!” Don’t look, just don’t look. Put it behind, put it behind you.

Thinking leads to stress, problems, opens old wounds—things I rather not dwell on. So, I killed my mind and left myself on autopilot while trying to find some sanity.

But now I must open those floodgates, take hold of the wheel and remember what I am to stay in this place. Where are we? Where is this place?

Somewhere off Highway 69, smack dab in the hillbillies of Florida, just a few miles away from Alabama. A rundown town called Brightwood. My eyes zip back and forth, room spinning, as this poor empty fool can’t make heads or tails of what’s going on around him.

“You going to sit there like a dang dummy, or are you going to order something?”

Who said that? I thought I was alone.

“Hey, buddy. Are you there!?” Two corn chip-like fingernails snap near my face. An angry underpaid waitress stares me down. So much red is on her lips, a lot of black and blue on her eyelids. Is this a diner, or have I somehow accidentally ventured into a circus?

“What the heck?” I look around as though I’m waiting for the midget carney to pop around the corner. “How and when did I get here?” I wasn’t looking for an answer, but this waitress felt compelled to answer.

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” Speaking in her best Southern accent of that waitress that’s been beaten and dragged but still has something left in the tank to spout out her sass. “You a tweaker?”

I groan and rub my weary eyes. “No, madam, I am not a tweaker. Just a tired traveler. Looking to find his place in this desolate world.”

“You like the big words, don’t you,” She snickers. “Knew a man just like you; he was queer.” That’s Florida for you.

“Such a tragic tale.” I mock. “If you don’t mind, I’d just like to rest here in silence for a bit.” The silence feels right to me. It’s the only place I want to be.

“Yeah, well, this ain’t no Library.” Which comes out as Liberry, as she puffs her chest and puts her hands to her hips, to demonstrate that she means business. “You either buy something or get the fuck out.”

My mood should have been more pleasant. Take her piss and vinegar with a smile and leave it at that. But such kindness was not overflowing from me at that very moment. So, I did something out of the ordinary; I bit back. “You do know it’s common courtesy to pour a weary traveler a cup of coffee beforehand, offer him a menu so that he may peruse your finest selection of truck stop soups.” I see her flex that jaw. “Before acting like an entitled bitch. So, I guess we’re both breaking social taboos.”

“Get the fuck out of my diner!” I knew she’d say that.

“So, you’re the owner and waitress; are you doing some Undercover Boss revival for CBS?” I shouldn’t push; it’s not in my nature. I should leave and never come back, but this other side of me demands ‘enough is enough’ sooner or later; you’re going to have to grow a pair. It sounds nice. It sounds fair. But today is not that day, and I fall back to old habits once more. “I’m sorry, I’ll go. Just a bad night.” I slap a twenty on the table. Despite never ordering a single thing, anything to keep the peace. That’s who I am—always scared to act, scared to lash. Docile.

“Damn right, you are,” the Waitress smirks, content that she broke me. Her gleam smile raises the hair on her lip. How badly she needs those whiskers removed. I can only pray my twenty will go to waxing.

I groggily step out of the booth, the hairy lip waitress eyeing me as I walk away. I would bid everyone a farewell if it weren’t only me. Only me, how the words feel so cold as it goes through my head, yet it feels so right. Like it was meant for me.

CHAPTER 2

THIS PAIN, THE ONLY THING REAL

Are you going to do it again? How much pain can you put on yourself till you break? Don't do this. Just walk away. Why do you do this to yourself, old man? Why do you put yourself through this abuse? Be brave, be a fucking man for once. End it. Maybe in another life.

"Hey, it's me. Straight to voicemail again. I'm getting used to talking to it. It's nice hearing your voice."

My blood is running cold, chest tightens. I want to die.

"I don't know where you're at or what you're doing, and that kills me." Bridget, the master manipulator, the girl I fawned over, picturing our relationship to go on for miles, what a fool I was.

How many years did I spend bent over for her, doing everything she ever asked. I want to slam my head on the wall, stop all this self-inflicting embarrassment that oozes through every orifice of my body.

"Linda and Tom keep telling me that you'll come back to your senses, that you're just overreacting again." Oh, great, the two closest people who I consider friends are on her side, great, just great. As though my self-esteem couldn't be any lower.

"I still love you." Still love you? as though I did something for her to fall out of love with me.

Stop listening to these voicemails. Please turn it off.

"We're both at fault. We both made mistakes. You know it's true. Darren, I hope you calm down and call me back. I would really like that."

How I slam my fist on the steering wheel, scream at the top of my lungs as I hear that newly left voicemail play. Causing me more profound psychological trauma on my weary psyche, and for what? I know what's going to be said, so why do I keep listening to her messages. Maybe because I need to feel angry, I want to be angry.

My fingers are ice-cold. I can feel the pressure rushing through my nose, pinching at my nasal cavity. It feels like the worst nosebleed is about to occur.

I'm trying desperately to get my breathing in check. Everything around me spins for a second. Glad I haven't crashed yet. Vision gets a little cloudy here and there. But everything seems to fall back into place. Keep it up, Darren; you'll be fine.

As I continue to drive and find my center, a part of me wonders if I am at fault for what happened, the other part of me hates myself for thinking that, while the small portion behind my mind begs for me to focus on my breathing before I crash the goddamn car.

Can't I have my old life back? I miss the days of going to work, talking with co-workers, coming home to cuddle and watch Netflix. Life was so carefree till Bridget, the so-called love of my life, my reason for living, ruined it. She burned our paradise to the ground till there was nothing left. Who am I kidding? It was only a paradise to me.

I cared, loved, and paid the price for being a loyal person. And what does she get? She gets to live her life with not a single stain on her, and it's not fucking fair.

You're doing it again; you're hurting yourself. Just stop it. Focus on something else. Like the fact I need gas, I'm getting close to running on empty. When was the last time I filled the tank? Better do it now before I get stranded. I don't trust the locals in these backwater towns. They give you that Deliverance vibe.

CHAPTER 3

HAVE WE MET?

"Are your tires a mess? Are they on their last thread? Is that darn tire too expensive to buy? Fear not, I've got you covered. Come on down to Crazy Bob's Discount Tires! We got them all at a low, low price. New, refurbished, whatever you're looking for, we've got it. How can I afford these insane crazy low prices, you ask? It's simple; it's because I'm Crazy Bob!" Shut up, Bob. Stupid Bob on the radio.

Finally, I made it to my destination. I pull up to the pump and put the car in park. I should be stepping outside, but tiredness wins this battle. So, I close my eyes just for a few seconds; I try to allow my mind and body to shut down just for a bit.  I ease myself into my seat, trying to forget everything and everyone.

A kaleidoscope of colors begins to dance around the dark space of my mind. An energetic vibration starts to rumble; I feel my body drifting to another place in time. Intense flashes of a broken picture begin to fade in and fade out. I see a man wiping down a counter, pouring drinks. My other senses start to pick up more—the smoke, laughter. I've been here.

I can feel myself settle in. Where was I just a minute ago? Who remembers.

A girl sits not far from me; she's cute. I can feel her eyes glance at me. No, it's too soon for that. I look down, trying not to meet her eyes. She can do better.

I hear her sigh and walk away, no doubt feeling neglected. You did the right thing.

A drink lays before me. I focus on it. Seeing a sad reflection of myself, why am I sad?

Why am I here? Why aren't I home with Bridget?

I hear someone humming; someone's eyes begin to fall on me. I look to find it; I know someone is out there watching. "Wake up!"

I open my eyes; my heart is racing, and I'm gasping for air. I force my eyes open, knowing going back to sleep will do me wrong. What a nightmare that was. Get a hold of yourself, Darren. Nothing has been right since that day. Everything just blends.

Seeking professional help may be the best course to take. God knows I need it. I just need someone to listen and tell me I'm not overreacting and my feelings and emotions are in the right place. Though I'm afraid to call it quits and head back, home isn't home. It's just a place where others see me as they paint me to be. Where a friend in need will not be in reach, Bridget has them all in the palm of her hands. Don't overthink, just don't.

My tired eyes glance at the 'E-Mart' neon sign that radiates. Never heard of this company in my life. Probably the poor schmuck that works here hasn't either. Out we go, the gas is not going to pump itself.

I can hear my muscles crack as I step out of my red Honda Accord. How freaking long have I been out there? Four, five, six hours? Time seems to be nonexistent in my state of mind. The only thing that matters is getting lost.

$2.50 for gas. That's rare to find. Then again, there must be a catch to it. Are they watering down the product? And that is never good for your fuel injector, or thingamajigger your mechanic always seems to find wrong with it, the bastard probably doesn't know himself, just making up shit as he goes. Jesus H Christ, I have been in that car too long. I'm rambling incoherently.

I swipe my debit card, but a poorly written sign indicates to pay inside. "Can't I just get a break?" I ask the man upstairs, who is undoubtedly laughing at my pathetic excuse of a life. At least someone is enjoying themselves.

I drag my feet, forced to go the extra mile for gas, groaning like a zombie and rolling my eyes back in annoyance. The bugs are zipping around me, trying to feast off my blood. I think I can even hear a hissing gator in the dark. Fucking Florida, next time I throw a fit, I'm choosing Las Vegas.

The door chimes as I walk into the gas station. I see a bald little man pacing around the dairy aisle, mumbling to himself, looking displeased. Not as much as the gas station attendant working the register; when it comes to being fed up, that guy is on a whole different level.

The worker's eyes meet mine, and he groans, seems I'm taking up his precious time from his phone. I smile, hoping that will change the mood, no such luck. Can't say I didn't try.

That has always been a thing with me. I smile even when I don't want to. It's a nervous tick of mine. A reassuring smile goes a long way.

I wander around a bit, seeing what catches my eye.  My stomach begins to grumble as I linger at all the salted treats. So many tasty treats, but they're bad for me, one bite, and I'd be regretting it the next day. Is that me talking or the ghost of Bridget that still lurks in my mind? The one that made me wait on her hand and foot. The one that made me drink down all those god-awful shakes, forced to wake at 5 a.m. sharp for those daily runs? How long will I be following the rules of a false idol? Fuck her, fuck her lifestyle. She cannot tell me what to do anymore.

"I've been looking and looking, but you don't have any soymilk. What establishment runs without soymilk?" The shrieking sound of the bald man snaps me back to reality. I rub my face and grab whatever. I'm going to need a drink.

"This is ludicrous. You just wait and see when I get online. I'm going to write the worst Yelp review you have ever seen in your life." The bald soymilk lover rages on while the gas attendant pretends to give a crap.

A car comes pulling in with its high beams at full blast, one of those trucks that says 'I'm Southern and darn proud of it' blasting Heavy Metal. I would've pegged them for a Country lover. We are in Murica land, after all. But then again, I can see why Metal might be so popular here. You do live in a constant state of repression and God-loving bible thumpers. Metal gives you an escape and platform to vent your anger against your mundane life.

The young man in the driver's seat yells something to the girl on the passenger side; she's smoking like it's the only air she can breathe. He slams the door and makes his way inside.

The door chimes, but the gas attendant and the bald soymilk drinker are still at it. Is his soymilk that important? It's nearing midnight. Why does he need it so badly? Does he have a fetish for this thing? Does he get off to women drinking it? How rude of me; we live in modern times; it can be dudes. Whatever his reason for his soy obsession is beyond me.

My eyes linger on the beverages. And so, starts the next grand debate, do I want a soft drink, energy drink, sports drink, cold frappuccino or do I want a beer? And if so, what size? So many selections, what to choose, what to choose? Fuck my indecisive mind.

"Beer." I hear a voice say behind me. I turn and see the young truck driving Heavy Metal Enthusiast standing there, wearing a cut-off jacket, displaying his tattoos of God knows what. "You look like a man that requires a beer. I'm an expert on knowing the telltale signs." He chuckles, and I chuckle back, I don't want to, but I have to.

"You would not be wrong," I say to him.

"God knows I need a pack for myself right now. I have the biggest pain in the world riding my ass." I know he means the girl in the car. "I know it's wrong. You should not drink your problems down. But a cold one would take the edge off things."

"It never hurts to have a drink once in a while," I say to him.

He gets a chuckle. "Amen, my brother." He slaps my shoulder hard, almost causing me to lose my snacks. "So, let's hear it."

"Hear what?" I chuckle nervously.

"Your story, the reason you're here trying to drown your problems away." He stands there, waiting for me to confess.

First person to ask, but why should I bear my heart to a stranger? Then again, whatever is said here, would never be repeated to another soul. What's the worst that can happen?

"Saw something that just freaking pissed me off and broke me at the same time." My Heavy Metal friend mouths a silent 'Oh shit' as I pour my heart out. "Funny thing, I started that day as the most upbeat optimistic, son of a bitch alive. Nothing in the world could phase me. I just threw caution to the wind, thinking if you did things by the book, life would repay you in spades."

"What did you see?" His curiosity is getting the best of him. "What turns an optimistic man into a dour one?"

"Putting your ten years of faith into the wrong person." I can already hear Bridget moaning; she never did that with me. No, but this one, she needed to let the world know how good he was. "I thought she was my first and last."

"Bitch." My new friend retorts, already knowing where this tale would end. "Please tell me you fucked them up?" I shake my head in a resounding no. He seems more disappointed in me than I am in myself.

"I just stared at them, and they looked at me, like two horny deer basking in the sunlight. I could feel the blood rushing to my head and this little voice mumbling something to me."

"What did it say?" He's intrigued.

"Get out," I say, taking a deep breath before I exhale. "That's why I got into my car and drove away. From New York to wherever the road takes me."

"Dang, man. You're like on a self-discovery path and shit." My new friend isn't as backwatered as I thought he was. "You need that beer."

"I'm the designated driver." That's Bridget talk. "On second thought, why not. You only live once, right?"

For a split second, this new radical side of me takes hold. A new me is born. Until that sackless side rears its ugly head once more, and I become what I always hated. "I'll drink it when I find a place to park and crash for the night." Getting pulled over for a DUI and getting sent to jail isn't my thing. I may hate myself now, but I'll thank myself later.

"Once that beer is in your system, you'll feel like a whole new man." My Heavy Metal friend slaps my shoulder, and this time I manage to hold my place.

I grab the beer of my choosing; my new friend smiles at my selection. It has a little devil on it; it's called, Arrogant Bastard Ale. Don't read too much into it.

"What about you, my friend." It's only fair. He listened to my tragic tale; now time to hear his. "What's your story?"

"Nothing of importance really, I'm just a victim caught in the crossfire of someone's reckless decisions."

"Guessing the person giving you the friendly fire is coming from the little lady in the car." I tilt my head to the parked truck outside.

How he laughs, nodding his head. "She's only a little lady when she ain't a pissed-off demon."

"Then you better have four beers," I advise him.

"Amen, brother." He extends his hand out to me. I take it without hesitation. "Well, I wish you well, sir."

"Likewise." We part ways.

I make my way to the counter. The soymilk drinker is gone; I guess he'll have to go soyless for one more night.

"Is this all?" The bored gas attendee says to me.

"Not quite. Give me forty on number six." Another pissed-off look. No pleasantries given, just a stern look of bitterness from the worker as he punches in the sale. "You have a great night." Someone has to say it.

Once outside, I'm pumping the gas, closing my eyes for a bit, trying to let my mind wander again, hoping to find my zen. But the smell of smoke hits my nostrils. So I bring myself out of my sleep mode and find a girl looking at me a few feet away. Cut off shorts, dirty blonde hair, a nose ring. Tattoo of a snake running down her thigh, what the heck am I seeing?

"Hello?" I say to her.

"I've seen you." She points her finger at me.

"I do a lot of hemorrhoid commercials." I joke, but she's not laughing. Which, in turn, makes me feel nervous, so I clear my throat. "That was a joke."

"You from around here?" She says, taking another hit from her cigarette.

Who is this girl? What does she fucking want?  Finally, it dawns on me. She's the Heavy Metal Enthusiast's girlfriend. "Ask your boyfriend. I told him my life story."

"Ain't asking him, I'm asking you." She's so demanding. It reminds me of Bridget.

"No, I'm not from these parts." I keep giving in to her questions, hoping she'll stop.

"Then why's you here?" Thank God for the education system.

"I think that you meant why am I here. It's pretty simple, my car is low on gas, this is the only place near me, and my life isn't going as well as I envisioned it. That's why I'm standing here talking to someone like you." I could have shortened my words and made them more polite, but something in this girl brought the worst out of me.

The pump locks. I get in my car to leave. I lower my eyes down, trying my best not to make eye contact with this woman. She seems unstable.

"You ever been to White River?" She shouts as I start my car, making her way closer to my window. She's studying my face.

"White River?" I look at her as I switch the car out of the park gear. "Doesn't sound like my cup of tea." I pull away, letting this awkward conversation become a thing of the past, watching that white trash of a woman vanish in the haze.

Fucking rednecks. Shorts in this cold weather, why would you be wearing them?

CHAPTER 4

HERE ALONE

"Everywhere I went, I didn't fit in. I was always lonely. Till I signed up to Whitefarmersonly dot com, now I'm not lonely anymore. I'm among my people, and no one can shame me for my political views or my proud European heritage. Thank you, Whitefarmersonly dot com." The further you go, the more bizarre things get on the radio.

Back on the open road, my old friend, my new home. The only place that brings balance, where there was none. A lone wolf bathing in the light of the Moon. Fuck, this is pathetic.

The only positive of being alone in a car is that you can fart as loud as you want and not worry about mannerisms.

What to do? Count sheep, not very smart if I walk that line. You can never tell what sheep would be the one to hang you. There are always those sweet voicemails that almost cause me to blackout from sheer rage. So, a little radio it is. Let's see what offensive thing I'll stumble upon this time.

"There are dark days ahead, my brothers and sisters, dark days indeed. Man's time has come. He has played the fool for too long and ignored the signs painted on the wall. His time to meet the beast is here. He will come face-to-face with the Devil, and when this time comes, I pray you'll be strong enough to handle its wrath." That's some damn good Southern preaching. "We must reject this evil, fight it away by all means. We must reject the homosexual lust that it pours into our hearts!"

I turn off the radio while depressingly letting out a sigh, as I wonder if this is how I wanted to live my life? Can I even say that I was happy with my old life? I must have been. Look how tormented I am. Is that the truth, or am I just forcing myself to believe that?

And if Bridget hadn't done what she had done, would you still think the same?

God damn, I could go for that beer now, more than anything in my life. I need something to numb my indecisive thoughts. Why do I hear music, is that grunge?

High beams come bearing down on me. This fucking driver wants to cut me off. They are jerking the car back and forth, revving the engine as hard as they can, like it's a life-and-death situation to get ahead of me. I'm driving the speed limit, watching where I go. This idiot is insane to think I'm going to move. Fucking hillbillies, I swear.

I pick up the pace, but this maniac keeps trying to cut me off. That's it. I'm moving to the side. I'm going to let this bastard pass. The car is moving in. Wait, that's not grunge that sounds like Heavy Metal. I turn to see--

CHAPTER 5

THE DEVIL IS A FRIEND OF MINE

Is this hell? It feels like hell. A dark presence is clawing at my soul. The flames of this fiery pit scorch my flesh. The pain runs down from my spine to my body; it's an agony I have never felt before. Yet, I do not scream. I smile and let this world be.

"God damn it, leave the car alone. We don't have time to be fiddling around." I hear these words that sound like a foreign tongue to me. "I will hide it. I will handle this." I used to be them, but now I am not.

"I need to look." That God-awful cry. It makes my skin crawl. "I know it's here; I knew it from the start."

"Let it be, get back!" Titans clash, the skies turn black, thunder begins to fall. The ground starts to shake and soon parts, sending me down into the dark abyss, never to be heard from again.

It feels like centuries have passed since I felt a presence. I call out to it. "Who are you, and where am I?"

"Shit, he's awake." Another whisper that I do not recognize speaks out to me. Is this lost soul just like me?

The Devil speaks. "Your mine." I can feel its breath on my face. "There's no way out for you." Its final words, as it drags me down into this bottomless pit. God save me.

CHAPTER 6

CHAINED DOWN

In a world of darkness, the only thing clear is the sound of my heartbeat. Up and down have no relevance in this place and time. I grasp, hoping to find balance, but everywhere feels so empty. This bizarre world has no life.

Darkness slowly begins to turn red. My angst begins to bubble harder to the surface as I see the color start to fill in the blanks, how I wish for darkness again.

I quickly pick up the pace, trying to outrun the red that starts devouring the world around me.

Run, keep running, but there seems to be no end to this place. My hands start shaking.

So much light, yet I still feel this overwhelming sense of claustrophobia consume my very soul. "Let me out!" I choke on my panic, sweat beating down my brow, the air in my lungs running dry.

"Leave me be, leave me alone!" I cry out in panic, screaming at this unknown force hiding amongst the red. "I just want to go home. Let me go home!"

* * *

A desperate gasp for air, as my mind snaps back to the here and now. My eyes flutter to open. A haze washes over my vision. I can't make out the images in front of me, but I know I'm alive. I'm alive. I feel so alive. As though my soul is cleansed.

My neck cracks as I swing my head right; throbbing pain washes over my spine. A musty smell fills my nostrils as I slowly realize that I'm inside someone's basement. Is it my basement? Do I have a basement? Not that I remember.

"How did I get here, and why am I chained to a water heater?" I can't help but take a panic gulp at the mere sight.

This is how every fucking horror movie starts. If a little man dressed in a Saw mask asks you, 'Do you want to play a game?' shit your pants.

Trying to retrace my steps is a burden in itself. The harder I probe for answers, the more my head starts thumping like a bastard. I run my hand across my head, only to discover bandages wrapped tightly around it.

Who would patch me up and then chain me up? They need something from me. God, don't let it be sex. I quickly check to see if I've been violated; no, I'm good, for now. What if this is the start of things.

Calm down, keep thinking. I left New York in tears, lost myself for hours. I thought of ending my life, but I'm nowhere brave to do such a thing. Jump forward, the diner, that bitch of a waitress. Then I went for gas, the gas station.

A sudden rush pours into my head, the highway, bright lights, and heavy metal music. "They drove me off the road."

The who comes front and center, the Heavy Metal Enthusiast and his white trash of a girlfriend, something was wrong the moment she stepped in to confront me. I can't remember what she asked, something about White Lake? No, that's not right. Think Darren, think. "White River, if I ever been there," I exclaim out loud. But there was more to it.

Footsteps begin to echo; it's coming from upstairs. They're coming down. It's getting closer and closer. The door leading to the basement is kicked open, the light shines upon me, I see shadows looking at my frightened face, heart freezes at sight, I crawl to the corner.

Fear grips me in the worst way. Closer and closer, the shadows descend upon me. I close my eyes and pray, "Please, God save me, take me back home. Protect me from these demons. I did nothing wrong. I was on my own, trying to find peace in my broken heart. Please God, if you're out there, please protect me,"

"I'm sorry it had to go down this treacherous way. I truly am." That voice, the same one that recommended me to have a beer. The Heavy Metal Enthusiast looks down to the floor, hiding the shame in his eyes. "It was all in the heat of the moment, is all."

"Why?" I stammer with my words, shake from fright. Two other faces stand behind him, looking as scared as I am. "I didn't do anything to you. I was just on my way. Why did you do this?"

"You know why." That voice, that smell of tobacco. It's her, the girl with the snake tattoo running down her thigh. It's Heavy Metal Enthusiast's girlfriend. Soon she comes into view, pushing all three aside. "Stop playing this scared act, ain't no one buying. So you can stop lying now." She holds her lit cigarette.

"Lying about what!?" A nervous chuckle pours out of me.

"You've been to White River." She takes a puff before pointing her finger at me. "I remember seeing you there. You acting different now, but you just trying to throw off your scent."

"Look, I've never been there in my life. You have to believe me. Do I look like someone who would visit White Whatever?" The three faces feel sorry for me. I can see it in their expression that they believe what I say, but it's her who I have to convince; she's calling the shots. And how I feel my life slowly begin to drain at the deranged look in her eyes.

There has to be some humanity in her. She's mad, and she's confused. I just need to talk her down from this. "Look, let's all calm down. Let's talk."

"Please do." She says with a smirk.

"You think I'm someone I'm not." My voice crackles with nervousness. "It happens."

"You saying I'm crazy." Her tone is sharp and cold.

"No, that's not what I meant." I feel faint. "People make mistakes. People confuse others for other people. You get me?" My brain is stroking out. I can't even form my sentences correctly.

"No." She says coldly. "You're making this worst on yourself."

"I live in New York. I have an apartment in Brooklyn!"

She whistles at that tidbit. "Mighty long way you've come, you here because you love our rare cuisine?" That's a joke. I can tell by that stupid grin that shows her stained yellow teeth. "Boy, you best stop lying and just come clean."

"Come clean about what!?" Rage pours out of me. "Make sense, you god damn welfare queen!" I lunge at her like a wild animal, hands out, trying to go straight for her throat. I would have gotten to her if it hadn't been for the chain.

She crackles with excitement. "My, my." Enjoying my tantrum in all its glory. "You ain't as subdued as you claim to be, mister New York City."

"Angela quit it!" The witch has a name, spoken by the poor girl in the back.

"Don't be fucking retarded. You don't use real names!" A male in his late twenties, with a mullet and a basic handlebar mustache, says to the other unfamiliar face.

"Both of you shut up!" Angela's sharp voice silences the quarrel. "Head back upstairs. We got this." The "we" is her and her boyfriend.

The two unknown faces take off without thinking twice.

Not a word is said until the door slams shut. "Time to confess."

"I'm not who you think I am. My name is Darren Phillips. I live in New York, in an apartment with--" can't say, girlfriend. "With a roommate, the address is 346 North Avenue Apartment A-12. Check my phone, check my car, check my wallet. All the proof you need is  there." But my pleads seem to bore her; she yawns at my request.

"What did I do? Just tell me, did I piss you off, did I hurt you?" I cry out in frustration.

"You know what you did." Her eyes flare with hate as I try to probe for answers.

"I don't. I fucking don't. Because I never met you in my life. I've been here for two days! All that time I spent on the road. I swear!"

"We have to go back." Her boyfriend enters the frame. "It never hurts to look. We might find something that puts an end to all this."

"You don't have my stuff?" I ask.

"Like I said, the heat of the moment." He tells me once more.

Angela drops the cigarette on the floor. "We'll be back then, I guess." It's a waste of time for her, but hopefully, it will buy me time. To do what exactly, I'm not sure yet. "Try not to do anything stupid. I'd hate for you to end up with buckshot. I don't want to clean up any more messes."

As they turn to take their first steps, I shout desperately. "Why don't you just call the cops?"

"Oh, honey," She shakes her head. "We're a little too late for that, don't you think?" She lets out a devilish laugh as they walk away.

As I'm left alone, I let out a sob, feeling my heart race with dread. "Please, come for me," I say under my breath, hoping my loved ones are searching for me.

CHAPTER 7

BRACE YOURSELF

Lights, cameras, action! Applause breaks out. A giant jackass of a host is wearing a bright red jacket with rhinestone. "And I told them, 'I wouldn't look in the back if I were you!'." People laugh. Somewhere I've missed the punchline.

I'm standing in the middle of this bad cliché of a late-night talk show. The audience has taken notice of my presence. A few start to point, as though I'm a special gift to this delicacy of idiocy.

"Look what the cat dragged in." The Host bursts with joy. He comes running to my side, gesturing the cameras to follow along. "This guy here is a bad joke." Crowd laughs.

He puts his arm around me. "I'm joking. I'm joking. How are you, buddy?"

"Fine, I guess. What the fuck is happening, and who the fuck are you?" I say to him.

"Easy, live tv, we can't swear." The host says out loud for all to hear.

"Live tv, how did I end up on live tv?" No one bothers to answer my question.

"Tonight, we have a special guest. Do you wanna take a 'stab' who it is?" He says that as if it's a clue.

"I have no idea, Jojo fucking Siwa?" People laugh.

"Nope, it's your ex-girlfriend and her lover," And just like that, my worst nightmare appears right beside me. "Fucking live on the stage for the world to see!"

"Hey, you." Bridget manages to moan. The other man is balls deep into her. "Fuck, he's too damn good."

The crowd begins to hoot and holler, cheering on their fornication. Telling the other man to go harder, the women wishing they were Bridget.

My head starts to spin, stomach turns to knots. This can't be happening. "What the fuck is going on, stop, stop this!"

* * *

"Stop!" I shout in a whimper. "Jesus, it wasn't real." I look around in my confused state. There's no lights, no cameras, no Bridget fucking. I can't help but mutter a prayer of thanks.

I start to groan and moan in pain as I slowly begin to awake. "Fuck, I'm here." I whimper, hoping all of this had been a part of a bad dream.

How I managed to get a few winks is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it's the head injury. What are the odds that I'm really in a coma, and this is just some sort of spiritual journey I have to traverse to make my way home? That would be nice. I'd take that over the reality that I'm facing.

It's night, and those two dimwits of Angela haven't come down to check on me after the little fiasco of letting her name slip. Both ran scared shitless of this whole situation when they had an out. But they're still sticking with this plan. They won't let me go. They had all the opportunity to end this quagmire. No matter how scared they are of this situation, they're loyal to Angela. Be it out of friendship or fear. I need to find a way to get out.

I try pulling on the chain as hard as I can. But it won't budge. I let out a frustrated sigh, pulling on my hair as hard as possible to relieve my anxiety. How could this happen to me, me of all people? Fuck all of this.

Think Darren, think. Put your mind to it. Hey, if I break my ankle, maybe I can slip the chain off, I've seen people do it in movies, but that's with their wrist. It's still possible for me to do it, right?

"You must be the most fucking useless piece of shit ever!" The hair on the back of my neck stands as the howling banshee enters the house once again. I can hear Angela's angry stomping footsteps, soon it becomes a free-for-all to see who can shout the loudest, and right now, the lead dog seems to be Angela.

"Let's all take deep breaths," the Heavy Metal Enthusiast is the pacifist. He's trying to calm the fire of this situation, keep everyone on the leash. "Just because we couldn't find it today doesn't mean we can't find it the next. We need to relax and keep our fucking heads cool." What couldn't they find? My car? How hard is it to find my freaking vehicle? It's in the same place they left it, right?

I pull on the chain, trying my hardest to see if I can break free. No luck. Panic starts to set in severely. The urge to scream for help is my only chance. But they made no effort to gag me. She feels safe to do whatever she pleases. It doesn't matter how much noise I make. She knows nobody's going to listen.

An overwhelming sense of doom is washing upon me. If I have no proof and my word is no good, what chances do I have of making it out alive?

I try for the chain, again and again, tears running down my face, panicking like a wild animal stuck in a cage. "Let me go, let me go," I say under my panic breath as I try to free myself, but it's a failed attempt.

Breathe Darren. Focus on your breathing. Forget about the wicked things they have in store for you. Fuck, breathe. Think about anything, think about anything but the here and now.

The world falls dark once again. I start hearing the sound of distorted voices, people typing away. My job, the last place I wanted to be, is my source of salvation.

For a moment, I lose myself back in my old life. The hustle of the grind, friends, someplace I could call my own. How mundane it all felt back then, taken for granted. The more I focus on it, the more I can feel it, smell it, hold it. How I wish if I opened my eyes, I would be there.

A part of me begins to pray like no tomorrow, "Please, God, listen to me, hear me. Take me there. Would you please take me away from this? I know you're out there. Please take me home. I don't deserve to be here."

"How you holding up?" It feels like death when I open my eyes and find myself still in this basement.

"I'm good." I choke back tears of fear as I speak to the Heavy Metal Enthusiast.

"You don't got to be brave with me," his face is full of concern. "I'd be pretty scared if I was in your position as well."

"I want to go home. Just let me go home. I swear I won't say a goddamn word." I plead with all my soul, hoping to find some compassion in there.

"I'd let you go if I could, but it's not my call." He says as though he understands the fear I'm going through, but he offers no freedom—just excuses.

I bang my fist on the floor in a fit of rage. "You can't do this to people. I have rights!" I wish I hadn't broken into tears when I said that, but I couldn't hold it in; my emotions are all over the place.

"I'm an innocent man. I did nothing wrong." I plea to him. "You are making a huge mistake. Just let me go; you don't have to do this!"

He shakes his head, wrestling with his conscience. "Can't. I can't do that."

"I know this wasn't your plan. She pushed you to do this, she got into your head with her constant badgering, and you snapped. You just did it to shut her up," The Heavy Metal Enthusiast looks away, nodding his head softly, knowing I'm right. "It was a mistake; that's what this all is. Look, if you can't let me go, go to the cops, tell them what happened. I'll say you saved me. I won't blame you or your friends; you have my word, I swear it. Just listen to reason."

"Why are you in Florida?" He turns to look me in the eyes.

"I don't need a reason. You don't own this God damn state!" I growl at him. "I told you why; you fucking know!"

"Yeah, you told me." He says that with laughable doubt.

"Yeah, I told you. My girlfriend cheated on me. I had a mental breakdown and ran away like a fucking coward." A confession I've been refusing to acknowledge. "I should have stayed home, tackled my problem head-on."

"Don't beat yourself; this has been a shit day for all of us." The Heavy Metal Enthusiast walks back from his lingering doubt and falls back with me.

"My car, didn't you find my car?" I ask desperately.

"We had a mishap." He laughs. "Turns out, we can't remember where we left it. As I said before, it was a heat of the moment type of situation and a long stretch of road; It all just starts to look alike."

All I can do is hang my head in disappointment. "So, what happens now?" I'm out of willpower. I'm out of strength; this is too much to bear.

"Well," he rubs his chin. "I'd recommend you get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day."

CHAPTER 8

HANG HIM

"Whatever you do, don't look in the trunk." Laughter all around as the joke breaks. Tobacco in the air, clashes of glasses in the distance. It's a good time.

"I don't know why I allow myself to get pushed around. Maybe because I'm weak or just too scared of confrontation, I think that's it. Growing up, I saw my parents fight a lot. I know every couple fights, but theirs went to a different level. They scared the living hell out of me; they really did.

"I always remember that sensation; when the air started to change, their eyes and mood just turned to a boil. My hands would get clammy, and my heart would start racing like it was about to pop out of my chest. People say you can't taste anger, but I beg to differ."

I can already see my younger self running to hide, locking myself in the closet, and counting until the shouting stops. "Run, little frightened animal, run, but it doesn't matter how far you go because those scars are going to be with you until the day you die." Here I am speaking the truth to a man I don't even know his name, in this quaint little bar.

"That's your origin story?" He grins like a demented fool as the next song on the jukebox pops on. "I was kinda hoping it would be a little bit darker than that, just saying."

"Sorry, my life isn't a comic book movie." I roll my eyes as I let out a chuckle. This bar feels out of place, but it feels right.

"So, getting back on track," he licks his chops. "What did you say when you saw the woman you loved getting pounded balls deep?"

The words choke, hesitation creeps up. "Who remembers." I lie, but he sees right through it, this stranger of mine.

"Come on, don't get shy on me. We're all friends here." Friends, something I've wanted so badly.

"I'm sorry." He pauses, wondering if I'm apologizing for something. "I said I was sorry to her."

He shakes his head in disappointment. A second later, he burst into laughter. "Sweet Jesus, you are something else. I mean, I've seen my share of sackless men, but none like you!" His face is turning red.

"Sackless, why? Because I didn't act like a barbarian?" I say to him.

"No," He points his finger at me, trying to catch his breath. "Ok, I'm better now. But you failed to do anything. Anyone else would have done something if they had seen that."

"Maybe I'm not like other people." I can't help but feel hurt.

"Why didn't you do anything? Why did you let her walk over you?"

* * *

"Hang 'em High," I'm forcefully brought back into reality, can't make heads or tails of what's happening to me. The world around me is still a blur. So many dark shadows are digging their claws into me, lifting me to my feet. "Hurry the fuck up, ladies." The shrieking banshee screams at the top of her lungs as she stares into my soul. I can see a smile trace on its ugly deformed face.

"Let me go, let me go, just let me go!" My panicked screams echo through this world, bouncing off these cryptic walls. "Why are you doing this? Just tell me." the drunkenness of sleep washes away, and my senses start to connect everything bit by bit. The here and now slowly trickles together.

The Heavy Metal Enthusiast to my left, his dim-witted friend to my right, the scared unnamed girl in the far left corner just watching this whole fiasco, as both her friends hang me like a piece of meat from the pipes above.

"Don't hang me. You're better than this!" I cry out in horror.

Angela flashes a giant grin, enjoying the ruckus that pours out of me. "This ain't no lynching. We about to get the truth out of you, son, one way or another, that I promise."

"Don't listen to this crazy bitch; she's out of her mind." They're caught in the middle of all this, but they won't cross Angela. "Listen to me; I'm not the person you think," I scream at the top of my lungs trying to wrestle free. "Please find my car!"

Angela steps closer to me as they hook me in place, giving a taunt in the way she walks. "How about you make this easy and spill your guts. It don't have to be this hard, but if you want me to rough you up, I'd be much---"

A strong, driven kick to the gut ended this witch's talk. I don't know what possessed me to do it. Something inside me just had enough of this taunt. The moment she was in range, I took my shot. What a sight it was, seeing her gasp for air, grabbing her stomach in pain. It felt so right. Finally, victory, one short-lived.

A mere second later, her boyfriend steps in and delivers a thundering punch that snaps my head back. Thank God for being dazed and confused, or I might have felt that.

"Holy shit, you fucking killed him. I heard his neck snap!" A loud, muffled panic is what I hear. It sounds like I'm underwater. "He's dead. He's so fucking dead." But my groan puts them at ease.

"Everyone simmer down, now!" The Heavy Metal Enthusiast walks over to me and lifts my head back to the upright position. "See, he's fine, going to have a nasty headache later, but beyond that, he's fine." He heads over to his downed girlfriend, tries to give her a hand back on her feet, but she slaps his support away.

The demon rises again. Angela's smile wiped away. "I want the truth," she growls at me, looking more sinister than before. "You were at White River, four days ago, I remember you. You was chatting up Thelma, had her swooning. Later in the night, she comes to me, says she's heading out for a night of fun with you."

"Bull." I managed to spill out.

"I waited for her, was the last one out of White River, and she never came back. Thelma wouldn't do that to me. She'd call, she'd text me. To go on and vanish like that, that ain't like her."

"What do you think I did?" What a punch that was. The ringing, the fucking ringing, won't stop in my ears.

"That's what I want to know," she crosses her arms, staring down my soul, trying to find some form of hesitation in me. "Get that burden off your shoulders. Just confess." And I do.

"If your friend Thelma is anything like you, I wouldn't have touched her, not even with a goddamn pole." I flash my bleeding gums, which reward me with two hard strikes to the ribs. But, she's not done, not in a long shot. She preps herself like a world champ boxer about to work on a punching bag.

"That's enough!" Her boyfriend saves the day, blocking the next strike and pulling her off me.

"Get off me, you fag!" Angela screams at him. But the brave bastard stands between us.

"You ain't using your head. You're too hot. It's clouding your judgment." He's fighting to push her back.

"You don't know jack shit!" She vents her frustration at him, trying to push him away, but he stands his ground.

"I am the only one here thinking straight. You can beat him all you want," please don't encourage that. "Sooner or later, he's going to tell you what you want to hear, to make the beating stop. And what would that accomplish? We still won't know what happened to Thelma. Just admit you're out of your element!"

Those words alone put her at ease. She backs away, rubbing her chin, as her mind cycles around, till finally a decision is made. "You're right." The look in her eyes, those are the scariest looking pair of eyes I've seen in my life. "I need Bobby."

The jaws in the room fall, the Heavy Metal Enthusiast fires back in protest. "Not him. We don't need that psychopath here!" But Angela smirks, ignoring his pleads, and vanishes up the stairs leaving everyone in the room out of breath.

"Who's Bobby?" I ask, hanging like a piece of meat.

"Someone who is going to make you wish that you were dead." The unknown male of the group says to me. The other girl begins to pray silently for my coming demise.

"We got to defuse this quick." The Heavy Metal Enthusiast says. He turns to me and asks a straightforward question. "You fucking innocent?"

"Yes." I groan.

"Just hang in there." He can't help but chuckle at his joke. "We'll be back." And off go The Three Stooges, leaving me to twirl around in mid-air.

"Fuck my life." It is all I can say as I hang.

CHAPTER 9

PEE BREAK

Time is pretty non-essential when you're just hanging around, literally. Everything starts to feel the same, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. It's all one now.

Whistling show tunes has been a source of keeping my mind occupied. That and counting how many blotches of mold I can find in this basement, twenty-six so far.

Huh, I've never felt closer to that stupid poster with the cat that says, ‘Hang in there.’ I get that cat. Its frustration, its anxiety. I understand it now; you and I are kindred spirits.

Jeez, I'm losing it. I wish the stupid rednecks would show up by now.

I need to pee. I'm amazed that I didn't piss my pants when Angela beat the crap out of me. No other time would have been more acceptable to piss one's pants, but I can't do it. I'm a grown fucking man. I can't; I shall not pee my pants. I'll take a moral victory wherever I can find it.

That's it, Darren, keep it up. Someone has to be your morale-boosting cheerleader, who best but you.

"She's going to kill us if we do this. Let's all calm down." It's the voice of the other male stooge. "Why don't we just let her do it her way? What could go wrong?"

"Her way?" The Heavy Metal Enthusiast's voice chuckles out loud. "I fucking did it her way. That's how we ended up with a goddamn hostage tied to the freaking water pipes in the basement. I wait any longer, will all be choosing what body part to chop into bits." Well, my testicles retracted back.

And enter the Stooges in all their glory.

"Don't fucking do this. You're not thinking straight." His stooge friend says in a panic, scared to defy the demon they know as Angela.

"Wil, get the fuck out of my face. If you want to run, go ahead and run now." The Heavy Metal Enthusiast outs his friend.

The stooge has a name-o. "Don't use my goddamn name, Bryan!" And just like that, their secrecy is no longer a secret. "Wil is not my name, so you just go ahead and forget about my name, which is not my name, got it!?" Wil, the stooge, points his finger at me.

Going on a hunch and saying that Wil is probably the dumbest motherfucker around here.

I never pictured the Heavy Metal Enthusiast for a Bryan. Maybe Zeke, Dakota, Jed, Lenny? I don't know; Bryan seems so out of place. I'm kind of let down. Well, it's better than Keith; that has to be the worst name for anyone.

"Look, fellas, can we just go upstairs and forget about this." The last stooge and the only one whose name still goes unnoticed tries her hardest to steer this plan off its tracks. The girl is twirling her light brown hair in a nervous panic.

"Both of you, look me in the goddamn eye and tell me you believe Angela is going to handle things calmly and peacefully." Not a single one dares to take him up on that challenge. "That's what I thought."

Wil answers back. "Why'd you bring him here?" He grabs Bryan by the arm. "You brought this shit on us. We didn't need this. We were both happy selling our goddamn weed. Now you want to be all righteous and walk the right path, without thinking about the consequences it's going to have on us the moment he goes straight to the cops and tell them what we did."

Bryan's momentum stops. "So, what are you proposing? We let Bobby go to work on him. Have that blood on our hands?"

"It's not a popular idea, but we don't got much choice now, do we? We know Bobby's inner circle. He never done any prison time for the work he done. And you know that psycho has dug his share of graves."

Fucking, Bryan, he's buying into it. I have to play devil's advocate, divert him from going along with this. "Hey, you think you can just make me vanish that easy!?" Cause a scene on weak nerves, and they'll be more willing to listen. "I have a brother who works with law enforcement," He's a gay man in his forties who writes sci-fi for a living, but they don't need  to know that. "a family that's pretty much worried about me, and the last ping of my cell phone location."

"Shut your goddamn rambling." Wil barks. "You just all talk."

"That's the beauty of GPS on a cell phone. They can trace you by any means necessary. Seeing how my phone is still in my car, I'm pretty sure they're bound to start looking in this direction." The look of terror strikes their faces. I laugh. "Going to take a stab in the dark and say we're not that far from the car, are we?"

"He's full of it," Wil is desperately trying to make Bryan stick with Angela's plan. "He's just trying to rattle our cage."

I whistle to get Wil's attention. "People with a shady past are the first one the authorities lace into." Wil's face turns pale. "How about it, do you have a shady past?" Checkmate.

Bryan smiles at me. He comes back to my team. Thank God. "Tell me now, what are you planning to do if I let you go?"

"Go home. I never want to see this place ever again. The same goes for you and your friends."

"Are you just going to take him on his goddamn word!" Wil freaks.

Bryan looks into my eyes and nods. "Yes. Yes, I am." Bryan takes out the keys and liberates me from the chains. "Keep your word." He says to me before I drop to the ground.

I rub my wrist, trying to make the pain of it go away. "You have my word," I promise, and I plan to keep it.

I never pictured my panic bluff to work so well. I highly doubt anyone is looking for me, and I'm pretty sure I disabled the GPS on my phone. Oh well, they don't have to know that.

"Get up there and run interference on Angela," Bryan tells the girl. She doesn't have to think twice about it. She runs upstairs to do her job.

"And what do I do?" Wil asks.

"Not to pussy out and turn on me," Bryan tells Wil.

"Fuck." They both look at me as I say that out loud. "I need to take a piss."

CHAPTER 10

IT WAS ALWAYS ME

Hold your piss for the longest you can, then relieve yourself. Tell me that's not the best sensation in the whole fucking world.

"Hurry the fuck up!" The beads of sweat are already pouring down Wil's face. "She's going to find out what we're doing. I know that witch is going to find out."

Bryan keeps his cool. It's as though he has everything down to the second. "We got time." He casually tells the jittery Wil.

Wil takes his mind off the panic to ask a question. "If Angela's wrong, and we know she is, where the fuck is Thelma?"

"Has this been the first time she went missing?" Wil shakes his head at Bryan's question. "Gone for two weeks the other time; ends up in fucking Reno, high out of her mind on meth and whatnot. How did good Thelma accomplish such feet? She blew every trucker from here to Reno."

I can't help but eavesdrop on that conversation. This Thelma is quite the character. Sucking dicks from here to Reno, how many dicks do you have to blow to make it to Reno? The world may never know, and I probably wouldn't want to know.

"To be fair, Bryan. I never seen Angela this worried in her life before. She's always been mellow."

Bryan shakes his head. "Angela is mellow, but the moment Thelma goes off the rails, she's a whole different person. It's like a fucking nuclear meltdown. You best run and hide if you don't want to get caught in the fallout." He sighs heavily, "I'm sick and tired of dealing with that same old soap opera."

I finish up and meet them at the doorway. "Thank you for giving me that one human privilege."

Bryan nods his head. "Let's move out."

I'm guided through this house that resembles a landfill, the pure definition of white trash. Close your eyes, and picture white trash. Whatever you envisioned it to be, you'd be right. Bonus points if you imagined a monster truck rally blasting on the TV.

"How does this go down? Are you driving me home? Are you taking me to a bus depot or the state line?" I prattle my question as I jump over an old rotting pizza box.

"Nope, I'm taking you to your car," Bryan says.

"You told me you didn't know where it was." My tone came off upset, and how could it not, thinking about the hours of misery that he could have spared me if he had just taken her to the goddamn car.

"I didn't. Till I was pulling up here in the morning, passed a billboard of Hardee's that's 10 minutes away. Faint tire tracks engraved in the mud." All words fall silent as one angry scream pours out in the distance.

"Fucking, Bryan. I'll kill you!" She knows.

"Lads, time to hurry the fuck up!" So we run for our lives. We pass through the landfill out the door and make a straight line to the truck, forgetting precautions.

My legs are on fire as I'm forcing the blood back into my stiff muscles. I can't keep up with them.

"Move it, move it, no time for rubber legs!" Bryan says, shoving me to keep with the pace.

Wil starts running like an Olympic sprinter, leaving us in the dust. "Open the goddamn doors, Bryan!" Wil shrieks in a panic. He doesn't want to see Angela's wrath face to face.

Bryan tosses him the keys. Wil catches them and rushes to the driver's seat. Freedom is in our grasp, only to have it taken from under us, as Angela starts shooting over our heads and into the front window of the truck.

"She's fucking shooting at us!" I yell at the top of my lungs as I get into a fetal position.

There stands Angela, gun in hand, body shaking from the betrayal. "He ain't going anywhere!" I can hear my heartbeat thumping in my ears. "He's the only one that knows what happened to Thelma!" It's all a figment of her imagination, but nothing can talk her out of it.

Bryan rises to his feet, so brave yet so dumb. "Is this what it's come to, you shooting at us now!" He tries to match her intensity. "You could have killed Wil!"

Wil slowly creeps his head up. The only part visible is the raggedy mullet.

"Because you're not listening to what I'm saying!" Angela's eyes start to dart around. Her hand is shaking, scared out of her wits that she crossed this line. God only hopes she can walk back from it.

"I've heard what you said, but baby girl, this is insane. This madness has to stop before it gets out of hand." Running me off the road, hiding my car, chaining me down to the basement wasn't the tipping point; this was?

Bryan stands stern, refusing to back down. "You know I'm right. Look around you. It's over. We have to call the cops." Finally, common sense.

"No, no fucking cops!" Howls Wil through the passenger window. "I can't go back. I avoided getting fucked up the ass six times in prison by forcing bowel movements. I can't do that again!" Jesus Christ, we didn't need to hear that. No one needed to hear that.

"Shut up, Wil!" Bryan barks.

"Are you all that blind?" Angela ramps up her rhetoric. "That's what he wants, we call the cops, and he gets his hooks on them. He'll make them believe his story, just like he's doing to all of you."

Her fingers tighten around the weapon. "He's manipulating you, can't you see it?"

Bryan takes a deep breath before he speaks. "Fine, we don't call the cops. But we are walking out of here." Bryan gestures for me to get up, and I do. We're face to face. "We leave, you never come back here again, and keep your word, none of this comes back to bite us back in the ass."

"I swear on my life," I say out of breath, stumbling a few feet back from nerves.

He smiles at me as he speaks. "Good, let's head out----" it's warm, it's red. It's on my face, inside my mouth.

There standing in confusion and a daze is Bryan. His mouth opens as though he's trying to speak, a gaping wound in the front of his eye socket.

Someone is screaming bloody murder at the top of their lungs. It's so loud; it strikes fear into me as this horrible sound pours out to the unknown. What is it? It's inhuman; it needs to stop. Wait, it's me. It's always been me.

Fury takes human form and rains down on this hysterical soul, lifting its fist to the heavens as it crashes back down onto its screeching cries. At long last, peace.

CHAPTER 11

WELCOME BACK

"So, why didn't you do anything?"

There's something in the air that reminds me of home. With the dim lights in the back, the drink in my hand, the sour-looking bartender in the distance, I'm back into my safe place. Did I ever leave?

"Hey!" Someone snaps their fingers in my face. "You listening or what?"

My eyes fall to the Stranger, gulping down his drink beside me at the bar. I remember him, kind of. What was I doing before we got here? What was I saying? "Yeah." I rub my head in frustration, trying to make sense of this. "Did I leave?"

The Stranger cocks his eye at me. "Where to?"

"No, I mean, have I always been sitting here? It doesn't feel like it, but I have. I know this is here, but it doesn't feel like I've always been here."

"It's only been a few seconds since I asked you my question."

"Question, you asked a question?"

"Yeah. I asked you why didn't you do anything when you saw them fucking?"

Now it's starting to come back to me, though I swear I felt my existence in a different place in time. A world where I was hopeless. Perhaps not that much different. "What was I supposed to do?"

He chuckles. "Hypothetically speaking, if it were me, I would have ripped the guy's jaw off. I'd make the bitch see her lover bleed to death while I raped her ass raw." Such colorful, vivid imagery from this odd fellow sitting beside me.

How do I respond to something like that? What does one say? "I think a simple punch to his face and calling her a whore would have sufficed. The mutilation and sodomy would have been a tad overboard, don't you think?"

The Stranger rolls his eyes at me. "This is why she banged the other guy." He points his finger at me.

I let out a chuckle of my own. "Why, because I don't act like some primitive beast?" I say in the snarkiest over-privileged tone.

"Women like a beast. They need a beast, someone that puts fear into them. That makes them kneel."

"Make them kneel?" I can't help but shake my head. It's men like him that have repressed women for ages. "You're not much of a feminist, are you?"

"Feminist?" He howls a laugh. "The greatest group of contradicting bitches. I'm going to tell you something about a feminist. A feminist is all bark and no bite. She's a victim of rape the moment she steps outside; she's disrespected the moment someone holds the door for her. They are a breed that should die. It makes me sad to see the men that openly castrate themselves to that rotten ideology."

"A weak man would say that." My words come out sharp as a knife.

"This coming from a man who saw his woman get pounded balls deep, and the only thing he could muster to say was; ‘I'm sorry’.” Well, that shut me up. "Being a feminist is just a phase. Because once that bitch is on all fours, ass in the air, you remember to ask yourself where that feminist ideology went? Because in the end, ideology dies when human nature kicks in, and it's all primeval animal instinct from there on."

"The beast," I say out loud.

"The beast."

* * *

"Hey, mister, you still alive?" My eyes flutter open to a concerned face staring down at me. At first, I'm at a loss for where I am, where this is, and who she is. Till this whole nightmare floods back into my mind like an unstoppable tsunami. I have to grind my teeth as I feel the shock rip through my head.

The side of my head is throbbing from when Angela brought down the butt of her gun to silence my screams, as I bathed in Bryan's blood and brain matter.

"Yeah, barely." I try to get up slowly, but I tumble back down. I still haven't recovered from the hit.

"Take it easy." She says to me, the one girl of this group that remains nameless.

I take deep breaths before I speak. "Angela killed him." Bryan's death replays in my head.

This poor girl holds a brave face as she speaks, feeling his death harder than I. "Yeah, Wil covered him with a tarp in the back." I almost cry at that tidbit. How could she do that to someone she loved? No respect, no honor. "He wasn't a bad man, you know."

"I came to that conclusion a while back. Bryan was forced into this situation." I only knew Bryan for a short time, but he's someone I would have liked to know on a deeper level. Despite us being from different worlds. He was very down-to-earth, it seemed. He risked his life to save mine. That's a death I'll carry with me.

My senses start kicking in. My eyes start scanning the room. It takes me a few seconds to notice that I'm no longer in the basement. No, this is different. My leg's chained to an empty workbench.

"This isn't the same place?" I ask.

"She dragged you back to the shed after she knocked you out." The nameless girl says to me.

"She dragged me on her own?" I'm in utter shock at that possibility.

"Yeah," She laughs. "Angela gets crazy strong when she heads into that dark place." Fear lingers in those nervous eyes.

"What's your name?" It shouldn't matter, but I need to know for some reason.

The question itself makes her uneasy. She's pacing around, wondering what to say, what to do. I'm guessing she's not even allowed to be in here.

"You don't have to know my name." She fires off defensively.

I can't help but chuckle. "Look, you know better than I do; I'm not getting out of here. My chance of escaping died with Bryan. Whatever you say, I'll take with me to the grave. Dead men, tell no tales."

She stops circling like a cat trying to find its place and takes a seat beside me. She bites on her lip, thinking profusely about what's about to come out of her mouth. "My name, my name is Emma."

"Emma?" It sounds made up, but I'm not going to push. "It's a delight to meet your acquaintance." Her face lights up. Peace is a beautiful thing to find, even in the most chaotic situations. Am I coming down with Stockholm Syndrome?

Now she has a question of her own. "Why are you here?" She combs back her light brown hair that covers the side of her face.

A lie sounds good to say, but who am I protecting? Just let the truth free, Darren. "I lived very happily before. I worked in an office, had my cubicle. I did data entry, really boring shit. Everything was good till I came back home and found my girlfriend of ten years getting fucked by another man." Her reaction is the same as the others, total unbelievable shock. "So, I did what anybody else would do, or maybe wouldn't have done, I don't know. I just ran. Just kept driving until I found my way here."

She's quick to critique. "Huh, that's stupid." I never said my story would be uplifting. "Do you know how much gas is nowadays? It's a lot. I would have gotten a gallon of ice cream and eat my sorrows away." I hate when people use common sense, it always puts me to shame.

"When one is an emotional wreck, one tends to forget the simple remedies. But, I'll keep it in mind for next time." Yeah right.

"Some guys in your position would've had revenge sex. But not you. You took off to forget her, to stop seeing her wherever you went. That shows how much love you had for her. It's a shame she was blind to it." Emma says with a smile. She understands the pain and agony that drove me here.

"Thank you, Emma. That means a lot, for what it's worth."

I wish I had more time to talk with this girl. I feel safe, or maybe I'm just oversensitive to the circumstances. But this is me, after all; life won't allow such luxuries. "You fucking better not be in there!?" Angela's voice sends Emma straight to her feet as the door swings violently open. "Get the fuck away from him!"

Emma backs to the wall. "I was just checking on him."

"Get out now!" Not a single moment of hesitation, Emma runs out the door, never looking back. Can you blame her? Look what happened to Bryan. "You trying to sink your teeth into her too?"

I roll my eyes at Angela's paranoia. "What the hell do you think is going on here!?" I shout at her, which sends a ripple of pain straight to my head, causing me to drool a little. That hit was a nasty one.

"You know what you are." Her eyes descend upon me. I can see the thought running through her head, how easy it would be to end all this with a simple push of the trigger, with the murder weapon tuck to the side of her hip. Make herself vindicated, with one single bullet to the head.

"Don't play around with my last seconds of life. If you're going to do it, do it." I groan and hold on to the side of my head.

"You giving orders now?" Angela scoffs. "I ain't Bryan."

"Of course not. You're not dead."

That makes her jaw flex, "You killed him, you did that!" Angela hysterically screams, pressing the gun straight into my head, which sends my blood running cold.

I should stop egging her on. But still, I must pour salt on the freshly opened wound, anything to cause her pain.

"Yeah, because it was me who pulled the trigger and blew his brains out," I shout back, ignoring the throbbing pain hammering my head. "You shot him from the back like a coward!"

"You turned him against me!" Angela pulls back the hammer, loading a bullet into the chamber. "You poisoned his mind; you got into his head. You made him think I was crazy!" She's balling her eyes out as the words spit out of her with rage.

"I got into his head?" Now I know she has jokes. "I wasn't the one who convinced him of this paranoid fantasy and forced him to drive his car into mine, sending me off the road." It's a shouting match now. "The real problem was that he started to see through your bullshit, and you took notice of that. So when you started to lose control of the situation, you did what you had to do to gain control, and you fucking killed him. Admit it! And you'll do it again, to the first person that begins to doubt you. That's the reason Bryan's death is weighing on your heart. You've become a monster for your cause!"

A grin breaks on Angela's face as though she's found amusement in my words. "You want me to pull the trigger, don't you?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I fire back.

"I kill you, and you die an innocent man." Angela laughs out loud.

"You're insane," I say to her.

She puts the gun away, wipes the tears from her face. "I won't give you what you want. I'm onto you." Angela takes a deep breath and exhales. "This little act of yours is coming to an end. People will see you for what you are."

"The world has already seen what you could do." Another jab to our back and forth. "You should let me go."

"Is that a threat, little boy?" She laughs. I don't even bother to say a word.

Angela walks away, putting an end to our standoff, and lets me be for the night. Once the door is closed and locked tight, my weight gives from my sat position. I fall back to the floor, where I allow myself to weep and cry. A release from this nightmare, the only thing I can do.

"I'm going to die here." The unsettling truth sits and lingers for another day.

CHAPTER 12

THE SHE TO ALL MY PROBLEMS

Nighttime should signal the moment your mind begins to rest. When you slowly start to hallucinate and drift off to a better place.

Sadly, I won't be able to grasp such luxury. The circumstance is out of my hands. I saw a man killed in front of my eyes. I've been hung like a piece of meat, had the living shit beaten out of me, literally. All because of my sensitive aching heart, no wait, because of fucking Bridget.

Fucking Bridget. The woe to my never-ending problems. She cheats, and I pay for it. If a creator is lurking among the great beyond, he undoubtedly shaped me into the butt of the joke—a human magnet of misery so the world could piss on.

Huh, that Waitress wasn't lying. I do like the big words. But back to the nagging psychological breakdown that's been hammering from New York to here.

I genuinely fucking wonder if Bridget worries about me? Sure I get a few text messages from her, but it sounds too rehearsed. I need to know, nay, I want her to be suffering for her infidelity.

Every second she doesn't hear from me, I want actual pain and suffering to pour out of her. It's the least this world can give me. If I'm going through hell, she should be going to a much worse place.

I can't do that to her. Bridget is a sweet person when it comes down to it, despite being a massive whore. She's the type of person that would lose sleep just because she saw a starving homeless animal. I can't keep track of the times we fed strays. Sure, I was miserable doing it, but there was something cathartic in branching out of my comfort zone.

That's one of the reasons I fell for her. She was different, outgoing, and talkative. She was everything I wasn't.

Perhaps our paths were meant to cross in our lives, it wasn't how one would picture meeting a future romantic partner, but I wasn't the usual man.

I had seen Bridget as I passed the local coffee shop near my work one day. I was in the worst place of my life. I was alone and miserable. It just seemed hopeless for me at times. Was the cubicle the only life meant for me? Was I not entitled to feel or be in love?

But as I walked past, she smiled, perhaps not at me. But there was something in her golden smile that made things better, and it continued to plague my mind as days went on.

I tried to push myself to ask her something, anything to break the ice, but I just lacked the courage. I wanted to know her so bad that I would spend hours awake in the middle of the night, picturing our talks, our walks, our dates. I was already in a relationship before it began.

I dropped so many dollars to a product I hated with every bone of my body. That coffee was like drinking cat piss, but I would chug it all down just to be greeted by Bridget.

"Do you like this coffee?" I was shocked when Bridget realized that I was a regular visitor at the coffee shop where she worked.

So, when the time came, and she confronted me about it, I was forced to reveal my true intentions. Even though a part of me wanted to drop the coffee and run for my life, "Actually, I don't."

"Then why are you ordering it?" She laughed. "Why sit here almost every day?"

I cleared my throat like a nervous wreck. "Because of you."

"Me?" Bridget jumped back at that revelation. I couldn't tell if she was shocked or afraid for her life.

"I don't know you, but I want to get to know you."

I remember the smile that broke on her face as though I melted her heart with those pathetic words. But did she smile out of politeness to spare me the humility? Was this going to be one of those situations where I was labeled a stalker?

Who in their sound mind spends their time fantasizing about a woman he knows nothing about, and to add an extra layer of creepy, watches her work on his time off! I could already hear the alarms sounding off.

I felt my insides run cold, as it seemed forever for her to answer. "Sorry, that was out of-"

"I'm off at five. What time are you off today?"

"It's my day off." I couldn't believe this was happening, to me of all people. I could only laugh.

"You spent your day off just to be here with me?"

"Yes." I shyly said.

I told Bridget the story of how I saw her and how she brought me out from my dark day on our first date. She fell harder for me. From then on, it was she and I to the end.

We made plans to grow old. Plans to travel the world, even buy a house together. What we created was perfect. So many great memories, what happened? I guess that's the thing that bugs me the worst; why did she do it? The never-ending why that continues to plague my mind.

I feel like a fool for wanting to relive our golden moments. But is it such a crime not wanting to spend your night with uncertainty and unrest? I settle deeper into these thoughts till my pain and agony become a thing of the past. Finally, rest.

CHAPTER 13

B IS FOR BOBBY

No bad dreams, no out-of-body experience, my mind just shut down after reminiscing about Bridget. I can’t help but let out a pleasant groan, eyes still shut, stretching myself as far as I can. I could go for another four hours of sleep; what’s the harm in it?

But I can feel someone’s presence hovering. So, I open my eyes.

“My, doesn’t he sleep like an angel?” I awaken to an unfamiliar face looking down upon me wearing dark sunglasses, a long gray beard, and a military veteran’s hat.

I circle in a daze, trying to make sense of who this is, “Easy now, I think I spooked him?” He bellows out in laughter.

I see the second face in the room that he’s talking to, Angela, leaning on the wall, arms crossed, a look of evil in those eyes.

“Who the fuck are you?” I tried my hardest to deliver those words aggressively, but the grogginess left them weaker than I expected. I barely manage to make it to my feet.

“I’m the man whom you are going to have a one-on-one with.” Bobby, the same person Bryan was trying to save me from encountering. He’s an older gentleman, has to be in his late 50’s. Everything about him reeks unstable. “I’m going to advise you, son. The faster you confess, the faster the pain ends.”

Angela is hovering in the back with a glowing grin. She’s getting what she wants. Knowing I’ll soon confess to a crime I never committed. Truth means nothing to that unhinged lunatic.

“Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself in? Did she tell you what she did?” Bobby stares me down, letting me have my moment. “She shot Bryan in the head after he was ending this charade. He knew I was innocent; they all know I am. That’s the horse you’re backing.” I need to try to tear down her lies. There must be a shred of humanity in him.

“Wow,” he smiles as though my words are feeble to him. “You are neck-deep in this, boy. I’ve seen this tactic before, trying to cause doubt and division. It’s the last card you got in your deck.”

“You’re insane.” He’s just like Angela.

“I never walk in blind to a job, son. I know she shot Bryan. Heck, I was the one who helped her dispose of the body.” My skin crawls at that tidbit. Angela won’t even look me in the eye. “Ain’t nobody looking for him no more, so you can shut that prayer down.”

“You see the madness in all this, don’t you?”

He shrugs my words off. “I know your type. I know your act. You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Seen that look in your eyes on the battlefield.” Great, my interrogator is General fucking Patton.

“You’re overselling me, grandpa. I’m innocent.” This old bastard laughs and mocks my words. “She knows it, so did Bryan.”

“I’m sure he did.” Bobby yawns.

“Look for the car, just look for it. All the proof is there!” I shout in rage, trying to get that into their thick heads.

“We ain’t saying that you’re not the person you claim to be. That has nothing to do with it.” What the fuck is going on here. “What we want to know is what you did to Thelma that night five days ago. She vanished without a trace, ain’t no one heard from that girl, but you.”

“I never saw Thelma in my life.” My rage falls on deaf ears. “When are you fucking people going to get that!”

“Talk is over,” Bobby turns for a split second; he meets Angela’s gaze, gives her a pervy look. Almost like he’s putting on a show for her. He returns his attention to me. “we’re taking a different route.”

I smile as his true motives come to light. “Tell me, Bobby,” I’m about to cross a line that I know I shouldn’t, but when you’re this far in the hole, you might as well go for broke, “What’s the real reason you’re doing this; I mean what do you gain from helping her?”

“Pardon?” He says.

“You don’t do this type of work for free, that’s for sure. So, my question is, what kind of cash does a poor redneck like Angela have to offer? It can’t be much, probably be able to buy a six-pack and Cheetos but, that’s it.” I can see the reaction on their faces. They know where this is going. It’s priceless. “And I don’t see you as the guy to give a damn about other people’s problems unless you get something out of it. Taking a wild stab, are you getting Angela’s pussy for a confession?”

Never saw that haymaker come from Angela; it just struck out of nowhere. Damn, she’s fast.

“He does that type of shit,” she says, shaking off her fist. Glad that punch didn’t send me to the floor. “Try to get under your skin.”

“How else am I supposed to kill time?” I say in a chuckle as I manage to stand upright.

I can feel blood forming in my mouth. I start spitting out a few globs of blood on the floor. Not going to lie; I think I’m used to getting the crap beaten out of me.

Bobby straightens up. He’s tickled pink by all this. I can tell his mind is set to one gear. I’m going to hang one way or another for this. “You leave him to me. Just go get my tools from my truck, so we can start getting the truth out of him.”

“Hurry, so the sooner he can have your---” This time, it’s Bobby’s turn to shut me up. And he does so masterfully with a strike to the ribs that knocks the wind out of me. He’s tired of me insulting his Queen. “Pussy.” I still manage to spit out in pain.

“Bobby, make him sing,” Angela says with a smile as I fall to the ground.

“We’re wasting daylight.” Bobby hurries Angela along as he’s soon about to place the cherry on top of her delusional fantasy.

CHAPTER 14

I AM NOT YOU

It's just me, Bobby, and the dead silence. He hasn't looked me in the eye for the past five minutes. All he does is click his tongue over and over, so fucking annoying.

"You never learn to whistle?" My words get a chortle out of him. "Stupid hillbillies, can't whistle, can't write, it's a miracle you guys are still alive." Sling as much shit as you can; being polite won't do a damn thing. "I thought the inbreeding would have done you in."

"Save your strength." He warns me as I'm down on the floor, still trying to recover.

"What for, for the force confession you're going to get out of me?" I hawk spit at him, not something I would have done before, but I'm boiling inside right now.

He comes a little forward, amused with my outburst. "You still got a little fight in you, I see."

Look how they look at you. These stupid rednecks think your weak, a pathetic waste of space. Doesn't that make you mad!?

I shake the anger out of my head. "Tell me, how did you get rid of Bryan's body?"

"You like the details?" He crows.

"Morbid curiosity, I guess."

He kneels to my level, rubs his beard. "Sawed his body up, fed him to the gators."

Goddamn. "Does Angela know how you got rid of him?"

"You kidding?" He snorts. "She helped me slice and dice him, then feed him to those hungry gators. She never flinched once." He says that with pride. "Just grabbed a body part and went to work."

"What a special girl." I shake my head. "Good to know she can be loyal to the end. Bryan would be proud."

"That little fag was never good enough for her." Bobby lets his distaste for Bryan spew.

"He was gay?" I ask.

"Looked it," Bobby says, "That boy thought he was smarter than the rest. He acted like he was some philosopher of life. Sure he hung with the rough crowd, but something always seemed off. You know, he gave off that queer vibe."

"Must have been excruciating to see someone like him with her?" Bobby bites on his lip. "You the old embodiment of man, and he a fag tapping the ass you could only dream of."

Bobby laughs. "You are something else."

"What are you, Bobby? Who are you?" He seems flattered that I've taken an interest, but he seems hesitant to divulge anything. "Come on, don't be shy." I push. "You know I'll be taking my secret to the grave."

He nods his head, knowing it's the truth. My fate is sealed no matter what this farce of an investigation determines.

"In war, you need people to do the awful things no one wants to admit to." The flood gates have opened; Bobby is an open book. He takes the shades off to tell his story. "It was my job to break the toughest men, sometimes women." He grins. "All to protect the freedom and security of America."

"Bullshit," I state. "You're no American hero."

Bobby doesn't take kindly to my words, I can feel his urge to bust my head in, but he'll hold back for now. "You ever serve your country, boy?"

"What for, so I can come back like you." I laugh.

"You know who you remind me of," I refuse to answer him. "The same people I used to torture. They all said they wouldn't talk, and in the end, they did."

"How does a man like you make a calling out of this?" I ask.

"War isn't the only place people need my expertise. It's a booming market out there, people willing to pay top dollar for it." He says it with a gleam in his eye. "Never saw myself taking shit from a high school dropout. No point in working a job that makes you miserable. No, I was born to do this. Hell, I would do it for free."

He's practically confessing to being a closet serial killer. "You enjoy hurting people?" I probe, trying to understand this freak. Why, who knows?

"You will never know the power of seeing people fold under pain. They're practically begging to suck your dick, take it in the ass, as long as you stop. I remember I made one call me Daddy." He almost topples over, laughing.

"This is why Bryan was afraid of you," I say.

That seems to warm Bobby's heart. "And what about you," He looks me in the eye. "Are you afraid of me?"

"Not the slightest."

Refusal to acknowledge his authority or even fear it; drives him up the wall. "You got something to say to me, boy?" Bobby is sizing me up.

I grin at his forced bravado. "Yeah, I do." I meet his gaze, never flinching, never showing fear. I clear my parched throat. "I pray your death is quick when you meet the devil eye to eye."

"Goddamn!" He almost gushes, rubbing his hands together, enjoying the spark in my soul. "You are something else. Imma takes my time with you." Promises.

Angela comes walking in with his duffle bag full of toys, catching us face to face. "About time, girl!" Bobby hollers at her. "What took you so long?"

She drops the bag on the floor, eyeing him suspiciously. "You gots a lot of shit in your van," paranoid thoughts are firing off in her mind, taking this image out of context. "You two been talking?"

Bobby rises and cracks his neck. "Oh yeah."

"You still with me?" She demands.

"This psychopath is loyal to the end," I say for Bobby. "You won't have to chop him up and feed him to the swamp." Her jaw tightens as I speak her little secret out loud. "It's good to see you have no limits, even with the people you love."

"Shut up, now," Bobby warns me as Angela's knuckles turn white. She's clutching her fist as tight as she can. I should heed this advice, but something is banging in the dark corner of my mind to keep pushing, tear her down by any means necessary.

"What went through your simple little mind as you started sawing his body piece by piece," Everything is flooding out. I have no control over this, "Did you remember the good days you guys used to have or did you just go blank?"

Stop it, Darren, this isn't you. You're losing your mind. I can see the tears running down her cheek as she relived that nightmare, and I'm enjoying it.

"You shut up!" She's barking like a rabid dog, and I love it. Just a reminder of that fresh wound still bleeding and oozing.

"Did you flinch; did you cry when you fed the man you supposedly love to those wild beasts?" Pour the salt on her wound, make her scream. Make her relive her goddamn nightmare over again. "Out of curiosity, how did it sound when those demons started to eat him?"

"I'm done listening to you." She grasps for the weapon neatly tucked behind her pants. She's had enough. What a surprise, so have I.

"Stop barking and show me your bite!" I welcome the end.

Bobby leaps in between us like a knight in shining armor. He's fighting with Angela to wrestle the gun away from her hand. "Relax, girl!" He's struggling to control the situation. "Angela, let me handle this, let me take care of him!" Their little tug of war spills into the vicinity of my range. There's blood in the water.

Take them out, enough of this. Put them in the fucking grave!

So, I attack. I quickly get on my feet and grab the back of Bobby's head and slam it into Angela's. There's a loud whack. Angela gets sent to the floor, the gun flying out of her hand.

Bobby is stunned, can't make heads or tails of the situation. So I grab him by the shirt collar and send him flying into the workbench, gashing his forehead brutally.

The tables have turned; now it's my turn to instill fear into them. Angela will be the first.

"Bobby!" her eyes fall on me, she panics. I reach over and grab her legs, and I begin to pull her towards me. She starts kicking and screaming, but I win this tug of war. I pull her towards me and fall onto her, pinning her arms to her sides. She shouts as I start choking the life out of her.

I rejoice like a maniac, my grip getting tighter around her neck, a smile breaking on my face. "How does it feel, you stupid bitch?"

Angela's eyes are popping out; her face is turning blue. Tighter, make her remember this! "Just fucking die!"

Her eyes are rolling to the back of her head. I'm killing her, oh my God, I'm killing her.

Stop this, Darren. Darren, this isn't you. Fucking stop what you're doing!

I pull myself off her. I glare in awe at my hands, knowing how close I was to committing murder. The horror of my actions hits me like a tsunami. My knees buckle, my hands start to shake, and my mind begins to crack. "I am not you!" I begin to cry out.

Bobby recovers and darts for the gun in the distance. The blood runs down his face. "I knew I shouldn't have let my guard down."

I nod my head with joy as he lifts the weapon into his hand, steadying himself to put me out of my misery. "Please, just fucking kill me already," I beg him.

"You don't have to tell me twice." I'm ready for death, it suits me, but it never comes. Angela rises to her feet to stop him from taking the shot.

"No, no, let him do it!" I cry out.

"Don't do it!" She manages to say.

"Step away!" Bobby tries shoving Angela out of the way, but she pushes him back. "Two minutes ago, you were ready to do the same!?"

"And you stepped in." Angela manages to spit out.

"He hadn't tried to take my life two minutes ago!" Bobby barks at her.

Angela takes the gun away from him. "He dies. I lose Thelma." The way she lets out those words from her mouth seems as though something has rekindled the spark into her delusional truth.

Emma and Wil come through the door with scared looks. They had probably envisioned a bloody massacre from all the ruckus they heard.

"Finally, the two fucking dimwits decide to show the fuck up!" Bobby growls at them as Angela ushers him out. "Get my fucking bag!" He screams at Wil.

"Please, just end this!" I scream out. Emma looks on, worried about me as I beg for death.

Soon, everyone is out the door. And I'm left with nothing but silence.

CHAPTER 15

STAY BLIND

Music is playing in this Ballroom. It sounds like jazz. Everyone looks so content out there, swaying back and forth, not a care in the world. How nice that must be to be so free.

"Why don't you stop people gazing and just go out there?" Bryan in the flesh, alive and well, looking more at peace than ever. Seeing him should frighten me, but it doesn't.

"Will that change anything?" I ask with a faint smile, wondering if I should tell him about his fate. But why should I burden him with bad news? I've had my fill of bad news to last a lifetime.

"It just might. Dance is the most cleansing thing a person can do. It's like an exorcism for your soul." I chuckle at his sage advice. "Laugh if you must, but dance is the cure for all human suffering."

"Just dance away the problems, is what you're getting at?"

"Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

"Friedrich Nietzsche."

"The one and only," Bryan says with a smile.

"What college did you attend?" I ask.

"Pardon?" He says with an arched brow.

"Because with the bullshit you're shoveling, you sound like a Harvard Man."

He wags his finger. "Yale, my good man. All the best bull shitters come from Yale." We share a laugh. For that moment, everything wrong in my life fades into oblivion.

"How did we get here?" I ask.

He takes a moment to ponder that question before answering. "Life is an unpredictable mistress; you never know when she's going to light the whole house on fire and just watch you scream as you burn."

"True dat." He laughs at my slang. "I never pictured that my life would end up like this."

He puts his arm around me. He feels cold, ice cold. "I highly doubt any of us thought our lives would bring us here." Where is here? Is this the final stop? "I had dreams of leaving that backwater town, maybe head West to California. Take in that Hollywood lifestyle, pitch a screenplay; you know the cliché shit."

"Wait, you wrote a screenplay?" I ask.

"Everyone's got dreams." Bryan smiles as something catches his eye. "But that doesn't matter anymore because when you're alive, you torment yourself just to stay busy, keep the truth at bay."

"What truth?" I shiver as the room gets colder.

"That we all have a date with the undertaker." The thing that catches his eye comes into the frame.

"What is it?" fear pulls on my heart as I see these walking bones wearing a black dress and black roses clutched to its chest.

Bryan squeezes my shoulder, reassuring me that it's alright. "You don't have to be afraid of it." It extends its hand to Bryan. "Till we meet again, friend." Bryan takes Death's hand and vanishes into the sea of people.

"It's a face I will get to know when the moment comes."

* * *

"Hey, you still with us?" Was I asleep? No, my eyes have been open all this time. This world just decided to bleed through. "Hey, now. Give me a sign you settled down."

I turn my head tiredly and find Emma standing near the door with a food tray. The dish's aroma makes its way to me, but it doesn't grab my fancy. She wants to step forward but hesitates to do so.

"Step forward if you must." My tone is so dark.

"If I step closer, you're not going to kill me, are you?"

I'm in no mood for this little game, so I turn my back again. "Save your food. No reason to be feeding a dead man." I can hear the air exit her lungs as she desperately wants to deny such truth. "It was here; I saw it in front of my eyes."

"Saw what?" She asks.

"Death. It's coming for me."

"You see it in your dreams?" So much concern in her voice, she thinks I've lost it. "Man can't see death, I mean, right?"

"I don't know where I saw it, but it was there in front of me."

She clears her throat nervously as she's about to say her following words. "This place, did you happen to see Bryan?"

"Bryan?" I turn around to face her, and I can see the overwhelming guilt in her demeanor. "He was."

"Did he seem angry, like he was holding a grudge?" Emma asks nervously.

"No, he made his peace with it all. He seemed happy when I saw him." My words break a smile on her face, relief coming from her troubled mind.

Emma takes a few steps forward. "I have good news," she puts on a happy face. "It has to do with Bobby and Angela. Do you want to take a guess?"

They both died and went to their graves? "I don't feel like guessing. Just tell me what it is."

"They say someone saw Thelma out in a rave. She was on one of her benders again. Angela couldn't believe it, so she and Bobby went to track down the lead." She says it as though she expects me to jump out of my skin from sheer joy.

"That's it?" My tone couldn't be less excited.

"Don't you see; it means you're innocent. You were telling the truth!"

"I never doubted my truth. It's what I've been saying for so long, but what good is the truth when either way, I'm going to end up six feet underground. After what I've seen, Bobby and Angela won't let me walk out of here a free man. I'll end up gator chow more like it."

"Is that what they did to Bryan?" Wil's voice creeps behind both of us. Emma almost drops the tray. "They cut him up and fed him to the swamp?"

"She didn't tell you how she and Bobby just picked a body part and went to work?" I shake my head; I can't believe how gullible they are. "According to Bobby, she didn't shed a goddamn tear. I don't know what fairy tale she fed you guys. Bryan is right now in the digestive tract of those gators."

"Fucken bitch!" Wil growls under his breath. "She punched his lights out for some meth whore on a freaking bender!"

Emma tries to calm Wil down. "We can't do anything about it; what done is done."

"And what if it's not?" Wil fires off.

"What do you mean?" Emma asks.

"How do you know we're not next!" Wil says to her.

"She wouldn't do that; we go way back," Emma says to him while a bit of doubt lingers in her tone.

"She and Bryan went back. You saw how much that was worth when she went off the deep end. And you know how Bobby is, he don't like us. He's going to see us as loose ends." Wil is freaking out. "They both are snakes, and they're going to wait for us to be off our guard, then bam!" He mimics a bullet to the head.

"Stop it!" Emma screams, she drops the tray down and storms to drag Wil out of the shed. Both of them arguing, Emma trying to deny Angela would ever dare touch a hair on their head.

Fear, panic, and uncertainty. Welcome to my world. Don't be a stranger.

CHAPTER 16

HALF A MAN

I hear this loud pulsating sound in my ears. It’s a throbbing pain cutting into my elbows and knees. I feel like screaming, but I can’t. My eyes are too heavy to open, not because of sleep but fear.

I hear the distorted sound of someone’s voice; it’s just too hard to make out as the pain grows in intensity. I know I must look, and I have to. I need to know what’s happening to me.

My bravery was misguided; my fear was well-placed. My eyes opened to a horror show. Blood covers my body, arms and legs are cut to the bone. The shock keeps me from feeling, and I thank God for it.

“Well, shit.” I look towards the shadow coming closer to my hazy vision. “That sedative didn’t keep him down for long.”

I’m flopping on the floor, trying my best to rise. I can feel the blood rushing to my head; weakness overtakes me; coldness runs through my skin. Two shadows begin to descend closer and closer, revealing the monsters’ faces who have done this to me. Bobby and Angela.

“Can’t trust those two idiots to do anything right. I told her to smash three pills into his food to prevent something like this,” Angela smirks, wiping the blood from her face.

Emma, she did this to me. She knew what they had in store for me, and she went with it. I knew kindness was too good to be true.

Bobby heckles as he watches me flop around the floor. “Goddamn, that’s comedy gold. I bet I can make a few bucks selling him like some sort of freak show. Never mind, those damn Woke generation wouldn’t allow me to put anything like that up.”

“Should we put him back under?” Angela asks.

“Na,” Bobby says, tossing a hand in the air. “He’ll bleed himself out to death. The more he moves, the more blood he’ll be pumping out. Ain’t going to use my good stuff on him.”

I don’t want to believe this; this can’t be happening.

“Believe it.” A dark, growling voice speaks from the shadows, “You’ve become a useless stump.”

Both Bobby and Angela smile ear-to-ear as they turn to face the large towering shadow that looms over them.

“What are you!?” I scream in horror as the devil stairs me down.

“What am I? What are you?” It chuckles as it lunges at me, trying to wrap its claws into my soul.

* * *

My eyes snap open as someone’s weight presses down onto me. I try to scream, but something wraps around my mouth. I hear a tear. My eyes dart around the room. I can see my arms and legs, thank God. The tray of food lays untouched, it was all a nightmare, but this isn’t. What’s happening?

Someone is hog-tying me. I can’t shout; my words come muffle. My tongue tastes, tape? It’s fucking duct tape. I lurch back to see who it is, and who else would it be, Angela and Bobby.

Though something unusual grabs my attention, Bobby’s face is drenching with fear. What would make a man like him feel fear? “Fuck, fuck.” He says under his breath as he hog-ties me with my chains.

“Why would they be here!?” Angela shouts at him.

“How the hell am I supposed to know!?” He growls at her as he finishes tying me up. “There, that should hold him.”

“You fix this, Bobby,” What the hell happened; what did I miss? “I don’t care if we gots to put him in the grave.”

“No,” Bobby leaps up and shakes his head in protest. “We ain’t killing no damn cop.” A cop, did someone go to the authorities for help? Is Bridget looking for me? Is it my family? Hope enters my body once more, and it feels good.

“You’ve done worse. Don’t turn pussy on me.” She fires back at him.

“That’s a line I don’t cross. You kill a cop, and you’ll get hellfire raining down on you, girl.” He thumbs his finger at her chest. “You ain’t paying me enough to do that.” Damn, he said her pussy isn’t worth killing a cop.

“If you won’t do it, I will.” I believe her; I genuinely do.

“You ain’t pulling me down with you!” They seem on the verge of pouncing at each other, ready to take the other’s life, if need be. The stress is getting to them; one wrong word and someone’s bound to pull the trigger. It couldn’t happen to two better people.

“Angela, he’s coming.” Emma’s soft-spoken voice cuts through the crack of the door, killing the tension in a heartbeat. Fuck you, Emma.

“We got to keep calm,” the mood has changed. It’s evident in Bobby’s voice. “If they had known something, they would have brought more people. So, it’s safe to say they don’t know shit.” Hate to admit it, but he’s right. “That’s why they send Raylan down here, so he could bust some balls, see who he can make flinch.”

“And if he comes back here?” Angela’s tone goes dark.

“He won’t.” Bobby tries to extinguish this fire that’s growing inside her.

“But if he does?” Angela won’t let up.

“Jesus, he won’t.” I hear that fear and doubt escape his breath. All was well; he was free to roam with swagger when nobody knew. But now his dream fuck is pushing him down a hole from which he knows there is no return. Now he wants to go back to normality. For which there is none here. “I promise he won’t.”

Angela shakes her head. “You’re not thinking right, Bobby.” I think Bobby is the sanest person in the room right about now. “You’re getting soft on me.”

Bobby seems like he’s about to fall on his knees and beg for the cop’s life. “Raylan is all bark. It won’t have to resort to this.”

“But if it does,” how Bobby’s face turns pale as Angela continues to push the unthinkable. “Cop or not, we have to put him down, no questions asked.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He caves in with a tired nod, giving into this white trash devil. Too deep to go back.

With everything settled and done, they both scattered outside to meet a panicky Emma. “What took you guys”

“Just getting on the same page,” Bobby says as the door closes behind. Their voices are still coming in as they talk amongst each other.

“He’s inside with Wil,” Emma says to them.

“That little dipshit won’t hold.” Angela bitterly says.

“No time to worry about that. Let’s get out of this spot. You go pretend to be sweeping over there,” Bobby takes charge, instructing Emma to do as she’s told. I can hear her footsteps running away. “You got your man’s keys?” He asks Angela.

“Yeah, I got them,” Angela answers back. “why do you need them?” I never hear a response. I try my best to listen, but it’s nothing but silence. That could only mean one thing; they’re far from earshot. I’m not about to let that stop me.

I need to hear what’s going on. I need to find a way out of this. I’m not dead yet. It feels like hope is coming back—less thinking, more doing Darren.

I slowly roll to my back, take four or five deep breaths as I begin to cradle back and forth until I get good momentum and accomplish my first roll. I’ve never felt prouder in my life.

Everything is working to my advantage, a cop on the premise, hillbillies running scared. What more can I ask? Focus Darren.

I keep going until my rolls get me to the light at the end of the tunnel. My head thumps on the door; I stand frozen from fright, thinking they heard it. Seconds pass, but no one comes.

My heart is pounding like a jackhammer, partially from the strenuous activity. Plus, not being well-fed is another part of it.

I push my head as low as I can through the crack of the door. The light of the sun blinds me as it hits my eyes. How long has it been since I’ve seen daylight?

“He’s coming.” I hear someone’s voice.

I peer through the crack; I can barely make out the blurry figure. It takes a few seconds till I realize it’s the fat old bastard, Bobby. Angela is beside him near the truck. She’s got something tucked behind her pants; it looks like a dagger.

They’re fidgeting. I can see a nervous sweat pouring down Bobby’s brow. How could one person strike so much fear? What kind of evil is it?

Closer and closer their nightmare gets, their backs straighten, their eyes to the ground. This nightmare is my dream come true.

It’s here. Showtime.

CHAPTER 17

MORE BLOOD ON MY HANDS

"What brings you out here, officer Raylan?" Bobby jumps front and center trying to take charge of this little fiasco. Angela hangs back, covering up the weapon she's concealing.

Wil is a few steps behind the officer, his face pale as death.

Dirt begins to rise near the door. Someone's footsteps are coming towards the shed, most likely from Emma. "Let me guess. Are you here to sell tickets to the policeman's ball? Sadly, we gravitate more towards the firefighters. They throw one hell of a party than you policeman." Bobby heckles from his joke.

The officer stops in his tracks and looks at the nervous faces around him. He's not afraid of them, not one bit. He knows who they are and what they've done in their lives.

Officer Raylan, as they call him, has his hand on the weapon holster to his side. Letting his finger tap on it as though it was a drum, the subtle gesture warning them he's not afraid to use it if it comes down to it.

The officer flashes one giant smile at Bobby, which upsets him; his body tenses. "Well, if it isn't Bobby Luisa McDonald," no fucking way, his middle name is Luisa? I can't help but chuckle under my gag. Laughter always brings you out of a dark day, feeling a bit hungry now, too. "what in the world are you doing here? These ain't your backwoods. You didn't move in here, now did you?"

Wil answers. "No, I told you he's just-" Raylan lifts his hand in the air, getting Wil to fall silent.

"Did anyone ask you to answer that for him?" Wil shakes his head. "Then please, do shut the fuck up." I can see why they were so afraid of him; this cop is a real ball-buster in all its glory.

"I don't live here," Bobby says to him.

Officer Raylan ignores Bobby's response. A second later, the officer begins to chuckle as though he's remembered a funny joke. "You been staying away from the high schools?" What do we have here?

"I don't do things like that!" Bobby bolts out the gates with anger.

"Do what?" Emma's curiosity gets the best of her, and it's a sheer blessing for my amusement.

"You haven't heard?" Raylan isn't Bobby's biggest fan; you can tell in the way he speaks. He was hoping to have this moment to air Bobby's dirty laundry. "A few months back, we got a call from this angry, distraught mother who happened to catch Bobby here, jacking it to some high school girls running around the track." Bobby, the pedo!

I'm giggling under my duct tape mouth, not sure if they heard me. Man, it's good to laugh.

"Allegedly saw me. That redhead bitch is a liar." Bobby arches his back as though he let the wrong words slip.

Raylan is tickle pinked by it. "Funny, we never made public the witness's identity who reported the crime." An awkward silence falls till Raylan breaks it. "But, I ain't hear about that."

"Why's you here?" Angela takes over, knowing Bobby is useless as a bag of rocks against a tank. She takes a few steps closer to the officer. My vision lingers on the blade behind her pants. Fear reaches my soul as the thought of another death creeps into sight. This officer doesn't know who he's staring down.

"Well, we got a call about gunshots going off in this area two days back, shouldn't set off alarms." The officer rubs his chin, trying to add tension and get one of these fools to fold. My advice to him would be to run away. Go back and forget about all this. You're just digging your own grave. "But then we got a call about Bobby marching around these areas, and I got to thinking, there has to be a connection to all of it."

"Boy, you got jokes. You trying to be Sherlock Holmes now?" Bobby tries to force his best laugh, anything to ease the officer's suspicion. "Who put you up to this, was it Walter? He's got a hard-on for me."

Raylan laughs. "That he does. He's always been gunning for you. Can you blame him?" No, we cannot. "As the saying goes, If there's bad news and Bobby happens to be around, something is up."

"Cute." Bobby is biting down on his anger.

"Rest assured, Walter didn't send me up here. I decided to check this on my own." He shouldn't have said that; I know what's going through Angela's mind. She sees a lone cop with no one knowing his whereabouts.

"Is that right?" Bobby says, Almost wishing Raylan had kept that bit of information to himself.

"Still work with the Tawney Brothers?" If I had to guess who these gentlemen were, I'd assume they were the ones who gave Bobby's creativeness an outlet to grow. "Heard they got in some deep shit in Chicago, pissed off the wrong people. We found a few of their boys dead and butchered in the swamps. I'd start updating my resume pretty quickly if I were you."

"Well, I don't work for them." Bad acting Bobby, we all could tell your swallowing back that WTF. This revelation is news to you.

"That's good. Good to hear you're living your life on a straightened arrow." Another long pause in the air before the next question. "So, where's Bryan?" Stop digging; you have no idea what these people will do.

"It seems odd that you two aren't together." Raylan directs his question at Angela. "Wherever he goes, you go." That makes me laugh from the inside; if this officer only knew what she did to him.

"He's out." Permanently Angela forgets to add.

"Out?" He doesn't buy it. "That's odd, I've known that kid for the longest time, and you know what I've learned?" Everyone is silent. "He never leaves without that truck."

Oh, I feel the tension rise in these dimwitted fools. They never pictured Raylan being so observant and pointing out the elephant in the room. Someone's bound to make an uncalculated move.

Angela jumps quickly to answer before things get out of hand. "It's busted," Angela says. "He took Wil's bike."

"Is that so," The officer is rubbing his chin, knowing he smells a lie. "It just doesn't seem like him to part with that truck, let alone allow another man to touch it." That's not the only thing Bobby wants to touch.

"This going anywhere?" Angela says to him. If he takes another step closer, Officer Raylan and that blade will make their acquaintance.

"Is everything all right? You seem a little on edge. Like, if I start poking around, I might find something," He's looking at the shed. His eyes fall dead center on it. "you might not want me to see?"

He's walking straight to the shed; I can see Angela tightening her body and blocking his way. She's not going to let him pass, and if he persists, she'll ram that knife to his skull.

"You mind telling me where you heading?" Angela is inches from Raylan.

"You keep the shed locked?" He asks her. Both their bodies merge, creating a shadow in my sight.

"Of course," Angela says. "Too many meth heads roam around these parts, trying to steal what they can for their habit."

Raylan takes a step forward, Angela takes one back. "What's in there, honey?" Raylan laughs.

"I ain't your honey," Her left hand slowly drifts and grips the blade. She's ready to do it. She knows she has to do it.

It's too late to stop it—another death.

"I got weed!" The loud panicked voice of Wil kills the tension. Her hand pulls away from the attack. "It's my mistake, gotta fess up to it. They're just trying to protect me. So I won't do time."

Raylan turns back to face Wil. "What were the gunshots about?"

"We got high on what I grow, got a little drunk. We try to shoot down that beehive there yonder." The officer's body language seems to subside; he's buying the con. "We missed and fucked up Bryan's truck."

"Goddamn," Raylan shakes his head. "and this fucker?" He points in Bobby's direction.

"He's a fan of my product," Wil says.

"You know I can bust your ass for this?" Wil's entire body seems to crumble on those words. Emma gasps in anguish as her friend is about to take the fall.

"But I won't," Miracles. "too much paperwork for just selling a bit of weed. Besides, I've heard the stories about your time in prison." Raylan passes Angela. His hand falls on the lock, giving it a slight tug. This is my chance, my last chance. Do something, Darren!

"Do you want to add another body to the grave, add more blood on your hands?"

But I deserve to go home. Why does my life have to end so brutally?

"Even on the off chance he hears you, Angela would sink the blade faster than he can react. The numbers are against him. Don't let another man die." So, I lie down and do nothing. I won't condemn another man to die for me.

I hate myself. I hate my inner thoughts. Anyone else would have tried, but not I.

"You might want to keep a tight leash on your girl, Thelma." The conversation goes on, but I've lost my yearning to care. "People saw her breaking into homes and causing a mess."

"That wasn't Thelma." Angela raises her voice, trying to calm any doubt that should be running into her crew's mind. "I would know."

Raylan chuckles. "Sounds like her. Nobody else in these neck of the woods would hang with crazy Debbie. You must be a special type of crazy to do that; Thelma is that type. I'm not sure if these girls are high on meth or acid. My guess probably both." The officer's voice begins to trail off slowly until it vanishes for good. All that is left is the voice of Emma and Bobby from earshot.

"You said you both track down that lead?" Emma's concerned voice says to Bobby.

"We did." I highly doubt they even looked that hard for answers. "We didn't find nothing."

"Raylan just said they spotted her running around with meth head Debbie!"

"Keep your voice down," Bobby warns her. "People are used to seeing Debbie and Thelma together. They probably see another crazy white meth head, and they assume it's got to be Thelma."

"But what if it is her, huh?" Emma says to him. "You're about to kill an innocent man for a crime he never committed."

"It's your freedom or his now; which one are you going to choose?" Emma doesn't say a word. She's chosen her path. "We got no choice but to see this through." The end is near, about time.

CHAPTER 18

A BETTER LIFE

The sun is settling down; nighttime is rearing its head. I've managed to roll myself back into place. There's no need for it; it just felt like the right thing to do.

Hours have passed since that whole fiasco. Nobody has come to check on me yet, but why would they? They have everything wrapped in a bow, and they'll live on as I meet my maker. All will be right in the world.

It'll be ages until someone bothers to come looking. Bridget will marry her new man. My family will rejoice that they don't have to see their aging son remain a bachelor with no hope of ever having kids.

I'd give for anyone to come through that door and put me out of my misery.

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. The door of the shed pops open. Bobby comes running in a frenzy. He comes towards me and kneels to rip the tape off my lips. Quickly puts his hand over my mouth. "Listen up, listen carefully." Pointing his dirty little finger at me. "I'm only going to say this once, got it?"

He removes his hand away from my mouth. "Fuck, that hurts." I began to spit out the taste of Bobby's disease hands out of my mouth. "Don't you ever wash your goddamn hands?"

He grabs me by the shirt collar, his fist goes up like he's ready to cave it into me, but he stops himself from doing so. "Don't fucking test me." His words could be louder, but he's keeping them on the down-low. I wonder why?

"I wouldn't dare test you, Bobby," I say to him. "We both know you'll just fail." It's my turn to enjoy a little laughter from others' misery.

Bobby is shaking. Never has he been forced to bite down on his anger like this, "You know, as I know, this pain is not going to end for you." So diplomatic. "So, here I am to offer you a solution to this problem."

"How noble of you." He knows I'm full of sarcasm, but he ignores it.

"Angela ain't going to budge till you give her something. That's how it just is; there's no talking her out of it."

"So, what do you propose?" I ask this desperate fool.

"Give me anything, and I'll take it as the absolute truth and put you down quickly. That's more than I've given other men."

Fat-ass charlatan. Now I must recite the past to show the hypocrisy. "I've met men like you, the wolf in sheep's clothing. That was the huge chunk of shit you were trying to peddle. The monster you could see clear as day. Now you're making a deal with it."

"That's in the past now." He hisses. "I need this shit to end now."

"Because of a problem you and your boys got into, right?" I can't help but enjoy the shocked look on his face. He knows I heard it all. "The bodies are dropping around because of the people you pissed off in Chicago. What did you do by chance?"

Now it's Bobby's turn to laugh. "You are something else." he wags his finger at me. "you had your chance to escape. You could have made some noise, get that cop's attention. But you let it slip through your fingers."

"What good would that do?" He looks at me, a bit stumped by my response. "he probably would have gotten a shot out on one of you, but he'd still end up dead. And frankly, I'm tired of having blood on my hands."

"You did your good deed for today." Not a thank you, but it's the closest I'll get to it. Bobby didn't want that cop to die; he wasn't ready to handle that much heat.

"Who are you running from?" I ask.

Bobby nods and gives in. "I thought we were roughing up some small drug peddlers. I got creative, a little out of hand."

"Do you know who they belong with?"

"I took a look at their bodies. They had some tattoos that resemble the Russian mafia." Oh, Bobby. You're a dead man. "Never figured them to put two and two together, but I guess they know who we are now. More the reason for me to get the hell out of here."

I smile at him. " I mean, if you can get out of here."

Bobby's jaw tightens. "What do you mean by that?"

"What happens if I don't give you the answer you need? What if I keep you waiting? Take what you can dish as long as I can till they find you." I can see his fist clenched. "Wouldn't that be something?"

"Don't make me get creative in hurting you. You'll live to regret it." He's breathing deeper, trying to keep cool. He never thought I'd pull this on him.

"The way I see it, it will go down like this. You either kill Angela, Angela kills you, or the Russian mafia finds you and kills you both." He knows I'll do it.

"You don't have the balls to do it, boy." I can feel the anger radiating from his body.

"Bobby, I'm a dead man. But I'm one willing to take others with me, and nothing in the world would make me happier than seeing you die right in front of my eyes."

I'm pretty sure he would have pummeled me to death if Angela hadn't stepped into the shed that exact moment. "You tell him yet?"

Her voice whips Bobby back in line. To be continued. "Yeah, just telling him about the move right now."

"I've been in a basement, I've been in the shed, so where to now, someone's attic?"

Angela gets a kick out of my joke. "You're funny." Angela gazes down on the floor, and something has gotten her attention. "Did you sweep in here?" She asks Bobby.

"No, that wasn't me." Bobby stands up and meets Angela at the door. "Our little friend here decided to roll himself to the door to see if he could get the attention of Raylan."

"And he decided to let him go?" She pretends to almost faint from shock.

"You would have killed him," I say to her.

"Or maybe you knew they would find out you weren't the person you say you are." She says with a grin.

Something catches Bobby's ear. "Is that a motorcycle?" But neither Angela nor I pay attention.

"When I demanded you call the cops, you said I would get my nails into them. Turn them against you. Now, it's because I'm hiding the truth," God, I miss hand gestures. You never know how important they are; until the day you can't use them. "make your fucking mind up!"

Angela dismisses my rage like it was just a fly on the wall. She turns to look at Bobby. "This place you got, is it secluded?" Big word for someone uneducated.

"It's where I do my best work," Bobby reassures her. "You want me to untie him so we can load him into my van?" Bobby pulls the keychain that holds the one key to my restraints from his pocket, clipping it on the side of his belt.

"Na," Angela shakes her head. "Too risky with this one. I'll help you lift him to the van."

"Bobby and a van, is it the same van you use to stalk the high schools?"

"Shut up!" Bobby growls as they both pick a side to hoist me up.

"Make sure to use your back to lift," I shout at them. "I hope you ruin your lower backs for life!"

"Pipe the fuck down before I kick your head in!" Bobby warns.

"Angela, he's going to do it!" Emma's howling scream stops their momentum. She comes through the door. Her face a bloody mess.

"Good God," Bobby says in a panic at the sight. He rushes to Emma's side as she collapses on the floor. "Who did this?"

Emma is balling. "I tried to stop him, I fucking tried. He said he was going to end this."

Angela rushes past them both; running out of view.

"Just tell me what he plans to do." Bobby calmly says to her.

"His bike is gone!" Angela shouts in sheer rage.

Emma cries harder. "Wil said he was turning us in; he said it was all over. Please, you have to believe I tried to stop him. Look what he did to me. Please, don't kill me!"

"We ain't going to kill you." Bobby helps Emma back to her feet.

Angela storms in, her eyes filled with rage, just like the last time she killed someone. Run, Wil, don't look back.

"Get your van." Angela orders.

"What are you planning?" Bobby doesn't have to ask; it's a stupid question. He knows where this is going.

"Tying up loose ends," Angela says without remorse. She's crossed one line; what's another.

Bobby rushes past Emma as both he and Angela make their way to catch up to Wil.

Emma stands near the foot of the door, watching peacefully, as she wipes away the blood and tears off her face.

An eerie silence washes over this place until a chuckle pours out of Emma as the van peels away.

I have to ask her. "Have you lost your fucking mind?" She turns around with a giant smile on her face. "They're going to kill your friend, doesn't that matter to you!?"

"They ain't killing no one." She jiggles the key that was on Bobby's hip, the one that held my freedom. There is a God.

"You swiped them?" I'm almost seconds away from crying.

"Just a habit of mine that I've never been able to kick," She doesn't waste much time. Quickly she frees me from the chains.

"What happened there," I tried pointing to her bloody mouth, but my arms are still numb. "to your face."

"Told," Emma helps me out by putting my weight on her shoulders. I scream as my legs light up on fire from the sheer sensation of numbness. "Sorry," she says before continuing with the story. "I told Wil to hit me a couple of times. I had to sell the part. It worked like a charm when I stumbled in. Me and Wil figured; it was now or never to make our move. We knew this wasn't going to end well for us. So we decided just to cut ties." Bold move by them.

I manage to wobble good enough to stand on my own. "So, is Wil going to the cops?"

Emma snorts. "Heck no, he's going to meet me at a motel across town, called the Star Lights Motel, room 107. That's our special little spot we conduct our transactions, you know, sell drugs." I figured as much.

"She'll kill you for this. You know that, right?" I have to remind her of the consequences.

"We'll vanish, head out to Kentucky. Lay low with a few friends we got. Not even Angela or Bobby would dare cross that state line, not with the people we know."

I hug her, she laughs. "Thank you, thank you for believing in me."

"All right, that's enough." She pulls away, blushing a little. "Let's get you out of here."

We make our way through the door. I feel the air hit my face; I see the sky again. I almost cry as a few stars start to creep out in the coming night. I made peace with never seeing such beauty ever again.

"Hurry up." Emma runs to Bryan's car. She dives under the driver's steering wheel and rips the wires underneath, which I see is another of her talents. Once I make it to the passenger side, she hotwires the car without a problem.

"I need your skills." I jump into the passenger side and buckle myself for freedom.

Emma revs the engine. "I'm dumping you off on the nearest police station, you tell them what happened but just keep---" Emma's words get cut off, and I can see why. Bobby's van is heading back in a fury. "She figured it out. Clever bitch."

I would've thought this would end here. Emma would walk out, make a plea for her life, and sell me down death row. Instead, Emma fires up the truck and heads straight at them.

"Bring it!" Emma screams at the top of her lungs as she pushes aggressively on the gas; Bobby does the same. They're both locked in a game of chicken. "Oh, you going to play, little boy?" Emma laughs out loud.

I take a quick look into Emma's eyes; she has no attention in pulling away. She'd kill us both before she'd let them win. Good.

Time almost seems to slow as the vehicles get closer and closer. Angela's eyes lock onto mines. She can't believe this is happening. She'll gladly take the crash head-on, even if it kills us both. Finally, something we can agree on.

But Bobby is all bark, and he does what he always does, run away. The man loves his life too much to die. On the other hand, Angela is a demon in all its forms. The moment she feels Bobby pulling away, She sticks her body out of the car, pulls out the gun she used on Bryan, and lets loose a few shots into the truck.

Emma didn't take this attack lightly. She drove the truck into the van's side, a pit maneuver that sends both Angela and Bobby barreling out of control and into a small ditch that Wil had been digging, what for, I could only guess. Best not to get into that man's mind.

"How you like that!?" Emma cheered, getting the truck back on track and speeding like a demon away from this place. One look around, and I could see Angela wobbling out of the vehicle, firing recklessly at us without aim.

I couldn't help but laugh as Bobby rushed at her, trying to wrestle the gun away. Oh, how the smile broke on my face, as those images vanished as the further we went.

Soon something new came over me; it felt like hope and a second chance at life. "I'm free. I'm truly free." Never did I think I would see this day, what a time to be alive.

CHAPTER 19

DON'T LOOK

My heart is racing with excitement. I can't hold back my smile. Emma keeps looking at me, reciprocating the same passion I'm feeling. It's hard not to feel like this. I'm winning for the first time.

So many thoughts rush through my head. "Where do I go, what will I do, what's next?" And it brings a smile to me because my chapter doesn't end here as I had envisioned; it continues.

But then, why do I feel lost?  Something is genuinely broken inside of me. Put that feeling away, Darren. You're alive. We have our future to think of; remember that.

"Man plans, God laughs." I snap my head around the car. Where did that voice come from? It sounded so familiar.

"Fuck, fuck, this can't be happening," Emma's distress is my dark omen come to fruition.

"What's going on?" my voice reeks of concern.

"We're losing fuel fast," she points at the gauge, which is quickly dropping. "she must have hit the tank, fuck." Her eyes zip back and forth; I can already read her mind. She wants to ditch and run.

"You want to run for it."

Her eyes almost jump out; she never pictured me to have psychic abilities. "We got no choice, mind reader." She gives a playful wink, trying to soothe this dreadful situation. "Besides, I know these woods. We should be able to lose them."

But it looks like we won't be exercising that option today. The Hardee’s sign is upon us, which means my car is not that far off.

"My car!" I exclaim with joy.

Emma looks at me with confusion. "What's that?" She asks.

"Bryan told me my car was off the Hardee's billboard. Said you could see the skid marks leading to the distance. Hid it deep into the woods so no one would find it." My eyes start to focus on the road, as does Emma.

A minute or two later, we see the faint skid marks of the tires come into sight. Emma drives into the field as the car slowly comes to its death. "We'll have to go by foot here." Emma is ready to leave, but I grab her hand. "What's the matter?"

I can't explain it, but I get this cold-turning feeling in my stomach. "You need to leave, Emma. They're not after you; they're after me. Thank you for helping, but now I need you to leave." Get her away from here, Darren, don't let her come with you.

"What are you talking about?" My words catch her off guard.

"Run, Emma. You don't have to see this through with me." I'm begging her, so much fear running down my spine. But she won't listen.

"Hell no, you're giving a girl a ride back into town. It's the least you could do after I saved your ass." Headlights probe into the darkness. We already know who that is. So the debate ends, and our legs storm into the night for a game of 'find the car.'

The lights of our pursuers die out. I can barely make out what's in front of me. Another part of my mind starts pondering about the gators lying around the woods and the horrific stories of people getting killed by them.

"Best pray they ain't hungry," Emma says, reading my thoughts this time.

"Fucking Bryan, where did you put it." I'm huffing and puffing, cursing under my breath each time I keep running into trees.

"Getting warm."

I stop in my tracks. Someone's out here with us, I heard them. "Emma, someone's here." My shaky voice says to her.

She stops to listen. "Ain't no one, but they will be if we don't hurry up."

The further we go, the more I can sense someone is watching us. I can feel their breath on my neck. I keep turning my head from side to side, stopping my movement, trying to see if I can catch a glimpse of them.

"Keep moving." Emma snickers at me.

"I see you."

I heard it. It's out there; something is out there. "Go away, just go away." I hiss under my breath, my knees shaking from fright.

"Move it!" Emma orders once more.

"Yeah, I'm coming," I say. As slowly in my head, I pray that they'll leave us alone and let us be.

"Jackpot!" Emma says in jubilation as she discovers my red Honda standing in the distance.

"Don't look in the back."

"What did you say?" I ask Emma.

"I didn't say anything." Emma slaps my shoulder. "We found it. Come on, let's go!"

The closer I get to this car, the more uneasy I feel. I get a close look; the keys are on the dashboard. "Hurry, hurry, get in!" Emma is hollering at me as she runs to the passenger side.

"Darren, Darren." Something's in the trunk. I can hear tapping from within it.

"Do you hear that?" Emma ignores my question; all that matters to her is getting the hell out of here.

"Get in. We don't have time to be sitting here."

"Give me a second." I open the door and pull the lever to open the trunk.

"Hey, what the hell are you--" something grabs her attention, and she lets me be.

"Come on, buddy, open the back, I dare you." What is this? I can feel its heartbeat. "I didn't think you'd come back. I bet you were hoping you wouldn't." Its laughter scares me.

Out there, I feel lost. Now that I stand, hearing this thing speak to me, I don't feel lost. I feel as though I belong. What's happening to me?

My heart is pounding; my hands start to shake. I take a deep breath and pull open the trunk. "What, it can't be." It's me, and I'm looking back at myself. "What the fuck?" How is that possible? There's only one of me?

Yet, here I am, looking at a bloated, lifeless version of me. But if that's me, then who am I?

"Say hello to the beast."

What have I done?

CHAPTER 20

THE BEAST IS FREE

My entire world is collapsing around me. The ground beneath is gone, and I'm free-falling, unable to hold on to existence itself. It feels too surreal, but it's all happening.

How does it feel to be back where it all started for you?

I know that voice, but I can't put a face to it.

Darkness all around me. There's no light here. It's almost as though I'm alone, but I know I'm not. I can feel it watching me.

I've always been looking over your shoulder, breathing down your neck. You refused to acknowledge it. We had our dances time from time, always in those nightmares of yours. I almost had you in my grasp, but you kept slipping away. FYI drop the monologue; I can hear you clear as day.

If you hear my thoughts, does that mean we're both one of the same? You are me, but just a darker subconscious part of myself? That has to be it; that's the only logical way to explain all this.

Swing and a miss. Not even close. How do I break this to you? You have no conscience, and there is no existence to the man you think you are!

There is no truth to your words. You don't exist. You are not real; I'm real!

Damn, you got jokes now.

No, I have the truth, the only thing to keep me safe.

You got a bag of lies is what you have. Didn't it strike you as odd when all that bark and bite magically slipped out of you?

I was mad, angry; it had to slip out one day.

It would never slip out of you. Hell would have to freeze before that happened. No, that was all me.

Shut up, go away. Just let me live in peace.

Living is for the living, not the dead.

That's where you're wrong; I am alive.

Did you forget what you saw in that trunk?

I saw nothing.

You're hysterical. Let's take a deep breath and calm down, retrace our steps. Do you remember, can you see it?

I don't see anything. You're lying. Just let me go back to Emma, let me go back to my life. Please stop this.

Now, now. Don't act like you don't see it? The whole picture has been fading in and out for a while now. You've been there before.

The bar? White River.

Yes, yes, yes! He's remembering. Tell it, tell the story like it is!

It was the bar White River. I just found it there out of dumb luck. I needed a place to stop and think. I was upset. I was shaking from utter rage, but I couldn't show it or let it out. I just sat there with a glass of water, wanting to talk, but nobody would listen.

I noticed. I saw the real you, an absolute train wreck, misery spilling onto the floor. It was turning me on from across the room. I made my move, I came to you, our eyes met, and it was love at first sight. I knew you were the one.

Then you came into view. The man in the bar, in my dreams. Now I remember you. You're not a stranger; you've been haunting me, trying to reach out to me.

Feels good to be recognized.

The bartender remembered you. He said, "You again, what you made this your new hunting ground?" You were there each night, looking for someone. And you found me.

Oh, how you spilled your guts like a gushing girl, you even cried. How pathetic was that?

I had a bad vibe about you, something inside me told me to run, but I pushed it back. You pressed and pressed into my life. I felt like I was a case study. I was so afraid of you. The look in your eyes, I knew you were up to no good. I let it go, and I bared my soul to you.

That you did, and I felt something I never felt with others.

What?

Sympathy. I never knew a man could be beaten so badly in life and still accept his fate.

What did you do to me?

You know what I did. Stop being blind; keep going to the next scene.

No, I left, that was it!

How did you get to that open road; how did you end up in the diner?

I was distraught. I lost track of time; that's it.

It's almost as though you picked up your life in the middle of a dream.

I left the bar, then you followed. You kept talking to me, asking me for a ride.

He's getting warmer.

I got in my car. You were silent, so dead silent; it scared me. You told me to pull over, and you asked me to step out so we could have a smoke.

You're burning up!

Before we got out, you told me to pop the trunk. I laughed and asked why? You told me not to ask questions and do it. And I did. I've never felt so scared before; I didn't have the power to leave. You offered me a smoke, I declined. You shrugged your shoulders, continued to smoke. I looked at the trunk, and I asked you what we were doing; remind me what you said?

I'm making you into a better man.

And then.

Go on, say it, you know what comes next.

You started choking me. You watched me struggle to breathe. You had this God-awful smile on your face as you did it, and suddenly I saw this look of disappointment on you.

I thought you would fight, be a man, at least in your last seconds of life. But you just gave in.

You killed me.

At long last, now he remembers.

I'm dead, this can't be true, but it is. You tossed me in the trunk, and you took my name, face, and soul.

That I did, and I have zero regrets. You were doing nothing with your life. Someone had to change it, make it better. I didn't expect to fall so deep into you that you would take control of my body. I have to pay the price for wearing new skin; It's a bitch.

What took you so long to repossess it if this is your body?

I was always coming back for my body. If it hadn't been for that stupid hillbilly who sideswiped us, I would still be in control. Instead, that knock to the head sent me into a dark place, one worst than hell.

But you found your way through hell and back to the surface.

Every time they put you at risk, I would slowly creep in. I could get you to do things you would never dare to do.

Why didn't you take over?

I tried, but you wouldn't budge. You were a persistent little fucker. But luckily, a little shock therapy does wonders. Thank you for coming back to the scene of the crime.

What happens to me now?

You go back to the shadows, son. You let me worry about the future. Because the future is for the living and I have a lot of living to do.

CHAPTER 21

SAY YOUR LAST WORDS

Goddamn, it feels good to be back. It's like waking from a deep slumber. I feel well-rested, so full of spunk to seize the moment. Unlike Darren here, sadly to say.

Darren was something else. I'm never going to forget him. He brought emotions out of me long and buried, and I lost myself in it. But all well that ends well.

The subtle movement in the car grabs my attention. A dumbfounded girl steps out, holding a wallet in hand. Who the fuck is this? How the hell did she get here?

It's all starting to come back. Emma, Angela, Bryan, Wil, and Bobby. The fools who thought I was weak, the ones that chained me up like a dog.

Don't worry, my little friends; I'll show you fear.

"What did you say your name was?" She steps out, holding bloated Darren's wallet, finally putting two and two together.

"I have many names." I move faster than she can think. Before she knows it, I wrap my arms around her like a snake. Making her drop the wallet. She yelps and cries, how I miss those emotions from those scared souls that cross my path, "But you need not worry."

I start crushing into this girl; her bones begin to snap from the pressure. Not a milk drinker this one; bones are too brittle, too easy to break.

"Oh, my God!" Her screams echo into the woods. I'm sure her little friend Angela heard that. Good, let her come. We have some unfinished business.

"Stop, please." Emma's word struggle to escape. She starts foaming spit and blood from her mouth. I open my own to catch it, so sensual if you think about it, tasting her fear, her last seconds of life.

"You should have taken his sage advice. He was trying to save you from this horror." Her eyes start rolling back. "Death, freedom, that's all he asked, his way of trying to save you." I'm talking to myself; she's long gone.

"Julie!" That voice is like nails to a chalkboard. "Julie, answer me!" Julie, not Emma? I guess I wasn't the only one pretending to be someone I wasn't.

I drop the body and hide in the shadows from the oncoming footsteps. I'm good at hiding; no one seems to notice me till the last moment of their life.

"Julie!" Stupid white trash Angela stumbles upon the scene, her eyes full of panic. Her color seems to fade as she sees the crushed body on the floor.

Angela covers her screams with her hands. Her head begins to shake as she inches towards her friend's lifeless body. "Oh my God, no, no, who did this?"

She kneels beside her dead friend, baring the vulnerable side to her. A few minutes ago, Angela wanted to murder this bumpkin; now that the reality is there, she retreats to this pathetic state.

She's got the knife sticking out of her back pocket, the one she was going to ram into the cop's skull.

"Where is he?" Now she noticed my absence. Her eyes are moving back and forth, trying to find me in the dark. She can't see me. If she could, she'd be running.

I'm coming for you, girl. I know you can feel it. Angela is reaching for the knife; she feels the predator out there.

"Now we meet," I whisper into her ear, grabbing her wrist tight, pulling the knife away. Take it out of her hands and spin her around so she can see me, right before I slice and dice. A gush of blood cascades in the air, painting my face red. Angela falls, clutching her neck. Trying to prevent herself from bleeding out. "For the very first time." I tremble from pleasure. This was a worthy kill.

She has a look of shock on her face; deep inside, I think she hoped that she had been wrong about this.

"As much as I hate you, I admire your keen eye. Everyone else saw a weak, helpless man, but you saw the real me." I can't help but chuckle. "You should've pulled the trigger when you had the chance."

She's mouthing out a word, one annoying word I've heard one too many times already, Thelma.

"Your little friend ran into me when I was in a slump. I think I was some biker wannabe? She seemed quite smitten with the act. It was easy picking. You already know what happened to her, and I don't want to bore you with the details." Acceptance overcomes her; she can now die knowing the truth, no more nagging doubt.

I kick her hand away, let the blood gush out of her. I could watch this for hours, but annoyances are a part of life. So I hide back in the darkness and watch the next pray fall into my sights.

Old horny, Bobby comes on a white horse for his pussy. He's more lost than anyone. I know he's thinking to himself. "No way that coward I chained up could do this."

What a joke this old Vet is. Big talker, no beast. But I remember what I told him face to face in that shed. I remind him as he kneels to clutch the neck of his dying white trash princess. "The devil is here. Your death won't be quick; I'm afraid to say."

EPILOGUE

On the open road again, it feels good. It's a shame that I have to start looking for a new place to start over again. I mean, someone's bound to notice the missing people. Someone will eventually stumble onto those bodies. That sucks; I was starting to take a shine into these backwater parts.

"Please, talk. We're all worried." Text chimes from bloated Darren's phone. It's the ex, the one that held the boy's nuts in a bag.

My first instinct is to break the phone and toss it to the side of the road. But It just doesn't feel right to leave things unfinished. No, I'm going to do Darren a solid. So I text her back.

"Bridget, it took me weeks to figure out how I could deal with this, move on from this pain, but I did. I've made my peace. You are not my enemy; there is no hate in my heart. I want to start my life over again and perhaps have you in it as a friend when the time is right."

Oh, the anticipation. Did I pick up a few things from fat-bloated Darren?

"Darren, that's all I want. I need to see you and talk to you face-to-face. Is there a place I could go to meet you?" Damn, I'm good.

If I only had a place to meet her, wasn't Wil staying at a nearby motel? Things are working in my favor.

"Meet me at the Star Lights Motel, room 107, in Brightwood, Florida. We can talk and make our peace before we go our separate ways." Thank you, Emma, Julie, or whoever.

A quick reply pings in a heartbeat, "Thank you, I'm bringing Chuck with me. Is that okay?" The other man, wow, she has some balls.

"Yes, that's fine. We all need to talk and get on with our lives. I look forward to seeing you and Chuck." I wonder if I have enough room in the trunk for them? That's okay; I'll worry about it when we get there.

MISTAKEN

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