Perhaps it was strange for someone to pull up in a limousine on the street in front of my house; even stranger was the man who stepped out from the passenger door and gleamed over at my friends and I with a bright smile that would have seemed friendly, if not for his strange means of transport that suggested that he wanted something from us.
Newshore Junction, Iowa is the most ordinarily weird town in the United States. It is not “new” by any means, it is not located near any body of water, nor is it a Junction of any sorts. Newshore Junction, Iowa is merely a handful of streets connecting a ragtag group of stores and houses. The biggest attraction in town would be a motel that consists of only six ground floor rooms, but still somehow charges around 50 dollars a night. The church manages to be significantly smaller than a large portion of the houses, but it still brings people in every Sunday at noon. The people are normal people, which leaves some onlookers questioning how the town has stayed alive.
I remember starting a “landscaping business” with two of my friends one summer. We used my dad’s weed wacker and a friend’s Uncle’s push mower to provide us with a way to actually run the business. We ran our little business out of my garage, making a little bit of pocket change that we could spend on magazines, records, BB pellets, and trips to the movies. We used magic markers to make posters advertising our services at three bucks a pop with a phone number almost illegibly drawn next to the address of my house.
Before long, around thirty of the posters had been made and placed on windows all around town, and that was just how easy it was. Within a week, we had taken ten lawns and accumulated a whopping thirty dollars, which was a small fortune that would last two or three days in our hands.
It was impossible to not feel excited when the limo came cruising through my neighborhood one afternoon. All three of us were practically foaming at the mouths at the sight of the black vehicle with tinted windows that revealed nothing but a deep dark void sitting inside of the luxurious car. We were hoping that it was someone famous looking to grace us with their presence.
Much to our astoundment, the car slowed down and pulled to the side of the road, then glided down the street before coming to a stop in front of my driveway. The passenger door popped open with a satisfying click to reveal a man wearing a pair of sunglasses that matched the dark tint of the limo windows. He stepped onto the driveway in a pair of black dress shoes and a black suit with a matching hat.
“Is this the fine little mowing company you’ve got going here?” he asked. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt like he was winking at us. We all kept silent.
“Well?” the man in the suit bellowed.
“Who are you?” one of my friends nervously asked.
“Well, I work just a few miles down from here,” he replied, not really answering the question.
“We were sitting down at Spunk’s, y’know that place? We saw your sign and we had to come over here.” The three of us simply stared back at the man.
“The boss said he’ll pay you thirty bucks if you run a mower down the lawn; help clean the place up.”
“Alright… Sounds great, Mister. When do you want me to work?” I asked, knowing my friends were somewhat unsure of how to respond to the strange man’s request.
“Jumping straight to it. I like that,” he said with another shiny smile.
“We’re just a few miles outside of town. Just off of the road. Ask your pop about the farm down there. Show up at noon.”
After he had said that, he slowly made his way back to the limo.
“See you soon, Slick,” he said as he slammed the door, then he sped down the street.
—-
“You’ve got to go.”
“But why?” I pleaded to my father at the dinner table that night. My mother silently distributed green beans between my father, sister, and me.
“Because you already told him you would. He’s paying for a service that you are offering. It’s thirty bucks, son, that’s pretty good, ain’t it?”
“I really don’t want to.”
“You don’t have much of a choice. I’ll take you sometime tomorrow. He’s not the boogeyman. He’s got a nice car, so what? They’re just a bunch of soybean farmers. Eat your beans and shut it.” I wasn’t exactly scared of the man, but he seemed strange. There was nothing normal about a man with in an odd business suit driving up to a kid’s house, offering thirty dollars to mow a single lawn, then driving away as soon as he made the offer, without introducing himself.
The farm was an oasis in a giant desert of green. My father’s pickup truck dusted along a narrow dirt road between the rows of crops. The sunshine pattered on the ceiling of the truck, sweltering the black fabric inside with an oven-like heat. Miles upon miles of crops were on each side of the main road, while a much smaller dirt road led to the farm that orchestrated the entire business. The dirt road eventually took us to a large clearing, in which the road split into two, forming a large three way junction. The right arm of the road led to a dry grain storage sitting next to a barn, in which I could see a crop harvester. Between the barn and storage building were three large silos. The left arm of the road led to a massive farmhouse that resembled a well used mansion that had obviously been standing for several decades; I could practically smell the ancient dust floating through the air around the house. The crops that I had seen for miles on the dirt road made a wall around the group of buildings, leaving a firmly cut rectangular border that made the clearing seem even more like an oasis. The greenest, most luscious, most unmarred grass I had ever seen was blanketing every inch of the ground inside of the clearing. As if to solidify all of this, there was a barbed wire fence separating the grass and crops. A fountain was sculpted magnificently in between the two arms of the road, only increasing the perfection of the settlement.
My father smiled at me, then said, “Nice place!”
He then dumped my mower onto the ground and sped away from the land, spraying my clothes with dust. I assumed that he expected me to go inside of the house and ask someone to use the phone if I wanted him to pick me up. As soon as I ignited the engine of the mower and pushed it on its sludgy wheels, I realized that I was going to be working for several hours. I began the mind numbing work, which consisted of pushing the mower until the grass was short. I daydreamed as I pushed, feeling the sun fall down on my forehead and arms, providing me with a deep farmer’s tan that reminded me I was still in the real world. I occasionally splashed water onto my face with a water bottle that I kept on the side of the mower, being sure to not get heat stroke. As I turned the mower off and moved across the driveway, I became afraid of the house. It seemed to be screaming at me to come inside; I began to notice that each window in the house was covered with drapes, blocking all light from entering the building. Upon the closer inspection that came when I mowed around the farmhouse, the black drapes actually appeared to be layers of black paint over the windows, completely obliterating any cracks. Whomever was inside clearly did not want to attract onlookers. My fear and curiosity surrounding the building seemed projected through the front doors, as if they were beckoning me to come closer.
When I had finally finished with the lawn, the sun was beginning to set in the west, directly behind the farmhouse, casting a large shadow on the dirt road. I was left with two questions:. How was I going to get home, and when was I going to get paid? Seeing as the driveway was absent of vehicles, I realized that I would have to either walk home or attempt to use a phone inside.
After I spent a short time contemplating, I swallowed my fear, galloped up the stained brick steps, and then slowed my pace as I came closer to the wooden front door.
“Mister?” I called out, expecting the man in the suit to be waiting for me inside. I grabbed onto a golden door knocker in the shape of an angel, then jammed it against the wood of the door. It made a dull tapping noise, no louder than if I had simply knocked with my knuckles.
It was then when I noticed a handwritten note attached to the right side of door frame. Had I not been so tired, and had it not been so dreadfully humid outside, I would have noticed it earlier.
“Stay outside. If not back by night, leave,” was all it read. The note was both foreboding and mysterious, but at the same time, it only managed to peak my interest.
Knowing that it was getting dark, I knew that the latter applied to me. Also knowing that my dad assumed I would find a way home and that I was not walking, I made the fairly rash decision to thrust through the front door. Curiosity, fear, and pure lust for whatever thrills that would galvanize me into sprinting back outside managed to override my common sense and force me to ignore the note near the door.
Fortunately, my fears further disengaged once the door had opened. There was no axe murderer waiting for me, nor was a typical standard of cleanliness that many have come to expect from farm houses, but a obsessively polished room waited for me instead. The door opened straight into a living room. To the right of the door were several chairs, a couch, and a fireplace laden with ash. To the left was a marbled floored kitchen, in which a counter divided it from the adjacent living room. A half open door led from the kitchen into a utility room. Two more doors sat side by side near one of the couches.
This all would have seemed perfectly farmhouse-like, other than the insane amount of the work that had obviously been put into keeping the place clean. From what I knew, the farm had been running for nearly a century, yet there was no evidence that anyone had lived there. The entire kitchen was empty of any dirty dishes or food stains on the counters and floor, none of the paint on the walls looked dated or chipped, and even the laundry room was completely empty of clothes. The dusty smell I had noticed from the exterior of the building was nonexistent on the interior.
Deciding that I was already trespassing and that I didn’t want to investigate the cleanliness of the farmhouse, I made my way to a phone in the kitchen. I hastily jammed my father’s number into the turn dial. When he answered, I anxiously told him that I was done working. I put the phone down, then started out of the house. The sound of something that resembled a blender echoed through the walls as I closed the front door, allowing me the assumption that someone was still in the house. I thought nothing of it, and with a bored sigh, I paced outside to wait for my father.
“How was it?” one third of the lawn mowing company asked that night. I was sitting at Spunk’s diner with one of my buddies, just realizing that I had wasted an entire day mowing, only for the results to be destitute at best. My other friend never managed to show up at the diner, despite telling us that he was planning on going to Spunk’s that evening.
“Stupid,” I replied over the busy chatter of the restaurant.
“Jus’ stupid? Didn’t anything happen?”
“I’m here now, ain’t I?
“Well, still,” he said as took a deep slurp of a strawberry milkshake from a metal mixing cup.
”No, nothing happened.”
“You still thought you were gonna get molded,” he said with a chuckle.
“The hell I did.”
“Ever’body thought you were. I kid you not. Promise you, you were pretty damn scared.”
“Why are you poking fun at me? At least I had the balls to go,” I said with a growl. He looked back at me with raised eyebrows and a shake of his head.
“I’m just messing with you. Step off a little, sheesh.”
I took a large sip of my milkshake, then immediately groaned from the impending brainfreeze.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been a-”
“Wait. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth as hard as you can.”
“Why?”
“Try it.” As soon as I had tried my friend’s random suggestion, the brainfreeze quickly melted away.
“Science!” he barked.
Just after the two of us had finished our food, I felt a sudden urge to use the bathroom.
“Be right back,” I said simply, then climbed out from the booth and rushed towards the diner’s bathroom, which was located on the opposite side of the restaurant from our table. I hurried to the feces scented toilet, then relieved myself. I inhaled deeply, then roamed to a sink, and once I had cleaned my hands, I went through a graffiti covered door that more than likely rendered my hand washing useless.
A smile greeted me at eye level. For a moment, I was completely mesmerized by the obsessive cleanliness of it. It looked as if the person whom owned the smile had steam cleaned their jaw just seconds before, leaving a spotless set of teeth that seemed as if they would show my reflection had a powerful enough spotlight pointed its ray upon the white surface of his chompers.
“Hey, Slick,” the man in the suit said. He looked exactly as he had when he had hired me, only then did I realize that the eyes of the man were incredibly bloodshot, as if each muscle in his body was consumed in an intense hatred, which I imagined was going to be lashed out onto me. My words were caught in my throat before I could mumble them to him. Not that it would’ve made any difference- I was still terrified of the man. A quick glance at his body told me that I wasn’t escaping. Underneath the sleeves of his suit, the man was incredibly muscular. Each of his purple veins fought to piece the skin of his arms.
“You left without your pay,” he said. His tone suggested that he was calm, but the look in his eyes clearly screamed that he was impossibly furious. I itched to run away from the man, for there was no telling if he was angry or not. Unfortunately, he blocked the way out, and I doubted that I would win in a fight against him.
A group of three men emerged from a booth near us. Two of the men were allowing the third to rest his arms on their shoulders, as if they were dragging him through the store. All three wore matching black suits and ties that would have made them identical to the man in front of me, only they had varying lengths of hair. The clerk ignored the men exiting the store and continued to blankly stare at a wall. Through the windows I could see that it was dark outside, and the only light was provided by a flickering street lamp.
My intimidation was quickly turned to terror; it was dark, four strange men with suits were watching me, I had no one to protect me, and there was nothing that said that these men were against hurting me.
“I’m lucky I ran into you! We were just leaving. I left my wallet in the car, mind if I pay you there?” I nodded half-heartedly as he moved past the disoriented clerk, whose eyes I noticed were fluttering as we followed the other three men outside. The man in the suit led me through the parking lot, and finally we came to his familiar limousine, where the two men were shoving the third man, whom I assumed was passed out, as his entire body appeared to be limp, into the back seat of the car. They left the door open, while one of the men motioned at me from inside. I stared back at him, confused as to what he wanted. It was then that the possibility of them kidnapping me ran through my mind, but it was far too late to react to this.
I felt my nose literally bend as a hand flashed in front of my face, sending thick gushes of blood over my lips, and causing my knees to buckle. My breath was forced from my lungs, leaving even more defenseless. The man in the suit wired his hand around the back of my neck, as if I were little more than a stray kitten, then he looked me directly in the eyes.
“Can’t you fucking read?” he snarled, then shoved me head-first onto the pavement. The shadow of someone walking past flickered alongside the car.
I lifted my bloody head from the ground, only for the man in the suit to jab me in the stomach with his foot.
“Help…,” was all I could manage to moan out at the person walking outside of my line of sight.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he said. In response, the shadow quickly skitted away from the car.
I tried to push myself off of the ground. When I heard him move closer to me, I clenched my jaw just as another punch smacked me into the cold pavement. I felt more blood began to pour from my face.
“S-stop. P-p-please,” I sputtered through waves of pain and sheer adrenaline.
“Get up!” he yelled then put his hands back around my throat and yanked me into the back of the limo.
He tossed me into a seat several feet away from the door, near where the passed out man was sprawled across the leather. One of the men, whose black hair was cut into a mullet that covered the back of his shoulders, sat directly across from me. He grinned at me with a tobacco stained smile. The other man, who was most easily identifiable by a completely shaved head, was seated on the other side of the passed out man, while the one who had shoved me into the pavement sat in the seat near the rear end of the vehicle. A large tinted window blocked my view of whomever was driving the limo. As soon as all four men were in their seats, the driver turned on the engine and went screeching away from the diner. None of the men spoke a word to the driver, but I had a feeling that he knew what his job was.
The drive from the diner to the farmhouse was beyond surreal. From the inside of the car, each of the windows were impossibly tinted, making it seem as if there were nothing else in the universe beyond myself and the other four men sitting in the seats. After driving for several minutes, the typical yellow dome lights that would be found inside of any normal car shut off, and seconds later they were replaced by dull blue lights. I was far too shocked to react to this situation in any sense of real fear or retaliation, which is what any normal person would have done. It didn’t help that my face was aching in intense pain and was leaking blood onto the seat, down my shirt, and into my pants.
“Wansumdi,” the man with the mullet asked through a mouthful of chew tobacco.
“What?” I asked. All of the men laughed at my response.
“What?” he mocked.
“Want some dip?” the bald man translated.
“No.”
“You sure?” the tobacco chewer muttered, then spat a thick wad onto the leg of my shorts. I reeled back in disgust, swiping my hands across my pants in a desperate attempt to remove the tobacco from my pants. It seemed that each man burst into tears with laughter at the very sight of my shocked response. For whatever reason, it occurred to me at that moment that these men weren’t my friends, weren’t going to pay me, and there was an almost certain chance that they were going to hurt me, and if what happened in a public parking lot was just a taste of what they planned to do to me, then there was no chance in hell that I was prepared for what they would do once they were miles away from the closest town. All of these things I had thought about, but they hadn’t fully ‘clicked’ until the man had beaten me.
“You know, Slick, I like you, and I don’t wanna hurt ya. I just gotta teach you to have some respect, and not to go fucking around in other people’s houses. I’m sure the boss is gonna love to meet you,” the man in the suit said. I stared back at him.
“Lighten up,” he said as the car lurched and rumbled over what I assumed was the dirt road. Seconds later, the limo lost speed and came to a stop. The man in the suit shoved the door open, allowing a different shade of light to come flowing inside of the limo.
“C’mon,” the bald man said as he grabbed his passed out friend. The one with the mullet helped by lifting the man up by his armpit. There was nothing I could do other than follow the man in the suit. I was greeted by the front of the farmhouse, which was dimly lit by a single red lightbulb over the front door. A quick glance behind the limo told me that I could go sprinting down the dirt road and possibly make it away from the strange house, seeing as the other men were stuck on the inside of the limousine. Just as I took a deep breath and prepared myself to run, the man in the suit turned around and grabbed me by the throat with one of his massive hands, forcing me to freeze.
“The boss loves his colored lights,” he snarled whilst pointing at the front door, “aren’t they nice?”
“L-lovely,” I stammered as his grip tightened and I began to choke. What was the point of the multicolored lights?
“Walk,” he commanded. The other two men dragged their unconscious friend away from the limo. His legs were limp as they dangled against the bricks and swayed back and forth. The man in the suit and I trailed behind the men as they shoved the door open, then tossed him into a couch near the two doors which led out of the room. Oddly enough, the only lighting fixtures in the room were several candles scattered across the kitchen counter, which provided a hollowing glow that left massive shadows flickering against the furniture. The two men disappeared through the door on the left, but it was far too dark to make out any details in the passageway. I stared blankly at the door on the left, as if there were nothing else to look at. The man in the suit seemed to stare too. I could only question what was beyond the door.
“Walk,” he whispered into my ear. It had become so quiet in that room that the whisper felt like a scream that seared directly into my bloodstream. He placed a hand against my back, then shoved me through the door on the right. As soon as I glared into the darkened staircase that led deeper into the house, my body seemed to tense up. A part of me expected the men to begin torturing me.
“Walk,” he repeated, sensing my fear. He closed the door behind us, which trapped the light in the living room and left the staircase blindingly unilluminated. He inched me down the stairs so slowly that I felt the entire house creak with every step I took. After a variable of time that I was unaware of, we came to another door at the bottom of the stairs, which he sluggishly pushed open to reveal another room. Another red dome light was positioned on the ceiling of this featureless room, making it seem as if the walls were painted a light shade of cherry red. Beyond that, the only notable detail about the space was that it was a perfect square. Had the room been flipped upside down, it would be nearly impossible to notice the difference. It was an odd contrast to the seemingly normal living room.
The man in the suit and I moved through another door that was placed along the opposite side of the room, only to come to a nearly identical room with the only immediate difference being that the dome light on the ceiling was a pale blue color. We hurried through a door into a third room where the light was purple, then to a fourth where it had turned to fiery orange, and finally to a fifth room in which the domelight had been replaced with an ultraviolet light. It changed the color of the man in the suit’s dress shirt and highlighted a powder-like trace of something neon green around the man’s nostrils. Was this some kind of attempt to brainwash me?
He blankly stared at me, then led me through the final door. The space that it opened into was much different than the square rooms I had just been shoved through. Beyond the door, there was a hallway that was illuminated by several blood-red dome lights. Lining the walls were several stainless steel medical carts that were covered in various bottles of pills, bloodstained cutting instruments, and needles. There were two doorways directly across from each other at the opposite end of the hall.
The man in the suit shoved me to the door on the left, then brought me to what I assumed was my final destination: a room with a checkered floor and dim fluorescent lighting that resembled a makeshift doctor’s office. Like the hallway, there were medical carts filling much of the empty space. In the center of the room was an operating table that resembled a wide ironing board with restraints. I hadn’t noticed my heart rate begin to quicken and my breath turning to desperate gasps. He shoved me once more, practically picking me up in an attempt to get me on the table. I had no choice but to obey him. He kept a hand pressed against my chest as he tugged on several sets of restraints. The first went across my ankles, the second held me by my forehead, the third set secured my stomach, two more secured my arms in loopholes, and the final went over my calves.
In my panicked state, I began to wish that I had at least tried to escape. I knew that whatever he was planning on doing to me was going to be far worse than simply being shot or killed whilst trying to run away. He calmly removed a needle from one of the carts, allowing it to glisten in the light as he brought it to my arm. A thin plastic tube connected from the back of the needle and linked into something sitting on top of the cart. He swiftly jabbed the crook of my left elbow, sending a strange fluid through the plastic tubes. Before I could ask the man what he was doing, my eyes were closed, and then I felt nothing.
The gentle plucking of an acoustic guitar awoke me. The noise was somehow comforting. I held my eyes closed, expecting to be in the comfort of my bed. When I tried to roll onto my stomach, my restraints tightly held me down, in a similar manner to that of the strings being tied to the neck of the guitar. As I grew more conscious of my surroundings, I felt my left shoulder ache, and my body felt weak to the point of me almost no longer wishing to escape my restraints. For whatever reason, my left arm felt extremely numb, but my right arm felt fine. I used my shoulder to try and shake my arm, only for nothing to happen; there was still the numb feeling, but I did not feel the restraints move when I attempted to do so. I tried my right arm, but the effect was almost the complete opposite: I felt a tugging sensation on the restraint. After I had done so, I finally managed to open my eyes and look at my left arm.
At first, I thought I was hallucinating, or that it was some kind of error with my retinas. I blinked, hoping that it would trigger or change something. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that crusty red stains soaked the plastic of the table along the left side of my body, and a large bandage covered the stump of my missing arm.
I couldn’t help but feel confused. My eyes fluttered, but I didn’t feel any real pain. I only felt that it was strange, that it couldn’t be real, or that they were playing a joke on me. My arm wasn’t really gone, was it? The guitar seemed to soundtrack the surrealness that filled the air like a thick, black smoke. Wherever the noise was coming from was beyond my telling, as the straps on my head made it extremely difficult to see anything outside of my peripheral vision.
Before long, the man with the mullet and the bald man barged into the room, then with surprising gentleness, they undid my restraints and pulled me to my feet. The man with the mullet slipped under my right shoulder in an attempt to drag me through the room, while the bald man held onto the back of my shirt. The two hastily moved me away from the operating table. I tried to cooperate and make it easier to support myself by putting my left arm over the bald man’s shoulder. Despite this, a deeper part of me was terrified. What were these men going to do with me? I felt my arm move and come closer to the man’s suit, only for me to look over and see that my arm was still completely gone. I gave a final attempt to move my left arm, hoping that it was still there, but it was to no avail. The man with the mullet pushed the door open, then we moved into the hall.
In the time that I had spent in the room with the operating table, someone had left the opposite door open, leaving me a limited view of what lie beyond it. Like the multicolored rooms I had seen throughout the house, this room was almost completely bare, and the floor, ceiling, and walls were covered in black wallpaper. A single lightbulb created a spotlight which shined down in the center of the room, highlighting a wheelchair. Sitting upon the chair was a person whose body was so mutilated by burns and scars that they were barely recognizable as a human being. Their skin had turned a pale grey, and an oxygen mask was attached to their face. The person’s head was lazily slung against the back of the chair, as if they had been paralyzed. Perhaps the most distorted part of their body was their eyes. Parts of the person’s forehead and cheeks had been burned so severely that they appeared as if they were literally melting, forcing their eyes to be covered with scarred tissue and more than likely making the person blind, but even beneath layers of burnt flesh, I could see the person staring at me.
Two pipes were connected to the oxygen mask; the first of which looked to carry oxygen, and the second was filled with a red liquid. The one with the red liquid connected to a tall rectangular object behind the wheelchair. On the top of the object was a grey funnel. The other two men ignored the disturbing person in the chair and continued dragging me down the hall.
They took me to the living room and sat me next to the passed out man. When they let go of me, the bald man went into the kitchen, and the man with the mullet went back into the basement. I quickly glanced to the door and calculated the time it would take me to run down the driveway. I looked back at the bald man and noticed a handgun on his hip. My heart thundered with the possibilities.
“It’s locked,” the man barked. He opened a drawer and pulled out a large pot.
“What are you doing?” I asked, still too stunned to act. He did not respond.
“What are y-”
“Feeding you,” he said.
“Why?”
Several minutes later, the pot was filled with boiling water and noodles. He used a large wooden spoon to pour the soup into a bowl. While his back was turned, I remembered the phone that I had used to call my dad. I could use it to call 911! As soon as I had thought that, the man placed the steaming bowl of soup onto the arm of the chair. The passed out man shifted his head, then snored. The bald man stared at me as I brought the bowl to my nose and sniffed the excruciatingly hot fumes.
“It doesn’t bite. Fuckin’ drink it.”
Without hesitation, I jerked my remaining arm up and slammed the bowl of boiled water into the side of his face.
He managed to growl, “GOD DA-” as he clutched his face in agony. I jumped up and shoved him onto the floor with my arm, then sprinted to the phone. I yanked it off the hook and used my index finger to dial 911. Unfortunately, the phone dropped off of the hook before I could catch it.
“911, what is your emergency?” I heard the operator ask.
“Hang it up,” the man in the suit barked from behind me. I froze up.
“Sir?” The operator pleaded.
“Hang it up,” he said, then I heard the floor creak as he stepped towards me.
“Sir, sir?”
“HANG. IT. UP,” the man in the suit bellowed. I felt him grab me by my hair, then he tossed me onto the ground, as if I were merely a twig. I sheepishly crawled back onto the couch and away from him. I looked at the gun on his right hip, and I fully expected him to fire on me. It took the man nearly three seconds to reel back around. In those three seconds, I acted in a state of panic. In the first second, the man clutched the phone, sighed, and I tried to sink into the couch. In the second second, he pushed the phone into the hook, and I glanced to the passed out man. In the third second, he turned around and screamed in fury, just as I reached for the passed out man’s right hip.
The man in the suit stormed to the couch. Before he could cause any damage, I had pulled the gun off of the passed out man’s hip. I barely had enough time to examine the weapon that I was holding, but it was clear that it was some form of revolver with a wooden grip.
The gun precariously shook in my hand. I felt his blood chill as he stared down the barrel. I wasn’t really prepared to shoot him, was I?
“Are you gonna shoot me?” He asked in an attempt to remain dominant in the situation. I could barely find the strength to squeeze the trigger, but when I finally had, my hand sent the shot soaring past the man’s head and into the wall near the phone.
He chuckled at my anxiety, then sprinted at me once more. Without fully realizing it, I squeezed the trigger a second time, sending a shot into the center of his forehead. I couldn’t help but gasp when I saw the small black hole that had been etched deeply into his skull.
Less than a second later, the man collapsed, leaving a puddle of blood on the floor around his head; it was clear that he had died before he had even hit the ground. I nearly dropped the gun when the realization came that I had just killed a man. I didn’t know what he was he like; for all I knew, he was just following orders. Unfortunately, the realization that the other men were still alive seemed to be much more over powering.
I acted fast by running to the windows and pulling back the curtains, but I came face to face with an incredibly thick sheet of glass. Seeing as there did not appear to be a way to open the window, I instinctively fired a bullet into it, but to no avail, as it left a spiderweb-like dent in the center of the glass.
Perhaps my mind was moving too quickly, but I knew that the other men would soon investigate the loud gunshots, and it was entirely possible that I would have to fight the entire group of men, and it was entirely possible that there were more than three men in the house. With this in mind, I half mindedly pointed the revolver at the passed out man with my remaining arm. It felt strange, pointing this weapon at someone that I had never even spoken to; I didn’t even know his name, but then again, neither did any of the men in suits. I cautiously pulled the trigger, sending a third incredibly loud bang through the house. Seconds after I had fired, the noise ceased. Clumsy footsteps tapped towards me from the room behind the door that was next to the staircase leading to the basement. Knowing that I had only a few seconds to run, I shoved my way through the door, just as a police siren wailed in the distance.
I anxiously searched for a place to hide in each of the colored rooms and the hallway, but it was hopeless, as each room was void of any solid furniture. As I investigated the operating room, I began to hear the siren through the walls of the basement. Almost as soon as I began to move to the closed door across from the operating room, the blender-like sound returned. I waited for the noise to halt, then I used my arm to hold the gun and simultaneously push the door, making an arch with the barrel of the revolver.
The weapon immediately lined up with the person in the wheelchair’s head. The sound of the person breathing was hellish, to say the least. The pipes running from their mangled body made a raspy noise that screamed that the lungs were in pain, just from breathing. The person’s chest moved in a gentle rhythm. The person stared directly at me, as if they were unaware of my presence in the room. The only emotion conveyed by the injured person was the breathing, which was calm, but seemed to show an excruciating tension within the lungs. Was this person the boss? The red liquid in one of the pipes seemed to be much a much lighter shade than it had been when I had first encountered the person. Small droplets of the liquid were splattered across the top of the large piece of machinery that seemed to feed the pipe. The machine gently hummed, providing ambiance behind the person’s breathing. Whoever they were, I wasn’t ready to kill them. The sirens stopped, and then there was a series of gunshots. Not knowing if the police had been killed or not, I debated hiding behind the machine. Voices shouted from upstairs, and more gunshots were sent back and forth.
Minutes later, the frantic sound of footsteps tapped through the hallway towards me. I held the revolver up in preparation to defend myself.
The End