I'll Justify My Reasons With Your Blood

*Synyster’s POV*

Zacky and I were playing a lovely game of cards when Shads and Rev dragged in an unconscious, bloody Nikki. She was all beat up and scarred already…I’m guessing they had some fun with her downstairs.

“Did you hear the secret yet?” Rev asked, sitting down next to me and looking at my hand of cards. I laid down the ace of spades.

“What secret?” I asked, not really paying much attention to this conversation in the first place.

He scoffed, “How could you not know? Nikki is human!”

“WHAT?” I laughed, not believing what he just said.

He nodded, “Zacky figured it out when he was listening in at Jack’s place.”

I glared across the table at Zacky who tried to keep an innocent look on his face. “You knew this whole time and you didn’t tell me?!” I shouted throwing cards across the table at him.

“I…uh thought you knew?” he stammered, ducking from the flying cards.

“You guys can deal with this dispute later,” Shadows interrupted, “Syn, do you think you’re ready to test out your power?”

My demeanor grew serious all the sudden. “Yeah, I don’t see why not. Have you tried yours?”

“Let’s just say Nikki was my lovely test subject and that I’ll be using that power much more in the future.”

I smirked, “So I take it she’ll be mine next?” He nodded throwing her still body over to me like a rag doll.

My power was seeing anything that my victim has seen. In other words, I can see their entire past…even the moments that they themselves don’t remember. Then, I can project a selected memory out for the others to see.

“So,” I said, sitting back down on my chair, “what kind of memory did you have in mind?”

Shads paused for a minute to think. “Pick one that is special to her and involves her and her brothers.”

Right away, I got to work…delving through her mind and all its filed memories, searching for the perfect one. And within mere seconds, I found it.

It was Parent Appreciation Day at my grade school today. I was the best artist in the entire third grade, and I was about ready to show it off. The theme was ‘The Light of Your World,’ meaning that the kid was the light of the parents’ world. We were given a Styrofoam kind of frame with sticker letters, paints, and sparkles.

I picked out a black frame and yellow sticker letters to spell out the theme statement. I glued the sparkles down in the shape of stars, to make it look like a starry night sky. Then, we put in a picture of ourselves. I picked one out of me on my First Communion day. Shannon told me that it looked like I was getting married in my pretty white dress, so it became my favorite picture.

Once the frames were done, we took them home to give to our parents. I couldn’t wait to see the look on mom and dad’s faces when they saw my amazing artwork. Sadly, their cars weren’t in the driveway. Well, maybe they just were out at work still? I ran inside the house and found Jared and Shannon in the living room playing Nintendo on the big screen TV. “Where are mom and dad?” I asked, nearly out of breath.

“On a trip,” they both said in a monotone voice.

I didn’t know why – maybe it was because I really wanted them to be here for my gift – but I felt tears coming. I hated crying in front of my brothers, so I dropped the frame and ran off to my room. I didn’t even think they noticed me…too busy with their game.

I laid down on my bed, listened to Green Day and fell asleep crying. Why was I the only one whose parents where never here when I needed them? Well, apparently later on Jared and Shannon realized I was upset. They came in my room carrying the frame. “Nikki, why did you drop your frame?” Shannon asked.

“B-because mom and dad aren’t home and aren’t here to see it. I made it for them at school.”

Jared came over and hugged me. “I’m sorry that they’re not here, but you know how hard their job is. That’s why we have this nice house.” He looked down at the frame and read the words. “…but no matter what Nikki, regardless of whether or not mom and dad are here, you’ll always be the light in me and Shannon’s world.”

And from that moment on, anytime I was upset, they would always be able to comfort me by reminding me of that fact. Even when we got older, in our 20’s, they would both say, “Nikki, you should feel special…I mean, you are the light in our darkened world.” And I did feel special.

The memory replayed exactly as it had happened, with Nikki’s own thoughts included, onto the wall on the other side of the room for the others to see. We all burst into fits of laughter after watching the ‘touching’ scene. “Now, how do we use something like that against her?” the Rev asked once we all became serious.

“I have an idea,” Shads grinned, looking down at Nikki’s body with an evil glint in his eye. “Let’s make her the light of our world too…”

*Normal POV*

You would think that after passing out for what seemed like such a long time that your body would feel somewhat rested or relaxed…but mine felt like the total opposite. The moment I felt alive again, thousands of prick points of pain resurfaced. I swear, if I didn’t know any better I would’ve thought that there were millions of needles digging into my skin right about now.

And to make things worse, my head felt like a sledgehammer had been whacked toward it a few times. Hell, I didn’t even want to open my eyes and see where I was at now. First, I see a river of blood, so who knows what I could end up seeing now anyway.

I could feel something dripping down my face, so out of instinct I went to move my hand to wipe it off. But there was a problem…I couldn’t move either of my arms. I still refused to open my eyes, and continued to pull on my arms but they wouldn’t budge. I bit down on my lip as I slowly opened my eyes and immediately regretted doing so.

I was somehow suspended all the way at the top of the room…more commonly known as the ceiling. This room was huge and tall, which meant that I must be at least three stories in midair. I’d always had an issue with heights…and this situation was no different. But how the hell am I even up here?

Shaking with fear by now, I slowly look to my right to see that they have me hooked to the bottom of a chandelier. Literally, there were large metal hooks dug deep into my arms, my back, and my legs stretching my body to fit more or less with the shape of the lighting fixture itself.

Blood from when I fell into the river was dried and crusted onto my arms and face…making my skin feel stiff. And then to make matters worse, my own blood was dripping from the hooks, falling like rain drops. I wanted down, and I wanted it now.

“Well, well, well it looks like Sleeping Beauty is finally up, and it took her long enough,” Shadows laughed, stepping into the room below me and catching a couplerain blood drops in his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up and get me the fuck down,” I cried, squeezing my eyes shut and hoping that for once something could work out for me.

“Wow someone’s getting feisty,” Zacky chuckled.

“Oh, so you want down?” Shadows asked slowly, talking to me as if I was one of the little kids I taught at work.

“YES!” I screamed.

“Ok…”

And the next thing I know, I’m sent flying toward the ground, still attached to the light. But just before I actually hit the ground, I flew back up and returned to my initial position. It felt like I was just on some ride from an amusement park in hell.

“You asshole!” I shouted, my body totally shaking with nerves and shock.

“What, did you just ask to come down and see us again?” he teased, keeping his hand wrapped around the lever that would send me up or down.

“NO!” I shouted, hoping that he would take me seriously. And he did.

Synyster walked in the room next, followed by the Rev. “It seems kinda dark in here,” Rev said as he reclined on the black leather sofa.

Syn shrugged, “Let there be light.”

And then the next thing I knew, hundreds of jolts of electricity were tingling through my veins as all of the light bulbs on the chandeliers lit up at once. I screamed out as the strange tingles consumed my body and reached every corner. My body began to convulse which wasn’t a very good idea. The more my body shook, the looser the grip of the hooks became.

As each strenuous second passed, I could feel bits of my skin slip from under the pull of the hook…it was like how some of the little kids in my class used to stretch the playdough apart slowly and watch as the large gooey blob separated into two different pieces.

If these didn’t hold me up, then I’d end up falling three stories and breaking a bone of some sort. And at this point, being held up this high with God knows how many volts of electricity flowing through me seemed much worse than breaking a bone or two.

I began to fight more and more, feeling the lovely sensation of my skin ripping. The skin held above the hook snapped into two pieces, just like the playdough, leaving behind a gaping hole in the middle of my arms and legs. I screamed out once again as my body dropped down to the ground at an alarming speed. Theguys below me laughed at my terrified expression.

I squeezed my eyes shut, just waiting for the unavoidable impact, but was surprised to find that I landed in someone’s arms instead of the ground. As it turns out Synyster was the one who caught me. Upon seeing my confused expression, he said, “What? We can’t have our precious, innocent little human dying so easily on us. We still need you.”

“Need me for what?” I spat, angered that they think they can just talk to me like they own me and that the only reason I’m alive is to serve their desires.

“Oh, I think that would be a little too much for someone like you to handle,” Zacky laughed.

“Try me,” I glared over at him.

“Why don’t we just focus on the matter at hand here?” Shadows suggested. I was about to ask what the ‘matter at hand’ was, but I got a little distracted.

Forgetting that I was in the arms of a murderous ‘vampire,’ I was a little shocked when I saw him lean down toward me out of the corner of my eye. He stuck his tongue out and then the next thing I knew, he’s licking up and sucking on the areas where the hooks were. I tried to pull my arm away from his mouth, but soon realized there was no way to get past his iron grip.

“Dude, focus,” the Rev said snapping his fingers in front of Syn’s face, causing him to immediately remove his mouth. Guess he must have something more important to focus on than draining me of even more blood.

“So,” he said setting me down on the couch, “you wanna know why you woke up in the middle of our ceiling attached to a light?”

As most sane people would do, I nodded my head waiting to hear what possible reason they could come up with. He crawled a little closer so that his head was right next to mine. Then he whispered, “I just wanted you to be the light of my world, Nikki.”

My eyes widened when I heard that as my mind instantly retracted back to the memory he was insulting. How the hell could he know about that?! That was such a long time ago…there’s no way he could know. All of the guys started laughing at me once again as I felt my body begin to experience some sort of mental breakdown here at the thought of them making fun of something that meant so much to me.

“You don’t seem very happy about that. Is it because you never got to hear mommy and daddy say the same to you?” he teased, pushing the knife further and further into my heart.

I began hyperventilating as tears rolled down my cheeks. “S-shut up and stop making fun of me!” I said, covering my face with my knees as I sat in the fetal position.

“Aw, don’t hide from us baby, we wanna see our little light,” Shadows taunted, stepping forward and forcing my legs back down so they could further humiliate me by watching me cry like a little kid.

“There’s nothing to try and hide because you can’t stop us from seeing anything, as tonight demonstrated. Hell, we got to see whatever memory of yours we wanted,” Zacky said.

Was he right? Was there really nothing else left for me to do in this moment? No…if what everything they said is true, then that means that Jared and Shannon are just like them, in a sense. They must have some sort of super powers too. Let’s hope that super hearing is one of them.

“JARED SAVE ME!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, hearing my own voice reverberate off the walls after I was done.

That hurt like hell to do, but something deep inside told me that it helped me out more than I could ever know...at least I hoped so.