Sunsets and Car Crashes

William

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have done. I was really tired – I must have been more active at the show the night before than I had realised. I tried to move my arms and stretch, but I was stopped by something. Rope. Oh god – I was tied up! I had been knocked out by something – not asleep. I had been with Francesca; I remembered that bit. We’d had that coffee...it must have been drugged or something. I knew it’d tasted funny.

I opened my eyes slowly. The light in the room was bright and nearly blinded me. She was stood in front of me. As my eyes adjusted, I realised that she was crying. She was pointing something at me – a gun. It hit me then that I was about to die, and, not only that, but it was going to be brought about by the woman that I loved. I screwed my eyes up tightly and waited for death...

“I’m sorry, Will...” she whispered. I looked up again, trying to ignore the big black machine that she was brandishing. “I didn’t want to do this, but they were going to kill Marco...”

She was sobbing so much. I didn’t think I had ever seen someone in so much pain. The hand that she was holding the gun in was shaking so much that I was surprised she was even able to hold it up. My emotions hit me then like a train wreck: first was anger. I was angry because I’d trusted her, believed that she had got out of this business so that we could be together, and yet she had been lying so that she could kill me. Secondly was sadness – sadness that I wasn’t going to get a chance to say goodbye to my brothers, my nieces, my friends, my bands, my fans...I was just going to disappear, and no-one would know what had really happened. And then came the fear. That one nearly knocked me senseless. I had never been more terrified in my life. I had been suicidal before, that was certain, but I had never experienced facing death against my will.

“Will it hurt?” I asked quietly, unable to look up into her eyes anymore.

“I don’t know...”

I nodded. At least she was being honest with me. I didn’t want to be lied to right then. And, if I was going to die anyway, I should probably try and sort a couple of things out first. “Fran, will you do a couple of things for me? After you’ve...done this?”

She sniffed. “Yes...”

“Will you tell all the guys that they were awesome fun to have around...and that they should carry on with what they’re doin’...and tell them to tell my brothers that I love ‘em...?”

Francesca sobbed again, wiping underneath her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Yeah...I’ll tell them that.”

There was a long pause. I was expecting her to shoot me then, but I could still feel warmth in my veins and lungs. There was just silence, broken occasionally by her sobs. I looked up, and she didn’t have her eyes on me. She was staring at the floor, though the gun was still raised. I was confused. It wasn’t that I wantedher to kill me, but I didn’t understand why she was dragging it out.

“Why haven’t you shot me yet?” I asked, my voice suddenly tiny. Francesca’s head shot up and then in her eyes I saw the answer. It was because she couldn’t. The white of her eyes was a horrific shade of scarlet from her tears, whilst her cheeks were a dramatic shade of white. She looked ill.

“Will, I have to tell you something,” she blurted out quickly. Her words were so fast that I only just about caught what she said. She took a deep breath in to steady herself, glanced behind where I had been secured, before looking me dead in the eyes and uttering the words that officially changed the direction my life was taking.

“I love you, Will. I’ve loved you since the day we met. I nearly got punished on that first day because I screamed at Ermanno to let you live. He was going to kill you because you’d nearly ‘ruined’ my face. I’d face all the punishments these fuckers can come up with if it’d keep you safe...but I can’t keep you safe. Because I love you, you will neverbe safe.”

I felt tears trickle down my cheeks then. She was howling like a wounded animal, and yet she sounded less vicious than that. It was more like a child, lost in a wood, with the monsters from under her bed creeping in ever closer. She was lamenting the fact that she would never be able to love anyone because they would just be taken away from her. I wanted to get up, hold her to me, tell her that it was okay and that the monsters weren’t real...but I couldn’t lie, and the monsters had already decided my fate. I only had one possible way to calm her.

“Fran...I...I really, fuckin’ meant it when I said that I wanted you to be my girl. I’ve never fuckin’ wanted anyone more in my life. You fit me perfectly, and even though I know that you think you’re broken beyond repair...well, I think it’s because you were made to fit against the way that I’m broken too. I love you too, Fran. I don’ just want you to be my girl – I want you to be the person that I’m with forever, the person that I wake up to every morning and who I fall in love with just that lil’ bit more every time...”

I don’t really know what happened next. I know that Francesca suddenly stopped crying, turned her face back towards where I was sat and fired her gun.

Francesca

He lovedme. That tiny thought suddenly made me feel invincible. Suddenly my life felt like it had a purpose – I had to stay alive and I had to get Will out alive. They couldn’t hold us down if we didn’t let them. I stopped crying, turned back towards him and Roberto, raised my gun just that little bit higher and fired.

The bullet hit Roberto right in the middle of his chest. The impact made his ribcage crack audibly, and there was a sudden flood of blood that sprayed everywhere. Flecks of it landed on my face and my clothes. Will shouted out in fright and screwed his eyes up tightly, leaning as far forward in his chair as he could. When he’d realised that it wasn’t him that I’d shot, he looked behind him and shouted loudly.

“FUCK ME! You shothim!”

“Rather him than you,” I said flatly, clicking on the safety on the gun and shoving it into the back of my jeans. I strode over to Roberto’s carcass and began to rummage around in his pockets. Every fibre of the material he was wearing seemed to drip with blood. It smelt metallic too – the scent of fresh death. I found his pen knife in his inside jacket pocket. I ran back over to Will and immediately set about cutting him free from his roped prison.

“I don’t know how long we’ve got,” I confessed. “I think they’ll have a bug in here somewhere. We gotta run – I don’t care where we go. We just gotta go.”

I cut his legs free. He stood up without hesitation and pulled me into his arms, grazing his lips along mine. The contact thrilled me. I cast my arms around his neck and pulled him nearer to me, deepening the kiss. It was urgent, frantic...painful. I released him again.

“Let’s get outta here,” he whispered to me. He took my hand in his and we turned to run out the room. The door opened before us. Milan’s silhouette took up the whole doorway and his gun roared loudly. Everything seemed to slow down then: the bullet crawled towards me and I watched it, helplessly, completely unable to get out of its path. It connected with my skin, and I was vaguely aware of pain in my abdomen. This weird, red water gushed from my wound. Was it a wound? I don’t really know. But suddenly I was on the floor, with red on my hands, on the floor and on my clothes, and Will was next to me. I think he was screaming, but I couldn’t really hear him. All I could hear was my heartbeat in my ear.

It was fading.

William

The person with the gun stood, wide eyed, staring at Francesca. He looked at me and ran away before I could say anything to him. Francesca herself fell against me heavily, almost knocking me over. There was so much blood. I was shouting at her, wanting her to hear me and wake us both up from this nightmare.

“Fran! No, baby, come back to me...please! This isn’t real!” I was crying, the hot, salty moisture burning and blinding me. Francesca’s movement started to become short and jerked, almost as if she was having some kind of epileptic fit. Her eyes were large and unblinking. She kept making grunts of discomfort, and yet she never cried or made any kind of noise that let me hear the pain I knew she must be in. She looked up at me, her eyes beginning to lose the cheeky spark within them. She put her blood streaked hand up on my cheek and tried to speak. All that came out was a strangled noise that bubbled and foamed.

“Fran, please...please...no! I love you, come back to me! Tell me this is a dream!” I was bawling so much that I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to stop. But Francesca just stared at me and gave me a tiny smile. And, with a final jerk of her whole body, she fell limp in my arms.

I started to scream then, not caring that the whole building was probably teeming with those low-lives. The light had completely vanished from Francesca’s confusing grey eyes, and now all that was left was an empty shell, cold and bloodied and not the person that I had fallen in love with. The person I’d loved had disappeared – I didn’t know where, but I hoped for her that the life after death, that I had spent my whole life doubting, actually existed. Because, in all honesty, if anyone deserved to go there, it was her. I held her body to my chest and sobbed into her hair. It was breaking my heart, and yet I was happy for her. She’d been captive for so long and now she was able to stretch out.

My Francesca – free at last.