It's up to Me to Make You Bleed

The room was silent for what felt very close to an eternity until my mother finally spoke up. “What the fuck is going on here, Brian?” she demanded. Wow, I’ve never heard her drop an f-bomb before…

In the dim lighting, I saw Brian shrug before lazily replying, “We’re making a video, with you and Courtney as the stars.”

“What…what kind of video?”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to figure that out eventually, Mrs. S.”

I couldn’t believe that this was really happening; I mean all of this craziness seems surreal, but them doing this to my mom too? That’s just going too far. I was glaring absolute, sharpened daggers at Brian…and I knew he could see me. But I wonder if he knew that I was ready to rip his throat out.

“Anyway, Mrs. S, I’m going to have to ask you to leave for a little while. I need to have a word with your daughter,” Brian announced.

Before my mom could protest, he had already picked up a shovel and whacked her on the side of the head, sending her body flying down onto the concrete floor, with a small pool of blood leaking from her head injury.

“You bastard,” I growled, leaping up to my feet, “I’m going to kill you!”

My fingers automatically came together in the form of a fist as I charged forward toward him, fueled by some sort of rage that seemed to erase all of my pain, temporarily at least. He shook his head and laughed as he watched me come closer and closer to him. With the shovel still in hand, he tried to swing it at me, but I managed to move out of the way just in time.

Noticing his shocked expression, I lunged forward and, with as much power as I could force out of my arm, I sent my fist flying across his face, making contact with his cheekbone. He stumbled backwards a few steps, and I could already see a beautiful black and blue spot, the size of my fist, on his face. He looked back at me with such a scornful expression that it almost took away my confidence, almost.

“What’s gotten into you, bitch?!” he questioned, anger clear in his words.

“What,” I smirked, “angry that I managed to finally get a hit in on you?”

“I’ll do more than that right back to you,” he retorted.

“No, I don’t think so. Now that you’ve involved my damn mother, you’ve crossed the line. I’m not letting this insanity go on anymore!” I screamed, burning tears of rage filling my eyes.

In my peripheral vision, I noticed that there was a small kitchen knife resting on a table. If I can grab it really quick…

“Courtney, we’ve had the upper hand so far, I’m not quite sure what makes you think the tables can be turned,” he reasoned.

Then, I bet you’ll never see this coming. I reached to my right and grabbed the knife, swinging my arm for him. He tried to dodge the slash, but I still got him along the jaw line. A nice thin red line formed on his skin moments before the blood slowly surfaced and rand down his chin.

Much like before, his eyes became filled with hatred and anger. “Now you’ve done it,” he snarled.

He reached forward and tightly gripped my neck, choking the air out of me. I slid the knife into my jeans pocket before both of my hands anxiously flew up to his own, scratching at his flesh, trying to force him to release me. With a strangely perfect aim, he threw me forward, allowing me to land in the chair behind me. The automated wrist and ankle cuffs strapped down, locking me in place.

Brian was about to say something else, but Matt stormed into the room before he could spit anything out. And boy, did he look pissed.

*Matt’s POV*

Out in the hallway, I heard Brian’s confrontation with Julianne, and already I knew that we’d have our second family member added to the ‘cast’ of our movie. Courtney didn’t really look like she was planning on going anywhere other than sitting in that chair, so I decided to head over to the room next door, the storage room.

Ok, I know this isn’t my house and all, but almost right away as soon as I entered the room, something seemed off. The lighting was typical, dark with only a slight hint of light, just enough to be able to see in front of yourself. All of the boxes, covered in mountains of dust, were still stacked in their lopsided piles. The table where I fucked Courtney was still in place, completely cleaned of any fluids. So what wasn’t right?

The room smelled absolutely disgusting…like week old leftovers cooking in Californian summer sun…or severely expired milk. As I was walking further into the room, I noticed that the floor was really sticking. A copperish-red, crusted substance was trailing ahead of me, all the way around the stack of boxes. I know that this wasn’t here earlier, because my feet were still able to walk across the concrete without getting stuck.

I followed the trail, somewhat cognoscente of the fact this could very well be blood. Well, after a few steps around the corner, all of the questions were answered. Joe Sullivan was laying a collection of spilt blood and fragments of his skull. I’m not any sort of medical examiner, but I could definitely tell you that someone attacked him, probably by surprise, by smashing his skull in. I mean shit, the only way I could truly tell that it was him was because of the fact that the only part of his head still in tact was his face.

Moreover, there’s only one person who would’ve had a chance or motive to do this – Courtney.

I was a little shaken up after seeing Jimmy’s dad dead in his own basement. I paced the room back and forth, trying my best not to look at the battered body. Has this gotten too far out of control? Maybe we should call it quits now…

No, we’d have to get rid of Courtney and her mom either way now, because if we let them go, they’d go to the cops. Although, we could use Joe’s murder as a liability…to ensure they wouldn’t tell. But there’s no way of knowing with sneaky bitches. I need to go tell Jimmy…the camera’s off now, so he should be available.

When I walked back into the main room, I saw that Courtney was strapped down into the chair, Julianne was passed out on the floor from an apparent head injury, and Brian was not only bruised but also bleeding on his face. “What the fuck did I miss?” I asked, my voice quivering slightly in between words.

Courtney turned to look at me, almost looking to scared to speak, but did so anyway. “I got a few punches in on that bastard for going against his word and bringing my mom into this!” she shouted, turning back to glare at Brian as she spoke.

“Oh,” I said walking toward her, “so you think it’s so bad and unfair with what we’re going to do to your mom? What about Jimmy’s dad? Was what you did to him fair?!”

I lunged toward her and slapped her as hard as I could across her face, feeling slightly better listening to the contact of skin-to-skin vibrated and echoed off the walls. Her head totally whipped to the other side, showing off the nice red handprint I left behind. I even was able to break a bit of skin in some spots; others only broke a few blood vessels.

“Dude, what are you talking about?” Brian inquired.

I turned to him and gravely said, “Jimmy’s dad is dead.”

“What…how do you know?” he gasped.

I nodded my head toward the storage room, “He’s in there. Practically missing half his skull.” Brian and I both saw Courtney’s eyes widen with fear and guilt.

“You…you did that?” Brian asked, enraged.

Her body began trembling as tears fell from her eyes. “I – I thought that it was one of you coming downstairs. I was so mad and scared, and I just wanted to get the fuck out of here! If it had been one of you, oh God it would’ve made me so happy. Once I made contact with him, assuming he was one of you, I couldn’t stop myself until I knew he was dead. When I opened my eyes…I saw Joe.”

Both Brian and I were having a hard time controlling ourselves…but we needed to wait until Jimmy knew, until the camera was on. This is the kind of shit that’s going to make our film better than everyone else’s.

*Jimmy’s POV*

After giving myself a relaxing break upstairs, I decided to come back down and see if the guys were ready to start filming again. At the time, I didn’t think of it…but I should’ve noticed that my dad had “been in the basement” for over an hour and a half now. Well, little did I know, he wouldn’t be coming out of that basement anytime soon.

As soon as I got downstairs, Matt was waiting, with a look of anger mixed with sadness. “What’s wrong with you, man?” I asked.

It took him a moment before he found the words to say. “Y-you’re dad, man, he’s been murdered.”

“Good one,” I chuckled, waiting to hear what was really wrong.

Matt shook his head, “No, I found his body in the storage room. His…his skull was nearly entirely demolished.”

“Who would’ve killed him?” I asked, still having a hard time believing this shit.

“Courtney did it. She said she heard someone came downstairs and thought it was one of us. She attacked the person and once she made contact, she couldn’t stop. Her eyes had been squeezed shut, but once she opened them she realized what she’d done…”

“I’m gonna kill that bitch!” I shouted, angrily storming into the room to find her sitting, strapped down into the chair.

“How could you kill the man who took you and your pathetic mother in?! How could you do that to him….he was practically your father!” I screamed in her face.

She was convulsing pretty badly and her face was beaten and soaked in tears. Good.

“J-Jimmy, I swear I never meant to kill him. You bastards did this to me! You practically gave me the O.K. to kill him. NONE OF THIS WOULD’VE HAPPENED IF YOU ALL HADN’T GONE INSANE!” she screamed back, her voice sounding raw and scraped.

“You just shut the fuck up, sis,” I said, tightly gripping her throat and pushing her head further back into the chair.

“What are you gonna do?” Brian asked.

I thought about it for a minute, and saw the shadow on the ground start to move. Oh, Julianne what perfect timing you have. “I’m not going to make you pay just yet, Courtney. As they say, an eye for an eye,” I announced, walking toward Julianne.

Behind me I heard Courtney struggle and jerk around in the chair. “No, don’t do anything to her. Just deal with me. She had nothing to do with this,” she pleaded.

I shook my head, “Sorry, Court, but I think your mommy needs to be punished. Brian, can you go into the camera room and turn the camera on?” Brian nodded and got to work.

The minute the red light flashed on, all hell was let loose. I couldn’t stop myself. The minute Julianne sat up, I slammed my fist into her face, sending her body crashing back down.

There was a screwdriver on the table nearby, small and sharp enough to use. I gripped it tightly and slashed out at Julianne, creating random cuts along her arm and chest. She asked me to stop, she looked at me with pleading eyes. But I wouldn’t stop. This one’s for you, dad. I slammed the screwdriver right into her stomach, watching with delight as the metal forced its way in between her skin, calling forth the bloodbath that would ensue.