Take a Breath, Pull the Trigger

I sunk down to the floor holding my stomach. How I ever ended up here, I do not know. The only thing I now wished for was the ablility to go back in time and erase every event from ever happening from the time I met Derek eight months ago in the movie theatre to now. But that wasn't possible. I was here to pass the initiation. I was here to prove that I was worthy to belong in my boyfriend's gang, and worthy to be his.

"Get up." Someone barked. I looked up to see the gaze of my boyfriend's best friend looking down at me with cold eyes. Aleck. From day one, this man had despised my guts and thought I was not worthy of his best friend's love. He was one of the reasons I couldn't back out now.

"I'm getting up, I'm getting up." I hissed at him as I stood up straight. I followed him into an old paneled room, with a round wooden table sitting in the middle of it. Derek stood at the other side of the room, looking more than just a little nervous. I gave my lover a questioning look, wondering what the test was. Surely it couldn't be that bad, right?

He saw me look at him and broke his gaze instantly. The initiation was bad if he didn't want to make eye-contact with me. Everyone was in the room for the initiation, and Aleck led me to take a seat at the wooden table across from an Asian girl. She was petite, possibly 3x prettier than I was.

Another man walked into the room, and made his way over to the chair next to me, leaving there room only for one other person on the opposite end of me. There wasn't any chair so I'm guessing it was only going to be the three of us participating in the initiation. All of the others stood, their eyes falling heavily onto the table as a thickness shrouded the room in darkness. The weight made me feel claustrophobic.

"The initiation ceremony." The man sitting next to me said. He was their leader, the toughest. I tried to remember his name. Joe maybe? No. That's not right. There were two of them, I know that. Him and his brother single-handedly began the street gang, grew it up from the streets and turned it from cardboard box shanties into skyscrapers. They worked effectively in the black markets as well as in crime sprees with boarder gangs around the city. I hoped I wouldn't be facing the initiation with this intimidating brute.

"There's no turning back from here. You sat down. You play the game. Understand?" The man said, looking first from the Asian girl then to me. She stared down at the table, nodding. I was going to be going against her, I realized, not this beast. I must have lucked out.

"Joe? The game please?" He called to another person who stood at the edge of the room, holding a black box. Joe walked around the table to the man, and I could see the similarities. They were obviously brothers. It's funny how the smallest things click inside your brain when you're least expecting them to. The man at the table was Damien, his brother Joe. Damien meant darkness in Greek, didn't it? Or demon? It seemed to fit. Damien took out the ‘game’ from the case, revealing it not to be a game at all, but a gun with a revolver on it.

"The game we're going to play is called Russian roulette. Have you heard of it before?" He asked the Asian girl and me. We both nodded, and I looked over at Derek once again. He wasn't looking at me. He must have known that this was the initiation. How could he have talked me into doing an initiation that could result into my death? Didn't he love me?

"Good. So I don't have to explain. You take the gun, click it into place, put it to your head and pull the trigger. The person that doesn't get their brains blown out is the winner. We play until someone loses. Easy?" He said and once again she and I helplessly nodded. Damien took something else out of the case, which happened to be a pair of white die. He shook them in his hand.

"We pick by whoever rolls the highest number. If you roll the highest number, you go first. Got it?" We nodded again. Damien gave a small chuckle, finding this whole event funny.

"And what's a good game without a prize, right? Whoever wins, you're initiated into the gang, and become invincible with the rest of us. Also, you get to have one of our strongest links Derek as your keeper so to speak and he can decide what to do with you." He filled us in, "Of course, you both dated Derek. Alice, you're just defending your position in the gang, right?" Alice looked at me coldly and nodded.

"Okay. Good. Let's start." Damien said and rolled the dice over to Alice. She picked them up in her hands and dropped them on the table.

Thoughts tumbled through my head as Alice tossed the dice around and around in her hand. Derek had never mentioned Alice. I felt betrayed. Damien had made it clear that if I die, Alice gets to keep him. I didn't even know it was part of the equation. Damien had said Derek was our keeper, so what did that mean? Somehow it seemed to me as if he had suddenly been granted the permission to be my master, or my pimp.

"Seven." She mumbled, obviously not thrilled at all.

"Alright, good. Your turn." He tossed them to me and I picked them up, shaking them and closing my eyes as I dropped them onto the table, my heart stopping for a second and then speeding up again.

"Five." I said. Alice mumbled something that sounded like a curse as Damien handed the gun to her.

"Alright. You're up first." He told her. She took the gun, and even from where I sat across from her in the dimly lit room, I could tell that her hand was shaking viciously. She let the gun revolve and then closed her eyes as she pressed the gun to her temple. I squinted my eyes, not wanting to see her if she was unfortunate enough to have the chamber that bared the bullet in it. Some type of morbid fascination inside of me at the same time forbade me from closing my eyes fully.

Alice whispered something to herself, probably a prayer. The room was silent as they waited for her to pull the trigger. I watched her finger moved, and my heart was racing as she pulled the trigger, and stopped when I just heard a dull click.

She breathed, relieved as she pulled the gun away from her head and handed it back to Damien. Damien took it from her, and the room clapped. He turned to me and handed the gun to me. I took the handle in my palm, feeling the beads of sweat collect and roll down my forehead. I wiped my forehead with my free hand, feeling how cold and clammy I was and wondered if that was going to be the last time I felt my forehead.

"Don't think anything like that." I scolded myself mentally. I flicked the revolver, locking my chamber into place. Hearing the gun click made me sick to my stomach. I picked up the gun and traveled it to my head, not really wanting to feel the metal pressed against the side of my head, but knowing that was the only way to play.

Either fate was going to be good to me, or my luck was going to run out, and the same thing I had feared for Alice was going to happen to me. I knew that I might not be here in another minute breathing, and that in itself scared the hell out of me. It would have been my own stupidity to do so, and yet it was also my own desire. If I wanted Derek, I needed to do this. This was the only way I could be with him, and if I couldn't be with him, then I would rather die. I couldn't deny I still loved him.

"Please don't let this be the one that has the bullet in it." I thought silently to myself, placing my finger over the trigger. I didn't want to hear or feel or even think about what would happen when I pulled it, and in vain I tried to block it out. My heart stopped as I pulled the trigger, just to hear the same dull click I heard when Alice pulled the trigger.

The room clapped again less enthusiastically as I practically tossed the gun onto the table. The wait was agonizing enough. Time was running low as Alice took the gun, looking paler than when I first saw her.

This game of theirs, this must be a representation of what is to be expected. Every day you're going to have to take the chance that you might not be living in another minute, and it'll be your entire fault. It was survival of the fittest, and most of it was just sheer luck that decided if you were fit or not.

My thoughts quieted and stopped as Alice put the gun to the side of her skull. She looked deathly afraid, more than she had during the first round. There was only six barrels in the gun anyways, so there would only be four rounds total before a loser was named.

Anxiety threatened to tear through my chest and stomach as I watched Suzy give another prayer, whispering it to herself so that nobody else could hear. I nearly closed my eyes again as her finger wound its way around the trigger, and pulled it.

A scream erupted from my lips when I heard the bang go off, and I put my hand over my mouth to stop anymore screams from erupting. I couldn't peel my eyes away from Alice, who's hand had dropped away from the gun. Blood spattered the walls, and all over the side of her head, blending in with her shiny black hair and dripping onto her arm.

"NO!" Aleck screamed and ran to her, grabbing hold of her body. Damien rose up from his chair.

"It's the stupid bitch's fault! She knew the rules! You should of reminded her!" Damien yelled at him. Aleck just kept on shaking his head, in shock and wiping her black hair away from her face, his hands covered in blood.

"This wasn't supposed to happen to you. It wasn't supposed to be you. I promised you were going to be okay." He apologized over and over to her.

Tears formed in my eyes as I bit down on my hand, seeing his desperation and sadness. Would Derek be doing the same thing is that had been me? Or would he of been over on the other side of the table, congratulating his ex-girlfriend as the other members pulled my body away like they were doing to her?

I turned to look at him, and saw a small smile on his face of relief, warmth illuminating through his eyes even though his ex-girlfriend was dead. I practically killed her myself. He wasn't the man I had grown so close to over the past eight months. He had power in the gang, power in which I had never known before. My entire fate now lay at his feet. I was his now.

Dear God, what had I just gotten myself into?