Ticking Time Bomb

I open my eyes slowly when I begin to feel the sting of pain in my chest. I look down just in time to see Andy finish carving his name into my tender, milky flesh. My head was groggy, and I felt weak as I look up into Andy’s eyes. He didn’t look like the man that loved me or that I loved, no, this was the true Andy. The side of him that he only let me see on a few occasions when I really pissed him off. I smirk to myself as I think that my rebellion against him made him realize he has nothing left in life, so now he was desperate. He knew that Chris and Jonas would find us, they always did, but at this point Andy was so desperate for revenge he didn’t care.

I tried to move in the ropes to get more comfortable, but it wasn’t happening, “what’s wrong? Realizing you have no escape?” I ask Andy as I see him pace.

Andy punches me hard across my jaw. I spit out blood and look up at him, he’d put me through worse, so this was nothing. Andy was nothing. I had to put myself in the mindset of a killer if I wanted this to end. I had to become what Andy had been trying to make me for so many years. Andy hits me again, this time in my stomach, and again in my jaw once more. I didn’t fight, I mean what could I do with being tied up in these ropes anyway? I just let him punch me again and again until blood was running down my jaw and nose. I could hear the second person walking around behind me, preparing something no doubt, something that I would imagine would be ending my life tonight.

Andy knelt to look me in the eyes and with a smile, he said, “you’ve never looked as good as you do when you’re all bloodied,” he finishes with running a knife across my cheek. Leaving a decent cut in the flesh of my cheek.

Blood filled my mouth as something rough was placed around my neck. I look down and could just barely see the edges of an old rope. I didn’t know what kind it was, but honestly, I wasn’t sure it mattered when I was about to die.

“Do you remember the feeling of having a rope around your neck? You tried hanging yourself to get away from me when your parents died, but that didn’t work. It never worked,” He said with a grin.

I remembered. I was so close to dying then and so close to preventing all of this, but Andy was always watching me even when he wasn’t home, so his friends had cut me down with his permission. I gasp as they tighten the noose around my neck and Andy unties my legs as well as my hands. Andy yanks me up from the chair and drags me to the stool. I step up on it when instructed to do so and watch as Andy ties the noose to it.

“Do you have any last words Raiden before I shove you off?” He asks watching me.

I shake my head, I had formulated a plan quickly inside my head, it still ended with me dying but I was going to make sure Andy paid as well. I close my eyes as Andy shoves me from the stool and kicks it to the side, so I couldn’t get back on it. I focus my mind to control the instinctual panicking that I was facing as I asphyxiated. Andy had taught me how to control the panic when he was strangling me years ago, unbeknownst to him it was about to come back and bite him in the ass. I grab the top portion of the rope and pull myself up to relieve some of the pressure on my throat. I struggle since I was not an athlete by any means but making myself concentrate on Andy helped. I took a deep breath before hoisting up my lower half and wrapping my legs firmly around Andy’s neck when he tries to make me let go of the rope. I wrap my legs tighter like a boa constrictor until Andy was choking too. I gasp in pain when Andy shoves a knife up through my left thigh, but I didn’t let go. I kept going until Andy gave in and passed out on the floor.

I hear a growl from beside me “you’ll pay for that!” His partner yells at me.

I chuckle at the irony. I grunt in pain when his partner, a man I didn’t recognize, stabs another knife deep into my right side. My hands slip, and I drop my body roughly. I feel a crack in my neck and breathing suddenly gets a lot harder. This was it. Chris wouldn’t get here in time, Jonas wouldn’t get here in time, but I didn’t want them to. Andy would be unconscious when they got here, and they could take their revenge as I have taken mine. I give into the overwhelming sleepy feeling as I listen to my blood slowly forming a puddle under me.

I close my eyes and slip into the unconscious state that overtakes me.

Goodbye Chris…

Maybe now you can find someone that doesn’t have so much baggage.



I kick in the door for Jonas as we arrive at the house, it was silent inside. I motion that it was clear to enter and walk through the house, the closer I got to the back of the house the stronger the scent of blood became. I motion for Jonas and point to the room the smell of blood was coming from the strongest. I tried the doorknob and unsurprisingly it was locked. I kick it open too and my heart drops. The first thing I see, the first thing any of us sees, is Raiden’s lifeless body hanging from the ceiling beat up and bloody. The next thing we see, was what we all wanted, the unconscious body of Andy.

I take my phone from my pocket as I hear Chris’s bike pull up, “you shouldn’t let him in Jonas, not yet” I said as more of a suggestion. I place a call to Doc, “we have one body, you should get here quickly, it’s Raiden,” I said with a sense of sadness in my body. We would have our revenge for Micah and Chris would have his revenge for Raiden but look at what our need for revenge has led to. Raiden was a good kid, a little messed up, but no one could blame him. He didn’t deserve to die like this, but we kept hunting Andy, and the more we got hurt the more Raiden felt guilt.

I shake my head, “we were all so focused on Andy, how did we not see how much it was hurting him? He came here to die so this would end, or I would assume so, but he never had to die. I can see it even in his death, Raiden felt guilty for everything, for us hunting Andy, for our injuries, and we enabled it. Raiden could have been saved sooner, but this damn club demands so much of our time, and Chris was selfish. Micah chose to die because the club screwed up before I was even out of elementary school, and look what our need for revenge got us? Nothing but sorrow,” I said as I walk over to Raiden and cut him down for Doc. I shake my head and go outside to see Chris.

I stop him from going in, I shake my head, “not yet Chris,” I say without any emotion. I was done. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back.