3 01: 02// Present day

~Axel's POV, present day~

If there was one thing that was certain, it was that all those fucked-up moments with father ended in vain.

All the sweat glands in me resounded by the millions.

They all multiplied, and chased after me in vain, like my fights with Raymond. Crap. All I ever wanted was to grasp a lump of his hair and yank out every single strand like grass yanked right off the ground.

Besides that, the ground was hard and cement, it was cool when I laid my head on the slap of half-melted cement.

The construction workers had just implanted the right amount of slab into the ground and being like the total psycho I was I dumped my fists into the cool, sticky cement that seemed to ooze as my hand melted through it like quicksand.

I wished to myself.

I wished that all the things that people said about me weren't true. But there was one true epiphany in all of this realization that started to repel from my chest. Ugh...Fuck...

There was a time. A time where all children in this stage of growth-of-the-human-cycle were propelled to make straight A's and play nice with other kids.

The mafia taught me well to cover my ears whenever the teacher reminded me not to staple another kid's arm. I was a violent kid. The kid who was both a creep and a loner along with the mix of the word violent.

The violence that I was portraying to my peers wasn't me. It couldn't be, couldn't it? Me who would stand up for YOU whenever all your friends betrayed you. I was the monster. Not you.

Today, unlike yesterday, was a better day. A day that shone out of the creaks of darkness and haha-ed its way out of its cave and seemed to lurk: even though it was morning. Today was the day.

YOU are tending to your drunken father in the living room.

He's down after a couple of shots of mezcal beer, and two hours of beating your poor mother up.

He's locked the door to his room, but you are KIND.

You walk over to the little cupboard above your kitchen microwave and you unlock his door. That disgraceful bastard doesn't even appreciate you. Even though he knows that you are tired, and you have just came home from France, and, you are still in the same clothes you were in just so you could greet him while he was watching the Astros play on live television.

When the internet gets bad, he scolds you and blames you for turning off the wifi signal. You sigh and go down to the basement only to find your baby brother, Alex messing with the old man's wifi. "Beep, boop, beep." the innocence of this toddler certainly was fake.

Your little brother has just turned three-years-old and he was a result of your old man's affair with his woman Leyl Brooks, a lawyer who lives in Ontario. However, you treat him like HE is actually your real brother. You are so kind.

YOU head over to where your "brother" is and you kindly tell him to stop playing with the wifi or else your father will get mad at you. Or even worse, he'd beat the crap out of you with a whip.

The look on YOUR eyes pains me.

Why would such a beautiful and kind person such as yourself have such a terrible family? YOU begin to pick up Alex, being careful to not make him scream.

Your little brother is frail, with big round brown eyes and platinum-blond hair: just like your father.

To me, he reminds me of your father's mini-me. After you pick Alex up, he starts to wail. Slowly, but louder and louder the more you make him rise from the ground.

He screams like there is no tomorrow like YOU are going kill him, not your father.

But, you doubt that your father will kill his only son. Unlike YOU the little spoiled brat has inherited more rights and privileges than you will ever have.

Again, the sad look in YOUR eyes makes me sad.

For one thing, YOU have mentioned to me that you couldn't have toys or dolls growing up.

But, your baby brother, Alex, has a whole toy box of them. (Dolls, build-a-bear stuffed toys, LEGOS, light up trucks, you name it)

That night, you are beaten terribly by your father.

The many scratches and bumpy-bloody bruises lay on your back, all turning a deep purple and making your veins pop. YOU refuse to scream, however.

No matter how many slashes you endure throughout the night, you never refuse to disobey him. He who, (according to my photos and observation) is the evil one, not YOU.

No matter what people call you: slut, hoe, bitch, I don't care. I love for the real you.

The one who-in the middle of the night- has tears piled on your pillow sheets, muffling tears under the covers, your neck, back, and hair all slashed by never-ending scars and wounds.

For one thing, your hair still looked beautiful, no matter how many times your father pulled it.

No matter how long it takes I will avenge YOU.

********

HE is a sleeper.

A knocked-cold-deep sleeper. His snores could've woken up the entire suburb.

The birds were chirping happily, I spy a red robin on the windowsill of HIS window. HE shoos it away and mocks the poor bird. I already hate HIM.

HE starts the day early: 5:35 am to be precise. Not a minute more, not a minute less.

He then rolls out of his huge king-sized mattress and flops on the mahogany floors with a THUD. "Damn you!" He directs this insult to himself, in shame. He was only in his late thirties but he was suffering from a mix of insomnia and type four diabetes.

HE then uses his hands to prop himself from the floor and stands up, still groggy from the lack of sleep. He heads over to the pantry and fetches a flashlight.

Then, he uses every ounce of dull light that seemed to spew out of the flashlight, cursing himself for not going to Walmart to buy triple-AAA batteries.

After gulping down DANNON vanilla-flavored yogurt from the Samsung silver-but rusted refrigerator, and black coffee, he is refreshed after his hunger has been satisfied and his thirst quenched.

He looks tired.

Thick black eyebags seep under his eyes, and his eyes are sagging from yes, you named it, lack of SLEEP. This was due to the beating he gave to YOU last night.

The moment he stops eating (finally!) he walks upstairs, not being mindful of his sleeping wife and children. He was a selfish man, that was for sure. But the moment he tries to open the door to his room-

"WHAT THE HELL! MIRANDA, WHAT KIND OF SICK JOKE ARE YOU- ?" His voice, dry and hoarse, seems to crack through the edges of his lips. He licks his lips and starts muttering to himself:

" Why the hell would my sweet Miranda lock up my room? She does know that I have a meeting this morning does she?" He was trying to make up for his mistakes to her, without even telling her. He really was nothing without her. Finally! He actually believes that SHE is his wife after all! His first love, his married partner in crime.

The door creaked open, making a loud squeaking noise like the door hinges were purposely rusted.

And they were.

BAM! CR---REEEAK!

And his mouth was slit shut, the blood seeping from his pale and dry lips.

****

I press the semiautomatic switch on my AK-47 rifle.

Aim, press, trigger,

The aim, trigger.

Trigger.

BAM!

I am no murderer.

Instead, I'm a lurking creep who just sold his soul to the devil, that's why he resulted in killing off the remains of the devil himself.

Like I told YOU before, you are the light that was creeping out the peak of a cave. That cave, being me and my loneliness.

I wasn't always like this. But I guess the more you seem to try to open yourself up to people that don't give a crap about me and I get cramped: between their judgmental glares and non-consistent texts. It's so weird how even when I try to, be myself since I have been playing the part of "Mr.CreepyGuy" for so long (longer than you can fathom): that no one even knows who I am. Who am I? What is my purpose?

Who's mother was the talk of CNN news ten years ago? Mine.

And that's hardly the point.

*******

" Mom, you'll promise me that when I get to college you'll help me find a part-time job, right?" I pecked a kiss on the top of my mother's head. I was growing that was for sure.

At nine years old I was almost 5'0, and my mother was only 5'4. I was bouncy today. As a nine-year-old one is always bouncing around.

Whether it be on the leather sofas or the dog-poop-stained carpets. My dog, Freddy Jr. was limping in and out of his cage like a mad-dog.

He simply couldn't decide whether or which he should just stay in his cage or get out and play with the tennis balls my child-self was juggling. It was a feat to be able to know how to juggle four tennis balls at age nine. Anything done at age nine would be known as a feat.

It's just not the same once we all get out of the neverland stage.

I remember the day my mother died. It was terror and unstable at the time, but now it seems so fresh in my mind.

The way that the nine-year-old me had a free-for-all at the neighborhood swimming pool. I remembered the way that the chlorine stung at my legs and itched my hair.

My hair at the time was a long and hazy mess: every day was the get-out-of-bed look for nine-year-old me.

After making unsuccessful whirlpools out of the pool water, I lounged at my friend Rory who was gleefully swimming past six feet, bragging like he just "bested" me at my four feet level: and I was walking on the pool.

Besides, when kids start to grow past four feet, they could easily cheat their way past others in the swimming pool. Nine-year-old me sighs, and wonders: Where is mom? Didn't I just see her talking to old lady Ms.Rogers?

My mother was nowhere to be found. It's either she was playing a good game of hide-and-seek or went back home.

Oh, well.

If one thing was for certain, it was that not everything in life lasts.

A hand could reach out and say, "grab my hand. I'll save you from falling." But to fall didn't mean to die. At least not in my case. When the price for revenge was always high on my end. Everyone I ever knew has betrayed me anyway.

But not my mother.

She had this way of speaking to me, that hushed, quiet slow way of speaking, that seemed to calm me down. At night, when I couldn't sleep, she'd rub my temples with lavender oil and sing a soft lullaby to calm my hyper nervous system.

When I had a bad dream, she would saunter her way to my room and place a cup of whole milk and a plate of sugar cookies by my bedside.

Oh, how I loved sugar cookies.

Ever since that day, Raymond had a new position as a mafia leader that was far from Pennsylvania, he dragged me along with him. And sent mom to a mental health hospital.

"Raymond! Please, I promise I won't do that anymore!" She cried out, begging my father to take her along with us to Ilinois.

" No. You are staying right here, Millie. I can't afford to lose you." He said these words in a genuine, cool manner. Because unlike my mother, my father didn't have the money to afford such things.

These moods of his fathers were better than no mood at all. Moods that consisted of staring blankly at the spinach omelets mother made just for him every morning, those moods that told him he was "too busy" to spend any time with his family.

Being the faithful mafia leader he was, he was often gone for weeks at a time: traveling to places like Peru and Argentina to plant tobacco and weed for illegal customers.

I never truly knew the reason why my mother couldn't come with us. Every time I tried to ask Raymond to unveil the truth: he just scolded me and avoided the question at hand.

********

To me, YOU are someone that I don't want out of my life. Especially since YOU are the only thing I have to live for.

So I resulted to doing the one suitable thing that one with such passion and love for YOU would do...

******

Climbing through the same window that the red robin perched on HIS window, I used a mixture of stealth and sneaky-ability to get through the small opening of the window. Good thing I was lean and skinny enough to squish through the parameters.

After lining the rim of the room in bear-traps and the area with even bigger bear traps, I used a long, thick rope to place between some already made hooks in the ceiling: and used these such ropes to scape the ceiling like Tarzan.

Remembering that I forgot something, I climb back out the window and head back to my apartment. On the counter are the very tools that I need: a pack of twenty cans of mustard gas and a staple gun.

Back at the window, I lounge head-first into the opening and close the window frame shut.

Next, was the duct tape. It took almost a miracle to mug the hardware store that inhabited the lot of duct tape on its shelves. But after burning the place down, it was done. Set in motion and ready for the next part of the plan.

Working in lines with the plan, I wrap the mustard gas in yellow duct tape to match the ceiling wall color. And yes, this was mainly out of habit, not out of necessity. What was even such a necessity?

Then the fun part:

BOOM! The sound of my rifle stifles HIS screams but the old bastard hasn't even been fucking shot. That ugly side of me, that side of me that YOU will never see, because I won't allow you to.

Now!

Yanking every balding strand of hair from HIM, tasting the blood from his scalp off my hand, I bang his head against the walls. He cries for mercy, but I see no need. When I decide I want to kill someone, I decide.

I think he's hurt.

NO! FUCK, NO!

I think he's crying out for his wife, save him!

HE only had one life and he had to waste it by laying his hands on YOU.

No.

Moments that when I was the one who was hurt by my emotions, my agony, and my lost-love all diminished like a switch of a light.

As I banged the head of my rifle, again-and-again on his stomach, he belched out a mix of the green salads he had for lunch, along with a variety of other things.

He was reaching for something. HIS right hand was shifting to the side, trying to get hold of a butcher knife. With his stomach a pool of red and his eyes a bloodthirst red, he launched at me and threw the knife midair.

I dodged the knife and the edges hit the painting behind me, just above his mahogany dresser. Crap, this is going to be harder than I thought it would be.

Just when I thought the old man was down, he jumped from behind me and dug another butcher knife through my chest. I winced, and my sight turned blurry for a moment. After that moment was over, I launched the mustard gas from above the ceiling.

20 minutes.

The minutes on the timer were ticking away.

20 minutes until every room in this house gets sprayed from mustard gas.

While the bastard is still down, I flick on the lights in the room and hurriedly do the same thing to every room in the house. It was easy: there were only three rooms.

Of course not counting the dining and living rooms. Which made it five. Oh, and two bathrooms.

The planning it took for me to break into the electricity system of YOUR house was tiresome, the right tools, parts, supplies (lasers and mustard gas and of course, duct tape and wires, TONS of wires and hooks) and hours of planning it took to set this whole contraption.

However, it was all worth it.

If it means for YOU to finally stop enduring the pain and the terror of sleeping at night, it was.

Worth it.

But behind my terrifying monkey mask and black hoodie, every ounce of my body was shaking. Everything from my morals to my insecurities produced a blurred line between the two.

There was just one thing I wanted to be, but this wasn't it. Call this a work of the devil, but I say it is something so much more.

YOU are sleeping at the edge of your bed, hugging a small stuffed monkey. YOU have woken up only to realize that your parents are dead.

Even baby brother Alex is. YOU start crying hysterically.

First, blobs of tears stream down your eyes to your cheeks to your neck, then fall down on your bedsheets. Blobs that were once just blobs turned into clumps. The clumps suffocated you, and I wonder what I've done to cause you such pain.

But why? Why would you cry for a family that never cared for you?

But, that's when I realize something: YOU are fake-crying.

After a few minutes of faking, you smile to yourself. And, as I look at you, I realize something: A psycho has replaced you.

At first, I was glad to know you weren't crying anymore. Crying wasn't the solution to a problem after all. But when I see you unlock that mysterious box underneath your bed, my whole face is shaking.

YOU take the lock from your necklace off the chain and you unlock the box.

*******

I remember that first day I met you. YOU were so kind as to save me from the bullies from gym class. And, not only were you kind, but you were popular.

YOU had so many good friends, a bunch of pretty girls you knew from fifth grade, and even some seventh and eighth-graders.

All the boys in the sixth and seventh grades all frolicked around you like flies attracted to a pot of sweet honey. And, oh I didn't blame them.

You were a sight to see after all: your long brown hair was silky, and your teeth were pearly white. You were pretty but not too pretty. You flirted with the others, but you weren't slutty. You were so much more: that girl in skinny jeans and band tees.

That moment we had our second conversation with one another, YOU said:

" Are you okay, Axel?" You remembered my name.

" yes," I replied with a salty undertone to my voice. Oh! How I shouldn't have been so rude to you when I said that in such a way!

But, like the sweet girl you were, you replied to me like I was asking a question, " Are you new?"

"Yes." Again, you remembered me!

" My name's Pami. Pami Berger. I hope we can be good friends!" YOU had lent me out a hand, and in its place:

I gave you the locket necklace that was around my neck.