Part 23:
This
Is Your Reality
Pulling himself up on the
window ledge, Dan scraped his shoes on the side of the house, trying to get
enough of a toe hold to boost himself through the broken window.
Once he had his leg up and
over the ledge, he was able to pull himself through the window, before landing
with a thud on his back to the rotting floorboards below. Pausing, he waited a beat before rolling onto
his stomach and making his way, commando-style, across the room.
Every shadow made his heart
jump, while each creak of the floorboards made him stop, wide-eyed,
anticipating the big-ass, square-faced Mo coming around the corner to kick his
ass into next week.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but the sound of
Dan’s heart pounding in his ears.
Making his way through the
room, it appeared that he had reached some sort of hallway. Once to the end of the hallway, he glanced to
his left to see a flight of stairs leading up to the second floor. Taking a deep breath, he knew that he had gone
too far to turn back now, so, pushing himself up into a crouched position, he
made his way slowly up the stairs, slivers of moonlight pushing through the
burned-out ceiling above him, lighting his way.
***
Stepping back onto the
elevator, Kevin hit the button for parking level 2, waiting for the doors to
slide shut before giving in to the grief that was threatening to eat him alive.
Leaning against the
elevator wall, he slid to the floor, head in hands, as sobs wracked his entire
body.
He had never felt so
confused and utterly alone in his whole life.
“I miss you, Brian,” he
moaned, dropping his head back over and over against the wall, as the elevator
stopped and the doors broke apart.
Looking up through his
tears, Kevin swiped a hand across his face as he pushed himself to a standing
position, laughing at the irony that he would have to break down in an elevator
when he only had a few floors to go, instead of some big high rise in New York. “You’re a fucking pussy, Richardson,” he
moaned, dragging a shaking hand through his hair as he walked slowly from the
elevator to the car. “A fucking pussy
who needs a drink.”
Trying to remember where
the nearest bar was located, Kevin looked up to see that the piece of shit Ford
Escort parked beside his Lexus had parked practically right on top of him.
“Great,” he hissed,
turning sideways to scoot down the narrow gap between the two cars in order to
climb in the driver’s side door.
Glancing over at the
Escort, a scowl on his face, Kevin was considering leaving the asshole a note
on the finer points of parking when he noticed a faded blue Kentucky baseball
cap, just like the one Brian had always liked to wear, sitting on the passenger
seat.
How ironic.
“What is this, some sort
of sign, cuz?” Kevin said softly, glancing upwards, tears spilling freely down
his face. “A sign that I’m a shitty
person for not being able to forgive Nick.
A sign that you want me to stop feeling sorry for myself? A sign that you want fucking Kentucky to win
at the State Championships this year. What, Brian? What are you trying to say?”
Pushing his key into the
door of his car, Kevin pulled it open, roughly ramming a half-dollar sized dent
in the door of the Ford Escort.
“Serves you right for
parking so close, asshole,” he mumbled, glancing over one last time as he was
sitting down, something interesting in the backseat of the car catching his eye.
“What the fuck?” Standing up, Kevin got out of his car,
slamming the door shut. Turning, he
leaned down, hands braced on either side of his face as he peered inside the
backside passenger window of the Escort. Sitting on the middle of the seat were a pair
of bright red cowboy boots.
Everybody knew that Nick
had purchased two pair of cowboy boots on the afternoon before the shootings, a
pair of black boots for himself and a pair of red boots for Brian. A thorough search of the home Brian had been
renting never turned up any cowboy boots. And when Nick was found in the warehouse, he
had not been wearing any shoes at all.
According to the media
reports, the boots Nick had purchased for himself and Brian had been one of a
kind, so there had been no photographs available. But Kevin distinctively remembered reading
that, according to the sales clerk at the posh Beverly Hills shoe store, the
boots were highly polished, intricately tooled leather boots with two different
designs of birds on the side. Just like
the pair Kevin was looking at now.
“Nice boots.” Standing back from the window,
a flash of the boots worn by the security guard that Kevin had ridden with in
the elevator up to Nick’s floor popped in his head.
“Nice boots.”
Black boots with intricate
tooling peeking out from beneath the cuffs of the man’s pants.
“Nice boots.”
“Holy shit.” Kevin turned, making his way quickly back
towards the elevators.
***
“Mo.”
“That’s right, Nick. Did you miss me?”
Blinking his eyes open,
Nick was looking into the familiar eyes of the man who had caused him so much
pain. “Not really, you son of a bitch.”
Mo smiled. “Yeah, well, I guess I really didn’t miss you
either. Too bad you couldn’t have just
died the first time around; it would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”
“Maybe if you would have
shot me in the head or something, but I guess your aim with that thing sucks.” Nick nodded towards the gun on Mo’s hip.
“I don’t think Brian would
agree with you.” Mo reached for the gun,
pulling it slowly from the holster. “Do
you?”
Nick winced at Mo even
speaking Brian’s name.
“After I read about you in
the newspapers, I thought about letting you live.” Pacing the room, Mo slapped the barrel of the
gun in his open palm. “I figured maybe
you deserved to be alive, after fighting your way back from the coma and all. But then I decided that I couldn’t risk your
memory coming back and you turning me in.”
“Where’s Howie?” Nick’s hand lightly caressed the gun that he
had hidden beneath the bed sheet.
“Dead. Howie is dead.” Mo smiled again.
“You killed him?” Nick’s chin trembled slightly.
“Slowly, but surely.” Mo flipped over his watch to check the time. “If he isn’t dead yet, he will be soon.”
***
Reaching the top of the
stairs, Dan stayed crouched low as he walked along the wall to the first room
on his left.
The place smelled like wet
dog and shit. It was all he could do to
keep from gagging, as he made his way into the center of the room, shadows
twitching on all four sides of him. Squinting, he could see that there was a door
in the far corner of the room.
Walking slowly across the
room, he pushed his hand out, feeling for the door handle. Then, counting to three, he prepared himself
for whatever may lie on the other side, as he slowly pulled the door open,
moonlight spilling down through the caved-in roof to reveal the outline of what
appeared to be two bodies.
“Fuck.” Jumping back, Dan was overcome by the heavy,
metallic stench of blood wafting from the closet. Jesus, were they dead or alive? Was this some trick by this Mo guy to lure him
into room to kill him?
Then one of the bodies
moved.
Ignoring all of his
survival instincts, Dan lunged forward, dragging the top body out of the closet
and dumping it on the floor as he felt around for a pulse.
The mouth and nostrils of
the man were bound heavily with duct tape, and his arms and legs appeared to
also be tightly bound. Dan fumbled
around with his free hand to rip the layers of tape from the man’s mouth and
pull the wadded up gag from between his teeth, still trying for a pulse.
Looking down into the face
of the man, Dan reached for his cell phone in his back pocket, as the man’s
eyes opened, and he choked out a single word.
“Nick.”
***
Mo still paced Nick’s
hospital room, babbling on and on, making Nick’s head hurt.
“You know, St. Nick, I
read all the shit about you in the papers. About all the fame and fortune and popularity
you achieved at such a young age. I bet
sometimes it didn’t even seem real to you, to have so much for doing so little.”
“I don’t know,” Nick said
softly, shaking his head.
“Some people work their
asses off their whole lives and don’t get even a quarter of what you have, and
that is their reality. And here you got
some fucking reality that most people could never even dream of just for
singing songs and looking pretty. If you
ask me, that’s fucked up.” Mo glanced at
the clock on the wall, aware that he was running out of time. Soon the nurse would be returning to find that
her star patient was dead, and the security guard was nowhere to be found.
“This has been a great
reunion and all, and I’d love to stay and chat longer, but I’ve never been one
for long good-byes.” Gripping the gun in
his hand, Mo raised it, cocking back the trigger as he aimed it directly at
Nick’s head.
“This is your reality now,
Nick… are you scared?”
Raising the gun from
beneath the sheet, Nick leveled it right at Mo’s heart.
“No, Mo, I’m not scared… are
you?”
A slight smile tugged at
the corner of Mo’s mouth, as both men pulled their triggers.
BAM!
***