𝐇𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐌𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 ; 𝘉𝘺𝘭𝘦𝘳

𝟐𝟓.

⚠️TW: Suicide⚠️

Troy was almost raped.

Knock! Knock! "Hello?"

He'd almost had something taken from him against his will. And no one was there to protect him, to put an end to his pain and suffering.

Knock! Knock! "You still breathing in there?"

If he was there he would've put an end to it. If only he knew what the guy looked like. Then he could get revenge for Troy, make him ok again. Reverse the damage. He assumed that's why he was the way he was. He pushed him away because no one had given a damn before, so why would they now?

Troy just couldn't handle his love.

"Naw, I'm not breathing. My guts are splattered all over the wall."

His dad's voice was muffled by the door. "It's been days! Can you please come out and eat something?"

"You feed food to corpses?"

"Isaiah..."

There was a pistol in his lap with its chamber exposed, five golden bullets shimmering in the light peeking through from his curtains. He sat on the floor surrounded by pictures. Pictures he'd collected over the past year of people in Hawkins, classmates who pissed him off, classmates who made him smile, random people on the street, and a whole folder full of pictures of Troy, which included some of Mike, and a few of Will. The person had to be somewhere. Somewhere lingering right under his nose.

He slipped the pistol in his back pocket and lifted himself off the ground.

Opening the door was the first time he smelled the scent of the rest of the house in the 108 hours he'd been awake. His father was standing there holding a plate with a sandwich and chips on it in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

"Thank you." He takes the food and drink and went to push the door closed with his foot. His dad stopped it with his arm.

"Are you feeling ok?"

"Not really, but I'll be ok. Thanks again for the food—"

"Did something happen with you and Troy?"

Ba-dum, Ba-dum, Ba-dum! He could feel the blood pumping into his heart, the stinging of his lungs as they took in the air around him. Was it obvious on his face that something was wrong? In the twitch of his eye or the curve of his back that he was on the verge of doing something big. Something that would be hard to take back.

He lied of course because what else could he do?

"Pff! Of course not, we're fine. Everything's fine."

He felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket. Everything was definitely not fine, and he wished he could say it. He wished he could vent to his father and be held in his arms and told that everything would be alright. He wanted him to take the gun away from him, burn all of the pictures he took, and shove medication down his throat. Before he had the chance to kidnap anyone else, or worse...

Isaiah shut the door and as soon as he turned back, he dropped the food and the water. Glass shattering across his wooden floors.

He couldn't keep it together.

With his knees dug into the carpet fibbers, glass threatening to slice open his legs, an unforgiving cold shivered throughout his body. The cold from the skinny barrel pressed against his temple.

His mind was empty. Every thought was a pointless one. Every emotion focused into a single finger that would end his life with a little more pressure. And yet he couldn't think of anything that made him want to continue. He didn't want to keep lying to his dad, to everyone about who he really was. But if he told the truth, he'd risk loosing them all. Being written off as crazy. And maybe he was crazy. Maybe he should've never started taking pictures of people, of holding grudges and always looking for someone to blame. Was it too late to go back to before?

Yes. Yes it was.

Click!

An exasperated gasp left his mouth, what he was just about to do hitting him all at once. He pulled the trigger, and the chamber was empty. One of the six slots had no bullets.

If he hadn't used the sixth bullet for target practice, he would've been dead.

He laid down on his back and looked up at the ceiling. The gun was still held tightly in his grasp, redness forming around his fingers.

"Wow..." He said to himself, biting his lip to contain a smile. "I almost did it."

Something about almost taking his life gave him a rush he never felt before. Like the feeling he got on a rollercoaster after the big drop. The anticipation of the edge being near making him nervous and stressed, and then it all goes away once he realized he wasn't in danger.

He realized that that was one part of Troy he never thought to look into before. What happened before the drop? What kind of person was he like growing up?

He sat up and crawled over to his nightstand, pulling out thick red notebook titled "#4". Troy was the main subject. Everything Isaiah found out about him was recorded here in order of when he found it out. And while flipping through the pages, he couldn't recall a time he ever asked Troy about his life in Chicago, or about his parents. He knew they split because of his mother being married to someone else, but he never asked why. Or how much Troy cared about it.

This was it. The person who did such a horrific thing to him had to have done it a while back, had to have done it when they were in Chicago.

Isaiah finally had a purpose again. And now there was only one last thing to do.

Isaiah grabbed his camera off his nightstand and slid on some shoes, lifting up the bottom of his bedroom window.

He had to go searching for answers.

To be continued...
[8/22/22 | 1021 words]