A Cup of Restraint

Targeted

Matt’s call had caused a deep anxiety within me. After we finished talking I checked my phone for missed calls. There were twenty three. Out of all of them only one of them had left a voice mail. It was from Azi Ryskamp, the brother of Arora, one of the victims. He hadn’t found out why I had been released but I was now definitely his target. He had threatened to not only harm me but kill me. I wondered, not for the last time, how many of these threats would come in. Since junior year my life has been in a very rapid decline. I’ve been convicted, lost my parents, my brother Evan wont talk to me, and now am receiving threats. I now understood why Matt had left his number blocked. In the foresight that came from these threats he had went off the grid. He disappeared. I myself could only communicate with him from the anonymous letters he dropped in the mail every now and then. I couldn’t even respond, because there was no return address and all signs shown that the letters had just been dropped in a public mailing terminal.

While I was a little curious as to what exactly caused Matt to jump I had no way to delve into his situation and find out so for the most part I didn't try. It wasn't like him to do something like this. He almost never would be jumpy he was normally calm and collective, this is why I had befriended him. He often calmed me when the statistics weren't in my favor or I was stressed for other reasons. I knew something had to be serious though, so I decided it would be wise for me to do the same. Unfortunately, my meager savings from my time at Happy Sack wouldn’t be enough for me to do this just yet. While I would've tried to get my old job back I knew the chances would've been slim and I hated the job anyways. 

Like I said chances of getting my job back at Happy Sack were slim, but this wasn’t because of performance. Getting sent to prison had screwed me over in multiple ways. Not only had it alienated me further in social circles, but it had also ruined almost every job opportunity that I could've had beforehand. Now that Matt had went underground the cash I had been receiving from him had dried up, and I no longer had the time, or funds to be picky about where I wanted to work. I actually attempted to get my old job back. However, Happy Sack had no interest in hiring me. Neither did Code-Breakers. Code-Breakers was a software design and manual programming company that had been the focal point of my dreams before prison. They had been the sole reason I took most of my high school electives. All of the code, business, and extra math classes should of all culminated in landing a job there. Yet before the arrest I had ended up at Happy Sack, and after I couldn't even get a job there.

After five more refusals, I was hired in the construction industry as a trade worker. The jobs often involved hazardous situations and other undesirables, but because of the manual labor and long hours pay was higher than most entry-level jobs. After all, I was desperate. A lot of the other staff had a “history” with the cops as well, luckily though I hadn’t recognized any of them. One name struck me as odd however, the name was Ogden. Ogden Brenn was the kind of guy who would have scared me under normal circumstances, however he and I were at the same level now. Only figuratively though, his physical size had terrified me. I was no short guy by society's standards, I was actually quite tall. Yet here I was looking like an elf before Ogden. Once I started to talk to Og, as I would come to know him, I learned he was actually a fairly good guy. He hadn’t grew up here though.He and his dad had traveled here from the Netherlands about two and a half years ago. His mom had passed away when he was still young, and his father was now deceased too. He seemed to actually enjoy talking to me. He hadn’t seen the media coverage of the murders, or my arrest. This left him unprejudiced. He was my first friend I had made in over fourteen years.