Life Before You

Chapter Four: Guns, Coke and Mysterious Blokes

Chapter Four- Guns, Coke and Mysterious Blokes

Alex

Every time I struggle, the grip on my neck tightens. Each time I take a breath, in this awkward but terrifying moment, I fear it will be my last.

"Wh-whooo." I manage to choke out, my heart beat slowing. I should be able to recognise the voice that spoke just a few seconds ago, but the pain in my head is casting a haze over all of my thoughts.

"Why don't you tell me?" The voice growls in my ear, so close that I can feel the warm breath on my cheek.

"I-I..." My knees buckle and I tumble to the floor, bringing the gun man with me. I manage to take in two healthy doses of oxygen while the man composes himself and repositions the gun.

"Think you're so smart getting caught on security camera like that don't you?" The man growls. I hear Tom sigh heavily after walking slowly down the stairs. I thought he'd be more concerned considering his best friend is lying on the floor with some crazy murderer.

"He didn't know." I stand corrected. Tom enters the room and sits on a couch opposite me, swigging from a glass coke bottle. He doesn't seem fazed at all by what's going on. In fact, Tom is acting as though he's watching a television soap, one of those programmes that's so predictable that it just makes you cringe or roll your eyes at.

"What do you mean he didn't know?" I know who's voice that is. Wait do I? The same hazy feeling is fogging up my mind again, clouding my vision. My head feels like its been hit with a brick several times.

"I dunno." I hear my friend call from what seems to me like miles and miles away. Everything sounds so distant.

There's a long pause before the person behind me releases me from their grasp and stands up. I take a big gulp of air before collapsing forward into the worm purple carpet, my black hair sticking to my sweaty forehead. I want to go back to the times when I didn't have to work for dinner. When I came home from school and my mum had laid it on the table. But when my mum and dad wanted to get married -again- after their previous divorce, I knew things wouldn't be the same. They split up for a reason, because they didn't love each other. I don't understand how you can just love again.

I was thirteen when they divorced, and after two months of rowing I was glad of it. Mum was less stressed and so we did more things together. We went on holidays, to the cinema and she even took me to skate parks. That's the time I want to go back to.

I must have been day dreaming for quite a while because not only has Tom finished his coke, but Sides is pointing the gun directly at my head. He's standing only inches away from me and I can smell the beer on his breath.

"You actually want to kill Alex?" Tom says frowning, pure shock in his eyes.

"Twenty thousand pounds, that's how much they are offering for him, alive." The man pauses before whispering in my ear, "or dead."

"What?" I scream, I can't believe what I'm hearing. This is Sides... And he's threatening to kill me?

"Shout any louder and my trigger finger might just... Slip." Sides murmurs, pure evil laced in his voice.

"Yeah, but we made ten thousand pounds today and we could make another ten thousand pounds more." Tom's panicking. I can sense it in his voice.

"Nothing like a little instant cash though, eh?" Sides moves the gun forward so it grazes the skin between my eyes and it makes me flinch. He revels in my fear, a smirk spreading across his scruffy face, his green eyes glistening.

"You can't, you'd make hardly anything. I couldn't steal a lot on my own." Tom stands up, pulling a face of disgust.

"I'll just kill you as well then," and with lightning speed, Sides has fired his first shot past my left shoulder. Whilst he's distracted, I decide to take my chances and run.