No Way Out ➵ John Murphy

06 //

SIX.
❝i never wanted you to be my man. i just need your company.❞

"What did you do?"

Layla shrugged, leaning further into the cushions of the couch. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Murphy."

Layla tuned him out and stared at the television screen, watching a movie - Uptown Girls to be exact - and sipping wine.

Murphy stepped into her vision, cutting her off from her entertainment. He was holding cracked disks in his hands and looking quite unpleased.

"You broke them?" He said, holding up the discs and tossing them her way. She didn't have time to duck away but all of them missed anyway. His aim was unimpressive.

"Wasn't me." She told him nonchalantly. "Would you move out of the way? I'm watching something."

"You're the only other person in here, Layla," Murphy huffed. "It had to be you."

Layla sighed and hit pause on Uptown Girls. "Okay, so it was me. I should've done it a long time ago, too."

"No," he said, a grit to his voice. "You shouldn't have done it at all."

"You needed to stop watching them," Layla explained. "You wouldn't. I took matters into my own hands."

"You're not my mother, Layla. You can't 'take things into your own hands'."

"You're right," she agreed. "I'm not your mother because I actually don't like seeing you suffer and turn into a crazy person."

Murphy held up his hands in defeat. "You're impossible."

"What if I broke one of your movies?" Murphy ejected the disc from the DVD Player and glanced at it. "What if I took Uptown Girls and broke it?"

"Well, that would just be silly since it's a heartwarming movie about the bond between two lonely privileged girls."

Murphy cracked the disc over his knee and Layla gasped.

"You're officially a monster."

Murphy was unfazed. "That's what I'm been telling you all along, Layla. You just didn't listen."

Layla pushed off the couch and past Murphy to kneel on the floor and choose a new movie to past the time since Murphy had to act like a complete child.

"Pick that one." Murphy pointed to a red case, with a man sneering and holding a machine gun on the cover. Diagonally, and in bold white letters, it read 'Scarface'.

Layla pinched up her face. "You sure? It looks kinda old."

Murphy rolled his eyes. "They're all old. We've been in space for 97 years."

"Older." She corrected but picked the DVD up anyway and slipped it into the player. "Happy?"

He flashed her a smirk. "Very."

Trust Murphy to pick a movie about a guy who murders anyone who even slightly stands in his way. Brutally. But the movie was interesting, Layla would give it that. On space there was no room for crime of any kind and almost everyone got busted and when they got busted - they were floated, no exceptions. But on Earth it seemed people got away with a lot of things, if this movie held any truth to it at all.

Murphy stared at the movie and hardly looked away. "You know what I realized?"

"What?" Layla replied.

"Humans on the ground were really fucked up," he said. "They started wars. They killed for money. They did a lot of drugs. No wonder we had to go to space."