VICE

| HIS PAST. MY PRESENT. OUR FUTURE. |

They both stepped outside into the hospital garden where sick people were basking in the sun everywhere.

It was a beautiful garden even with all the sickly, zombie-like patients roaming or lying around.

Austin led them to an empty bench and they sat beside each other.

"So...what do you wanna know?" Michael began.

"Everything!" Austin said.

"Can't I just give you the cliff notes version!" Michael complained, "it's a really long story and I don't wanna miss Nicky. I wanna talk to her before she leaves."

"You know....I'm not usually in the habit of socializing with jackasses who break my sister's heart and probably want to go for round two so they can make her cry again!"

"But ...I was her first boyfriend." Michael justified as if that was the real issue here.

"Not her first boyfriend..per se...but you were her first real boyfriend and that means something!" Austin scolded, "You basically just screwed up her future relationships because you couldn't keep it in your pants. She can never trust anyone fully again ...and that is all your fault. And, not to mention, you have a girlfriend who you're shacking up with at the moment. Man, are you trying to lose your teeth or what!"

"I'm sorry, truly...and Lira and I aren't together anymore."

"Wow, cheated on her too?" Austin asked unamusedly.

"I realized what I had done and broke up with her...then she almost burned down the whole house, literally."

"What?!"

"I brought her here because I thought her parents were negligent and didn't want her. She had told me that they claimed she was crazy so they had sent her to a mental asylum just to get rid of her because they never really wanted her.

"They are rich, so I thought they could do that easily. Besides, from seeing what my parents achieve just by simply waving wads of cash around, it's not such a far fetched idea...I know someone else whose parents didn't want and they put her through hell just to get her out of their lives.

"She begged me to let her come back with me to America and I took pity on her. We hired some amateur actors to play her parents and got them to convince my parents that they just wanted her to spend her junior and senior years abroad.

"She was a really sweet girl and she had looked really shaken so it did not take much convincing for them to agree.

"However, I've been noticing a few traits about her these few weeks that got me thinking: what if she really is crazy? One time, I found her hanging with some hobos in town and she was eating out of a dumpster. She later told me that she just likes to make them feel like she is one of them.

"But then, when she sent me to her room to pick up a sweater for her, I opened her closet and she had these really creepy puppets and dolls nailed to the walls, along with cutout pictures of human and animal eyes.

"There were pictures of Nicky and all her friends' pictures and they were of all of them sleeping, with toothpicks pierced to their throats.

"I'm trying to reach her real parents so they can come take her away before she does something I can't undo. God....I'm such an idiot!"

"Wait, you're telling me that your psycho girlfriend is gunning for my sister?!"

"She is dangerous and I have no idea what to do."

"Where is she now?" Austin asked, suddenly ticked off. He could not bear having someone else he loved being stalked but some lunatic. He pulled out his phone and panickingly dialed.