ESCAPE

Chapter 4

"What is life without the mysteries it presents,

 what is fun without the mysteries of life."

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CHAPTER 4--THE IRONY

       The hand on my shoulder was gruesome and i inwardly puked but held the groan of disgust that threatened to leave my mouth. I shakily turned around to face the owner of the hand. Ironically it was Steve McNeill, and i gasped at the condition of his face.

      Compared to the photo i had seen of him, he looked far worse. His skin was deathly pale and was starting to turn blue, probably from them being dead or from the lack of oxygen. Whatever strands of hair were left still attached to almost bald skin, were all greasy and very thin, barely covering his scalp. The skin on the tip of his nose was missing, and unfortunately through the bloody mess of what had used to be his nose you could spot the glistening white of the bone. Chunks of skin was ripped away from where there was skin present to the world, leaving a battered bloody mess with veins and arteries on display for the world. However i knew in daylight his appearance would be worse since the dim lamplight's did not provide enough light to make out every gruesome detail.

      I shook off his hand from my shoulder, but he reached out with his other arm and grabbed my forearm. Tugging at like a child tugging at the sleeve of their mother to get there attention, I tried to pull my limb back towards myself and out of his grip, but he held on with a hand of a skeleton.

    I managed to lift my eyes off his horrendous figure of a hand and to meet his gaze. I noticed the parting of his mouth, as if he were about to say something, but I was distracted by the blackness of his teeth and the numbers of how many were missing.

   " H...h..el...p... m....e." His voice rasped, the words barely audible but I had been able to catch them. I shook my head, trying to say without words that i couldn't help him. I didn't know where to begin if I were to help him. His state of health was beyond fixing and helping him in that subject there was nothing i could do.

    I shrugged out of grip on my wrist and moved a step back, out of his reach if he tries to get a hold on me again. He stuttered again, this his tone was pleading and vulnerable, hid face contorted more into a grimace and a sign of regret, " P-p-p-lea-s-se g-giv-e t-thi-s t-to m-my f-fami-ly."

      His shaky hands disappeared into his ripped jeans and produced a small black velvet box, wrapped delicately in a crimson red ribbon which was tied at the top in a bow. My hands outstretched to reach the box and make the journey of his hand giving it to me smaller, as i pitied his battered state and knew that he was at deaths door. 

   My hands enclosed around the small box, wrapping around it to protect it from the worlds harshness. I looked up from the small treasure in my hands to the man that stood in front of me. Though he was done yet, as his hands produced a small piece of paler crumpled up from his back pocket. His has were shaking uncontrollably as he tried but failed to straighten out the paper. Out of pity and sympathy i gently took out the paper from his hands, and as neatly and cleanly as i could straightened it out.

     My eyes widened a inch at the what was written on the paper, it was a letter to his family containing his last wishes before he ultimately died. What was moat surprising was his hand writing, even his state you could see the struggles he went through to write the letter in extra neatness. My eyes skimmed to the end of the page, to the address at which the letter and the box was supposed to be delivered. I hid the gasp as i recognized the address at which this was supposed to me delivered. It was the apartment right next to ours, belonging to Ms. Nelly ,as she called herself, was a old woman most likely in her late 60's but she was the nicest and most understanding person i had ever met.

     I once remembered her telling me about her missing husband and how her children and her looked for him for months . Even when the police had given up on finding him. I couldn't bring myself to not do the little errand of his last wishes before he died, so nodded at the man, whose eyes were trained on my every move.

STEVE

    A smile, soft and almost invisible, made its way up onto his face, what remained of his lips lifted upward and much as they could while tears that had pooled in his eyes crawled there way down his face. He struggled to control his tears and put them at bay but the happiness of his love finally receiving his present from the day that he was kidnapped over whelmed him.

     Steve slowly parted his mouth and thanked the girl that stood in front, his mouth barely working at all but he wouldn't give up.  The girl in front of him nodded in understanding and turned around, the lamplight basking her in a yellow-ish complexion before letting her return to the darkness of the world.

   She stopped I in the dark, her sandy brown hair twirling and whipping behind her as she shot the battered and broken man a small wave and then continued on her wave.

     Steve stood there in silence, letting the darkness of the night consume him and take the pain that clawed inside of him to escape. He tasted a metallic texture in his mouth, his tongue swiveling to find the origin of it, but sadly it was too late for him.

     Steve doubled over from pain that started in the core of his stomach and like fire spread throughout his whole body. A waterfall of a crimson liquid shot out of his mouth, tainting the gray concrete ground beneath him in blood. His hands shakily made there way to his stomach, holding with dear life trying to soothe the pain that wrung his body inside out.

    His eyes widened, almost falling out of there sockets as a something popped or more like burst in his stomach. The crumpled skin on his hands felt more of the crimson liquid, but this time he could also feel the wetness, and the softness of his inner organs as they fell out of a gaping whole in his stomach, falling on the ground.

    Steve tried with his might to coordinate with hos hands to bring back the pieces of a puzzle that kept him alive, but I was futile. He could now hear his heart hammering in a irregular beat in his ears, as he lay on the ground with his life fading away.

    A sudden movement in his peripheral vision caught his eyes. He rolled his head all during the time agonizing pain swam from every nerve in his body.  It was a man, clad in a black tux, and those extremely shiny black boots he remembered from the times he had been with him. opened his mouth but the words only stayed in his head as another rush of blood blocked his breathing passage. Sending him into a fit of coughs.

 " I hope your happy Vince, your experiment was a success and now I'm dying." He though looking at the man that had made his life miserable.

   Black spots dotted his vision, and his head swam from the lack of oxygen but he didn't care. He took his last breath with all the strength he could muster and let the night and death carry him away but he did catch the same voice that had lulled him to follow the spawn of the devil to do his work for him.

 " You could've lived longer if you'd stayed loyal to me had done what I had said. Now be the dog that you are and die in vain."

 However Steve could care less at what his former friend and boss was thinking, he was now at piece, the piece he had wished for all those days he missed his love.