Demented

From Hell, To Hell

[Michigan: Present day]

It was midnight when Bard Redcloud had made it out of the formidable prison that had stranded him away from the world he knew for almost five years. He had counted the days when he was a fresher. Counted each dreadful day when the scraped walls of the prison had been burning his sanity. Scrunching a diary on the floor with his fingernails, he had kept himself from drowning. Not realizing that while doing so, he was making himself at home. And true enough, the hell had soon become his home and he had allowed himself to be scrunched and abused by his brethren.

He had shunted himself to a path free of pain and anxiety. He had shut his sane self, locked it for the time being in order to preserve his endurance. Soon enough, the realization hit him that he had killed a part of himself, though he no longer cared. After all, the dead part used to be the caring constituent of his. It was this part of his soul that had clouded his reasoning when he had robbed the general store. This part that had constantly kept shrieking for him to save his son. The doctors had said it was lung cancer. So, while Dean Redcloud coughed his lungs out, pitiful, and on the verge to die any moment, his loving father had resolved to the life of a con. He wished he could go back and save money like everyone did and like everyone is supposed to do. But it was just some pensive wish, as soothing as it was impossible. His son had never visited him during his jail time, his wife neither. He knew Kathy hated him and had wanted divorce. Dean was the only thread bounding them together. Maybe when Dean had died, which Bard certainly hoped to not be true, Kathy must have shed some tears and decided to enjoy her freedom now that she was finally unchained from all responsibilities.

He had thought his sane self was dead, until that day when the guard had a heart attack while unlocking Bard's cell door. And that tiny twinge of hope, seeing the door wide open and the guard's eyes bulging out while his chest billowed uncontrollably, had ignited the veil of his soul. This tiny spark had spread like a forest fire. And by the time Bard was completely back to himself after years, the chest at the door had restrained from action and the body was limply lying on the concrete. The path to freedom had demanded more, but nothing that a lustful heart can't handle.

So, leaving behind five dead bodies and a trail of blood, Bard Redcloud had made it out near midnight. He couldn't go home, at least not yet while the cops were on the lookout, and dumpster wasn't really a great hideout. He wished for a lot of things, most of them contradicting each other. While he once wished he had never pursued this path of evil, he now wished he'd shunted to it sooner. That way he could have made friends with less decent but stronger people. People who would have helped him at times like these. The people he knew would scream and panic at the sight of him with the bloody shoulder. The bullet had not inflicted any severe damage, it had just left his shoulder bloody and scary for the society.

He wished he'd learned tricks to survive, to find his way around in the wild. He wished he'd googled something useful when he had the time. But he hadn't. Instead, his web history had been full of information about the black hole, about space and time. And now thinking of this as he scudded down the alley on this fateful evening, he wished for superpowers. In his imagination he was busy creating a portal that channeled him to the ice-cream Parlor back in Manhattan, where he had licked on butterscotch with his father when he was a kid. So careless was he that he almost ran into the lady passing by on the street at the end of the alley. If she hadn't been busy quieting her wailing baby in the cradle and if there wasn't this cola dispenser, he instantly crouched behind, he would have been caught. The thought of having to kill this sweet lady left him numb. He promised himself to be extra careful now.

He decided to hide in someone's house for the time being. He'd kill the occupants if the need arises. He checked the pistol in his hand and sighed with relief because it still carried a few rounds. He could write a book about this jail break, he thought and smiled. He was thrilled and happy, resting assured that he was going to survive. He felt lucky, the gods were with him or he would not have been able to survive this long. Little did he knew that the luck he felt cocky about had finally ran out as he headed towards the house at the end of street.