[Sad]
It was a feeling that I had never felt before in all eighteen years of living.
A feeling only described in books and movies—a feeling I thought was possibly over-exaggerated.
Could one really quiver from fear?
Beg for mercy in the face of a merciless man?
Offer anything in their place?
Turn on the ones they loved?
Well, the answer is now clear in my mind.
People can and will turn on the ones they love to keep themselves alive.
And I am one of those people and I am dreadfully ashamed.
"So, Harry. Styles," the man purrs, his eyes flickering with no remorse or guilt whatsoever.
"Please don’t kill me," I say automatically, instinctively.
He laughs. Laughter was meant to be filled with humor and warmth but his was mocking and void of compassion.
"All right, then. If I should not kill you, I’d like your vote. Which of those four boys should die?" he whispers, his breath smelling of tobacco and mint.
He motions towards where my four best mates are tied up in the room adjacent. I see them through the tiny glass window and my heart sinks.
"I don’t know," I say promptly, the rope burning at my wrists. “As long as it is not me."
The man sniffs and opens the door, tossing me onto the stained concrete and in the company of my boys once more.
"Very well, Styles. But by the end of the day I will need a proper answer. A name. Just one."
—-
This whole situation was somewhat ironic.
I felt like a cheat, a lie, a fallacy.
I remember briefly back to when I was in High School and I was voted ‘Most Likely to Give Someone the shirt off of his back’.
Perhaps I would give someone the shirt off my back, but I guess that was as far an extent I was willing to give.
I was presumably the ‘nice and sensible’ one. I was to some point, I suppose.
But I was certainly not willing to give my life for these four, although I’d answer otherwise in any interview.
I was not about to lose a future. My future.
"So? Give me a name. Tell me who to kill, Daddy Direction," the man laughs a bitter kind of laugh and chews on a piece of gum, blowing a bubble and popping it with a loud crack.
The four names flash through my mind and I swallow thickly.
"Any one except me."
He shakes his head and grunts, tossing me back into the room with the other four.
"All right, Payne. By the end of the day I’ll have my answer. A proper one."
—-
Is it awful that the first thought I had when he asked who should die was “Not me"?
I was the oldest, shouldn’t that mean I should be the one to die? I’d had the longest time to live, sure.
But I had more living to do—we all did, yeah. I just didn’t want to die.
None of us wanted to die but I knew I certainly would not pull a martyr act and sacrifice myself.
