deathly love

Ch. 19 Messing With the Order of Things

The wet footsteps padded across the cement floor. I held my breath so he wouldn't hear me breathe.

"Come out, Asher. You know I'll find you eventually. If you give yourself up now it won't be as bad for you." I didn't dare move a muscle from the place that I hid.

I could hear Shawn's breathing from where I crouched behind the towel rack in the boys' locker room. After everyone had left but me and him, he had locked the door and tried to attack me. I had punched him in the nose, made his eyes water. That gave me enough time to hide here.

A few minutes ago, I had seen Shawn pull a switchblade from his gym bag. I suspected that he would use it on me. He had no reason, except for the fact that he loathed me for no reason at all, to try to hurt me right now. But, in Shawn's mind, you only had to be able to be a target to be a target. It had nothing to do with what kind of person you were. Only who you were. "What are you afraid of, Fag-sher?" he said. Even in the situation that I was in, his childish comment annoyed me.

Shawn sighed. "Ash-queer, I'm getting pissed. You better come out, or when I find you, I won't stop until I feel like you have suffered enough," he said. Which will be never, I thought. He would never feel like I had suffered enough, so he would more than likely keep going until I was dead, because quite frankly, I think that Shawn was clinically insane. I could hear him getting closer and closer, and I was praying that he wouldn't find me, though behind the towel rack was an awful hiding place. But I hadn't had much choice in where to hide when I only had mere seconds to choose.

I closed my eyes, then decided that I would want to see if he found me and tried to attack. At least then I could try to defend myself. Just then, a thought occurred to me. I only had one shot at it, but I had a better chance of it working than staying here and waiting for him to find me. I waited until he had walked back to the other side of the set of lockers in front of me, then I ran to the shower room. I turned the hot water on full blast in every one of them, letting the steam from them fog up the entire room. It was hard for me to run from shower to shower because I still hadn't had a chance to change back into my regular clothes from gym, so I was left in a towel with nothing under it. I decided that if I was going to die, I was going to die being able to try and get away from my fate, and with this towel on, my mobility wasn't at its best. I stripped the towel and left it lying on the floor in one of the showers. After I had all of the showers turned on and the steam had filled up the room, I heard Brad's footsteps coming closer to the room. With the help of the hot and cold handles, I pushed myself up one of the shower walls and sat on top of the wall. I crouched down low enough so that the steam would still mask me.

Shawn was in the room now, and I could hear his breathing over the pounding water. I could barely see his outline through the steam, but what I could see of his face didn't look mad. It looked sad.

"Asher, come out. Just come out already," he said. But when he spoke, his voice cracked. It sounded like he was about to cry. When he had walked past the shower I was at and into another, I hopped off of the wall and ran out of the room without him hearing or seeing me. I was almost to the door when I heard him talk again. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you with this. See? I'm throwing it outside the room." There was a clanking noise, and when I turned around, I saw the knife spin out of the room. "Just, please, come here, Asher."

As much as my instinct was telling me not to, I walked back toward the showers. I didn't know what he wanted if he didn't want to hurt me. I didn't even know if this was a show to get me back in there so he could hurt me. But I went in anyway. I was still aware of my being naked, but I didn't think too much about it since every guy here showered in here naked in front of everyone.

When I walked back into the room, I could hear a faint noise. As I got closer, I realized that it was Shawn quietly crying. Or at least, that's what it sounded like. I was still alert because at any moment he could attack me. My instincts were screaming at me to leave, but my heart was telling me to see what Brad wanted if not to hurt me.