playing with fire // l.h.

2

"Please, please be quiet," he said with a pleading expression on his face.

  His arms were tight around my waist. I looked up at the ceiling. There was really no way any sound was coming out of my mouth. I was frozen with fear because, well if you aren't an idiot you'd know this was obviously the guy Michael was talking about. My mind raced, wondering how many people he killed in the theater lobby. 

  And then I remembered that Ashton was in the lobby. !!! I've said like two things to him in my entire life, but if he died, it would be the equivalent of my favorite band member getting killed. He was this cute, bubbly, sweet, happy, popular and raging hot guy who I had fantasized over being in a relationship with for like two years. So yes, I was worried.

  "Hey," I whispered to the guy.  

"Shh"  

"Did you kill anyone in there?"  

"Shut up" he put his hand over my mouth.

  His grip tightened around me and felt him tense up as I saw someone run down the hallway in the direction of the theater I was supposed to be in. I tried to yell but I couldn't get anything to come out.    I squirmed and tried to get out of his extremely tight hold, but he was probably like 10 feet taller than me and a lot stronger than I'd pictured the stick thin boy wearing skinny jeans and a flannel to be. He only got a stronger grip on me and I could feel his heart racing in his chest.   

I assumed he wasn't going to kill me. I mean, Dr. Huang from Law and Order Special Victims taught me that he would more likely try to rape me first to feel like he had even more power over me. That would give me a chance to escape. So naturally I thought of a wild plan to get myself out of here. I would try to chat him up and become friends with him, and even if he was a sociopath it would at least buy me some time. 

  Before I could try to pry his hand off my mouth, he took my hand and ran across the hall to what we both probably assumed was an empty theater. Lucky for him, not so much for me, it was. He dragged me down the tiny hall into the main part of the theater and sat me down on one of the seats. 

  "Stay here" he said quietly.

  I heard him doing something with the door, probably trying to lock us in. I was  shaking an I thing this is when I realized that I could very well be dead in a matter of minutes. I had always made kind of a joke of death; kind of a way to cope with the fact that it kept happening around me. I don't want to get into the details, but a lot of people around me had died and I was kind of used to the concept of crying with my friends when the news came, attending funerals in the ugly church building in our town, and celebrating my deceased friends and family members' birthdays by releasing balloons into the air or something like that. 'Well at least I'm getting killed by a hot guy' I tried to laugh. I hadn't seen him in good enough lighting, but he was tall and had really great hair. 

  He walked down to where the emergency exits were and did whatever he did to the main door to those ones. I wonder if he was keeping in mind that that's how we escape if there's a fire??

  "What are you going to do to me?" I half whispered with a cracking voice. I was shaking and crying by now.  

"No no no, I'm not going to hurt you," he said and sat down next to me. 

"I just want to make sure you don't tell anyone where I am. I kind of assumed you saw me in the hallway. I can't let anyone know where I am." 

  "Are you going to kill me? My little brother needs me. I promise I won't say anything if you let me go," I remembered I would be Joe's legal guardian when I turned 18 so Jack could go to a real college and let us finish high school here.