Help From My Friends

Part 5

 Kevin's eyes fluttered open as he felt someone shaking him awake. Alyssa was sitting on the edge of his bed, her fingers curled into his shoulder.

"This is the end, Kev," Alyssa told him. "I'm sorry it had to be this way."

"Don't be sorry," Ethan told her. Kevin turned his head to see him leaning against the doorframe. "He knew that it was going to end this way."

"End what way?" Kevin furrowed his brows together.

"Kevin this is the climax of your story," she said.

"The climax?" he asked.

"Don't expect him to know what it is, Alyssa," he said. "He never wrote a story with one before. That's why they never ended properly."

"That's true." She nodded her head. "You left me on the porch ready to kill my boyfriend. Ethan was just about to run over his boss. Those weren't satisfying endings."

"So I'm going to kill somebody else?" he asked.

Ethan shook his head and stepped into the room. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and rubbed the blade on a cloth. Alyssa gave him a faint smile.

"You're not going to kill anyone else," Ethan said handing the knife to Alyssa. "You're going to kill yourself."

Somebody was pounding on the door and it echoed through the empty apartment. Kevin's heart felt as if it were slamming against his ribcage. He looked down at the blade and back up at his characters.

"Your story is over," she said.

"Police!" a voice boomed from outside. "Open the door! We're looking for Kevin Bolyen!"

"What is going on?" he asked.

"You didn't think that you would get away with this, did you?" Ethan asked him. "This story ends with two options: kill yourself or spend the rest of your life in a prison cell."

"I thought this was going to be a great story," Kevin told them.

"And it was!" Ethan exclaimed. "Look at what you did last night."

Kevin looked down at himself. His sweater was stained with blood and his sheets were spotted with red. The blood was flaking off of his arms and he could feel the itch of the dried blood on his face and neck.

"Who could get away with something like this?" Alyssa asked. "Your story has to be realistic."

The police continued to bang on the door. "If you don't open this door in thirty seconds we're going to break it down."

"This is it," Alyssa said.

Kevin opened his mouth to speak, but Alyssa grabbed his wrist before he could say anything. She dug the blade into his skin and she pulled it across. His wrist felt as if it were on fire as she sawed the blade back and forth. Kevin's chest burned as he struggled to breathe. A faint cry escaped his lips. The blood spurted out of his wrist like a fountain when she hit his artery.

The police kicked down the door and stormed into the apartment. They held their guns out as they charged into the room. They saw Kevin's bloody, unconscious body lying on the bed. One cop pressed his finger against Kevin's neck.

"There's no pulse," he told them. "Call an ambulance."

Ethan and Alyssa stood in the corner of the room. She crossed her arms over her chest and he threw his arm around her shoulders. They watched as the officers scanned Kevin's apartment.

"This was a good story," Ethan told her. "Now we just need to wait for somebody to write this down."