Pick three things in the room. Actualize them. Be present here.
Phone.
Shoes.
Trash can.
I made sure my line of sight bounced between all three objects over and over again until I felt like my hands were finally sneaking out of the restraints my stalker had slapped on my wrists.
Anxiety was a bitch.
Trying to talk yourself through why some random person is stalking you is hard enough.
My hands were still shaking and my heart was still pounding against my chest, making it hard to get a good amount of air in or out.
I stood up and picked up the orange bottle on the nightstand: benzodiazepines.
High doses are equivalent to horse tranquilizers, forcing your mind and muscles to relax, even though you’re still vibrating against the leftover fear.
That’s the thing about having a stalker: There’s no rhyme or reason.
It is what it is.
Crawling back into bed, I looked at my phone for the someteenth time: 3:17 a.m.—the time of morning that’s pointless. Too early to be awake and too late to be up.
There was no way I was going back to sleep after that kind of attack. I had two options: Work out downstairs, or call one of the regular girls I fucked. Either one would keep me focused on something else.
I chose the lesser evil: working out. The way I enjoyed sex was ultimately more work than lifting was.
Death wasn't the thing I gravitated towards out of sheer coincidence. I was a fucked up kid who killed bugs just to see what it was like to watch life evaporate at my hands. I was an even more fucked-up teenager, constantly being blamed for anything dark enough to be my fault. As an adult, I was unforgiving of all the people who blamed me, punished me, sent me away knowing death would become mine.
It was more than a chip on my shoulder. More like twelve bottles of pills, therapy for life, and creating a stronger monster.
They took a reckless kid and shaped him into the perfect monster—one willing to read a text with a name and do what they wouldn't: Watch the life evaporate.
I built a gym in my house so I could stay home more and be around people less. The walls being covered in mirrors made it seem less lonely, even if I was the only one ever in there.
Shirtless in my joggers, I stared at myself, trying to see past the monstrous parts.
There was a scar across my eyebrow from when I punched Vic’s dad so hard he retaliated by hitting me with the end of his knife. The blade caught me, but only some hair was the loss, not my ego. I knew I was still bad enough to repeat the decision.
I was covered in tattoos. At this point, it was one big tattoo that covered my whole body.
My hair was typical brown, short on the sides, and cut across my forehead straight when I brushed my hair, on the rare occasion. Normally my hair was pushed back messily and screamed, “I just fucked someone bent over my desk!” even if it wasn't true.
Picking up the weights, I lifted each arm slowly back and forth, feeling my focus come to a head. Stalker or not, I felt my body ease into my meds.
Finally.
“Hey, Siri, remind me to call Doc. Need to up my doses,” I said, without lifting my watch to my mouth, expecting her to just hear me.
She was the only woman who did, and she wasn’t even real. Every other woman took the polite position of running the other direction or welcoming themselves to an orgasm at my expense.
None of me was welcoming, friendly, or shouted I need a friend.
I didn’t, just to be clear.
Mommy issues (protective to a point of creepy), Daddy issues (that’s too much to unpack), and my anxiety… gang was all here—all the friends I needed.
The other four horsemen were my brothers, not actually, but it felt like it when we were all forced to go to a private school in the mountains and learn to become these kinds of monsters. No one else was going to understand that.
The Clave was knit too tightly to have anyone else outside of their ranks. Having anyone outside of our ranks meant the possibility of telling other people who we were, what we did, or why we did it.
I don’t think I could even try to explain “the good work” they thought they were doing to protect society from the bumps in the night. I could tell you exactly who and what though.
Growing up in this world, you learned names and faces to pile onto your own personal revenge killing list, if one day you managed to get out.
Normal people reveled in dreams and cast out the nightmares. All my dreams were made of nightmare shit. I wanted to burn down the building and everyone inside.
I welcomed the nightmares with open arms. The dreams were the ones that gave me cold sweats and pretended I was a good person who deserved traditional happiness.
I wasn’t.
Love, happiness, a life outside killing things… they weren’t something I wanted, or needed.
After wasting an hour of my time lifting, I decided showering before was probably necessary. I was already the guy who refused to wear a suit or business casual clothes, like everyone else.
There was something about being the only guy in ripped jeans or fitted joggers in a sea of suits that made me snicker. I honestly didn’t even know why we had offices in the building. We didn’t do any business there. Well, maybe Vic did; he always seemed busy and pissed off at every turn of events.
Death wasn’t something we needed on a daily basis, making going into an office difficult and boring. It was a special kind of torture to sit at a desk for eight hours with nothing to do. I counted the minutes, surfed Instagram for as long as possible, made arrangements with the rotating circle of girls who would come over when I felt like it, and waited for the three others to argue about who was the most important.
I didn’t give a fuck.
War.
Chaos.
Famine.
Death.
The first thing we learned at The Servants of Patmos was how much we are all tied together. That didn’t stop the weekly Friday lunch we had together in the conference room from turning ugly.
We were all monsters. Did it matter what kind? Nope.
Out of the shower, my tattoos glistened under the moisture. My hair was flattened down by the weight of the water, and every drop that fell down my chest to the metal in my nipples almost sparkled. Wrapping the dark gray towel around my waist, I yanked the door open to rustling.
Maids didn’t come until Monday, and the guys knew better than to show up without asking me first.
I had to think for a moment before I realized what time it was. Of course, I didn’t call any girls over.
My mom had a bad habit of walking in without warning, but that only meant that she looked for me until she found me. I would have already heard her barge into my bathroom while I was in the shower.
Mommy issues.
No, this rustling sound was a stranger in my house without any permission, who apparently had access to my gate codes, door codes, and knew their way around enough to not recklessly make noise.
I felt the anxiety of my stalker paying attention as I made my way to my bedside table, where my matte black Walther Q5 gun rested.
The steel of my gun in my hand already had the stalker backing off.
Listening for the rustling, I dropped the towel and stepped into my fitted black shorts with rips destroying the front, knowing how awkward a slip of my towel could be in a gunfight. That’s a heavy piece of artillery with the same kind of steel matching my gun, but it wouldn’t kill you the same way.
With my gun up in the air, I scoped around corners before rounding them. All our training paid off.