House of Cards

"Oh c'mon, pick up, pick up..."

The room spins in circles as I pace across the floor, a thick throbbing pounding the back of my head.

"Hey it's Mikey. Obviously I can't answer the phone right now, but you can leave a message..."

There's a quick, ear wrenching beep, and I yell a "Call me!" into the phone and then hit the End button and shove it back into my pocket. Halting my pacing, I stand there in the middle of the room, thumbs rubbing my temples as I stare down at the smashed guitar on the ground.

The guitar I smashed.

"What the fuck," I mumble to myself for probably the third time in the past ten minutes. This is crazy. This is insane. There's no way this guitar got here on its own. And the only person who knows about it, who cares about it, is this Frank guy.

Frank fucking Iero.

I have no idea who this guy is or why the fuck he kidnapped me, but I sure as hell know I hate his guts. And the worst part is that he's probably the one leading me around with these sticky notes. Who knows what he'll do to me? I'm at risk just being in this room! His room.

I shiver, hiding deeper in my hoodie.

The closet door hangs open, empty except for a shelf and an old forgotten button, lost from a jacket or something. No arachnids there. No flesh eating monsters. No ghosts. No psychopathic killers. But I can't stop looking back inside, the feeling of little prickly spider legs crawling up my calves.

Probably fifteen minutes ago, before I called Mikey, I'd sort of 'woken up' if you will, in front of the smashed guitar, the memories fading as they did earlier in the basement with the ice cream. It took me a minute to recognize the room, to realize that I'm possibly being carefully hunted at this very moment in time by a particularly small and adorable crazy person named Frank. And then I'd scrambled to throw the closet door open and make sure he wasn't in there waiting for me. He wasn't of course. And then I'd run fingers up and down the front of my calves and sure enough there were several thin scars left from the monsters in the basement, curling silver memories of horror.

It feels like what happened then could've been in a horror movie. Next thing I know and they'll be turning my story into a summer blockbuster, scaring little kids into buying nightlights and checking the corners for spiders. It's almost surreal. I had really gotten kidnapped. The funny thing is no one has actually said it to my face.

My own brother hasn't even told me yet. I mean sure maybe they want to protect me from something so horrifying, but a guy has the right to know that he almost died.

He also has the right to know he sees Monsters.

Now would be a real good time for my little consultant slash grandmother to appear. I call her name, sauntering out of the room and standing in the hallway, waiting for her to come strolling in like she hadn't just missed the entire eventful catastrophe of my day today. She doesn't. Which is odd, because yesterday she was very adamant about bothering the living hell out of me.

I start walking down the hallway, the floorboards screaming under my feet as I step. My skin flushes with goose bumps as I walk further and further into the dark, eyes darting, expecting to see the thick spindly legs of a spider equivalent to Godzilla, crawling crawling crawling toward me. My breathing hitches and I run like a scared little kid, skidding down into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. The hallway opens up in front of me and I turn into it, Converse squealing on the hardwood. The door towers in front of me, ready to be opened, [i]begging[/i] for me to turn the knob and bust onto the porch, out of the dark. But I skid, almost tripping, in front of it.

On the door is small square piece of blue paper stuck to the middle.

I want to cry. Not another fucking riddle. Please.

I shakily reach forward, unsticking the note, and bringing it close to my face to read.

Come back tomorrow at noon.

Come back? Come back so he can kill me? No fucking way. I'm done with this. Done with all of the sticky notes and the riddles and all the rest of this mind fuckery. I don't even know why I followed the note on my window in the first place.

Wrapping my fist around the sticky note, I ball it up and throw it onto the floor, wanting to stomp all over it and scream at the top of my lungs. Why does all of this have to be so hard and confusing and fucking messed up?

I don't do any of the stomping or the fit throwing. It's been too long of a day to have the energy to flip out. The note sits crumpled and lonely on the floor as I open the door and step out onto the porch. The world is wet and very cold, November wind snapping at my hands and neck. Past the safety of the small rickety porch rain drizzles down from the broken gutter, pooling on the steps and spilling onto the muddy earth. Water runs down the edges of the road like little rivers, flushing into a grate across the street, small red leaves left over from October trapped on top of the metal slots like wrecked ships in a storm. The sky is a dark brooding gray and the once sunny day is carried away by the cloud front.

I mumble a curse or two, my breath leaving clouds of fog in front of my mouth as I realize I don't have an umbrella. I pull the hood of my jacket up and over my head in the hopes of keeping off the rain and set forth down the steps. Water slicks the sidewalks and I have to take the occasional jump over a steadily growing puddle, the canvas of my shoes seeping with run off, my toes growing numb. There's nothing but the sound of rain and the steady hum of distant cars as I walk down the street, watching the water quietly wash away the color from the sky.

I round a corner off of Carolyn Rd, paying all my attention to my feet as I avoid small ponds in the middle of the sidewalk, my body hunched and hiding inside my jacket. A gray something flashes at the corner of my eye and I turn to look at what could possibly be lurking in the dark damp alley way beside me, but I'm being yanked inside before I can really see it, skittering on the pavement as I'm dragged by the arm into the dark.

I'm thrown into a shadow and my back collides with the brick wall of the alley way with a loud thud, ridged pain stringing through my back like lightning. Someone's forearm is shoved against my throat, lightly blocking my airways, and I panic, coughing and squirming. I push at their chest (and it's quite obvious that this person is of the male brand), straining to get a look at his face, but he's wearing a hood and along with the shadows of the alley and the rain it's merely impossible to make out his features.

"Is it working?" Light hits the edges of his face and I can see a hint of his mouth as he talks, his chin covered in stubble, his bottom lip busted and swollen. His voice is thick and raspy, almost as if he were faking it, like Batman, to cover his identity.

"W-what?" I choke, voice sandy. "Who a-are you?"

"The notes!" He growls, leaning in closer to me, his breath hitting my face, his forearm pushing harder at my throat. "Are they working? Do you remember?"

"C-can't. Breath." I can feel my face getting blue, swelling up like a bloated balloon.

His mouth, the light just barely catching it, turns into a frown and his busted lip stretches, purple and blue. It looks infected.

His arm lets off of me, and his face gets closer. "Can you talk now?"

I nod, swallowing and gasping for air, throat dry.

"Do you remember?" His nose is about an inch a way from mine and I spot a tiny little red hole where a piece of jewelry could have been.

"Parts of it." I swallow, tongue papery as I stare at him wide eyed. "Who are you? How do you know about the notes?"

"All in good time, Gerard." His busted lip curls into a smirk.

"What? How do you even know my na-"

But I can't finish because his mouth is on mine, swollen lip infecting me with warmth, tongue slipping and sliding everywhere. He tastes like cigarettes.

It lasts for a very very long second that feels like a million years, and before I can really even register the fact that he's kissing me, he pulls away, the shiny pink skin of my bottom lip briefly caught between his nicotine stained teeth.

I stare, dumbfounded, as he smiles. A big bright smile. A sun-shiny smile.

"I missed you," He says, almost too quietly for me to hear.

And then he's turning away to go, pulling his gray hoodie farther over his face. As he dashes out of the alley way I can make out thick red stains scattered on his back. Kool-Aid maybe.

Or maybe not.