By Sam Phoenix
He laughed, a bubbly thing, “What are you doing?”
The other man smiled coldly, pulling a gun out of his jacket and pointing it towards the teenage boy, who cowered when faced with the weapon. “You’re coming with me.”
The kid tried to scream, but the man cocked the weapon, making sure the teenager knew that his life was at risk.
“Please, don’t kill me. My dad, he’s rich, he’ll give you whatever you want!” he cried, putting his hands up by his head, in the universal ‘surrender’ stance. His soft eyes blew wide with the release of adrenaline and his gold hair made him look so sweet and afraid.
The man’s smile widened, making him look like his face was about to split open, “You have no room to demand anything, child. Your blood will be spilt tonight.”
The child sniffled, tears streaming from his face, “Please. I want to live.”
“Damn, kid, you do know that you’re not getting out of this alive, right?”
The kid nodded, wiping the tears and snot off his face and straightening his spine, dropping all expression on his face. “You are the one who will die here tonight.”
The man before him stared into the child’s eyes. Face to face with that horrifying blank expression. He began to shake in fear. What was wrong with this child? Where did the scared young teenager go?
“Put down the gun and your life will be spared.” The child took one step forward, his shadow curving over the wall behind him looking like a dark bodyguard.
He shook, but he had already committed to killing the child, he couldn’t back out now. “No,” he said, his voice sounding weak and shaky.
“Put. The. Gun. Down,” the child enunciated. His hands were suddenly occupied by a small wire that he was threading through his fingers. “I don’t want to hurt you, ~Sir.” The last bit was said with wide eyes and a childish tone, mocking the man for falling into the child’s trap.
His hands shook so hard he thought he might drop his weapon. He couldn’t move his feet, he was cemented to the ground, stuck there like a Greek statue, if Greek statues were ugly. “Stop. Whatever you’re doing, stop it.”
The boy’s eyes went wide and unassuming, “I’m not doing anything. I’m just a defenceless child with no way of protecting myself.”
“You know that’s not true,” he said, his voice weak, shrivelling up in his throat and barely exiting his mouth.
The child stepped forward again until his head was pressed against the barrel of the gun, “Kill me then, if that was your plan.” He twisted the wire in his hands as the cold metal pressed into his forehead.
The adult man tried to pull the trigger, but his finger was too weak. He didn’t have enough energy to pull the trigger, just as he didn’t have the energy to move his legs and run away from whatever this child was.
“KILL ME!” the teenage boy roared, his golden locks framing his face like a lion’s mane. His whole body was strung with tension, his eyes manic and crazed. “Or are you too much of a coward to kill a twelve-year-old?”
The man stumbled backwards at the crazed look on the child’s face. This was not what he expected when he saw the kid walking alone on the street and lured him into a back alley. He just wanted an easy target, but he picked wrong.
Boy did he pick wrong.
The child lunged forward, knocking the weapon out of the man’s hand and wrapping his wire around the scared man’s neck. “I’m sorry it has to end like this,” the child spoke sweetly, as he choked the adult. “You could have been a great member of society. If you weren’t a jackass.”
Those were the last words that would-be-killer heard before his body drifted off into the void of death.
