Am I Alive or Dead?

Today is the day of my twenty-first birthday and all my friends are going club hopping with me. I have hung with the same group my entire life. Yup twenty-one years old and I’m still living back home. Not my parent’s house but my grandparent’s old house, the house I was raised in for the first nine years of my life. My life has been trash to my parents I’m an unwanted burden. My sister was planned and fit perfectly into their plan, but I was a sour surprise that they did not want. They told me they had planned to put me up for adoption but my grandma threatened to disown them. Granny was great but unfortunately, she passed when I was nine years old. It was too late by then everyone knew my parents had two daughters and it would be social suicide if they put me up for adoption then. I was quiet and tried my best to not need anything. I mostly stayed with my granny before and after she passed away I had to stay all the time with my real parents. They were never too shy to tell me how much of a burden I was and how they couldn’t wait till I could leave. At fifteen years old I graduated valedictorian from our local public school. I applied to be emancipated from my parents with proof of my own home, job, and finished education. I wish I could say my parents would miss me but they didn’t even notice. My grandparents home was left to me in her will along with a very generous savings account for my education. After I graduated high school I went to university and graduated in business management again top of my class. A master’s in business I took in three years doing classes online and testing out a majority of the basics. I opened a cleaning company after I graduated high school but struggled to make it legal with my age. Even after I graduated from university I wasn’t taken seriously because of my age. It also did not help I was not an outgoing friendly type of person, that everyone automatically liked. I couldn’t care less about people at all since I had been treated as nothing but trash by the ones who were supposed to want me the most. My group of friends understood me and how I grew up. We are your typical friend’s group we all have extremely hard childhoods and took care of each other in school. I would come to school covered in black and blue bruises, my friends would help me hide from the teachers. They understood the embarrassment and shame of being unwanted and unloved. When I graduated their lives got a lot harder in school. I would help with their assignments but I couldn’t protect them in school anymore. One of our group couldn’t take his abuse anymore and ran away. It’s just the four of us now Kevin, Blair, Kylie, Timothy, and myself (Maya). James our friend left and unfortunately even now we don’t know where he went or even if he’s alive. We all work together now at my company we are a cleaning service but not like a maid cleaning service. We are known as a special cleaning service, we clean crime scenes of biological blood, and guts messes type of cleaning service. In our line of work, we see it all and need to be professional and quiet. I know what you’re thinking, why in the world would anyone want to work in that type of field? Well, truth be told someone has to do it and when nobody wants to do it then the pay is great. Kevin and I normally take the night jobs while Tim, Blair, and Kylie take the day jobs. Sometimes if it’s a nasty job, then one of those three come help me and Kev but we rarely need it. Since my company has been open for six years now and we are doing well. I was lucky to have invested some money early into stocks and built up my wealth my freshman year to be able to invest that money into a start-up business. See when I was fourteen years old I saw a guy down the road who had been murdered in his home and the house was a mess. Outside the home was a very old white guy getting out of his van. On his van, it says “We Clean What Nobody Wants To”. That was the moment I understood that people would pay more so they didn’t have to do it. I looked his business up and asked if he would mind some help. I worked for him till he passed away right after graduation. His family did not want the business so I purchased it from them. The wife was older and unable to run the day-to-day while their children already had better jobs outside of our city. That brings us back to today and my twenty-first birthday celebration. All five of us grab an Uber and head to the strip to get our drink on. I planned to get so drunk I don’t remember my name. The first stop is Club Cloud, where the music is great and the drinks taste like candy. We are all having a blast onlookers are buying us shots and I’m already tipsy as hell. We are at the club for two hours before calling it time to go to the next club. The next club we head to is a new club that just opened six months ago, Club Fang N Bang. It’s a new club but the word of mouth is amazing and when we step inside I am not disappointed. Once inside the atmosphere is electric everyone is dancing and grinding on each other. We step to the bar and order a drink and after downing it we move to the dance floor. Some hot guys come up behind me and Rylie to dance with us while the guys head not far aside to find their partners. The guy that grabs me closer is hot with his masculine features even though his blonde hair and strange eyes give him a prince look. He looks less football player and more lean soccer player. He sure can move through his hands grabbing my hips and moving them to the beat. As the song ends and I go to move away he gives me a show-stopping smile and asks for my number. He hands me his phone and despite my brain telling me no I enter my real number cuz damn the s*x appeal is there. He must be every bit of six foot four inches tall, such a lean build with strong defined muscles. He leaves and my group dances and drinks till the club closes. We head out of the club into the cool winter night and I reach in my purse to pull out my wallet and phone. Damn, where is my wallet? I know I had it when we paid for the last drinks at the bar. I told everyone I was going to check the bar for my wallet, I would be right back. As I leave I see Tim holding up Kylie because she can hardly walk. I also see Blair standing and talking to Kev as they nod in my direction that they hear me. I head inside as quickly as I can but the bartender states he doesn’t have any lost wallets. I make my way inside again but my group isn’t anywhere in site. Where did they go? They would never leave me I don’t understand. I pull out my phone to call them when I see a group of guys coming my way laughing about some poor suckers. They spot me and make their way over asking me to join them for some after-party fun. Umm like hell naw they are super sketchy, the little hairs on my arms raise and I know they are dangerous. My brain going a million miles an hour trying to come up with an escape plan. I may be a genius but my people skills and street smarts are lacking. I can’t talk my way out of a minor conflict let alone some criminals and deep inside I get the feeling they want to hurt me.