THE EMPATH

The act (conclusion)

The weekend passed by slowly, I was still in grief and I missed Tom terribly. My visit to the hospital supposed to make me feel a little bit better actually made me feel worse. Watching Alice in that condition broke my heart the more and I felt the need to pursue justice. I had chosen to keep my enemy close so I would know exactly who he was and what he wanted from me and of course he had made sure to get as close to me as possible and I figured it was for the same reasons as mine. Funny thing though, was the fact that he seemed to be the one grieving more than everybody else in the whole damn community, if I never took a ride into his brain, I would have believed his grief was true and honest.

Monday came by and I went back to school feeling alone and robbed. People looked at me in all angles and I could feel both their genuine and faked sympathy for me. I just lived through the day like a lost bird, left was right and top felt like bottom I even went to the wrong class for two lessons and didn't even realize it until the register was called. By the end of the day, my fear mixed up with pain and confusion and grew into resentment. My guardian tried to warn me about doing something rush but I never listened, you would think he would learn from experience but apparently, he was way too stubborn. After school, I went up to Alvin and asked him if we could catch up later and of course he agreed. He picked the place and I picked the time and we were all set. His place of choosing was an abandoned clay factory about four kilometers from my house. He of course thought he was holding the upper hand, he didn't have the slightest clue that I practically grew up in that place and I knew everything corner of it like the back of my hand. I had a single problem though, I needed to find a way to get out of the house without my mom noticing. Of course I could always say I was going down to the hospital but then there would be my dad asking me to wait him up the other lie would be about Robert but of course mum knew he was not home for the last full week and wouldn't be for yet another another. I ended up telling her that I had promised Tom to do something and I wished to fulfill it before I forgot. She was not sure whether it was a good idea to go to Tom's that late but in the end I played the grief card and she let me go.

It was still about two hours before the agreed meeting time and I decided to go then so that I could place a few things I thought I would need. I packed a bag with a few stuff and on top I put Tom's sweater just in case my mum asked. Thirty minutes later, I was making my way through one of the three holes we had cut on the wire mesh hedge about two years back. Alvin was new in the village and my first guess was that he had probably paid an earlier visit to the site to set his path. I was not sure though so I trended as carefully as I could and sure enough I happened to spot him before he could spot me. He had made the perfect trap for me, a room with only one door, that still had all its doors and windows intact. No one would hear me scream from onside there. I also saw him hide a few dangerous tools in there. After watching him for a while, I chose my trap like he would never expect I then laid low watching him go about his preparation before leaving the place almost at the same time as I did. Once again, my guardian warned me against my plans.

I made sure to stay away for sometime and come back just a few minutes before agreed time. It was time to take the lead and of course I wanted to make sure I was doing it the smart way. Alvin showed a whole ten minutes later pretending to be out of breath from running. "You know, you could have chosen a place much near and less creepy," I said with a genuine smile on my face. Of course he made sure to smile back but I could tell his smile was not genuine but I ignored that. "Hey, I brought some stuff that could help with what you are going through but I can't risk taking them out right here," he finally wiped his smile and said. "So, what are you suggesting?," I asked even though I had a clue. He showed me with his tongue to the huge room and of course I didn't protest. By that time, my guardian was bursting my head off asking me to turn and run the other direction, the voice was so loud it almost blew my brain up into pieces.

Against all his warnings, I followed Alvin to the room and made sure to stay right next to his planned murder weapon, of course that kind of assured him that I had no clue what he had planned. He smiled, that time around his smile was all genuine and there was more than just a smile, there was this dark look that made me remember Dexter. Alvin reached into his back pack and took out a bottle of whitehall fire. It was honestly my first tume to see such an expensive bottle of whisky up close. He poured a little in his glass and drunk it up all at once before gasping, " Oh dear! I only carried one glass," he said. I was about to tell him it was okey and that I didn't care for the damn thing anyway but by then he had already poured a lot of the bittersweet liquid into the glass and handed me the rest in the bottle. He smiled, proposed a toast and we both drunk at the same time. Three minutes of silence later, he said some sort of a joke meant to start small talk and without knowing, he gave me a card to assist me on my next move. I made him tell me all about himself and he was more than glad to tell even though I knew most of whatever he said was probably a lie. By then, I knew all there was to know about him. Like for example, I knew that he had just bought a six hectares of land some twenty minutes from the factory. I also knew that he was lying about living with his parents because I had researched enough to know that he seemed to have come from nowhere, their was no history of parents or any family for that matter. He had no plan to stick around for long which meant his only goal there was short term and my guess was that it involved me. The one thing I didn't know however, was the reason why he intended to do that and who exactly he was. I planned on making him tell me that.

"Wow, that was a somehow confusing story but it was good...cheers to family," it was the only thing I figured to tell since my mind was already blank. After the story, he reached for his glass and took a sip, then another and another. About five minutes later he started feeling dizzy and barely seconds later he dropped to the ground. He knew right about then that I knew his plan but he didn't seem scared. In fact, he smiled. "Ooh good, we can skip the introduction and the purpose of my visit now," he said before blacking out for what I expected to be three hours. However, I should have answered the question of who he was before taking action. The tranquilizer I had put in his drink worked alright, but only for five minutes. After that I found myself between a rock and a hard place. The guy was like say five times stronger than myself and definitely more faster. Robert had taught me very well but I was no match for Alvin I knew right about then why my guardian had tried so hard to warn me. I was just about to give up when my guardians voice bursted into my head asking me to bend low and without any hesitation I did just that. Alvin had his hand in the air ready to give me a full blow to the my back with the huge dagger he had brought. My bending made him miss and he fell forward somehow falling on the dagger himself. I had not noticed what was going on until he stood up with the damn thing plugged into his chest. He however seemed strong still and he tried to make a run for it but my guardian asked me to follow him.

With the knife I had hidden meters away from the room, I stubbed Alvin repeatedly on the back eventually being able to drop him to the ground. I then turned him over in an attempt to question him. His eyes were glowing bright green and he was more of roaring softly than groaning the sound of his voice then scarier than ever. I watched as the glow slowly subsided until it was just two normal looking eyes staring at me in fear and pain. Realizing what I had just done, I jumped back in panic, looked at the blood on my arms and for a moment I went unconscious. I had forgotten to calculate my moves after the act was done. I called to my guardian and for a moment he chose to ignore me for obvious reasons. I had to ask really nicely. "What do I do now?" was the only question that came out of my mouth. "What was your plan?" he asked in return. "Aaah...I..had not planned this far," I answered with a new understanding that I was screwed. "Well then, let's say I help you, will you promise to do something in return," at that point he knew I was more than willing to do anything, he knew that I would never say no to his help and the awkward laughter in my head would confirm it. "Great, let's take care of your mess," he went on even before I could answer.

The next hour was all about carrying, cleaning and hiding stuff. By the time I was done, it was almost eight in the evening and my whole body was aching, I also had this bump on my forehead and a cut on my left side that called for assistance even though I knew all too well I couldn't go out looking for it as it would sell me out. No one had to know of the occurrences of that evening for my life depended on it. I would do whatever it would take to make sure no one ever knew about it. I put on a brave face and walked home. I was trying to act okey on the outside despite the crazy storm of fear on the inside. However, I couldn't sleep, every time I closed my eyes, I saw myself stabbing Alvin on the back repeatedly and I would just start shaking and crying. Morning found me still wide awake and with no plans of falling asleep whatsoever.

School was just fine except for the register calling time. The teacher had noticed that Alvin was not in school but that didn't seem to bother her, at least not for the first four days. However, when Alvin didn't show up the fifth day, the teacher was concerned and she sent someone out to check on him. At that point I hoped to God that my guardian knew what he was doing when he asked me to take Alvin's body at his house. I feared the dead body would somehow rise up and tell on me. The police had of course promised to make sure that the killer was found and punished as it was obvious "poor" Alvin was murdered, they even had their best pathologist on the job and everyone was hopeful. Of course I knew it would take sometime before the pathologist would come up with something and my first thought was to skip the village and start a life somewhere else but my guardian promised me that everything was fine. A week later, the police gave out a statement that stated that Alvin was actually not who he said he was. Apparently, he was a member of a very deadly g**g called the "Cleaning Crew" known for it's ruthless murders among other heinous crimes. The police believed that Alvin had tried to escape the group but they found him and killed him. Just like that, the case was closed and the village went back to being a quiet village with less school children deaths and a guilty me wearing a mask to hide the truth.

Everyone seemed contented but I was not. I thought killing Alvin would make the pain easier but I ended up hurting five times over then that I realized the bastard was dead and he never even went through half the pain Alice was going through. What even hurt the most was the fact that his death had not changed a thing, Tom was still dead and Alice was still a vegetable and her mum didn't want to see me anywhere close to her, for some reason, she still blamed me for whatever happened to her little girl and in a way, she had all the reasons to blame me. As if all that was not already too much, I received a threat letter from the g**g that promised me a slow, painful and doglike death. Then of course I found out that my guardians request for payment was for me to promise that after highschool, I would be a full time protector and that my first mission was to finish off the whole Cleaning Crew members. "A single act is the whole reason why your life will be a living hell sooner than I had planned," my guardian had said.