The Contract

Chapter 7 - Unwind

Panic.

You want to yell out. You would if you could. But I couldn't breathe no matter how hard I tried. And you needed to breathe to scream. My muscles and limbs were starting to get numb; my fingers and toes were begging to wriggle and shake. But to no avail.

I kept forcing myself to cry out, to call my brother's name. He was about to get stabbed straight through the heart as I had been, but I couldn't even hear myself yelling my brother's name. I couldn't hear a sound. Not a single word. My consciousness threatened to blank out from the torture, and the crushing agony of my oxygen famished lungs burned as the spot where my heart was just pierced threatened to tear my mind apart with excruciating pain. My eyes were shut tight - not only was I too scared to look at the wound that had left the left side of my chest gaping and wide open, I also did not want to see my little brother murdered right before my eyes.

This sensation felt like it was contaminating my soul; like the very essence of my life was being sapped. To think that being stabbed would hurt this much. When I watched the movies, a knife through someone's heart always seemed as though the person passed away somewhat quickly and easily; their eyes closing and that was it - they were dead. Not only was the pain more than tenfold of what I believed, the worst part about it was the terrible feeling of being suffocated. I tried to keep on breathing but it felt as though I was about to pass out from both pain and nausea.

Someone was shaking me vigorously, and a muffled voice found its way into my eardrums through all my yelling, but as the pain still remained, the distorted voice kept on growing louder and louder.

"Come on, Brad, get up!'

I opened my eyes as I panted heavily. A torrential downpour started to rain down on me; sweat cascading down the entire length of my body as I peered through the tears of pain that blurred my vision. My younger brother had been the one who was trying to get me to wake up, his expression morphed into one of worry. I stared at the spot where I had been stabbed before and tried to feel for any possible cavity, but there wasn't a single bit of evidence that would confirm the fact that a dagger had run through into my heart. The searing pain was starting to fade little by little, and I inhaled deeply, relishing in the alleviation of drawing my breath again.

"Are we - are we dead?" Stammering as I took a quick glance around the room I was in; it seemed as though I was back at home in the comfort of my room. The only light throughout the room was emanating from the small bedside lamp I had. My clock beside the lamp read that it was six in the morning; still a couple more hours to go before college classes started even today was even a weekday.

Steve's eyebrows furrowed. "I don't get your question; we're still here alive and breathing, aren't we? I'm glad I snapped you out of that funk you were in earlier. Must've been some nightmare for you to act that way; I've never heard you scream in your sleep before, man."

Instinctively, I grabbed my brother in a quick embrace, appreciating his words while hoping that his answer was right - I could be in the afterlife right now and this might very well be a hallucination as the realization would sink it later.

"Ow, you're crushing me."

I released him slowly, exhaling a deep sigh of relief. "What are you doing up so early in the morning, anyway?"

"Well, I wasn't exactly in the deepest of sleeps, and your screaming was echoing throughout the entire house; I just happened to be the quickest to get out of bed to try to get you to stop shrieking. You probably woke up everyone in the house but I took action first." Steve puffed up his chest with a hint of cockiness at the deed he had just done, obviously very proud of helping his older brother with something.

Footsteps could be heard coming from the staircase louder with each passing step, and my mother poked her head into the room to check what had gone on.

"Is everything alright? I heard a scream coming from upstairs."

"Everything's fine." My brother and I echoed in unison. I wanted to believe everything was fine - I wanted to believe my sweet younger brother who just said that we were all still alive, but I wasn't sure if I had it in me to trust what he said. My mind was still messed up with all that had transpired; if I was still existing in the world of the living, what would that make those previous experiences? Were they simply dreams - hallucinations even?

My mother breathed a sigh of relief, as though she had been expecting something much worse than a simple nightmare. "Brad, you'd better get ready - today's the first day of your new semester, if I'm not mistaken."

The blood in my veins froze when those words were said, and I heard myself ask another question wearily.

"What day is it today, mom?"

She rolled her eyes as she usually did when any of her children asked a question that they could find out on their own themselves. Something about parents made it so that they almost always expected more from their children; I would never know why until the day I became one myself.

"Today's Monday, the fifth of September, Bradley - your college's fall semester starts today." Adding extra emphasis to her words, she left without another word, and my mind went blank.

No, no, no, no, no. What was going on? Didn't I just get stabbed in the heart a few moments ago on this exact same day in about two-and-a-half hours time when I was on campus grounds? The pain felt so real a moment ago - I refused to believe that this time it had been a dream. No. It was entirely, completely, one hundred percent real. I had to prove that it was real, lest my sanity be challenged by what was the truth and what wasn't.

I leaped out of my bed without getting washed up in the bathroom and sprinted downstairs hastily.

"Yo, Brad, where're you going?" The voice of Steve boomed from my room as I descended down the mildly cracked oak steps at a rapid pace - the sound of my feet colliding against the hollow wood reverberated throughout the household, echoing about in the house. I might've probably disturbed the sleeping of my parents and sister with the abundance of noise I had been making.

My sister was in the kitchen stuffing her mouth with a jar of our blackcurrant jelly instead of lying asleep in her bed; she seemed like she had either been oblivious to what had been going on or she simply didn't give a damn about the screaming that had occurred earlier. Her eyes widened when she saw me bolting toward her direction at full speed; quickly abandoning the jar of jelly she had been gobbling up on and running back upstairs to her room. I was actually running toward the door - it just so happened that the kitchen was along the path to our house's main entrance. The fact that I remembered seeing my younger sister shoving bits of jelly in her mouth caused me to feel the eerie, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu - something exactly like that happened before in my memories.

Chilly, morning wind rustled the leaves at the front of our house; slapping my face roughly when I swung the door fully open. I closed the door shut and squinted at the desolate road for a white sedan - the same white sedan that I remembered passing by me and splashing muddy water all over my legs. There was a man who was semi-transparent controlling the movements of the car - a figure that looked almost exactly like Adro, the monster who had murdered my father in my memories. My ears strained for the whirring engine of a car that might just come by at any moment now, but all that I could pick up were the crickets chirping in the distance and the dripping of a leaky water tap somewhere.

Shit, I really should've brought a jacket down with me; my head was starting to feel a little bit woozy and numb at the same time, probably due to the biting cold of fall weather. Seeing the white vehicle would have to wait - I went back inside the slightly warmer comfort of my home and sprinted back upstairs as quickly as I could to grab the jacket I always wore during winters when my high school basketball team traveled over to another school to play.

I could feel my ears perk up as the humming vibration of a vehicle's motor could be heard emanating from down below. My legs started to feel as though they were carrying a ton of steel around as I ran back down the steps; the lactic acid buildup in my muscles was really beginning to hinder my movement but I tried not to think about it as I swung the door open to see which car was it that had made the racket earlier.

"Oh hey, Brad, you're up early! College starts today for you, am I right?"

The heavy stink of booze lit up my nostrils as a stout, broad man of average height greeted me - my neighbor. It would seem as though he had been the one causing all the noise earlier with the 1996 Toyota Camry he had been using since his days as a semi-professional boxer.

"Yeah man, you been drinking again, Juan?" I returned a smile as I tried not to inhale the stench of alcohol; not wanting to start my day tipsy.

"You know me, mi amigo!" Juan chortled amicably as he fumbled about the keys in his pocket. "Drinking solves much for a man of such - like me."

That's right, Juan Santino Vasquez was a man way past his glory days, one might say he had 'gone to seed'. I'd known him only for the shortened duration of about half a year since my family moved over here but after intimidating my siblings and I the first few times we met face to face, he had established himself as a dependable, albeit almost always drunk friend; something that I couldn't say the same about anyone at my college; not even that amiable girl in my microeconomics class - Melia.

Juan was a stud at boxing in his younger days; he frequently competed in local, unofficial boxing tournaments where people would pay a small sum of money to watch two people in a ring punch and come out on top. He told me once when he was going to his usual haunt - the gym, he ended up breaking the wall with an eighty pound dumbbell because something had ticked him off. I wouldn't have believed in what he said, but the fact that he had possession of a pump shotgun that he always kept in the trunk of his car convinced me that he might not be entirely sane.

His nickname was 'El Bruiser'; he was known in these parts before he had thrown his entire future away by that moniker because after he was done sparring with his opponents, they had multiple bruises throughout their entire body - even the groin area, which was illegal to hit, but because the competitions were unofficial and not properly officiated, Juan went all out. He told me once he nearly killed a man with nothing but a pen, I wouldn't have believed what he said, but the fact that he had possession of a pump shotgun that he always kept in the trunk of his car convinced me otherwise. He struck me as the kind of person who would just do it regardless of the consequences that lay out in front of him.

However, whenever he spoke, you just felt like you had to listen to him; his enthusiastic, carefree nature was somewhat contagious as he talked about his life and experiences with me. I preferred to spend my days either polishing and improving my basketball skills and chatting up a storm with the Hispanic boxer who lived about seven yards from my house rather than going to parties in campus and getting wasted.

"Don't screw up yer career, you hear me? You got a good thing goin' on there, lad."

That was what Juan constantly pushed me to remember lest I forget. He had a dream, a visionary to become a professional boxer and to go down in the books as one of the greats, but peer pressure and bad decisions led him on to try drugs and drink. When he got caught on drugs, that was it - his career was over, and the only thing he could do was compete in the aforementioned unofficial tournaments that garnered him only a little profit that wouldn't even cover the medical expenses he needed to pay off for his growing injuries after each wrestle.

"Say, Juan?"

He whipped around as he twisted the door knob after unlocking the door.

"Yes?"

"Did you see a white vehicle passing by when you drove here?"

"I can't tell from color to color when I'm drunk." He laughed once more and closed the door. I merely sighed as I looked ahead at the path where the white sedan in my memories had driven on.

"White car, you say? I think I saw one parked near your college - but I would say it's safer not to trust my judgment; to me white could be the new yellow." Juan said, sticking his head out of the door before closing the door shut again.

It was true that I shouldn't be taken anything he said too seriously, but I needed to find and stop Adro's car before it got to my house. Juan said that he had seen the sedan when he passed by my college, and that it was parked. I would never know until I went to college to see for myself. Besides, if the man in the car was en route to kill my father, he would have to drive along the path I was walking to college - I would be able to stop him in time, or warn my family for that matter.

After I had retrieved my bag from my room and ensured that I brought both my phone, a pair of sunglasses and a small pocket knife that I shoved in my jacket pocket in case of an emergency - not that I believe a little blade could bring down someone as powerful as Adro, but I sure as hell wanted to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Bringing my sunglasses with me was essential to protect my eyes against the biting cold; I didn't want to squint at every possible detail through the chilling wind that constantly blew today. It may also provide a useful disguise when Adro passed by, as I didn't want him to take notice of me.

As I swung open the door, the glint of the sun rising in the midst of dawn stung my eyes momentarily. Every step I took as I walked in the direction to my college made my legs twitch uneasily; every second that passed by felt like an eternity. I didn't remember the autumn cold being so biting harsh today; in the past two times I had relived this day, it wasn't as cold as it was now. The wind was howling like wolves during a full moon; vicious, cunning, and coordinated as it spread the cold temperature throughout the region with its gusts.

My eyes darted from left to right as I surveyed the surrounding and my ears worked overtime, trying to detect a sound similar to that of a car while I trudged onward. The weather was so freezing that I wouldn't be surprised at all if snow or hail started pelting from the heavens at the ground.

The whirring of a car engine sent my senses in a frenzy and I instantly stopped dead in my tracks; my eyes was trying to scan for the upcoming vehicle that would definitely pass by me if it continued its current direction - the droning of its motor was getting louder and louder with each passing moment. The faint smell of petrol found its way into my nostrils and the same exact car I had seen before make its way along the open road.

Without a care for any injury as of now, I jumped right onto the middle of the road and waved my hands for the car to stop; a stupid move by my part but it was all I could think of as I remembered that Adro had told my father he would slaughter him in front of the eyes of his son - in this case, me. True to what I had expected, the car skidded to a stop, braking roughly as it veered, spinning steeply out of control and finally settling to a stop amid all the dust stirred up in the air. Miraculously, the vehicle had not come into contact with anything around it.

Surely an immortal would feel woozy after the events that just transpired, right? That's what I thought as I marched straight to the driver's door and knocked on it roughly.

"Are you freakin' insane, asshole?" Greeting me was not a raspy, serpentine voice - instead, they were the words of a Caucasian male wearing a muscle tee; his body full opaque unlike the translucent form of Adro's. His expression was one of extremely irritation - bordering on murderous intent. Steam was billowing from the front of his car. Oops. "What the hell, man? Look at my damn car!"

I was in a state of shock; the car was the exact same model that Adro used when he had driven along the lane, but the driver was a complete stranger whom I never met in my life. Glancing at the front of the car, I smacked myself in the head mentally as I forgot to check the front for any stains of blood that garnished Adro's white sedan. Then again, it was better to be safe and sorry; now a stocky man stood in my face with his chest swelled up and his fists curled into balls - not someone I'd like to get in the way of.

There were a few things I could do in situations like this. One would be to just run away and not look back, two would be to apologize sincerely for the genuine mistake on my part, three would be to argue back pointlessly. But I doubt there would be much time spared if I didn't run for college classes; I was already bordering on almost being late. The man didn't look like he was eager to accept any form of apology, and he sure as hell would be even more agitated had I quarreled back at him.

Not looking back, I hauled tail as fast as I could, leaving behind the irate man in the dust who eventually stopped chasing after me to watch over his broken down car. Whipping out my phone to check the time, I was in awe at how quickly time had slipped by - it was seven fifty-five. Five minutes until lecture started; five minutes until the Devil's class begun.