Other Brandon

Allen finds a bloody muder scene in Brandon's room, with Brandon out of sight.

XI.

 

There are moments of darkness in life, not great dramatic darkness but simply a loss of concious thought. A day dream that leads nowhere. Sara's head bobbed up and down, one eye open and one eye just a slit. She could feel only burning. The heat of the lights above her pounding on her tall, slim body. She could feel it mostly on her scalp, today it was not protected by any sort of gel or spray, those usual unusual rail spikes for hair were not even in a pony tail; they were in clumps and tangles pouring down her sweaty face. At least a half inch of black was setting into the bright blue on the top of her head now.

Her hand finally gave in, letting the weight of her unkept head drop on the hard wood desk below her, letting fall a pen and highlighter onto the floor. Her head both shot up in perfect awareness and filled with a rush of blood, turning her cheaks a bright red which was only accented more by her white skin and tangled locks of blue. Her teacher, Mr. Sedler, looked at her in an expression of perfect understanding: "Would you like to step out?"

"Yeh-m" was all she could manage, and even then only to herself. She stood fast, the blood felt as though it had been sucked out of her head by the rest of her body. A moment where the bright white of the lights overhead overpowered her senses followed which felt like at least two minutes, though it was no more than five seconds. She wobbled across the classroom and out the door which was already open due to the heat: the air conditioners were crashed again.

That must be it, the heat. It's the stupid heat I just need to cool off.

Down the hall and into the girl's room, it was like a psychedelic trip across the universe to her, but she made it with less difficulty than she expected. Summer was always hell for Sara, she could never wear those cool short-shorts or those fresh tank tops. Always jeans, always long sleeves. It was much easier than explaining the scars.

Those scars were now exposed to the Sharpie art of curse words and exagerrated figures of the human form which graffitied the walls of the small bathroom stall. The cold air against her naked shoulders gave her a chill everywhere except for that long, dark, blotchy scar on her back which went all the way down her inner theigh and left leg. That scar and the fourteen little red-brown circles, seven on each arm in perfect line from her elbows to her inner wrists. She undid her jeans and stood, soaking the cold air of the world that could chill every inch of her except for those dark scars. She leaned agaisnt the wall of the stall, wearing nothing but her baby blue underwear and still those dark parts were feeling heat. She was nearly nude, a beautiful disaster surrounded by graffiti and phone numbers scribbled on every wall. Half of her body off-white and the other half spiraling down her body in a sickening blend of red, brown and yellow. She was like a portrait with a double meaning, even her face convayed a wide variety of emotions, dominant ones being pity, lust and disgust.

Her face was blank until she remembered Brandon. She gathered her clothes together and hastily tried to put them back on.

What are you thinking? You're crazy! You're practically naked! What's wrong with you, get dressed! How long have you been here, get back to class!

 

XII.

His body was drained, the floor sticky and dark with his still warm blood. If he had only cooperated, there would have been one less innocent death in Malitt. Brandon needed a gun, that was understandable to him. In his mind it was insanely irrashinel to argue otherwise. Brandon took his gun, loaded, six bullets. Brandon liked it old school like that.

He was almsot back, he could feel it. He laughed then when he asked for the gun.

"I need a gun, please."

"We don't sell those." The cashier's voice trembled at Brandon's face. What walked in an expressionless every-man was morphing before his eyes. He could see and feel his emotions, they were clear on his face. Complete annoyance.

"The one under the register. I need it." Brandon added sarcasticly, "Stop squinting your perfect little brow at me and hand it over. It's a gift for a friend."

The cashier, an obese, greasy faced little creature, became angered and excited, maybe today he could be a hero. "No." He tried to be stern, every old western he'd ever seen came to mind, he felt like the tough guy. He had the gun, he had the power. He wanted badly to feel in control for once in his life, Brandon knew this. Which is why he laughed at the cashier's next move.

He drew the from the shelf under the register, hand struggling not to tremble with excitement and a face of absolute stupid arrogance. The gun pointed directly at Brandon's heart, not a difficult target when one was no more than two feet away. The cashier starred at Brandon, a man in red stained blue jeans and a thin blue doctor's top. The young man's expression was a complete riot to Brandon. He tried hard to look him in the eye, stare him down, but the kid's face seemed to only say "Who yo daddy, motha f***a?" inside Brandon's head.

So he did laugh, and hard. The idiot's face growing more and more stupefied with each deep cackle. Brandon's laughter was ceased by the single piercing sound of a bullet flying over his shoulder and through the glass behind him.

His expression gone again, the cashier's face was that of a corpse seconds before his body was lifted by what was nothing to him, but a deep blue aura to Brandon, one which was flowing out of his tired body. The dead-faced boy's body thrusted backward into the shelves of condoms and pornography, his head and the wall behind it cracked and caved in. Thick drops of crimson came down in fast streams over bottles of "Instant Energy 24/7" and from there onto the spread and scattered pages of Playboy.

He stayed there for a moment, body suspended in air and head half into the wall, and then dropped face down. Brandon searched for the gun and knew it had fallen behind the counter someplace. He continued to search, no longer with his eyes but with his mind. Cold he thought, cold hard metal gun.

He felt it, as if his entire body was a hand spread out against the handle of the weapon. He lifted and released, eyes opened. The gun had been tossed into the air, his thin arm outstreatched, knowing exactly where to be to catch it right in his palm. He slid it into his front pocket and pulled the blue shirt over it's cold metalic body.

Brandon peered over the counter and saw the concave figure of the cashier's skull with bulging, tattered brains on the floor. Lifeless eyes rolled down looking into the dead-behind-the-eyes of the December model.

That made Brandon laugh, too.

 

XIII,

Allen felt wet and warm, as he crawled onto all fours and eveloved onto two feet he scratched his neck and the side of his face, there were thin red-brown flakes of dried blood falling off of him like dandruff, more caught underneth his fingernails. At first panic, then relief and finally disgust. The blood was not his, it belonged to at least half a dozen other men who spread out around the room dead and drained. One man in particular struck Allen's heart with sorrow and the need to vomit, his body on it's knees, head completely through the half opened door out of Brandon's room. Allen could imagin that he had banged his head agaisnt that wall out of sheer terror and need to exit that room, he understood that feeling right then. It wasn't likely that he hit his head repeatedly into a door until his head broke bloody on the other side, and Detective Rochis' experiance of late night cop shows taught him that due to the pattern of the blood around him, there was only one single hard bang that broke his head through. Surely though, he had wanted to exit painfully. The bloody fingers, scractches and bits of broken nail on the door were proof of that.

Allen Rochis slowly walked around, as not to disturb the dead, he tiptoed and pushed over the man in the door with his foot, revealing under him a small, sharp scalpul. Rochis looked back one last time before exiting the room and realized that the other men all had one single clean, quick cut across the jugular.

What could have possesed this guy to kill his colleages so cleanly, perfectly, then spend the last moments of his own life in such... torture?

And instantly after that thought as he gazed toward the bathroom door on the other end of the hall: Where the f**k is Brandon Heays?

The bathroom door was swung open, the inward facing side of the door had similar jamming dents in it. The inside of the bathroom was clean, not a speck of blood. The bloody footprints went straight from Brandon's bedroom and out the door. Allen hadn't noticed the bloody footprints outside, not with the dirt and weeds, but he had definately smelled the blood.

Allen was about to exit the house until he realized something. From the moment he woke up he felt frozen, numb. Like his entire body was chained and he was mearly being dragged about. Now he noticed that he was chained, his wrists chained by his own handcuffs. He would have to get himself free before anything.

The kitchen was small, the area above the gas stove (and thank God there's a gas stove) was burnt black. Rochis tossed his hands over his head in front of him to turn the small dial on the front of the stove, igniting the stove on the HIGH setting, the large blue flames flickered. He turned to his left and used the chain between the two cuffs to flip the lever up and turn the sink on. He held his hand under the flow of water to esure that the water was at coldest. Allen was no chemist, but he know three things: heat made metal expand, cold made metal contract, and the Malitt Police Department was full of cheap old b******s. He prayed that these three elements combined would free him.

He blew out all flames except for one so that he wouldn't burn his hands, he spread the chain out as hard as he could and held it over the flame until the metal glowed red, the heat was making his wrists sweat and swell. He pulled out and placed the chain under the cold flow of water for a moment and then slammed the chain down as hard as he could against the corner of the kitchen counter, grunting in pain from his swollen, bruised wrists, he couldn't help but think how much easier it'd be if the girl had left a bobby pin lying around while tending to Brandon.

He repeated the process until he felt that he might simply break off his hands rather than the chain, slamming the chain on the corner of counter once, twice and on the third time a success. The chain broke loose, a wave of freedom flowed through Allen starting in his wrists, through his heart and into his mind, sparking a memory.

One he know was somehow relevent to all of this in the back of his mind, a memory that he had long forgotten except for a few trace scenes, it all pieced together into Allen's trademark hit of perfect lucidity.

It all began to make sense.
 

Author's Note

There is some spelling and gramatical errors in here. I'll fix that myself. How about some creative help?