To Love a Gangster

To Be Manipulated

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The ever going sound of the clock on the wall was the only thing that even dared to utter a sound in your shared apartment complex.

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Who knew that you would actually be sharing it with a leader of a gang so hungry and desperate for power?

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You fearfully glanced over at the noise maker to read that it was 1:32 in the morning.

He's been gone for three hours. Must mean he had committed yet, another murder.

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A choke lingered in your throat as you lied silently on the couch of your eerie apartment with the first-aid kit sitting aside patiently on the floor next to you.

Breath shallow and eyes jittered as they kept constant contact with the ceiling above while you anxiously awaitied your boyfriend's arrival from his gang duties.

He never came home without blood-stained hands or a large gash located somewhere on his body. It was your job to patch him up whenever he came stumbling back home to you from a  brawl in a pile of beaten flesh and bones, expecting you to be his personal nurse whenever he returned. 

But no amount of blood for you to cleanse could ever be compared to the horrid temper he also returned with, a scheduled routine that sticks in the middle between the two of you, and you always playing the role of his helpless victim.

These same old events have been going on for two years. You should have known what you were getting yourself into, and now here you are confined in your own apartment, incarcerated within these barren walls while your boyfriend is out there somewhere, doing diabolical things that made your guts clench.

You want to leave, to run away and be free with this way of living far back behind you and flee towards a promising hope on another side of life, but there are also always a million reasons to not do something.

Tik tik tik...

You jolted and concealed your breath when you heard the door open, indicating that he, Frederick Arthur was home. You timidly sat up with caution and met the hunched over silhouette masked by macabre shadows as he stood in the open doorway.

Not a "hello" or even a simple "I'm home" rang from the exact spot he was standing. Instead, he silently slipped from the blackened portrait and into the light. The cold, icy gaze of the man emerging into living room was cast down low and heavy with exhaustion along with his once clean white shirt now dyed in deep crimson. And more specifically, an even darker ring of red placed in his abdomen where he had been wounded.

Just as you expected. It's been too long since you didn't have his blood on your hands.

You drew in a hollowed breath, preparing yourself for what he might say to take his unappeasable anger out on you tonight.

"Another bad night," you asked with hesitation while gambling the risk of a sudden bark to your face like a vicious dog. To your luck, you watched as he just trudged impatiently passed you while completely ignoring you. He pulled up a chair and removed his shirt, showing that he had a jagged gash from a knife wound right where you had expected it to be.

The usual routine.

"Just fix me," he grumbled with exhaustion as he flopped himself down with his chin in his palm.
"He got what he deserved."

You've grown used to those words that passed his lips over time and learned that it's just best to not ask for you knew that it meant that he sent them to meet their maker and nothing more.