River & Revenge

01 | a villain's errand boy

A N D E R

     Ander Cassidy was confident he had seen worse days before.

Whether it was being forced to dress up as a Toilet-Paper Man on Halloween or watching his uncle's house burn down while the old man bled to death. Strange comparison, one might say, but both had been incredibly annoying points in his life. Bullied for being a laughable kid and ridiculed for his inability to save the most important man in the town. 

It barely stopped getting worse, but after spending a night in a locked attic, surrounded by rats who'd very much tried to eat him alive, he thought he had reached the peak of bad luck. Apparently, not.

Amongst all the aggravating events in his life, this fine evening, while he could have easily been sipping coffee and playing the piano in his cheap rented apartment, sitting uncomfortably between leaves and bushes instead beat everything. 

It had him conclude; nothing could ever tick him off more than two weeping people.

Or maybe three crying people could beat that.

"Thank you so much," the woman at a distance sniffled, trails of happy tears pouring from her eyes while she hiccuped and sought to find her voice again.

It was peaceful around, the sun had almost set, and on account of the saffron sky and chirping of the birds on their way home, everything looked kind of romantic. He remembered countless skies like this but none where he had someone to admire it with. Not that he was ever going to complain out loud, but thoughts like these often found their way into his mind, and Ander suspected he'd started to feel lonely, but that was a worry for some other day.

He looked at the screen of his phone. Nothing.

He looked ahead. Nothing.

As much as the sizzle of fire and the whispers of wind—all sounds of nature—were adding to the romance in the air, Nylla was determined to be the contrary. He watched as the blonde woman threw her arms around her husband and sputtered something completely inaudible.

He shoved the bud of his earphones further into his ear, but the problem wasn't the earphones or the mic attached to one of the shiny elements on her dress. It was her tears. Her words were muffled and gibberish due to the way she kept crying.

As Nylla once again held her husband's hands tightly and started whimpering, Ander lost nearly all of his patience. He was already sick of this sad shit—or happy? He wasn't sure.

He moved from his position and cursed instantly when the bushes around him rustled and swayed against each other, not ideally having him camouflage anymore. Panicked, he watched as they broke away from each other, eyeing the surrounding for the source of the noise.

Ander immediately crawled away, and pressed himself further against the rough bark of the tree, slouching low so he would be out of sight. The shards of the bark scraped against his back, piercing through the thin material of his shirt, and he wanted to get away but couldn't afford to make any more noise. 

His back ached, and dramatically, he assumed it'd bleed soon enough, but he couldn't move.

Wrong spot-choosing decision. Yeah, not next time.

He checked his phone once again. No text, no sign of Marco. Ander hoped his best friend of ten years wasn't going to back out. If he did, he was going to hunt that annoying blond until the end of his time.

Annoyed, he focused once again on the couple in front of him. Both were even more of a crying mess now, what they seemed to be engaged in, was a "Happy Aniversary" camping. The point of crying behind that? Ander didn't know, he wasn't amused either, but he had spent enough of the last week snooping around to know they were useful.