asylum [kai parker] editing/rewriting

Nine

S I M O N E
The next morning I'm required to go to school. School. Basically more like hell. And Kai just happens to be Lucifer. His old black rust-bucket happens to be in my driveway the second I am ready to go outside. "Who is that?" Nick asks while eating a bagel.

"A friend." Lies. All lies.

Nick nods, "Can I meet them?"

"No. He's shy and I am in a hurry." Lies on top of lies. But the second I mention my friend is a guy friend, Nick seems less interested. Sad even. "By Nick." I quickly take a bite of my bagel and pull on my backpack.

"Goodbye, Sim." Nick responds quietly.

But I don't stop at Kai's car. Malachai pokes his head out the window. "Where are you going?"

"I'm not getting in a car with you." I state and begin to walk to where the bus picks me up.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed." Kai watches me and waits patiently.

"You have quite the nerve coming here when my dad can see you." I say, looking towards the woods- anywhere but at him.

"Get in the damn car, Simone. I'm not asking." He is no longer being patient.

"No." I'm fighting him, and this will end badly.

"I'll make you. Don't play with fire, Kitten. Didn't you learn that years ago?" He knows he has hit something, yet he tries to dig deeper and deeper just to get to me.

"Shut the fuck up about my family, Kai!" I'm trying my best not to yell but it's not working. "I didn't kill them," I step closer to his vehicle. "Not on purpose. Finally I am able to see what you are doing! You are bringing me down now that you finally found someone who has something in common with you! Because, Kai, you know that the only reason you talk to me is because you are trying to lessen the guilt that came with hurting your family. You believe that someone on this god damned earth has hurt others more than you have! But guess what, I'm not going to sink to your level, however low that may be." My anger rushes out at once and all the sudden I cannot stop it.

Kai blinks.

"I'm called a pyromaniac. A fucking pyromaniac. You were in the papers. You were described as a murderer. But then you were let off the hook! No one gave you a damn nickname after you killed your family! But me- since when do I deserve to be called a pyromaniac of all things! The audacity of people. Then you come into my life and destroy the already broken things that I've been trying to build back up." I'm standing beside the car.

"Get in the car." Is all the bastard can say after my rant. Nothing more, nothing less. But being the idiot I am, I get in the car and let him drive me to school.

After a minute of silence, after he soaked all my words in, he speaks. "Pyromaniac. That would be a cool super villain name, don't you think?"

It takes me everything not to slap him across the face because I know there is a rusty banged up knife on the dashboard and I know he isn't afraid to put me in the trunk. But Kai's silence means it is working. He is thinking and I can tell by the way he stares at the steering wheel. My heart is pumping and hoping he doesn't kill me.

But Kai pulls into the parking lot and slams his door shut, heading right towards school. I open my door and shut it. Kai has no books not a backpack, but he has a knife in his jacket. That I know of. Kai waits for ma and suddenly brings up topics as if we were normal people. "You know that it's not illegal to escape prison in Denmark?" He asks.

"Maybe you should go there." Well, I spoke to soon. This isn't normal.

"Also, did you know that every forty seconds someone commits suicide?" He seems ecstatic, and his fun facts are making me quite depressed.

"No, I did not know that." I roll my eyes and head to my locker, but he follows.

"Every ninety seconds a woman dies of childbirth too. Oh and, I was looking online and it said that one in twenty five people are sentenced to death here in the United States. Plus, one in twenty five people are sociopaths." He seems amazed and I know it's all an act to disgust me.

"I bet your that one person, Kai." He ignores my smart ass comments as I gather my things.

"Oh," He scares me and makes me jump at the annoying noise he makes with his mouth. "A person just committed suicide!" He screams through the halls like it is music. Is he really counting the seconds now?

I quickly head down the hall to my first class, but Kai is there behind me and after a few moments, I hear him again. "Oh, there goes a woman from childbirth."

This is going to be a long day.

During my first hour, Kai happened to be my lab partner. And for the first two minutes of class he would lean over my shoulder and say, 'there goes another,' or 'oops, another one bites the dust.' Until finally I slammed my hand into the table.

Malachai Parker will be the death of me.

At lunch Kai sits next to me, again. The football jocks point and wave at him in laughter because he is sitting with me. But the look on their faces when he smiled and waved slowly back, moving one finger across his neck like he was cutting it off, was priceless. But I didn't talk to him the rest of the day. I avoided conversation and looked at my food until finally we were headed home.

"You better keep our secret Sim." He looks at me. "Because if you don't...." He sighed, turning up the radio as I gulped and looked at my white converse that looked a lot like his accept you could tell they were once stained with something and now look a dark dark red. My insides quiver at the thought of exactly what was once on his Converse.

"Yeah you, shook me all night long..." Kai screams and sings at once to the ACDC song that is blaring throughout the car. He looks at me but I stare out the window. When he drops me off, he smiles politely. "Goodbye, Kitten."

No one was home yet.

Which gave me just enough time to run up to my room and scream and fall into an endless pile of tears.

What is happening to me? Why can't it just stop?

These depressing thoughts only remind me of Kai. Suddenly he is in my head, counting down. "Thirty nine...thirty eight..."

No. I refuse to lose it to the madman who is Kai Parker.