Relapse

I'm Sorry

Forty-eight hours later

Erin's POV:

I woke up in a dingy basement, the smell of mold invaded my nostrils. The only light came from a hanging fluorescent bulb in the middle of the room, emitting a faint yellow glow. As the grogginess wore off I became increasingly aware of the pain in the back of my head. Though at first I was confused as to where I was and what the pain was caused by I quickly remembered the events that led me here. The scream, the girl, the young man with the crowbar. I no longer had my phone or any of the other belongings that I had gone to the park with.

I squinted to see the other other side of the basement. The room was not very big, and it only contained a thin dirty mattress in the back corner behind me. I tried to stand up quickly, but found myself to weak to do so. I was not restrained, but clearly the bloody head wound was leaching the energy from me. I slowly made my way across the room to the door clutching onto the wall the whole way. I investigated the lock on the door to see if there was anyway for me to break out of it. Soon after I had decided that my efforts would be useless the door opened, revealing the young man from the park. He quickly slammed and locked the door behind him. He seemed much to young to be doing this.

He was scrawny and malnourished, standing no more than 5'6". He couldn't have been anymore than twenty and even that was a stretch. I probably could have taken him down pretty easily, but something about him made me stop. Maybe it was his small frame, or maybe it was the way he stared at me with an incomprehensible fury, but what really made me stop was his eyes. A dark ebony color that I hadn't seen in almost nineteen years. The familiarness of his gaze startled me. I took a deep breath and averted my eyes from his glare. There was no way that he could be who he looked like. For a couple reasons, the man that he resembled was well over twenty and the main reason it couldn't be him, he was dead. I would know, I was there when he died.

"Who are you?" I wondered, mostly under breath. I then realized how sore my throat was from the lack of water.

"That's of no importance to you. All you need to worry about is the fact that you're here and there's no way your getting out of here," The man snarled.

His voice was so similar to the other mans as well. The deep, raspy, guttural voice that had once instilled a sense of fear in me and did the same to me now, even if the voice didn't belong to the man I'd grown accustomed to it belonging to. It was then that I decided to make a break for it. The door seemed old enough for me to easily shoulder through and I most definitely could shove past the scrawny twenty year old. I didn't get even past the man before he shoved me down. It became clear that I had severely underestimated the strength of the man in front of me.

"That wasn't very smart of you now was it?" He asked as his shoe was poised to crush my windpipe.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to figure out how I could get out of my current situation.

"Scared now are we?" He laughed.

I just stayed silent, not at all having the other hand.

"Let's speed this process up now shall we?" The man helped me to a sitting position.

I rubbed my throat, the spot where his boot was, already aching. He pulled out a gun and that's when his strong confident facade vanished, leaving only a scared twenty year old. His hand shook as he aimed the gun towards my head. He appeared to be rethinking this whole idea. I watched as he inhaled sharply and steadied himself. I just looked at him knowing that running wasn't an option. With his next inhale he lowered the gun.

"I-I can't do this," his voice cracked.

I felt relief wash over me. He ran his hands through his hair sand started pacing the room. He then made his way back over to me and pulled out his gun yet again.

"I need to do this," he stuttered.

"You don't have to do anything," I croaked.

"Yes, I do, it's not fair that you get to live while my father's dead. It's not fair that I grew up without a father because of you. I was just a baby when you killed him."

My stomach dropped as I was overcome with a sense of recognition. I knew who's son this was.

"You're right, it's not fair, but I promise you that this isn't going to make you feel better. It might make you feel better to hurt those who hurt you for a little while. In the long run though it's not going to bring your father back. I'm sorry that this is how things ended up, I really am, but I promise you this isn't going to make you feel better," I tried.

"I grew up in foster care trying to figure out what happened to my parents, what happened to my father. Then I found out about you and all I wanted was revenge, but now I don't think I can go through with this. And I hate that I can't go through with this because all I want is peace but I just..." The man trailed off with the gun still pointing at my head.

We didn't even know that He had a son when we killed Him. We didn't know, but that doesn't make it any better.

"I'm sorry that I have to do this," he looked at the gun in his hands.

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