Stick and Stones
A man awakens in a dark room, zip tied to a chair yet he does not remember how he got there. He assumes that the throbbing of his head may have something to do with the reason. As he sits there, in the darkened room, his mind slowly begins to recall the events that led him to this unfamiliar place.
James walked into his boss’ office, superstar, Travis Murphy. This man ruled the law firm. No case was too big or too small for him to take on; it simply didn’t matter! He had never lost and he would do anything to keep that streak alive.
“What took you so long? I would have aged ten years if you had moved any slower. Pick up the pace! I could find your replacement by day’s end if not!” Travis remarked.
James looks down at the floor, his demeanor stiff and cowardly.
“Sorry, Mr. Murphy! It will not happen again, I’ll make sure to move quicker.” James whispered.
“You’re pathetic! You know that, right? You have worked as my personal secretary for years yet you show no freaking backbone. Do you have no ambition to move up in the company?” Travis harshly laughed.
“Sorry, sir! Thank you, sir. I will keep that in mind sir. May I be excused, sir?” James fearfully spoke. His boss was clearly in a bad mood, it was always best to keep your head and fly under his radar when he was irrational like this.
Getting to work on his daily tasks, he kept the thoughts of what his boss had said in the back of his mind. He is not that pathetic! He has a wife, children and is very happy. So what if he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth? This is what he has to do in order to put food on the table and to keep his family clothed. Dose this fucking bastard not realize that words hurt? Seriously, sticks and stones very well may break bones, like we are taught as children. However, words can very well hurt you too. ‘The pen is mightier than the swords.’; this has always been one of James’ favorite quotes. The reason for this is that words have started wars as well as ended wars. They have saved lives and ended lives.
‘Now to hear this fuck throwing insults around and then telling me how to live my life? Someone needs to put this smug asshole in his place.’ James thought to himself.
The phone begins to ring as he is lost deep within thought, he mindlessly answers the phone for the hundredth time that day. He immediately hears the familiar voice of his sister.
“Katie, how are you? This is a nice surprise.” He says, He quickly realizes that she is crying which snaps him out of his thoughts. James’ tone of voice is full of concern when he speaks again. “What’s wrong, sis?”
On the other end of the phone, Katie sobs, her words caught within her throat as she struggles to catch her breath.
“Lexi is dead.” She manages to say.
These three words shattered James’ world. He loved his niece dearly and she was only fifteen years old.
“How did it happen?”
“She was hit by a car on her way home from school. The driver fled, he had crashed his car not far from where he had hit her, the cops realized that he was drunk when they got to him.” His sister spoke once more. This time, she had just a little bit more composure.
The line quickly disconnects. James looks up to see his boss towering over him.
“What do you think you’re doing? You know personal calls are not to be made during work hours! Are you stupid or do you just want me to fire you today?”
“I didn’t make the call, sir, but I did just get news that my niece has been killed in a hit and run today. I need to go home and be with my family, Mr. Murphy. Is that okay with you sir?” James spoke. Tears welled in his eyes as he tried to keep his composure. HIs boss’ eyes clouded with anger.
“Is that okay with me? No, it’s not okay with me, you moron. Do you know why I came out to see what your pathetic ass was doing? It’s because I just had to answer my own phone like some kind of common lawyer. We have a new case, a government official’s son has been in a car accident. He hit some stupid child and is facing some serious charges. You will need to work overtime today.”
James stands up, his face mere inches from his boss’. He has to try and do something, for once.
“You do realize you’re defending the person that just killed my niece, don’t you? You cannot take this case. Give it to someone else please, sir.” James begs him. “I have worked for you for years. Do me this one favor and don’t take this case!”
Travis looks him up and down, his expression changing from anger to one of pure amusement.
“You really think that you matter to me at all? This is a high profile case and with that comes money and prestige. Also, you’re fired so clean out your desk. Get your pathetic, cowardly presence out of my face and out of my office. If you’re still here in thirty minutes then I will have security throw you out on your ass!”
James, feeling defeated, cleans out his desk and leaves. He did not have much to clean out, therefore, it took him a total of ten minutes. He realized that he still had his access card upon leaving the building.
“Fuck it!” He shouted. He would turn the stupid thing in when the called about. First, he needed to go be with his sister.
Over the next week, James did not concern himself with finding a new job or even give his boss a second thought. He spent the time making arrangements for his niece’s funeral, and being with his sister at the trial.
Finally the day came. The evidence was open and shut. The cops found the kid in the car, drunk off of his ass, with James’ niece's blood on the car! However, he said he was not the driver and the cops found him in the passenger seat, blacked out. There was no evidence of a second person in the vehicle. The jury went back and deliberated for less than twenty minutes. They came back with a verdict of ‘not guilty’. This sent James into a rage. He knew his former boss had done some illegal shit to pull this off. It was the last straw!
James went home after he dropped his sister at her house and managed to get her to sleep. He considered getting drunk yet the more he thought about it, the more he realized this bastard needed to learn that his actions have consequences. James got into his car later in the night only to notice that it’s six o’clock in the morning. No one would be in the office for another two hours, except Travis. That man always got there promptly at seven o’clock.
It took James about an hour to get to his former place of employment. He saw that Travis had indeed already gotten there upon his arrival. He took out his old access card, he hoped that they had not yet deactivated it. James slid the card in the slot, the red dot quickly turned green allowing him access. ‘Thank god,” He thought, “It still works.”
He went to the elevator, pressed the button for the top floor of the massive structure and waited for the doors to open. The elevator ride took maybe five minutes to complete, the gears grinding as the metal container moved up every floor before coming to an abrupt halt, the doors slid open and he quickly stepped out. He could hear his boss, blasting his classical music, which he always played, when he was hard at work on a difficult case. James grabbed the first heavy object that he could find before creeping into his boss’ office. James, full of rage, smacked Travis in the back of the head as hard as he possibly could. Travis fell out of his chair, rolled over on the floor and saw the face of his former secretary. As Travis’ vision began to fade, darkness quickly overtook him, his eyes closed which left a satisfying smirk to creep across James’ lips.
All of that brings us to the current moment.
Travis is still sitting here in the dark room, still strapped to that wooden chair.
“Where the fuck are you, James? The least you can do is show your face, you coward!”
“Tisk, tisk, tisk. Now is that any way to speak to another person?” An unfamiliar voice spoke. “But I suppose that if you were a decent human being… then we would not find ourselves in this predicament, now would we?”
“Who is there?!” Travis yells.
“Oh, I would not expect you to know who I am, but, I do believe that you and my brother have been introduced.”
The lights abruptly turned on to reveal James standing directly in front of him.
“Surprise!” James shouts. A wicked grin plastered to his face.Travis makes a deep, hacking noise before saliva lands on James’ face.
“You think that you will get away with this, you spineless guppy?” Travis chuckles.
From behind Travis came the glitter of a knife, he received two quick and fairly deep cuts. The unfamiliar voice speaks once more, this time from directly behind him.
“Consider this the introduction to your current circumstance. If you insult me and or my brother again then you shall receive cuts for everyone. If you lie to us then you will also receive a cut. However, if you can humble yourself enough to tell us the truth, well, you may just walk out of this with your life… but I doubt you are capable of that.”
Finally stepping back from the shadows, the unfamiliar voice morphs into a person to reveal James' sister, Katie.
“Who the hell are you?”
“I am the mother of the child who was murdered by that piece of shit you defended. That is who I am! I should give you another cut for that but, I will give you a pass, this time. I did forget to explain one thing to you though, the more blood you lose, the more the container below you collects. Once you lose enough blood… ha, it will trigger the pressure plate and if that happens, well, you’ll just have to see this for yourself.”
Katie points upward, knife still in hand causing Travis to look up. He sees a net filled with a lot of large rocks.
“Sticks and stones will break your bones and words will set you free. Let us begin with the first question!” She excitedly claps. “DId you or did you not spend the last ten years treating my brother like your whipping boy?”
Travis opens his mouth to protest yet he looks at James.
“I was not that bad of a boss, was I?” He asks. James calmly looks at Travis before a guttural laugh leaves his throat.
“Not that bad, not that bad?!” James yells. “You never once gave me a holiday off and you… you would dock my pay if i had to leave work early due to a family emergency! You were then as you are now; a monster. A monster and quite frankly, an absolute nightmare to work for.”
Travis becomes angry at the sight of this man, who is lesser than him, laughing and mocking him.
“Listen here, you little shit. You were a terrible employee, always whining about your family, your hours and not being able to have holidays off! If you had put a little more effort into your job then maybe, just maybe I would have treated you better!”
Katie’s amused expression rapidly fades as she glances at her brother.
“Do you want to do the honors or should I?” She inquires. James reaches out, his hand grabbing the knife from his sister with a sick smile on his lips.
“This one is all me.” He says, James walks over to where his boss is being forced to sit, he roughly cuts the shirt from his boss’ torso.
“What are you doing?” Travis furrows his brows as he attempts to not scream. The blade easily glides along Travis’ chest five separate times which causes him to tense up a bit.
“There’s one thing that I want you to know just in case you think this a joke, I assure you, it is not. We are serious, you should now know that this is a fight for your life and not a silly game.” James sneers. “Okay, now on to question two! Do you feel guilty for setting free the people that have ruined other’s lives by committing heinous crimes against them?”
“Honestly, no. I don’t. I have done what I have done to achieve this lifestyle. I have become acquainted with it and I would do it all over again.” Travis calmly looks at them. Katie looks at him with a curious expression on her face.
“So you are admitting that you have tampered with evidence, threatened witnesses and asked your clients to purger themselves?” Katie stated coldly
“Oh what the hell, it’s just us, right? Yeah, I did it! I did it all and loved every single second of it! You do not even understand the kind of adrenaline rush that I get from breaking the law while knowing full well that I will never be caught. Being the smartest person in the room has its benefits after all.”
“You feel no remorse then… not even a little guilt for all of the lives you’ve ruined? Well, I must commend you for telling the truth. Your lack of empathy towards your fellow man cannot, no, it will not be overlooked.” Katie coldly states. She grabs the knife from her brother’s weak grip, her lips pursed into a tight line as the anger building within her struggles to be contained. “This one is all mine.”
She walks over to Travis, one eager step at a time. Her feet stop just before him, she calmly places the knife against his chest, firmly pressing the blade on it until it pierces the flesh. The blade is slowly dragged down the entirety of his chest. Her cutting is slow and deep which evokes a scream out of Travis, the likes of which they had not heard to this point.
“Final question. Did you once hesitate to take that scumbag on as a client after finding out that he had killed my daughter, the niece of your employee at the time or did you not even care about my brother and his family enough to do that? Did you only care about the money?”
Travis looks at her, he thinks long and hard about how he should respond to this question. He knows it was inevitable for this exact question to come up and he now knows that his answer determines whether he lives or dies.
“Look, I know that I have treated you and your family horribly. I deserve to be judged for my sins but this is not how I should be punished. The court of law is how I should be punished. To answer your other questions though, yes, I do regret having taken on the case of your daughter’s killer. However, my boss and his boss told me that I would either win that case or I would be fired. So as you may be able to see by now, I had no choice but to take the case.”
Katie stares at Travis, weighing his words carefully.
“I am not sure you actually mean what you are saying. Yet, I do agree that you should be judged by a court of law for the crimes that you have committed, so we will let you go; under two conditions. First, I don’t expect you to not tell the cops about your ‘unfortunate’ abduction but my brother was only following my instructions. This was not his idea in any way so I want his name to stay out of it. That part is mandatory; you don’t get to choose.”
“Fine! Fine, if you want to take the blame for this; that’s on you! I’ll keep his name out of this. What’s your second condition?” Travis impatiently asks.
That is the fun part in her eyes, a menacing smile crosses her lips.
Well as it is October I thought it would be nice to keep with the holiday. So I have two doors for you to choose from. The first door says ‘trick’. You can go through that door if you want but there is no guarantee you will get out alive.” She cackles. “Door two says ‘Treat!’ If you hit the upload button on the laptop sitting over there, that has been recording our conversation, it has your confession on it. By uploading it to the police, then the other door will unlock for you to get out safely which will cause you to pay for your crimes. Now make your choice and accept your fate!”
Katie bends down, the blade of her knife glides underneath each tie that holds his limbs to the wooden chair. She is serious about giving him the chance to pay for what he has done. Travis, on the other hand, can’t help but laugh at her. This woman must be delusional to offer him such a thing like that.
“Do you honestly think for even a moment that I would consider uploading the stuff I just told you? I will spend the rest of my life in jail.”
Travis walks over to the door labeled “stones”. He pulls the door open and steps over the threshold only to be hit in the stomach by a fast moving and solid object. Travis is caught in the shoulder and then in the head several times as he is falling, his body hits the floor. Blood pours out of his head as he lay there, limp and broken. His vision starts to blur as he hears Katie’s sickening voice once more.
Katie pressed the button, shutting off the pitching machine that had been hurling baseball-sized rocks at Travis. She then walks over to him and whispers in his ear. “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words would have set you free.” She satisfyingly laughs.
“What the hell, Katie?! I thought we planned on setting him free!” James shouts. He grabs his sister by her shoulders, shaking her to provoke a response. Kaite quickly slaps her brother on the back of the head.
“He set the killer of my daughter free! Did you really think he was going to live?”
“You’re crazy! I’m going to the cops because you have lost your goddamn mind! This is not okay, you need help!”
A loud bang fills the room as her brother turns to leave the room, James feels a sharp pain in his chest. He slowly looks down to see a small bullet wound, blood seeping out of the hole and running down his shirt. Katie walks over to him, a manic expression clouding her face.
“My sweet, sweet brother. I am so sorry but if you stand against me.. you must die as well. Goodbye, my dearest brother.”