~*~

Home is not a home - it becomes a hell
Turning into your prison cell
Advantages are taken, not handed out
While you struggle inside your hell
Reaching out - grabbing for something you’ve got to feel
Closing in - the pressure upon you is so unreal...

"Okay, on three!" Kevin yelled.

"One..."

"Two..."

"Three!"

At once, all four men ran at the door, trying in vain with all the strength that was within their bodies to break it open and free Nick from his hysteria. They all didn’t understand how Nick could’ve managed to get himself locked in, but somehow he had, and to them all it was no surprise. In the past they had all seen how easy it was for Nick to totally lose control of himself and be thrown into a fit of hysteria. When he had first started having these bouts of hysteria, which began with nightmares when he was sixteen and almost every night he’d wake up in a cold sweat screaming for help, they had all thought it was some kind of joke.

They wouldn’t put it past him, for Nick was always playing stupid pranks on them, especially when he was young, so they all didn’t take it too seriously. They all just humoured him. But when the nightmares kept recurring and becoming more and more severe each time, it was like a sudden wake up call for them all, and they all regretted ever thinking that this was some kind of joke.

It wasn’t a joke, but a shocking reality.

They had seen him shed so many tears in the past. So many tears that they didn’t think that he was capable of crying. And over silly things, things that they never expected him to be crying over. His dog Ruffles, a beige Labrador, that had passed away when he was eleven, being one. But just so many things, ranging from the sight of the rain, having to stay in a hotel room alone, being alone - just things that they all would’ve expected him to deal with ease. His tears seemed to get heavier, more deeper, more freer.

His cries became more stronger, more urgent, and more terror-filled. His shaking seemed to get more violent, more frigid, more panic-stricken. And his attacks seemed to get longer, more repetitive and more scarier. And when you didn’t know how to help a friend that was suffering, you’d know how the others felt, for when they watched him go through all that and all their hands were tied, it was agony.

Pure agony.

So many times Nick had denied that nothing was wrong with him. So many times Nick had shut them out, refusing to believe them when they told him that he had a problem. Nick had always brushed them off, swore at them, walked away, closed his ears - and just never listen to their incessant worries. But they all wondered why Nick hated being alone. They all wondered why Nick hated being in a room by himself sometimes. They all wondered why being in an arena sometimes scared him to death.

They all wondered why the sight, or even the mention, of two men together nauseated him, to the point that Nick actually had the audacity to walk up to a gay couple and swear his head off at them, only to be rescued and sweet-talked out of an instant bashing by the couple from Kevin, who claimed insanity on Nick’s behalf. They all wondered why Nick had smashed so many mirrors and always stared into space so hopelessly.

They all wondered why.

And yet like all good things, there were never any answers.

All the might, strength, power and force of the four men was thrown against the locked wooden door in one almighty surge to get Nick free. The rain pelted down onto the roof, still making harmonically rhythmic music that resounded all through the house. The wind howled, sounding to all of them like a desperate crying child - the same way that Nick had been. They had seen Nick hysterical in the past, they had seen Nick cry in the past, they had seen, and certainly had heard, Nick screaming in the past, but they had never heard Nick like this before.

Never before had he been locked in a room, never before had he been so scared of being locked in, and now that the room was dead silent on the other side of the door, they were all in a panic as to what Nick had done, had been doing, to himself. They all wondered, they all were afraid for their lives around him, for all it would take was for Nick to get his hands on something before he’d attack. A knife, a rope, a gun, anything...

The door did nothing. The door didn’t move a single inch. The only thing they managed to do was give themselves shoulder injuries, perhaps, was all that came of it. They had tried in vain several times to burst open the door, but in vain was all it was. Nothing came of their numerous attempts to get the door open, and just like Nick, they were all becoming hysterical, for there was not a single sound coming from the room. Not Nick’s fist pounding against the door.

Not Nick’s high-pitched shrieking, begging to be let free like a caged man that had been unlawfully convicted of a crime. And certainly not the sound of Nick’s heart-wrenching sobbing, making them all wanting to cry at the sound of Nick’s tears, for it had been a long time since Nick had cried in that childish way, for Nick always made sure that when he was crying, he was crying alone.

Kevin gave the door a strong, solid kick, and still nothing happened. "Stupid fucking door and its stupid fucking lock!"

Brian was pacing the floor, sensing major tension in the air and knowing that it was all his fault. "Anybody got a switchblade? Maybe we can pick the lock with the tip of the blade."

"Anyone got a gun?" A.J. piped up hopefully. "We can just blow the lock out. I’ve seen it happen in movies and stuff."

Kevin sighed in frustration and got right up into A.J.’s face and pointed to the door, his green eyes throwing fire against A.J. "Nick’s in there, probably dead, time’s running out and we can’t save him, and all you can think about is what you’ve seen in a movie! Some goddamn friend you are!"

Howie frowned and knelt down by the lock of the door and examined it carefully, turning his head from one side to the other as he inspected it as though he were an investigator. He then pulled the key out of the lock and examined that too, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the key, then the shape of the lock, and then back to the key again. He stared at the key for several moments, twisting it around between his fingers as though he were scanning it for prints before putting it back into the lock. He turned the key in the lock and jumped up in surprise when a click came and the door unlocked.

He turned around with a smile. "Guys, guys! I’ve unlocked it!"

They all rushed forward, almost crushing him against the door as they ran at him to inspect the lock that he had just broken. Brian frowned. "I don’t understand. It wouldn’t work for me...." he said softly, absolutely baffled.

Howie shrugged. "I guess you just didn’t turn it properly."

Kevin shoved them all out of the way and opened the door slowly, only to be greeted with absolute darkness and the raging storm outside, the room itself eerily silent but a gush of wind blowing through the room at a rapid pace. The lightning lit up the sky yet again, and this gave them all the light to see around the room. The room itself was cold, frightening stormy and anyone would’ve had to be a million kinds of sick to want to stand this. There seemed to be some kind of a presence in the room, as though whoever was occupying it was possessed. And, well, they certainly wouldn’t put that past Nick at all.

But as Kevin knelt down by the bed and felt the bed-sheets soaked from the rain, he looked up to find that the window was open. And how was the window open?

Because Nick had opened it.

And Nick had escaped.

Kevin jumped up and looked out the window. "He’s gone!" he yelled over the force of the wind. "He’s escaped!"

Brian frowned, confused, when the soles of his shoes crunched on what seemed like glass. "What the hell?"

"And why is there rope on the floor, made out to be a noose and a broken chair?" Howie added, equally confused. But when he put it all together - the noose, the chair, the window, the screaming - it all added up. "Oh no, he didn’t...not again..."

A.J.’s dark eyes were wide with terror. "Oh shit!" he yelled. "If he’s out there on the loose, who knows what the hell he’s capable of!"

Kevin sighed. "Oh, get a fucking grip, A.J.!" he yelled back. "He’s not a criminal! He’s not capable of murder!"

"Isn’t he?" A.J. countered, hands on his hips. "You’ve seen all this before. You know what he’s like! Hell, you’ve seen this more than we have! You must be the goddamn expert on this! So let me ask you this again: isn’t he?"

"NO!" Kevin screamed, his eyes blazing green fire in A.J.’s direction. "Nick’s not capable of murder!"

"He’s not," Howie whispered to himself. "Nothing but a confused, helpless boy..."

There was a dull, uncomfortable silence between them all as they began to wonder exactly where Nick had gotten to, and what Nick had tried to do to himself. Well, what Nick had tried to do to himself was fairly obvious. He’d tried to kill himself. Not like he hadn’t several million times before in the past. As the lightning lit up the sky again and thunder rolled through along beside it, they all stared out to the distant field ahead, wondering if Nick had taken that path.

He could’ve gone anywhere, run anywhere, could be anywhere...who knew when it came to Nick when he was suffering the way he was? And maybe A.J. was right. Maybe...well...maybe Nick was so far out of his mind that he didn’t know, or didn’t realise, or wouldn’t know or wouldn’t realise, what was right and what was wrong, and what was against the law and what was not...

"That’s it," Kevin said suddenly, breaking the silence. "I’m going after him."

~**~

Nick stood on the top of the roof, his toes curling around the edge to keep himself from falling and stared down at the ground below. Three storeys high, he was, just enough height to give himself a good jump and a nice, solid landing on the slippery, tarred road. His blonde hair was matted to his scalp and soaking wet from the rain, as was his tatty clothes that stuck to him like a second skin, thanks to the rain, and the wind whipped through his drenched clothes to his skin, chilling him right to the very bone.

He shivered violently with a knife in his hand, the knife also shivering somewhat from his fragile grip on its handle, staring down at the road beneath him, tears running down on and off his face like the rain that was running down and off his body. There were no stars in the sky, nothing twinkling in the sky, nothing to give him hope, nothing to make him reconsider, nothing to make him think that there were other possibilities, other alternatives, than what he was about to do.

"I can’t do this anymore!" he cried hysterically. "I can’t take it anymore!"

Nick was right about that much. He’d finally had enough. He’d been pushed too far. He was beyond help, beyond repair, maybe even beyond care. He didn’t care anymore. Nobody cared. And that was part of the problem. Nobody cared about him. And he wished they did. He wished that someone would take the time to talk to him, listen to him, understand what he was going through, what he was feeling, what he was experiencing, and just maybe...well...understand, and help him through what he was going through. And that was all he wanted.

A friend. A shoulder to cry on.

Someone. Anyone.

Didn’t matter who it was. Well, it did matter who it was. Anybody but a damn pestering shrink. That he could do without. No, not a shrink. Not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist or any other person whose title ended in ‘ist’. But, maybe, just a friend. A friend was all he needed. And whatever happened to that saying a friend in need’s a friend indeed?

What a load of bullshit.

But he just wanted it to stop. He just wanted everything to stop. He wanted everything bad that had ever happened to him to stop and leave him alone. It was as though something was after him and would never leave him. Unless he conquered it. But he couldn’t. There was no way he could. He was spineless. He had no guts. He had no courage. He was weak. He was a coward. And there was no way in hell that he was going to face up to his fears and finally relieve himself from his torment. He had tried. God, he had tried so many times, too many times, to conquer it all alone in the past, but nothing had worked.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Try as he might, and no matter how many times he had tried to fix everything, even in his dreams, he was still tormented every time he woke up. He used to think that sleep would fix everything and that he’d see a bright morning and that would make him feel just a little bit grateful to be alive, the yellow rays of the sun rejuvinating him. But all it did was make him feel like a miserable outcast, seeing all these happy people who had happy lives and happy families and happy friends.

He was so the opposite.

And so, maybe that was where suicide came in.

Fix everything, once and for all.

The rain crackled on the roof like millions of gun shots resounding in his ears. Deafening him. Silencing him. Killing him. He took a small breath. "Okay, one step, here we go," he whispered and took just one step forward from the edge before -

"NICK!"

Nick wobbled back and forth on the tip of the edge, his arms flying outward like a plane to steady himself and turned around to find four men running toward him. He stopped them all in their tracks by holding out his knife, waving it almost maniacally in the air, just like a mad-man on a killing rampage.

"Back off!" he yelled. "Back the fuck off!"

The rain was beginning to wet them all, their clothes sticking to their skins and watching with wide eyes at the statement on Nick’s face. There was something about his eyes. Something like...well...fear. But why would he be scared if he held the control over four grown men? Just another thing about him for them to worry about, for nothing was ever as it seemed when Nick was around. It didn’t happen all the time, but when it did, well, they knew better than to push him. But this was getting serious.

This was a matter of life or death, and life for Nick mattered. They needed him. They all did. The world needed him. The world wouldn’t continue without him around. The world wouldn’t keep spinning without him living in it. They knew that. And somehow, someway, they would have to convince him of that and make him stay, and somehow, someway, they would...

Kevin then stepped forward. "Come on, Nick," he said calmly, trying desperately to reason with him, holding out his hands. "Step away from the edge and give me the knife. You don’t really want to do this to yourself."

Nick let out a strangled cry and brushed away a trickle of rain that ran down his eyelid with the back of his palm and waved his knife madly in the air again to make Kevin step away from him. "Didn’t I say back off?" he screamed. "Are you fucking stupid!? Back off!"

"You don’t want to do this!" Brian yelled out, the desperation and fear evident in his voice. "Please, just step away from the edge! Please!"

"Nick," Howie said, also stepping forward, "why do you want to do this to yourself? Don’t you want to live? Don’t you want to know what tomorrow will hold, what it’ll bring? Don’t you want to experience all of life, not just a part of it?"

Nick shook his head wildly, the knife also joining in, making them all take a step away from him. "Back off!" he screamed again. "I do want to do this to myself, and I don’t want to live! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"

"Why, Nick, why?" A.J. asked quickly. "Why don’t you want to live?"

Nick’s mouth dropped open in horror at A.J.’s question for some bizarre reason which they couldn’t work out, and suddenly, the knife slunk out of his slippery grip and dropped to the ground with a high-pitched sound. His heart felt like it was pounding out of his chest and he was breathing in short, stagnant patches, breathing in the same fashion that he had just before he lost consciousness in his room. And then, he withered to the ground in a shuddering heap, his legs curled up to his chest, rocking back and forth on the roof.

"Why, Daddy? Why?" Nick cried in a child-like voice, tears and rain-drops running down his cheeks. "Why, Daddy, why?"

Kevin ran forward and knelt down beside the quivering and sobbing Nick, taking hold of his shoulders and trying to make some sense of his words. But he couldn’t. Too nonsensical to understand, so Kevin lightly shook him by the shoulders to snap him out of it. "Come on, Nick, tell me. What about your Dad?"

Nick’s eyes were vacant but wide, as though he were one of the children from the Village of the Damned. "Nooooo..." he breathed in a low voice.

Kevin’s hand reached out and slapped Nick’s cheek hard. "Nick!" he yelled. "Tell me what’s wrong with you!"

Nick’s mouth fell open in disbelief, almost in the way it would if an axe murderer had suddenly appeared behind Kevin’s back. "Daddy...Daddy...he...he...was...nooooooo!"

Kevin let out a frustrated gasp and shook Nick by the shoulders even harder, the remaining three men standing behind him and staring down at Nick in horror, for they had seen Nick hysterical before, but never like this. Never this detached, never this distant, never this unreachable, and never this crazy. "Come on, Nick, tell me what happened!"

"He was..." Nick whispered before his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed into Kevin’s arms in an unconscious heap, making them all scream.

~***~

Lyrics: The Struggle Within - Metallica