The Hit List

Chapter 2

Hitch432 - This is a place for serious business only. I suggest you log off immediately, delete your profile, and wipe your computer clean. To be absolutely certain, consider throwing it into a lake.

Cherry_Bloom - I am here for serious business. But if you're not, feel free to move right along. I sure as shit am not here to make fucking friends.

Hitch432 - Watch your language. I'm sure your schoolmates will be thrilled to learn about you on this website tomorrow. It's not a joke, though. Someone can track you down, figure out where you live, and do you serious harm. I'm merely attempting to act as a "good Samaritan." 

I scrolled away in an attempt to see if I could delete my profile picture. Maybe think of a better username while I am at it. When that now dreadful ping hit my eardrums once again.

Hitch432 - 5323 Thorne Lane.

Another ping.

Hitch432 - Apartment 106, single resident. Either you have neglectful parents, or you're not as young as I thought.

Ping.

Hitch432 - Not so fun now is it? Now I've done you a courtesy, overrode the system, and blocked others from viewing your posting. Now I'd suggest you heed my warnings, and leave this place immediately. It's not for people like you.

I've come too far to let some, possibly dishonest, maniac keep me from doing something that I've been planning for months now. My pride has been swallowed, and I won't be regurgitating it any time soon.

Cherry_Bloom - Smart. You're fucking smart. Maybe if being a "hit man" doesn't work out, you could be the next Steve Jobs? Or maybe it's all an act? Maybe you're here hoping to get off. Do you like scaring women? Making them feel fear makes you feel like some big man? Well, I didn't come here to feel fear. I came here to die. And if you're not going to help me out with that, you can fuck right off.

I flung my body back, letting my head hit my pillow as I squeezed my eyes shut. Frustration filled my blood and mind. I hadn't thought of a fallback strategy. I could always "take it into my own hands", but how does one make a literal suicide look like a murder? Ransack the place, and sell some of my more expensive possessions to sketchy people online?

God forbid an innocent person winds up on my hook. Nobody but me can get hurt by my ignorant decision. 

Ping.

"Damnit!" I groaned to myself, dragging my body to the light of my laptop. I yearned to place a sleeping pill on my tongue and worry about his response in the morning, but that wasn't a true option for me. I have to read it now.

Hitch432 - Alright.

Reading the response made me feel like when I would ask a magic 8-ball if I would marry Chase from science class in 5th grade, and it responded "Answer not clear." Yes or no? Those are the only two options for questions like this.

Cherry_Bloom - Alright? Alright, what?

No other messages came in, making me believe that his words were not works of fiction. And I couldn't get those words out of my mind.

He knows where I live, and I had no idea what to do with that information. If I create a new account, will I just be welcoming more criminals into my life? I wasn't blind to the fact that there would be bad people in the darkness, but it's different when that darkness parts to reveal them to the world.

I need sleep. I can feel the paranoia that always hits when I'm awake for hours too long. A paranoia that I had been warned about by my first therapist. 

A warning he made after I told him I thought a man would come down from my ceiling if I closed my eyes for even one minute. A paranoia that led to a prescription for sleeping pills that I still find myself taking when desperation creeps in. The results dulled from a year of expiration.

Sleep has always been an issue for me. Ever since I was a child and had nonsensical nightmares that resembled visual gibberish. Nightmares that had no sense to them, and yet were interpreted by my feeble mind as meaning that if I slept, my parents would die. A five-year-old struggling through insanity. 

I would bang on their door sobbing, begging to be let in. Unable to verbally interpret what I was mentally experiencing. To them, I was just a kid who was having nightmares and needed tough love to learn to sleep on my own. Eventually, the door would stop opening. And a child can't pick a lock. So the carpet would become my bed, and the monsters would make a home in my head.

Eventually, they became friends. Their company followed me into the daylight. 

Now I rarely have nightmares.

And I never have dreams.