Airtight

Prologue: Death to Greed

Fear swept through my body like waves crashing upon the shore. Pain rippled through my very core it twisted my insides like a pretzel. I thought I would scream, beg, shout, cry. With the amount of pain that I was in I thought for sure that tears would come, drip, pour from my eyes.

I did none of those things though. I should have been outraged, depressed, remorseful at the very least. I couldn't muster up those feelings. All I felt was the fear, the pain, the dulling numbness that crept up my spine, making my hair stand on end. It tingled along my limbs as it barrelled inside my head.

The muted gray sky mocked me as it cried its tears on me...for me maybe. It seemed like an overdue omen. Raining as I laid there unmoving and weak. As strange as it was I felt as though it was a blessing. As if the heavens had opened up to bathe me, to purify me, and wash my sins away.

I gave a choking laugh at my thoughts. At the Absurdity of them. Now I would find God at the end of my life. Little good the Father would do me now. I wondered if I should even try. If my lips should utter the prayers of my parents, worship the God they pledged their love to.

"Our father," I choked out tasting blood in my mouth. I laughed again, not even God wanted me to utter his name in my time of need. Moving my hand ever so slowly I gave the sky the finger. Fuck you too; I would have said it, but I was sure I would have strangled on my blood if I tried.

My body felt as if I had the weight of the world upon my chest. There was a crushing pressure weighing down on me. Even if I held on to a small spark of hope that I could get up, walk somewhere, get help for myself or something I was much too thick to act on that feeling.

I mentioned God before, and I wondered if making it rain on this day was his way of taunting me, teasing me, punishing me for all the awful things I have done in my life. The rain soaked through my thin layer of clothes causing me to shiver against the cold of the night.

It was April already, yet the freezing rain made it feel as if I was in the dead of winter. The water around me swirled and mixed with the blood gushing from my stomach, and chest. I choked on each breath I took as I struggled to breathe pass the blood filling my lungs.

Looking back to the sky, I could hear the gentle taps of the rain around me, could hear the wail of sirens, honks of cars, yelling of some angry drunk. The noise of the city soothed me. This was where I was born, it was a fitting death to die here. This place was where I had gotten my start, where my end shall come.

We all come from humble beginnings, most of us that is. Then we get a taste of something more, something that we want more than anything else in this world. Once your tongue has tasted that something you'll do anything for it. Greed can make a monster out of the best of us. It rears its ugly head, and you are no longer the person you once were, the person you were raised to be. My greed was the reason I was outside right now, the reason I was on the ground in a park.

Greed was why I had a hole in my stomach. Why blood seeped through my fingers as I foolishly tried to hold them to my wound. It was a pointless effort since there was a hole in my chest as well. It was pointless because no matter how much pressure I put on my wounds it was unlikely that I would see tomorrow. This late at night, in the rain, in a park. Who would find me; who would even look?

Someone, somewhere once said every man has a price. I knew from a young age I could be bought. I can remember my father giving me ten whole dollars to tell mother I was in the basement with him all day. Ten dollars were a lot back then, as a child it was my own small fortune.

Today if someone offered me ten dollars I would laugh in their faces. Back then though, I could have been bought for a nickel. It was that day that I learned the value of the dollar. I learned how easy it was to make one as well. Lies could be bought and sold for cheap. In no time, all the cheating husbands were coming to me.

Their idiot wives were fine with grown men hanging around a little boy, as long as his member wasn't near the babysitter. Needless to say, I made my money in less than honorable ways. It never bothered me before, I never cared who I had to screw over to get what was mine. I earned it was what I told myself to help me sleep at night. I earned this; I knew that as well.

Death was a slow process unlike the movies that portray their characters being shot and fading into the dark abyss within seconds. No, death was a slow, creeping, agonizing event that left my body wracked with pain. As if the pain was telling me to reflect, forcing me to remember how my thirst for greed caused me to be where I was now. I didn't understand it. I couldn't fathom how I had fallen so low in just a year's time.