Invictus

Chapter 1: Enemy

I woke up to darkness, the ringing of my phone shook me out of my catatonic state. 

Whatever sunlight was shining through into my bedroom was gone. It was now late. The light from my phone screen hurt my eyes because my vision was still hazy. I had to squint to make out who was calling. It was my foster mom, Tia.

I hadn't been able to answer so it went to voicemail. I noticed that she called three other times.

I wiped the drowsiness from my eyes and sat up. My body felt like a rock. On impulse I pushed the play button to listen to the voicemail.

"Ezekiel. You need to pick up your phone." Her tone was stern.

Who was I kidding, she always sounded angry. She wasn't my real mom though so I didn't care. All she ever seemed to want was the foster money the state paid her to keep me around. The foster money she used for those pills I had taken.

The pills that didn't do their job because I was still alive.

I stood to get up and my feet kicked the empty bottle. It rattled as it rolled across the floor, one pill still left inside it. I threw my one hand out like a blind man as I searched for the light switch by the door.

I then went to Tia's bedroom and searched under the bed for the box where she kept the gun, but it was empty.

I went through the rest of the bedroom being careful to put everything back as I left it. If she knew I was in there she'd take my phone away, and that was the last good thing I had left in the world. I didn't want to go on living without it.

After five minutes of searching I gave up, concluding that she must have sold it for a fix. That was a common thing over the years. Nice things of value would flood in only to disappear as quickly as they came. She told me it was because she didn't like them or that someone had stolen them, but It didn't take me long to figure out that she was the one selling them.

The woman was the definition of an addict. She'd buy something she thought she needed, use it for awhile, and then realize that she needed money for drugs, so she'd pawn it. I had to hide the VR rig I purchased with my own money because I knew she'd try to scrap it for cash.

Being a living, breathing financial crisis was both good and bad. On the one hand it meant I could never leave my wallet lying around, loose change, or anything that was worth something, like the Jordan's she found out I bought with my summer dishwashing money. It also meant that she was too stupid to notice that she had her card auto debited every month to pay the cable bill.

I stopped being mad about her taking stuff once I figured this out. In my mind, I reasoned, it was the same as if I had paid the bill myself, and if that was the case, then some months I wasn't paying the bill at all.

Today her poor spending habits were going to be the death of me, at least figuratively speaking.

On my phone I pulled up my YouTube app and searched for videos on how to make a noose. This prompted one of the ads on the screen to shift to a suicide prevention hotline number with "call us now, there's so much to live for," written on it.

I ignored the ad and found a video that showed how to tie a hangman's knot, but when I went to attempt it myself I realized I was lacking a fundamental item: rope.

I tried to improvise with a few shirts but they all ended up ripping, partly because I was too strong and partly because they were bad quality. I checked the extension cords around the house, but they were all too short. My last option was to use my neighbor's daughter's jump rope that was sitting outside.

Good news was that if it worked, I wouldn't have to answer for stealing it.

I headed outside and made sure I wasn't being watched. When I verified that I was in the clear, I pulled the thick corded jump rope off the ground and brought it inside, tying it into a knot like I saw in the video. I looked for something to suspend it from but the only thing that I could see was an indoor plant hanger.