Harry
I could even bare to look in the mirror as I passed it in the hall on the way to the bedroom. I had failed. I was a failure. I was everything I said I wouldn’t be. I felt the tears burn down my face again. How could one person get me so messed up? I couldn’t give up, I would never do that. But it had been over a month and we hadn’t so much of gotten a scent, clue or trace. She could be kidnapped and taken all the way to Sicily yet we couldn’t find her now. whoever had her were clever, precise and well trained.
I pulled on the end of my hair and then pushed it back with my fingers. I hadn’t had a hair cut in weeks, my curls were creeping down my neck. A simple task i couldn’t even bring myself to do. My eyes were red a lot of the time, I had gone further than the point of being ashamed for my tears. My heart felt like it physically ached. When I laid alone at night I wanted to rip it out of its cage inside my body and set it free so I couldn’t feel anymore. I didn’t think I could love someone so much it physically hurt.
I’d lost weight, not a lot but a somewhat noticeable amount. My clothes fitted looser and my skinny jeans were hardly skinny. I still ate, but keeping it down was harder than imaginable. It was hard to swallow when I didn’t even know if she was being fed at all.
I’d heard the whispers and the hushed conversations at the main house. No one had given up the search but they were questioning the outcome, if it ever came. I tried not to think about the worst possibilities but it’s all that swarmed my head. Her smile once engraved in my memory had disappeared. All I saw now was the painful expressions of everything situation she had been in because of me. Her beautiful body flashed in my mind covered in bruises, scars and cuts. All because of me. Guilt was eating me alive. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for long. My thoughts never strayed too far away from her.
I wouldn’t be surprised if wherever she was, she hated me. I promised to protect her numerous times, she must think I’m a liar now. When I get her back, I’ll hold her until our lasts breaths. I’ll never let her go, that’s not a promise, that’s a life commitment. But that’s if she would ever want me back.
It wasn’t just despair I felt. I was livid. I lost my temper. I shouted, yelled, screeched at anyone but mainly myself. Who in the right mind kidnaps a girl from her own home for their personal needs. She was human, not a bloody toy. I planned what I would do when I got my hands on them - they wouldn’t be walking out the room they walked into. I felt like a ticking time bomb and the seconds were disappearing rapidly.
Liam was right behind me as I walked down the hallway. I didn’t come ‘home’ often because vivid memories of that night shook me up. Liam’s hand rested firmly on my shoulder as we walked through the bedroom door. It wasn't exactly my idea to go back. I’d ran out of clothes to wear, I had no effort to wash any and I’d run out of clothes to steal from the other boys.
Though Louis wasn’t as highly intellectual as Zayn and Liam, he still tried just as hard to find any source of information. He scanned through computer files, softwares and hard drives of anyone in London he could get his hands on. But nothing remotely concerning a missing nineteen year old girl came up - at all.
Nothing other than Lennon’s disappearance had interrupted the peace between each London gang in months. We were fully aware it could easily be one of them behind it all. But it was too precise, too well pulled off. Gangs weren’t sloppy, but they were never this neat either.
“How many t-shirts did you wanna bring?” Liam asked, his head buried deep within my wardrobe and hanging clothes. I paced back and forth in front of the window, barely hearing what he was saying. I didn’t stop walking sluggishly around when I answered, instead I sighed heavily and ran my fingers back through my hair.
“I don’t care, just.. whatever.”
Liam mumbled something under his breath before I heard the screech of hangers being pulled against the metal rail. I leant sideways against the wall next to the window. It was fairly late at night, just after half ten. The traffic on the street below was beginning to thin out and the obnoxious car horns were less frequent.
There were less distractions at night to steer my mind away from unforgiving, deadly thoughts.
“Did you want any sweaters or jackets?” Liam was trying to distract me, I had noticed everyone doing this from time to time. They had noticed me zoning out, pulling at my hair, slamming my fists against the walls - it wasn’t a lot but I was still hurting myself. I hadn’t noticed I was doing it until I was sat in the kitchen with Louis bandaging my hand up at three in the morning.
I was losing myself, with every passing second I felt I was falling more and more apart. A year ago I was a different person, I would have never imagined being in this position. Feeling lost, empty and broken because of someone I had known only months. She wasn’t just a girl, she was the other half of me I didn’t know I needed. The boys didn’t mock me, make any sort of jabs about my abnormal behaviour. If their loves were stripped away they’d be exactly the same. We’re all human after all.
“The black one, with the zip pocket on the front.” I mumbled, squeezing my eyes shut. The last person to wear that sweater wasn’t me. It wouldn’t smell like her, it had been washed since but I could imagine.
“I could have come by myself you know, it would have been okay to stay behind.”
“It’s fine Liam, I’m fine.” My words were blatant lies that not even I believed.
“I think that’s everything, unless you want anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
I followed him back out the room, dragging me feet across the wooden floors. My head snapped back around followed by the rest of my body as I charged back into the bedroom. I flung open the drawers, watching them fall haphazardly to the floor. I rummaged through the pile of now crumpled clothes before I pulled out what I wanted. Despite it being over a month, her familiar scent was still present on her hoodie. I wouldn’t wear it, but it felt like she was close again. Even if it was just my imagination creating her scent in my mind.
“Are you sure you want to drive?”
“Yeah, it’ll give me something to concentrate on.” I answered Liam honestly this time. We fastened our seat belts oddly in sync. Turning on the engine the radio blared out at maximum volume. I muttered swear words like a sailor when a cheesy, boy band song seemed to be playing. Liam knocked my hand off, silently urging me to focus on the road disappearing under the car rather than the radio. He switched it over to a station where acoustic music was playing. It didn’t calm my mood, in fact I believed it made me more aggravated.
My teeth grinded together painfully, my eyes flickered from street corner to street corner as I drove along the somewhat empty streets. Liam didn’t say anything when I drove in the opposite direction of the house. It was a regular occurrence everyday for someone to do the daily search around in a car. Paul had called in every old friend he ever had, gang related or not to search the city, the country and as far as we could scope. Not a single sighting or word of mouth happened. Some of the most powerful people in the country were being outsmarted by who knows.
Zayn and Paul were already out patrolling the streets in one of the range rovers with the best equipment we could get out hands on, but it wouldn’t hurt for more than one search party to be out. Liam leant forward and stared intensively out the front and side window. I slammed on the brakes unexpectedly sending us both jolting forward in our seats. But it was a false alarm. The girl had short, brown hair but when we got close she was nothing but a vaguely similar lookalike.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine, maybe we should check up on the east hight street again, it’s doesn’t look as busy tonight.” I nodded in agreement and spun the wheel, sending us left down towards the hight street on the east side of the city. The road stretched for miles, you couldn’t see from one end to another unsurprisingly. It was still busy but there weren’t traffic jams backed all the way up unlike in the day. We didn’t go above thirty miles an hour, it was fast enough to make up ground but slow enough to see the faces of everyone we passed.
The petrol light illuminated on the dashboard after an hour and a half of slowly crawling along every street in the east side of town. Liam and I hadn’t spoken in the past hour, both of us concentrating hard on the scenes around us. You see things at night in London, not pleasant things but nothing I’d not seen before. The street corners were decorated with girls in less clothing than swimsuit models and higher heels than supermodels. Men wolf-whistled at their scandalous bodies but were soon chased away by the police.
The police had even been informed about the missing case on our hands, but our alliance with the force meant we didn’t help them, they didn’t help us. It was an agreement formed centuries ago and they wouldn’t back down. We tried to bribe them, but mainly their search dogs and yet we still came out empty handed.
“I think it’s time to call it a night.” Liam spoke, his tone heavy and tired from the passenger seat.
“Yeah, okay.” I agreed, my eyelids themselves were heavy and tired. I forced the wheel all the way round, swinging the car into a sharp U turn. Once the car was facing the opposite way my foot hit the accelerator like a concrete block was sitting on it.
The car hadn’t even reached fifty miles an hour when I slammed on the brakes again, yanking on the handbrake at the same time. The car stalled and thrust forward. Liam held onto the handle above his seat like he was scared he was going to fly out the window. I didn’t check for oncoming traffic before I pushed my door wide open, trying to climb out the car with my seatbelt still fastened.
“LENNON!” I yelled her name in a tangled mess, my throat raw from the volume of my voice. I was tired, at the end of my tether and turning to self hatred, but I wasn’t insane. I could imagine her back home all I wanted but out in the open was different - it never happened.
I pulled the seatbelt out of its holding without even pressing the button. I ignored the blaring horns of raging drivers around me. I wasn’t even aware of what Liam was doing. At that moment, I didn’t care about anything but her. I screamed her name again, chasing the girl down the street. She started running, setting a fast pace in front of me. My strides were double hers, I closed the distance in seconds. She swung her head over her shoulder, the first time I had seen her face in over a month. It was her, but in another way it wasn't. She turned back around but I was now inches away from reaching out to her.
My hand made contact with her body, landing roughly on her shoulder. I held on tightly but she continued to run and push me off. “Lennon, stop!” I begged at the top of my burning lungs. My words blatantly ignored until her arm reached out and hit me square in the chest. The contact winded be and halted my running for a split second letting her step a foot away. But I grabbed her hand not willing to let go. “STOP!” I shouted angrily. I pulled her body towards me, she fell backwards slightly, tripping over her own feet.
She wouldn’t look at my when she spun around, her head would dart in any other direction than me. I looked her over, she was skinny, but not ill looking. She was pale, but she always was. Her clothes were in tact and her skin looked bruise free. I couldn’t take it much longer and held her chin so she had to look at me. Her face looked normal but her eyes - they were squeezed shut so tightly it looked painful.
“Lennon, please look at me.” I pleaded sincerely. She squeezed my hand and shook her head. She suddenly twitched and bit down visibly on her lip. She kept twitching then pulled out of my grip. Her hands clung onto her ears as if she was blocking me out. I could hear her deep, ragid breaths over the city noise surrounding us. I attempted to pull her hands away from her head but she screamed. She screeched so loud my ear drums vibrated after she stopped. I stepped back, scared of what was happening.
Liam had caught up, he tried to rest a hand on Lennon but she screamed again. He took steps away, looking as scared and perplexed as I was. Here was the person we had been searching high and low for, for a month straight and she appears out of nowhere. But she wouldn’t talk, look at us and when we came close she would scream.
The next series of events happened so fast my beating heart could barely keep up. Her hands lifted away from her ears and her head was once again held high. I took a deep breath, hoping something optimistic was going to happen. She still had her eyes closed when she stepped forward. I was ready to catch her in my arms. Her hands shot out but when they landed on my collarbone I knew what was coming next.
Her eyelids shot open. I barely registered the devil like look on her face as she towered over my sinking body. My body twinged and weakened by her forceful touch. My limbs becoming lifeless as she struck a pressure point in my neck. Her eyes stared me down until I was lying on the pavement like a hopeless little boy. No words would come out of my mouth as I watched her feet charge of into the distance hitting the pavement heavily as she went.
The image of her full black eyes sent panic riveting through me. Black pupils were normal, black iris’ were rare but the white’s of your eyes being black? That was work of an evil kind.