Everything Looks Better In The Rain
I think I was about six when I first attended military school. My father had had the same education, and was determined to raise me in the same way as he’d been raised.
Military school was divided in two parts; the trainings and the education. There weren’t a lot of kids in my class. In fact, there were only two of us; me and a boy called Sam Quinn. We’d have the same classes as you’d get in a normal school, the boring classes mainly. I loved the trainings however, I saw them as one huge physical education class and I really enjoyed them. Even though they were exhausting and I’d end up with scabbed knees and broses all over.
I’d go home in the weekends, staying at my dad’s place – my mum had died when I was three cause of cancer. Sometimes we’d go over to my dad’s friend’s house where we’d stay for the weekend. I loved it there – they had a really big house with a huge garden where I could play as long as I wanted. It wasn’t the playtimes, however, that made me look forwards to the weekends, but the daughter of my dad’s friend, Amy. She was really pretty and made me feel all weird inside when she spoke. She had long brown hair, even back then, and her blue eyes made my knees go weak everytime she looked at me. I’d caught my dad and his friend, Mr Bourne, on a conversation once. A conversation that was bound to change my life forever. They were talking about promising Amy to me. Me being the six year old had no idea what they were talking about.
Something really weird happened when I was seven; Sam disappeared one day, and I was told nothing about it. I never saw him in class anymore, and he was nowhere to be seen with the trainings.
When Sam had been gone for, I think it was a week, I was told that a new boy was going to join me in the classes and trainings. I was excited over this, because the new boy was going to be sharing rooms with me, and I was brought over to a larger room with a bunk bed. I thought wisely, and took the top bed. The lady who looked after us – well, me - Mrs Bourne brought my stuff to my room and I was told to get changed into my pyjamas, and go to bed because the new boy was going to arrive soon.
When the new boy, Matthew, had been with me in classes and trainings for a week, Sam mysteriously came back. He had a black eye and looked rather sad. His dark hair sat flat on his head, and wasn’t shiny from the gel as usual. Sam had been my best friend until Matthew came around and I felt really awkward having to chose between them two. When Sam started to bully Matthew, I realized that Sam was nothing but a spoiled brat and I left him on the sideline, protecting Matthew with all my power. After all, Matthew was new and didn’t have the strength I had yet. This soon changed, Matthew was working as hard as he could to get at the same level as me and in a way, he was getting stronger than me as well. Whereas Sam could hurt me badly with his insults over to Matthew and I’d end up crying on our bedroom, Matthew would wave them off and didn’t even seem to have feelings over this. He’d also try to comfort me when I was crying, telling me that I shouldn’t get Sam to me so much. Sam was after him, as he told me, and it were only words. Matthew had closed himself for any feelings and he never was upset. He was a hard one, and tried harder than me. When puberty kicked in at age eleven, he changed and he loosened up. I saw this as a relief for me and him, as he finally started talking about his feelings and that Sam actually had hurt him. But that was all in the past; Sam had left military school when we were ten.
Matthew would stay at the base in the weekends, and I went over to my dad’s, occasionally going to Mr Bourne’s. I felt myself falling in love with his daughter, when I was thirteen and I’d tell Matthew all about her at night in our bedroom. I think Matthew was fairly happy for me, even though he didn’t know anything about girls because he’d never been off the base since he was seven and there were no girls around there. What confused me was that Matthew didn’t have any pictures of his family and not even memories about them. He said that he couldn’t remember anything from before he had arrived at the base and he would end up crying, rolled up in a ball and I would shush him. Telling him about my dad and Mr Bourne. Hoping and praying to God that it would make him stop crying. I never really liked it when Matthew was upset. He was my best friend, the only friend I had on the base. Not that I had many outside school, only Mr Bourne’s oldest son James, but he didn’t seem to want to hang out with a thirteen year old.
When I turned eighteen, just a month after Matthew had, I left the base and went to live in an apartment close to where Matthew lived.
We’d been put at the same company, as hired assassins and I have to admit that I liked it. It wasn’t really the money that was so appealing, but more the excitement that it brought with the job. The searching, tracking down and eliminating your victim.
One day when I came round at Matthew’s – I hadn’t seen him for a couple of days – I noticed something different about his house; his house was spotless. The coffee table even had a vase with red roses in it and it smelt kinda sweet around the house. All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place when a girl came out of the kitchen with two mugs of coffee. The girl with the long brown hair, the blue eyes and the beautiful smile. My stomach churned with jealousy as she pecked Matthew on the cheek and gave me one of her smiles. She hugged me, said that she hadn’t seen me in a short while and that we certainly had to catch up on things. Amy explained things to Matthew, and I told him this was the girl I used to have a crush on.
My father died when I was about to turn nineteen; he got killed in a car crash. Nevertheless, I started to spend as many hours of the day as possible round Mr Bourne’s house. I told him that, somewhere under the dust in my memory, I remembered something about Amy being promised to me. I was at the stage that I understood what that exactly meant. Mr Bourne promised me that he would talk to Amy, and that she would get married to me. If not, things would happen. I wasn’t worried, not at all; Amy was the shy type and the daddy’s girl and I was convinced that she’d dump Matthew for me to marry her. However, things went awfully wrong; Amy’s hidden, dark side came floating up and she’d had a massive row with her father. Telling him that she’d never leave Matthew even if it meant that she had to give her life for it. Mr Bourne never told her that it was me, who she’d been promised to.
Things went from bad to worse when Amy openly announced, with a small dose of sarcasm, that Matthew was going to be a dad. It’d made me feel sick, and I had left their house instantly, telling them that I didn’t feel so well, which wasn’t even a lie. I went from Matthew’s to Mr Bourne’s, telling him the bad news. I actually thought he was going to explode and told me that she was doing it on purpose and that she’d betrayed the family. I actually got scared that moment, but something inside me, told me that Amy had to pay for it. If she wasn’t going to be mine, then she wasn’t going to be anyone’s. Not even my best friend’s.
Everything was planned out nicely; I was on a mission together with Matthew. I don’t think he suspected anything, not even Amy being scared as shit as he left the house. Amy was going to be lead up the building, while I told Matthew that we had to kill someone up there. Everything was perfect, everything. Even when Matthew stood eye to eye with his wife-to-be and I told him to kill her. He trusted me over Amy, just as planned. He didn’t think, he emptied his brain and shot the bullet out of his gun, penetrating the flesh where it would kill. With a silent thump she fell down onto the wet gravel, her white dress no longer white, but red from the blood that seeped through the cotton material. Matthew ran off after that, the tears flooding down his cheeks, I could only call after him, but to no avail. He went straight to the office where I was told to wait in the office next to one where Matthew was screaming at the boss. Even that we had planned out; Matthew stormed out of the building, running as fast as his legs could carry him, down the emergency exit and in the arms of James. We’d been telling him all along that Amy had betrayed the family, and it was all Matthew’s fault. James had been taking this gratefully and knocked him out of conscious with a baseball bat.
It’d taken hours and hours for him to wake up in the dark room somewhere in the building of where our office was. I’d been set to work as the torturer, emptying my brain, soul and everything else on Matthew. I did this with delight, seeing that I’d been wanting Amy for over six years and my best friend had taken her away from me in front of my eyes. I explained everything to him, with a white lie here or there, such as telling him that I actually had gotten Amy pregnant, which wasn’t true at all, but I felt that Matthew had to suffer for the things he’d done. We’d given James the chance to do his thing as well, and he did this perfectly. He shocked Matthew with a stun gun, leaving red marks all over his body. When I had enough of it, I let James get The Butcher, the man that we’d been talking about since we were kids. I later in my life found out that there wasn’t actually a Butcher, but just for the entertainment, I brought one to life. This being Sam Quinn. The boy that had tortured Matthew from age seven to ten. I saw the fear in his eyes as he recognised Sam, and he exchanged a terrified look with me. I’d just smiled and waited for what to come, leaning against the wall, smoking my cigarette.
Then something happened, something that I hadn’t expected at all. Mr Bourne’s old man came barging in on us, making Sam stop with what he was about to do. I felt my heart drop as he send me and Sam out of the room, only to call me back after a good fifteen minutes.
“You’re going to pay for this really badly, Charles.” The old bastard told me. I then felt guilt rising up inside me; Amy never would’ve loved me as she loved Matthew. I’d just killed the woman I deeply loved, who I could never have had, and made my best friend’s life a living hell.
“But sir!”
“No, Charlie. You killed her, you hurt my future grandson, you murdered my great-grandchild. Not even going on your knees and licking my shoes will make me forgive you for that.” The bastard explained. I was surprised to say at least when he pulled out a gun of his pocket and aimed.
“Sir!” I yelled, falling on my knees and begging the man not to shoot me. Nothing I did was going to stop him however, and with a loud bang I got shot out of my life.