Chapter 8: The Worst Number to Prank Call.

I looked at Kyle in silent terror. I didn’t dare say anything, because it seemed like anything could set him off. I just stared at him silently and thought of what I could do.

It didn’t look like Kyle was holding any weapon (though he probably wouldn’t need one with the muscles he was sporting). I guessed that I wasn’t in any immediate danger and relaxed a little.

“Quit staring at me like a pussy and give me some fucking money!” Kyle growled, squeezing my arm so tightly that my circulation was cut.

“Ouch! I’m sorry; I don’t have money! You can check!” I pleaded, clutching uselessly at my arm. I overacted quite a bit, trying to show how pathetic and scared I was so maybe he’d see no reason to keep on harassing me.

“Maybe I will!” Kyle started roughly jostling me around in search of money while still keeping a painful grip on my arm. When he didn’t find anything in my jacket pockets he roughly yanked it off of the arm he wasn’t holding.

I tried to remain still throughout the process, resisting the urge to try and yank away from him. What if he killed me once he realized I didn’t have any money!? I breathed in deeply to attempts to calm myself.

“Oh? What’s this?” Kyle said with sick joy.

Huh? What was it? I didn’t have money! I looked at Kyle in confusion as he held up a thin object. I gasped out loud; my phone! I completely forgot that I took it with me!

Kyle stopped his sick smiling and glared at me. “You said that you didn’t have anything!” He crushed my arm even tighter. I felt my lower arm go numb with lack of blood.

I bit my inner cheek to keep from yelling out in pain. “Y-you only said that you wanted m-money. I didn’t know that phones… counted.” I said unevenly, the pain in my arm beginning to be unbearable. I impulsively tried to pry Kyle’s fingers away.

“Phones can be sold for money, Dumbass!” Kyle sneered. He turned on my phone. “Unlock it.” He commanded, shoving my phone in my face.

“Why?”

“Unlock it or else!” He said threateningly, his eyes growing dark.

I know that I really shouldn’t have asked this question in a situation like this, but my thoughtless curiosity got the best of me. “Or else what?”

“I’ll kill you.” He said warningly, putting my phone aside temporarily to unfold a pocketknife. When he saw me look at him in disbelief he cackled. “Don’t think I will!? Well, I will! What does it matter anyway!?!? What does it matter!?!?!?” He started laughing.

I stared at him as evenly as I could. He seriously was crazy. His insane laughter was beginning to waver and his eyes started becoming watery.

“Now, unlock the damn phone.” He stammered, smiling unevenly with a mix of tears. He switched the knife to the other hand, which was formerly holding my arm, and held up my phone again.

I silently followed what he said, while staring carefully at the knife now poised shakily to my throat, and entered the passcode.

Kyle chuckled brokenly. “Now, whom should I have fun with?” He looked through my contacts.

“…Fun?” I asked in confusion.

I flinched disgustedly as Kyle smiled at me manically. “Yeah, fun! FUN! Might as well do one more prank call, RIGHT!? Before they come… Before everyone fucking hates me forever! Before I disappear!”

…What? What was he even talking about!? Maybe what he did was finally causing a breakdown. It was true that once everyone found out he killed Teresa he would probably be more hated than the most hated person in the school, city, and county. But what did he mean by ‘disappear’?

“Hmhmhm. Who to call, who to call? Oh? Matt? You know Matt? Wow, I didn’t think someone like you would know Matt. Hahaha! You don’t even have ten contacts!” He flipped around through my phone, his red eyes darting around the screen irregularly. “Ooooh? ‘Private Number’? What is that, some kind of sick kink? I guess even weird looking guys like you can get a chick. Probably a weird chick.” He muttered. I felt like commenting that he shouldn’t talk, since he looked like an agitated rabid squirrel at that moment (but I’m not that stupid).

He pressed the call button on Private Number. “What are you doing!?” I asked in alarm. If only this guy knew what he was walking into! If Astly heard someone else’s voice on my phone he would go ballistic! Wait, maybe that was what I needed. After all, if any person could help me at the moment, it was probably Astly.

“Hey, slut.” Kyle greeted on my phone. The person on the other end said something that I couldn’t hear. Kyle frowned. “Dude, you sound like shit!” Kyle laughed. “Shit, shit, SHIT!”

I stayed super quiet to try and hear what Astly was saying; still keeping a careful eye on the knife that was growing uncomfortably close.

“I’m his friend! Right, Jake?” Kyle asked me with a sick grin. Kyle held up the phone to me.

I laughed convincingly. “Yeah, sorry Randy, my friend Kyle sort of stole my phone.” I tried to add some emphasis on the name ‘Kyle’, despite the risks that came with saying Kyle’s name.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kyle hissed at me, pressing his knife slightly to my throat.

I decided to play dumb. “What do you mean?” I asked fearfully.

“Saying my name! Now if you make it out alive someone will know!” Kyle screamed. He saw me expression of sheer dread and smile maniacally. “Yeah you heard right.” He chuckled. Then he held up the phone. “You both heard right!!! Jake is going to just be some red on the woodchips!!! Jake is fucking screwed! But not me! No jail, prison, juvie, or graveyard! I’ll be gone! GONE! I’ll be somewhere else! No one will know where I am! If anyone finds me they will never know who I am! I’ll be just one more corpse in this fucking city! This fucking city!” Kyle laughed and laughed. He sounded crazier than a hyena on crack!

I needed to do something! It was a live or die situation now. “I’m in the park!” I yelled frantically in the phone before I flung myself backwards away from the knife. However, Kyle had quick reflexes and gashed out wildly at me as I fell back. The knife grazed my collarbone and made a cut. “AUGH!” I yelled, barely catching myself before I hit the ground. I looked around frantically for a place to go and ran towards the play structures.

“You fucking cunt!” Kyle snarled. I heard the thudding of his running footsteps behind me on the woodchips. I picked up my pace and leaped onto the structure. I figured that because I was smaller, more focused, and more coordinated, I would be able to maneuver on the structure more easily than Kyle could. These were pretty last minute observations, but I didn’t exactly have time to think about a strategy when a cracked jock was trying to cut me up.

As I suspected (luckily), Kyle was much slower than me once he started trying to climb around the play structure.

I ran around the structure madly; if he caught me I was, literally, dead. I started quickly scrambling higher to reach the roofing of the play set.  I could only hope that he wouldn’t be able to reach me there.

I raced up the tiny children’s steps that lead to the slide at the highest point of the play set. Above the slide there was a little curved canopy. Once I got to the top I quickly started trying to shimmy up the pole.

“Got you, you little bitch!” Kyle yelled from under me. I looked down in horror to see that Kyle was directly below me. He hadn’t bothered to go up on the structure like I did, and used the ladder near to base of the slide to cut me off. He grabbed my ankle and pulled me with all of his strength towards the ground.

I went flying off of the structure and landed side first on the woodchip covered ground below. The woodchips dug into the shoulder I fell on, giving me a few splinters. I hissed in pain, but immediately moved to get back up.

Kyle grinned at me. “Not so fast.” Kyle stomped his foot down onto my chest, placing his whole weight on that foot. “Because of you…everyone is going to know. EVERYONE!” He became enraged in a quick mood swing. “I at least wanted time! TIME! Before I had to do it, I wanted time! I want time! But you just had to say my name to your friend!?!?!? Now I have to get out of this godamn world even sooner! I wanted to drown myself in the ocean! PEACEFULLY!” He crouched on me and looked me in the eye. “At least you’ll be an innocent victim! A Person who was killed by the monster, Kyle! I’m the victim! I’M the one who’s the victim!!!!!” He shrieked in my face.

“Kyle! Please, it doesn’t need to be this way!” I yelled desperately, just trying to deter his attention a little bit longer.

Saying that was a big mistake. He glowered at me in a mix of tears and raised his knife. “You are one annoying bastard.” He said, eerily calm. The knife came whizzing down towards my face. I screwed my eye shut.

…The stab in my face wasn’t coming… I opened my eyes. Kyle was sitting silently, touching his head in bewilderment. His eyes then rolled back in his head and he collapsed to my side. Someone was behind him.

The person behind Kyle was holding a metal baseball bat, which I guessed was used to knock Kyle out. The figure in front of me was dressed in black gloves, black jeans, a black hoodie with the hood worn, and sunglasses and a bandana worn on the face so I couldn’t identify any features of my savior. Or, in other words than ‘savior’; Astly.

“Ahem…Do you need any help?” Asked Astly in a low disguised voice, holing out his hand to me.

“Not from you.” I muttered, getting up on my own.

Astly looked undecidedly back and forth from Kyle to me.

“What are you doing—Augh!” I yelped when Astly brought down his bat accurately in Kyle’s ribs, then quickly landing another blow to Kyle’s head.

“Stop! Stop!” I yelled from where I was standing. I was too shaken to go near Kyle to stop Astly.

When I noticed that Astly was ignoring me I flung myself at the bat that was poised to hit Kyle again. When I came close to collision with the metal bat Astly maneuvered it away from me expertly.

“Don’t try to stop me Jake! This dick is going to fucking die!” Astly roughly grabbed my already twice-injured arm.

“FUCK!” I exclaimed in pain, clutching at my arm.

Astly froze in mid-swing towards Kyle. “What’s wrong? Did he actually get to you?!” Astly asked in concern, dropping his bat and heading over to me.

I shuffled away uncertainly. He looked seriously creepy; like a guy who was going to an armed robbery.

Astly stopped and sighed in irritation. “I just want to check to see if you’re alright! I’m not going to do anything. Come here.”

“No.” I said bluntly. “How do I know that you’re even Astly?” I asked suspiciously. He could seriously be anyone.

“Because I’m the only one that came to save you when you told me where you were?” He said cynically. “Now. Are you alright?”

“Yes. Go home.”

“No. Sit down.” He said firmly.

“No. I’m going home.” I said stubbornly.

“Shit, he’s waking up!” Astly shouted, turning his head towards Kyle.

I snapped my head to, the still very unconscious, Kyle. My waist was suddenly tackled and I was dragged into sitting position beside Astly.

“Where are you hurt?” He asked, examining me. “You should probably tell me, or else I’ll have to strip you.”

I flinched away and looked at Astly uncomfortably. “Fine. Arm, shoulder, and chest.”

Astly grabbed my injured arm. I cringed at my first look at it. Deep red and blue finger imprints were left on my upper arm, followed by some harmless scrapes from my earlier fall.

“…I swear to god, if you weren’t here I’d kill him so gruesomely that no one could identify his body.” Astly muttered as he trailed his gloved fingers around the fingerprints.

“Ironically, that’s sort of what he wanted.” I muttered.

“I’d grant that wish.” Astly growled. “Anyway, what wrong with your chest?”

“He cut it and stomped on it.” I said, trying to ignore the pain that I was reminded of.

“Cut?! He had a knife?!” Astly asked.

I nodded. “I broke away from him, but he cut me on the way. Then I tried to run away by climbing on the play structure, but he caught my ankle and threw me on the ground. Lastly, he stomped on my chest and ranted.” I said in a quick summary to avoid any more questions.

“…I’m sorry, you tried to run away by climbing up a structure with more ladders than a Snakes-and-Ladders game?”

I shrugged. “I was scared.” I murmured. “If you didn’t come sooner I would have probably died.” I felt myself shiver when I thought of it.

“…Crap. Why did you go out when I wasn’t watching you?” Astly asked accusatively.

“What am I, a lap dog? How was I supposed to know that the park was empty aside from one insane killer?” I looked at Astly and his unnerving attire. “Make that two insane killers.” I sighed, putting my face into my hands.

“…Well I guess you at least learned something today, right?”

“Huh, learned what? Stay the hell away from killers? Or the fact that I should be running from the man dressed from head to toe in black with a baseball bat?” I frowned at my own stupidity. Seriously, why the hell wasn’t I running away?!

“No, you learned to keep your phone with you and that I can protect you.”

“I don’t need you protecting me.” I said discontentedly. “In fact, I should be protected from you; you’re way scarier than Kyle.”

“Oh, but you do need me protecting you. I think that unconscious bastard is enough proof of that.” Astly said with frustration.

“Yeah, but that never happens. You don’t normally run into psychopaths in public parks.”

“You would if I came to the park more often.” Astly muttered in contradiction. I glared at him. “But more importantly; are you alright?” He asked with concern.

I looked at him in hostility. “I’m damn fine. Why are you even asking that again?”

“Because you’re crying.”

…Was I crying? I touched my hand to my face and realized it was wet. I stared at my hand blankly. I didn’t even notice. “When did that happen?”

“A bit after I got here.”

I stared at my hands and felt more tears stroll down my face slowly. The shock from being attacked and forced to stay calm was taking affect. The whole murder filled week was taking affect.

“Astly…Do you think you could leave now?” I asked softly, still staring at my hands.

“No. I can’t leave you like this.” Astly said gently.

“I would seriously rather if you did.”

“Can we at least get your phone and get out of the park before cops come by?” Astly asked, handing my phone to me, which I guess he picked up earlier.

I laughed miserably. “I really don’t want that thing back.”

“Well, tough luck. You need it.” He said, pushing it into my hands.

I groaned, took it from him, and then shoved it back into its original spot in my back pocket. I slowly got to my feet, shooing away Astly’s helping hand. I was then about the get the hell out of the there when I thought of something. I moved over the where Astly’s bat was and picked it up.

The bat looked remotely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I’ll take that.” Astly quickly snatched the bat from me.

“That bat looks suspiciously familiar.” I said with thought.

“No it doesn’t.” Astly said tightly.

“Uh-huh.” I said doubtfully. “I’ll leave now.” I turned my back and walked briskly away.

“Wait just a second.” Astly called as he fell in besides me.

“What?” I groaned.

“What’s so suspicious about this bat?” He asked casually.

“Uh, first off, the fact that you’re asking me that question.” I said, picking up the pace.

“How does the bat look familiar?” Astly persisted.

I didn’t know the answer to that, but if I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell him. “I don’t know. It just does.”

I started to panic when Astly moved closer to me. “Are you lying to me?” He asked, dropping his fake voice into a lower octave.

I glanced at him, and then made a mad dash for my house! If he didn’t believe me, who knows what he would do! I ran into the house and slammed my door.

“Oh! Sweetie, you’re home! You really cut it close young man! It’s almost black outside.” My mother warned.

I immediately hid all of my injuries and smiled. “Sorry mom, I lost my phone on a bench and I was looking for it the whole time.”

“Well, it’s dinner now. I made you some mashed potatoes with peas!” She said giddily, waving a plate in front of me.

I loved mashed potatoes! “Thanks mom.” I said, gratefully taking the plate and sitting down at the table across from her.

“So Honey, how was your walk; did it clear your mind?” My mom asked hopefully.

“Um, yeah, it was really… relaxing.” I lied, eating more mashed potatoes.

“I’m happy that you went on a walk, because you’ve seemed so tired lately.”

“Yeah…” I said distractedly, eating more potatoes.

After dinner, I went to the bathroom to clean and dress my cuts and bruises. After that, I made my way to, my now very unlikable, room. As soon as I got in I felt a vibration in my back pocket. I glared at the screen drowsily.

Private Number: “The cops got Kyle, ur safer now. Now what was so weird about the bat?”

I rolled my eyes. “I seriously don’t know!”

Private Number: “Then y did u run?”

“Maybe, just maybe, it was because some creepy asshole was in my face and would do something to me if I didn’t say how the bat was familiar.” I said sarcastically.

Private Number: “I’m a lot hotter than that.”

“And that’s relevant how?” I sighed.

Private Number: “Because I was ugly as shit in those clothes.”

I really didn’t see how any of that was even slightly relevant. “Are you trying to make me forget about the bat or something?”

Private Number: “no.”

I took that as a yes. “Whatever, I don’t even care right now. I just want all of these murders to be over.”

Private Number: “That’s all up to u.”

“No, it’s all up to you and you’re short tempered psychotic-ness.” I corrected irritably. He couldn’t blame these deaths on me!

Private Number: “And what sets off my short temper Jake?”

“…When I do something you don’t like. But that’s still all on you for making weird rules for me in the first place!”

Private Number: “blah-blah-blah, we’ve been through this.”

“But I-…Augh, honestly, why do I even try?” I groaned in defeat. “Anyway, I’m going to turn in early; today has really been crap.”

Private Number: “Shitty crap.” Astly added.

“The shittiest.” I agreed.

Private Number: “Alright, have a good night sleep. You need it. Also, I’ll be watching u sleep.”

“Why!?” I said, recoiling from my offending phone. Why did he even bother telling me!?

Private Number: “Because ur not EVER safe for some reason! Fist Las Vegas assaulted my lips, and then Kyle comes and almost kills you!”

“Ahem, my lips. Not yours.” I corrected, feeling slightly disturbed. “And also; why am I not safe now?” I asked.

Private Number: “I never said you weren’t safe."

“You were implying it.” I said, yanking the covers over myself. “I’m just too tired to care right now.”

Private Number: “Ur safe as long as I’m here.”

“Really? Because I feel like it’s just the opposite.” I set my phone face down on my nightstand and turned off the lights. “Anyway, have a good night. I’ll interrogate you in the morning.” I slurred.

Ignoring another vibration of my phone, I fell asleep. Even the news that Astly was watching me didn’t alter my deep and immediate sleep.

Also, whatever Astly was hiding about me still not being safe, I would find out. Though I was sure that I wouldn’t like it.

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DONE! Finals are done, and this chapter is done! :D I could cry I'm so happy.

I got so many comments in the last few weeks! BEST way to start off the summer. Thank you all so much for waiting. I actually would have taken longer if I didnt feel compelled to post immediately. XD so I broke my rules and wrote durring finals! Again, you all rock.