This was going to be so easy. No one would suspect this, not from me. As I pulled on my hoodie and checked my watch, I could feel the anticipation spreading through my bones. My only second thought came when I was tying my sneakers, and then it was just a second though about whether I'd chosen the right plan. Axel would never get the literary reference but no one would call me Little Luke, Loser Luke or love-lackin' Lukie EVER again. No, I'd show them all.
I crept carefully out the front door and hit the puddle-ridden sidewalk at a sprint. He should've known he'd gone too far. Axel should've known for his own good that nobody can just live with being publicly pantsed and had school lunch juices spread through his hair. He'd pushed the wrong button. I pushed up my coke bottle glasses, not that it mattered, the rain had destroyed any vision I may have had.
I checked for the switch blade in my hoodie pouch. Yeah, he'd regret this one. I could already picture those disgustingly perfectly sculpted abs bleeding openly. Those rock hard abs would never be able to be perfect ever again.
I had slowed down to a jog with my thoughts and supply check, but I only had ten more blocks to go. After nine I cut my sprint. Walking the last block made sure the empty streets knew I meant business.
His house sat on the corner with all its suburban perfection. The little yard lamps that lit up the sidewalk, the sparkling clean blue siding, the beautiful pale yellow shutters, the roses that would soon match Axel's sheets, they were all like a dream.
The amazing thing about spring is that even in the pouring rain it's warm enough to leave your window open. Ax's window was simple enough to locate. I slipped in so silently I shocked myself. I stood silently at the foot of the bed. God, how perfect would it have been for a roll of thunder and a flash of lightening to waken him to my shadowy figure? But that would've almost been too much.
So I carefully taped his mouth shut. If he would've stayed awake more in class I wouldn't have the knowledge that he's a heavy sleeper. Parents program that into kids when they're babies. If mom makes a lot of noise while the infant is down for a nap, the child trains itself to sleep through anything. An interesting random factoid that makes me wonder if his mom would realize how easy she'd made this for me.
Once I had his mouth taped I flipped on the switch. As the light sprang across the room I watched the shock hit his face, but I had to react before he fully woke up and knew what was going on.
It's that feeling, when you've been drinking for six hours straight and you're ready to throw up but right as it's sliding up your throat, you'd rather eat another sandwich and go to bed. That's what happened; I suddenly wished I was home, watching Law & Order, chowing on Cocoa Puffs, and I decided to go for that. I jumped out the window and rolled across the lawn, maybe he'd think he was crazy tomorrow. Maybe he'd force himself to believe that nothing happened. But that would be too much to hope for. Besides I'd left evidence that dreams don't: a large, highly adhesive piece of duct tape.
About ten block down I stop running. After about thirty seconds running I realized I couldn't go home, they'd make me go back to school. Explaining all this would be impossible. So I just made wrong turns and kept running. When I started walking I had figured out what I was doing. I may have skipped some middle steps but I could still complete the ending of my overly glorified plan. I already had the supplies.
Our school makes everyone take at least one class in industrial learning. I let the guidance office pick one for me. In their abundant stupidity I got thrown in a masonry class. Who'd have ever thought it would actually come in handy, right? Life can be surprising that way. I cut off the street and wandered into the woods. Nearer to my destination I was feeling myself grow far more reassured in exactly what I was about to do.
As I got to the other side of the woods, the warehouse was coming into sight. It was such a looming building, its dark cooling towers, the dirt engrained into its simple cement sides make it look like it comes right out of a movie. It hasn't been used in at least a decade but all the surrounding vegetation has thus far stayed away. Wait til' they find me though, just wait. It'll be awhile, I hope my dental records are all in tact. By the time they figure it out, it'll have been awhile.
There's a basement door around the right side of the abandoned plant. You'd think they'd have it locked tight, but I guess there's no point, you could just bust out a window. Ah, the clatter of aluminum is far too familiar to my ears. A lot of kids used to party down here, but they never felt the need to clean up, there's cans and broken glass everywhere. I go back to a far, dark corner. About a week ago, I slid a bottle of red wine I swiped from my father into this very corner. It was still just where I had set it down, slightly chilled in the cool basement air.
Pop goes the cork and I start hoofing it through dark, damp basement room, after dark, damp basement room all the way through to the end of the underground warehouse section. Then down three flights of stairs to what would seem to be a beautiful cement cavern. A safety chamber, if something were to go wrong in the plant, workers that couldn't hit the service, could fly to this room for shelter; it had an air-tight, blast-proof door, and a cheap temperature control. No true protection from any major accident could be provided here, but the thought that it was there kept the men at work, so more power to its inventors. However, if for some reason someone made it down here and survived whatever strange attacks the factory's unnatural power threw at them, they'd need an escape to surface or their survival would all be in vain. In the back corner there's a small crawl space of cement perfectly squared off tunnel to the surface.
I chugged down the remainder of the slightly aged and, to be honest, god-awful cheap church wine. I had already done the back wall of my solemn tomb, although in its original creation it was so much more vengefully worked on than its purpose shall be worth. My actions no longer have anything to do with Axel and his most recent line of jokes. Years of pent up misery that not my home, parents, dog, or school building will ever tear from my wretched soul. I can't remember a time early enough in my life that I could've been saved from this inevitable but meticulously decided upon course of action. But I didn't count on the actual masonry to be so difficult. I was laying the few short rows of brick from the opposite direction of where I had originally intended and it proved ever so slightly trickier.
But within minutes it was over, I had my tiny three by three by seven foot concrete shell. In the months or years to come, someone would notice the change in the building or just stumble upon me, and a great mystery of my horrifying disappearance will be solved.
For just this one time, I will be the headline running across the front page. But they'll never know I was a Poe fan to the extreme, or know that this wasn't a carefully plotted suicide that didn't need a note.
For a few brief moments, I thought maybe I should've written a note to my parents about what was about to happen. But as long as they never found my body, my parents will now be able to die with at least a tiny spark of hope in their life that wherever I ended up, I turned out alright. While they'll never know it, for just this one time in all the years my parents and I have known one another, they'll have exactly the right idea.

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