Page 2 of Cruel Games

He’d known someone was after him. And that made the rest of us just as unsafe as him.

“I don’t know why you’re here–”

“Enough with the bullshit, Dannyboy. You know what you did.”I wished I could see their faces, so I could identify them to the police later when they got what they came for and left.

Maybe they’d just hurt my dad and walk away. Break a few bones. Make him squeal.

I didn’t think they’d kill him.

And I certainly couldn’t have imagined what happened next, even in my best daydreams and worst nightmares.

Red Mask brought his bat off his shoulders and swung it one-handed, slamming it into my father’s side. The ear-piercing scream he made as the wood hit flesh was terror-inducing. I covered my ears in the hopes that I could block it out, but to no avail. It echoed in my skull and reverberated through my body as the masked man pulled the bat away, and the shiny metal of barbed wire wrapped around the tip glinted against the moonlight. Blood dripped from it to the floor, staining the expensive shag rug my mother had bought him last Father’s Day.

Mom would be so angry in the morning. I bet she’d even yell at the cleaning lady like it was her fault some psychos broke in and got blood everywhere.

My brain was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that tomorrow wouldn’t be just another day in my life.

Everything would be different.

But that meant accepting the things happening in front of me, and I was still half-hoping I’d wake up from this nightmare and find myself in bed still.

“Fuck,” my father wheezed, clutching his side like he could keep the blood from pouring out as the Red Mask man pulled back for another swing. “Just take me outside and get it over with, please.” His eyes cast in my direction, but he dared not look directly at me, perhaps because he worried what they’d do to me if they found me hiding here, a witness to their crimes.

The man on the end, who hadn’t spoken a word, put his hand up and stepped in front of Red, his mask flashing a bright lime green. His bat was steel, and it made a hollow metal sound as itdragged against the hardwood floor before it met the thick carpeting, and the sound was swallowed whole. He dragged it up my dad’s cowering form, from his knees resting on the ground, across his ragged and damaged torso, across his chest, until he reached my father’s chin. He tipped his head back with the force of the bat, and his masked gaze met the shaky, fearful one of my dad. And then, without warning, that bat flashed in a move so skilled, so swift, you could have mistaken the man wielding it for a major league star. The tip of the steel bat snapped my dad’s head sideways, the sickening crunch sound of bone and teeth meeting metal echoing in the silence.

My dad spit out several teeth onto the floor, just inches from where I still cowered.

“You wouldn’t have had to die, Dannyboy, if you had just left well enough alone. But men like you crave power and money, and no amount of common sense will get in your way of having both, will it?” Red stepped forward again, taking his mask down to look my father in the eyes over the top of it, muffling his voice a bit. “Did you enjoy taking the light out of her eyes? Did she fight? Did she plead for her life like a bitch?”

Who were they talking about?

My father would never hurt a fly, let alone a woman.

So why–

“She was thirteen, you sick fuck. Thirteen. She had her whole life ahead of her, and you snuffed it out. You and your sick friends, all for a quick buck. And then you damaged her so much, there was nothing identifiable left but herteeth.”

That couldn’t be right. Daddy was a nice man. These guys had the wrong Dan.

They did sorta seem like they were off their rockers. They had the wrong house. The wrong man. That was it. Maybe if I stood up and told them that, explained the situation, they’d leave us alone?—

The blue one reached out and grabbed my father by the collar of his undershirt and dragged him from the room, the other twofollowing close behind. I listened from my hiding place as they marched through the house, my father pleading for his life now, begging them to take his money and leave, promising to make it worth their while?—

The sound of the front door opening echoed through the house, and the moment I heard their voices outside, I forgot all about not moving. I forgot my promise to stay hidden. Slowly, I inched for the open window nearby, the one that overlooked the front lawn, and the driveway where three men stood around my father in a semi-circle. There was a trio of dirtbikes coated in various splatter patterns from mud, or blood, or who knew what, sitting next to them on the asphalt. One was lifted up, the back end on a riser that left the back tire suspended in the air.

Green reached for the handlebars as Blue watched on from the side, merely a spectator at this point. Red held onto my father by his hair. His mask had slipped all the way down his face now. The wild desperation and unhinged glee in his eyes were now reflected in the wicked smile spreading his lips wide, wide enough to see that his teeth were sharpened like a shark's.

Or a wild dog.

“You took away her beauty, her life, everything that made her who she was. And you threw her away like a broken toy.”

“Please, I didn’t–it wasn’t–fuck, I’ll give you whatever you want?—”

Red leaned down so close he was nearly nose to nose with my father. “What I want is mysisterback. Can you give me that, Dannyboy?Can you bring back the dead?”

My father heaved a sigh and whimpered like a puppy who’d piddled the carpet, still shaking like a leaf. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes turned to meet the stone-cold gaze of the man whose hand was twisted in knots in his short hair. “I didn’t mean–”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t mean for it to happen. It wasyourbusiness.Yourorders.Yourgoons. I might not have been able to save my sister back then, but now, I’m gonna show you what thisgirl felt when that car backed over her dead body and turned her face into tire tracks.”

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