In the eyes of everyone who didn’t truly know him, Javier was just another teenager going through normal teenage problems. But that’s not the case. He is not like any other teenager. His problems are far beyond any problem a 17 year old teenager should face.

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Its midnight, and he awoke suddenly, scared and drenched in sweat, just like last night, and every other night before that. Are these dreams just that- dreams, or are they flashbacks, he wondered. Javier could not remember anything, or rather he chose-if that’s possible- to forget everything that had happened on and before his 16th Birthday. He was still wondering this as he got up from his single mattress that lay on shaggy, stained, gray carpet, to pour himself a small glass of whiskey to help him sleep easier. He got halfway to the doorway when popping sounds stopped him dead in his tracks. They sounded like when he set off fireworks inside of a kettle at the convenience store a few months back. He dropped to the floor, already knowing in the back of his mind what was making all that noise.

He began to wonder, why they are here now!? They weren’t supposed to be here for a few more days! He rolls over to his closet so swiftly, that one would think he had been practicing every day. And they wouldn’t be wrong to think that, because that’s exactly what he did in his spare time; plan out and practice different ways to escape and defend in certain situations such as this one. He gets to his closet and closes the door behind him. He looks over all of his straps, takes a katana knife and some body armor from the left wall, some grenades from the right wall, and turns the middle wall around to uncover a secret room filled with guns. The silenced 9mm and the customized, fully automatic, extended magazine, dual Uzi’s will do. He had been preparing for this night for some time now, and was more prepared than ever, regardless of the fact that it’s happening now instead of the day it was originally supposed to go down.

He had barely gotten his vest on when he heard the sound of wood cracking, and he pictured his front door breaking down, with pieces of wood flying everywhere. The Landlord’s not going to like this one bit. He hears one of them stumble on something, and begin to curse at the darkness, while another guy asks where the hell the light switch is at. Javier smirked; He had taken out all of the light bulbs that were in the apartment. His smirk quickly faded as he realized he left his night vision goggles on the couch in the living room. A slight grin formed on his face as he thought to himself, it don’t matter, I been engulfed in darkness all my life, I don’t need no damn goggles to see in this dark.
He dropped slowly onto the floor and crawled towards his mattress. He lay low in between his wall and mattress, and quietly put a blanket over himself. As he lay there, he took hold of his rosary, took it off from around his neck, kissed it, and told God that he’s sorry, but sometimes the Devil isn’t so bad, and he doesn’t mind paying him a visit if the night doesn’t end well. He put the rosary on the ground and took hold of his silencer.
As the people moved in on his room, he began to hear their voices and footsteps. There were five different voices, so that meant there were five people. Javier measured in his head how far the distance of the voices were from the ground, and concluded that the people were at the least six ft. tall. He takes in some deep, calm breaths, and takes careful aim towards the narrow doorway, anticipating where the crotch area of the guy in front would be. He waits silently, and feels strangely calm as he barely makes out the legs of one of the guys. He takes aim and fires. No loud noise was made, just a faint whoosh sound.
‘Arrrrgh’, screams the first intruder, as he gets a full clip of bullets lodged into his legs and hip. He dropped immediately, and still screaming, he lets go of his gun to clutch on to his legs. Javier Switches guns in a split second, and is now laying down sideways lighting the room up from the flash of his Uzi’s. In between bursts he sees blood get splattered everywhere, on the shaggy gray carpet, on the peeling gold yellow walls, and even on his gun. After it was all said and done, he unleashed a total of 80 bullets from the Uzi’s in under half a minute.
“Damn, I’m glad I got that extended magazine, emptied it all out” he thought, “they didn’t even have enough time to get a single shot in”. He couldn’t be more wrong.
As he tried to get up, pain shot through his right shoulder, all the way up to his neck. Damn. He got a couple of bullets stuck in him. He isn’t tripping though, because it doesn’t even hurt anymore. He grabbed hold of his shoulder while he walked toward the dropped bodies. When they will learn, no matter how many people they send to finish me off, I will never be finished, he thought. Javier takes a look at the blood stained bodies, the blood covered walls, and the blood soaked carpets and decides that it’d be best for him to get out of there, because if the these guys didn’t kill him, the cops and his landlord would try to.

He barely begins to move his right leg when his left leg suddenly buckled, and both legs began to give under him as if they had fallen asleep. The room begins to spin as he lies helplessly on his back. Images of drugs, money, and guns fill his head. His vision becomes really fuzzy, and he slowly begins to lose his sight. For someone who has never used any type of drug before, Javier felt strangely high. He’s just about to scream when he notices cracks beginning to form in the ceiling. Through his fuzzy vision he barely makes out snakes slithering across the ceiling, and notices spiders beginning to crawl on the walls. What the hell is going on!? What the hell is this!?

Javier tries desperately to scream, and just as he barely makes a squawk like a bird, the ceiling crumbles and falls on top of him, crushing his skull in. He suddenly jerks up from his sleep, eyes bulging, shaken, sweaty, and more terrified than before, wondering if these are flashbacks, dreams, or a mixture of both. He looks over at his alarm clock; 7:45am. He slowly sits up, and feels a strange pain in his right shoulder. Grabs his pill bottle and pops a pill in his mouth. As he tries to stand up, he finds out he can’t feel his legs and begins to tremble. He is just about to scream, when he noticed his wheelchair, and realizes that he hasn’t been able to walk for a while now.

He crawls painfully to his wheelchair and pushes it against the wall so he can pull himself up on it easier. He sits there for a minute, and takes a few heavy breaths before he begins to roll himself into his living room, and stops abruptly when he notices someone sitting on his couch. He didn’t stop because of who he saw, but rather because of what he saw in the person’s hand; a glock and it was aimed right at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Javier asks the stranger, seemingly unfazed by a gun being pointed at him.

“I’m the one who wants you dead, and I’m growing very tired of sending people who can’t finish the job”, explains the stranger.

“Well, you know what they say, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.”

“Say hi to Lucifer for me, Javier.”

“F*** you. . . Dad”

As Javier uttered his last words with a semi grin on his face, he got a bullet right in his heart. His wheel chair rolled backwards against the wall with a thud, and as he began to tip over, his father vanishes...