Eli rubbed his hands together, cursing his forgetting to bring gloves today. The weather had taken a turn this January, and the cold snap was at full force this particular thursday. It was very early that morning, he'd shown up early to finish a project he'd forgetting to export to his home computer. When he got to the front doors, he gave a hard tug on the freezing metal handle, the cold biting at his skin. The door didn't give at all. " Damn!" he shouted at no one in particular, realizing it had been rather foolish to assume someone would even be here to open the doors, at the wholly ungodly hour of six in the morning.
Suddenly there was something hard, covered in fur over his mouth. The "What the fuck?" on his lips was muffled by what turned out the be a large, gloved hand. The arm attached to that hand was firmly holding Eli against the stranger's chest, the barrel of a gun on his temple.
"Shut up! Shut up, or I'll kill you, right here!" Needless to say, there was no more muffled shouting after that. There was a lot of jerking around and trying to use an elbow that couldn't reach, to hit the psycho in the nuts. Eli wished that in this moment he could somehow be, like, buff. He thrashed uselessly as he was dragged back down the steps he'd ascended only moments before. It was getting hard to breath under the glove, the man holding tighter as his young victim attempted to escape.
"Stop squirming or I'll blow your damn head off, kid!" And the squirming was done too. He pulled Eli behind a white van, which Eli would be quick to point out was extremely cliche, were it not for the whole threatened murder situation. Instead of stuffing him in the trunk, as per expected, Eli's captor forced him into the back seat, though he did handcuff him. As they drove away from the scene of the crime, Eli took a look out of one of the heavily tinted windows, hoping the glance he took that snowy morning would not be the last time he saw Morty, Degrassi, the outside.
"Why are you doing this?" shouted Eli, fully taking advantage of his ability to breathe.
"I need some money, okay! And you're gonna help me get it!"
"Are you going to kill me?" he wasn't crying yet, but damn it, he was getting pretty close.
"If you keep god damn talking when I told you not to, you piece of shit. Now shut up and I'll reconsider melting your face off with acid, alright?"
That was clearly a rhetorical question, so he stayed quiet. Eli was pretty sure that melting his face was a pretty empty threat, but he wasn't going to try testing his theory.
He closed his eyes and thought about what he was driving away from. What would Clare think when he didn't show up? Would she care?
Would anyone even remember who he was? Would anyone care?
He didn't doubt he was about to die, but would anyone care if he did? Would the kids at school be sad?
He remembered being younger, whenever a kid used to die, they would send in grief counselors to the kids school. But, did the kids at Degrassi even remember he existed, did they know who he was? He couldn't imagine they did.
Would they remember his name in two years?
Would Clare?
And finally, he cried.
