He had called into the Teller-Morrow auto-shop on his journey from his modest-sized bungalow home to the small clearing in Chigger Woods that he had stumbled upon on his last reconnaissance of viable locations. The items that he had procured from the garage had weighed heavily on his shoulders and back as they had rested in the bottom of his backpack on the ride between his two destinations.
He now sat perched on the overturned trunk of a tree that had fallen victim to the most recent storm that had ripped through Northern California, the thick chain that he had poached from the tow truck wrapped tightly around his knuckles. Pursing his lips, he peered down at the vaguely offending item in his grasp as he ran the pad of his leather clad thumb over one of the oversized links.
There was little left for him to consider, really. But a small part of him remained stubbornly in denial as to the true reason that he had ventured so far away from prying eyes in the all-encompassing dark of the dead of night.
Pushing out a breath through his teeth, he stood and artfully draped the chain across the curve of his previous perch, and allowed it to slip slowly from between his fingers.
Maybe. Most likely. But tonight was not the night. A small something kept rearing its head in the back of his mind; as though there was something left to do before he made such a fateful decision.
He dragged his feet a little as he made his slow way back to his Dyna, his usually haywire thoughts resting oddly silent within his mind.
Straddling his motorcycle and taking the time to attach his helmet, checking and rechecking that the buckle lay directly in the centre, resting in line with his Adam's apple, he revved the engine to allow it a second to warm before releasing the throttle and turning his headlight towards home.
Home. It was strange really that such a small, quaint town that stood full of equally quaint life could have demanded his heart quite the way that it had. He had grown up in the bustle of New York City, he had loved the fast paced life that walked the streets. But the Big Apple had taken a little too big a bite out of him herself for their affair to last well into adulthood. He had been forced to flee from the long arm of the law and the even wider reach of the Italian American Mafia. Details were still hazy within his mind as to how exactly a late blooming Puerto Rican boy from Queens like himself had come into such close contact with such power, but then the constant presence of narcotics and various hallucinogens in his bloodstream back in his younger years always made recalling details that much more difficult. Most likely, it had something to do with his big mouth and his penchant for finding trouble regardless of whether or not he went actively seeking it out. That or his semi-genius when it came to technology, but he had never been one to fairly value either himself or his talents.
Whichever way the beginning of his story was spun, he always ended up back on that highway out of New York in the dead of night, thumb out, praying for a glimpse of amicable headlights through the heavy rain; and it was always a friendly Scottish face who pulled over in the Club's black transit van, on his way home from an arduous and emotionally taxing final visit with his estranged wife and daughter back in Belfast.
Two lost and lonely souls wearing down the asphalt in search of somewhere to truly belong.
And his brothers had offered a place amongst them; somewhere to safely rest his head, somewhere to lock away his mangled heart, somewhere to find some room to breathe.
And all he had done was fuck it up. His past, details that lay outside of his obsessive control, had come back to bite him soundly in the ass; and as much as both Charming and the SONS had provided balm for his numerous hurts, even they couldn't hope to contend with the shit that was rapidly amassing above him, steadily burying him alive.
It had been a long time since he had felt secure; and he may well have been able to fight a battle on all fronts had he been sure in his standings. But he just couldn't fight the darkness off anymore, consumed as he was by the hopelessness and self-hatred.
There was a definite line between wanting to die and wanting to no longer exist, he decided. He didn't want the sudden brutality of death, leaving behind a thousand unvoiced questions. He simply wanted to evaporate; to slowly disperse into the atmosphere cell by cell, until there was nothing left.
Peace: that was what he was after.
A silence from the raging voices, both inside and outside of his brain. The voices that undertoned every syllable that he sounded, echoing it back to him until the words were nothing but childish babble; the ones that whispered constantly, decoding the expressions in his palpable companions' eyes. The resounding torment from them, the people with actual faces: 'retard', 'idiot', 'shithead'.
The woman who had given birth to him was no kinder; in fact, in comparison, the SONS only sprouted proclamations of brotherly love. She had been the driving force, the catalyst, in the fuck-up that soon became his life. She had allowed a spectrum of abusers into their home, feigning ignorance - even deafness at times - to the exploitations of her own son for the most part; participating or merely looking on for the rest.
He could still see her face, glowing with a malicious smile as he took what would come to be his last beating from her piece-of-shit flavour of the month.
It was something that he rarely permitted himself to recall, knowing that it would only stir up old hurts, rip the scabs off the barely healing wounds. But tonight was different. He needed a reason to fight, a reason to carry on where he was; a reason to believe that, regardless of everything that had been thrown at him in recent months, he was better off than he could have been.
A single tear traced its way down his cheek, the chilled night air whipping it from his skin as he powered through the darkness. He didn't really have to think this time about where he was going; all he needed was to see one last friendly face, scarred as it might be.