Why did things have to be like this? All of our lives, reduced to this. I could hear the others in the next room, chatting quietly, hoping for a way to end this.
I looked slowly around the room, taking in all the small details from years past. The unused baseball bat, sitting lonely by the desk. His skateboard, hung upon the wall, untouched for years.
My eyes landed on the small model yacht, the one we had spent hours making. I picked it up gently, turning it over in my hands. The paintwork was faded, a side effect of sitting in the sun for years on end.
He shifted in his bed, his bandaged leg hanging limply over the edge. I sat softly by his side.
He didn't deserve all this. He was such a kind person, his life shouldn't have ended up this way. All of ours shouldn't have.
A dog barked down the street, someone yelled. I held my breath hoping we weren't next. More yelling, more barking. A gunshot rang out, rattling the windows. Silence.
The rest of our group had stopped talking, and had killed the lights. He sat up in his bed, and I pressed a finger to his mouth.
Footsteps on the path outside. Barking, the dog had found something. Us.
I pulled him off the bed, throwing his arm around my shoulder. I pushed the door open, the others were gone. I didn't blame them, we should have been gone as well. The front door broke. Boots pounded on the stairs. I pushed him out onto the balcony. He would have to hide there.
I slammed the window shut. And the door behind me burst open. A man, yelling at me in a foreign language, a dog barking. A gunshot.
And then nothing.