Death by Love

          Fire. This is what is reflecting off of the eyes of Daniel when he arrives at his home. He is seeing the great fire burning his house. His son, Aaron, stands beside him, crying at the sight of their home being eaten by this hungry fire. Panic strikes the father, for he sees his wife’s car parked right in front of the house. He is standing in place, immobile for seconds, thinking of what might have become of Leslie, his wife. He finally gets out of shock as the firemen arrive and grab a hold of him, and trying to get him to move away from the site. Daniel carries his son to the fire truck.

          “Stay put, I will go find mommy…don’t worry she is gonna’ be alright. Just don’t worry…”

         He then begins to sprint faster than what he thought he possibly could. He runs in, trying to find his wife around the house. The ash from the burning house overwhelms him to the point of him going unconscious, but he continues to search. One fireman chases in after him and tries to pull him out before he was to get hurt, but he arrives too late. Part of the roof of the house collapses and falls on Daniel, hurting his right leg. He can not walk and is stuck underneath the burning debris of his house. A few more firemen come in and help get Daniel out of the house.

          He frantically yells, “My wife is in there! You have to get my wife out of there!”

          “We must get you out of here first…we gotta take you to safety before we can go back in, and you must stay where we put you at or else we won’t be able to save your wife,” the coughing Miami chief fireman stated to Daniel.

          Daniel hesitates to stay still and keeps trying to get up and back inside of the house, but the ashes from the house have left him completely exhausted. The burning sensation from his leg contributed to his immobility, forcing him to collapse and gasp for even more air.

          The fire has died out. After a few hours of extremely difficult work, the fire has finally died out. They searched throughout the collapsed house, mostly ashes now, and they come over an abnormal pile of ash with scorched clothing over it. They have found it. The incinerated remains of what used to be Leslie.

          Three months have passed since the accident. Daniel, who now has only a few scars and a terrible aching in his leg, is begging on the streets. He has lost his former job due to him not being at work for the full three months. He also can not find a new job in his former career field due to his diplomas burning down the accident. He and his son are now living in an abandoned building in downtown Miami. It is unknown why the old building hasn’t been remodeled or just knocked down in over fifteen years of being out of service, but luckily for Daniel and Aaron, this has left them with a home.

          Aaron has been living a dull life, forbidden from laying eye on the outside world without having glass or steel bars in between him and the outside. He stays in the building while his father gathers enough money to feed him. He tries his best to stay hidden because he does not want to be found by other people and taken away from his father and placed in to an orphanage. He conceals himself from any and every outside activities that occur in Miami. Moreover, as for what he eats, he gets to eat some junk dollar sandwich from McDonalds every day. He was extremely fond of that place throughout his earlier childhood, but now he does not even want to hear of that place; he has been eating food from that place 108 days straight, and he is completely sick of it.

          Daniel and Aaron have been living this way for a month. They’re both sick of it, and Daniel is going to change this. He can not allow his son to live under these conditions. He must find another way of making money. He must be able to support his son, and allow his son to be able to live a normal life in the outside world.

         "I can’t make any money through a job since I can’t get one, and the government can’t pay me Social Security benefits because they may eventually find my home and take my son away from me. There is only one thing left for me to do…I must steal from these people…I will do whatever I must to get my son a good life!”

          Today will be the first time he will attempt to do something as drastic as what he’s planning on doing. He is prepared for the worst to happen. He begins to search for a person that he believes he could take on in a fight in case of the person catching him during his attempt of robbing the person. It wasn’t long before he found someone that met his standards. He stands up from the cold sidewalk, slouches against a wall, and waits for the person to walk by him. The person gives him an insecure look, stands still for a moment, but keeps on walking, thinking that Daniel will not harm him.

          “Haha. He didn’t suspect anything…pretty good so far,” Daniel murmured to himself.

          After the person walks a few steps, Daniel begins to stroll quickly to catch up to the man. The man looks back and sees Daniel behind him, and he begins to sprint as fast as he could. Daniel takes off after him, and he catches up to the man. He grabs the man’s leg, forcing him to trip and fall down against the concrete. The man turns around and tries to retaliate, but Daniel is quicker and hits the man in the gut, leaving him breathless, coughing out blood. Daniel takes the man’s wallet from his back pocket. He thinks about taking the suit and denim jeans he was wearing also, figuring it could come in handy later on, or at the least add up to some extra bucks, but he decides to just leave with the wallet and be happy with his easily earned profit.

          The man, nearly unconscious, yelled in a coarse voice while gasping and coughing for air, “Please! I need that money for my rent! I have to leave my kids in a good home and not let them live on the streets…please…please!”

Daniel feels sorry for the man, knowing the feeling of having one’s children not having a home, and he does not want any other child to go through what his own kid is going through. He looks inside the wallet, pulls out the bills that are lower than $50, and leaves the wallet with the credit cards and licenses besides the man. The man had a look of gratitude for his half-heartedness. Daniel then runs off, taking a different route than usual to his building to make sure nobody follows him to his home.

          Once he arrived at his home, he counted out the money he made. It all added up to $109.

          “It’s good…very good…definitely better than the average three dollars I make on the streets daily…” he thought to himself. “If I do this at least once a week, I will be able to rent a small apartment in the suburban areas of town…allow my son to grow up like a normal kid…this will all go perfect…”

          He feels very good about his first crime. Only thing that has given him some regret was what the man told him, about him having to pay for his house in order for his children to have a home. This gave so much for Daniel to think about, but he overcame it after a day.

         Today, Daniel is in a different area from his last crime, in order for the person he robbed not to recognize him in the smallest bit in order for him to evade legal troubles and being placed in a prison. He today is just collecting money like he normally does, not planning to rob from anybody. So far in to the day, a little over noon as he can tell from the sun’s position, he sees a short person, around five-foot three-inches in height, with a small structure, almost no muscle appearance on the person. He sees that person walking to his direction with a stack of cash in his hand, just counting it. Daniel is insanely pondering whether he should steal the money or just let the person walk by. Daniel did not think twice. He just stands up from the ground. He puts on his brown hood over his head to hide his facial appearance. The person is still counting his money, ignorant of Daniel’s actions. Daniel begins to sprint towards the person, swipes the money, and doesn’t stop running. He continues running, and heads towards his building. He then counted up the money. Seven-hundred ninety-one dollars. Daniel is shocked at how much he just obtained. He decides on resting for the rest of the day and search for an apartment to rent out the next day.

          Two months have passed since when he got the money for his first apartment. Now, he’s living in a decent house in Hialeah, one of the suburbs of Miami. He is still leading a life of thievery. He makes on average $16,000 during both of the months. From time to time, he does happen to come along a few people with quite some large amount of money.

          One day, Daniel is taking his son to school. After he left his son off at school, he drives his way back home. On his way back, however, his eye catches a man with an appearance of being extremely wealthy, walking along a sidewalk. Daniel hastily makes a plan on how to rob from him. A few seconds after, he drives into the sidewalk, jumps out of the car, knocks the person out with a few punches, and steals the man’s wallet. He runs back into his car, reverses back into the streets, and drives away.

          He stops at a rest stop to count out what he made on this trip. Daniel is stunned at the amount of money he counted out from the wallet.

          “Over 41k…41k…I can’t believe it…”

          Daniel made over $41,000 on that little run. He also came upon a list of names that were on a small sheet of paper that was within the wallet as well. Most of these names appear to be very familiar to him. Besides the names, it also placed the address of the people. Daniel decides to go and visit them the next day to see whether or not he knew the people. He thought that they could help him out.
It is Tuesday morning. Daniel takes out the list of names and addresses and looks at the first name.
“Manuel. Alright let’s see where this will take us…”

          Daniel takes out his map book and starts looking for the directions on the map. Daniel finds it and he then starts to follow the map to get to the house. It was a forty minute drive from his son’s school to the house, so it would take him patience to figure out whether or not these were his friends from his earlier life.

          Daniel finally arrives at the first person’s house; it was a very nice sight. The house appears to have three floors. The walls were made of bright red bricks. In front, there was a large porch with two recliners. Besides the porch there were beautiful trees lined with white bark and black spots, four on each side, with a symmetrical appearance. The front lawn was very around the size of half a football field. In the middle, there laid a large, white, marble water fountain nearly 15 feet tall and around 25 feet around. Surrounding the fountain were many flowers of many colors and sizes, beautifully decorated. In the driveway of the house surrounding the lawn were three sports cars.

          Daniel has a feeling of this being his friend since he was a neurologist just like he used to be before the degree was burnt. Daniel leaves his car and walks up to the magnificent front doors, and he begins to knock the doors. It takes about twenty seconds for the servant to open the door. He tells her that he believes he’s an old college friend of Manuel, so she lets Daniel go in, take a seat, and wait for Manuel to attend him. It did not take long for him to come down and greet Daniel.

          “Daniel? Is that really you? You’ve changed so much since we’ve last seen each other…what brings ya around here?”

          “Haha Manuel. Yes it’s me…and you’d be surprised at what I’ve been through for the past year…”

          Daniel then informs him of the fire that ruined his life, how he had to beg for money on the streets, and how he stole money from certain people. He did not tell him about the recent robbery which lead him to Manuel. He does not want to cause any trouble between the two in case if the person he robbed was someone who was close to him.

          “Damn. You’ve been through so much…hey but you see all what I have on me right now? How do ya think I managed to buy all of this?”

          “Well I’m guessing through brain surgery and other neurological medical cases, yes?”

          “Ha no way…that could never pay up for this house in so little time. I’m running my own little business on the side…”

          “Oh really? What do ya do in this “business”?”

          “It’s nothing hard really. If you can evade the police for so long during your crimes, this will definitely be easy. The thing I’m doing is selling some drugs. Yesterday I bought $41,000 worth of drugs from this certain person…” Manuel gets cut off.

          “$41,000?” Daniel tries to conceal his secret and not show Manuel that he stole the money from his own dealer. “Isn’t that losing money on the drugs? And why pay so much?”

          “Nah…I bought the $41,000 worth of drugs…If I resell ‘em, I should get at the least $200,000 in return; $159,000 in profits.”

         “And how long does it take ya to sell ‘em all?”

         “If you know who to sell it to, you can sell it all in less than a week…making over 150k dollars in just one week out of doing nothing but carrying some bags to another person and grab the money. It is very simple.”

         “This sounds pretty good…hey can I buy the drugs off of ya and start trying to sell em bit by bit to get used to the business? Also I don’t want a lot in case if I don’t really get anywhere with this.”

         “Sure. Give me only $100 and that’ll get ya started. I’ll sell ya the stuff at the same price I buy mines.”

         Daniel pays the $100 and gets a small amount of drugs. Daniel starts to try to sell the drugs. In a few weeks, he becomes and expert seller and is making over $20,000 profit a week. Daniel stays in touch with Manuel during the weeks. One day, when Daniel came to his mansion for another order of drugs, Manuel told him of a robbery scheme that he’s been planning with some of his friends.

         “Hey Daniel, me and a few friends have been thinking about upping our game. Our little business is running fine, but we have a better plan that will make us much richer than what these little bags could.”

         “Really? And what would that be?”

         “None more than what you used to do for a living…we’re gonna rob.”

         “Rob? I spent weeks doing that and didn’t make all that much money,” Daniel said as he acted hesitant to go along with the plan.

         Manuel’s friends laughed, and one of them said to Daniel, “It’s none of that street mugging-type stuff…we’re finna go hijack one of ‘em banking trucks…we’re finna clean out the bank and take it all in the truck, makin’ us a few million bucks…still think that’s chump change?”

         Daniel seems impressed with the summary of the plan, “Damn…we’re gonna steal over a few million dollars on this little stunt? But if there’s that much money, shouldn’t there be some guards also?”

         Manuel said, “We have intel on the inside, monitoring everything and giving us all the new information. We already have planned out how we’re gonna take out the guards, how to open the safe, and how to immobilize the truck. We just now need to wait for the right time. You in?”

         “So it’s planned out, everything fixed. Alright, so if you’ve got everything ready, why you need me?”

         “We only need ya to finish this all faster so we can leave much sooner before the 5 0 get here.”

         “That’s it? Alright then, I’m in. Hit me up with the details…”

         A few days have passed and Daniel has the whole planned memorized and knows it like the back of his hand. Now they are all waiting for the perfect day to go and invade.

         During the time he waited to go rob the bank, Daniel has been having a series of nightmares. He keeps dreaming about the cops arriving at the bank earlier than expected, and how his son was at the bank with him and he had to carry his son and drive off in his car at full speed. The car he used to escape was later rammed and destroyed, leading to both of their deaths.

         Daniel receives a call from Manuel.

         “Hey Daniel, guess what.”

         “Oh hey Manuel…what up?”

         “Today’s the perfect day. Leave your son at school and whatever and meet up at my house, ok?”

         Daniel responds in a sleepy, moaning voice, “Perfect day for what? What you talking ‘bout?”

         “Today’s the day to put our planning to work…we gonna proceed with our operation.”

         “Oh for reals? Ok, aight then, I’ll be on my way.” Daniel hangs up and then wakes up his son.

         “Hey, wake up Aaron…time for school. Go get dressed and everything so I can drop ya off, k?”

         “Ok daddy.”

         After Aaron finishes getting ready, they both get within Daniel’s second car, which he bought and customized for this day. Daniel drives for a few minutes and then arrives at the school. Once they arrive at the school, Aaron asks his father,

         “Dad, do you think you can pay me for a field trip I’m gonna go to?”

         “Oh sure. Here’s $20 so you can pay for everything.”

         “Thanks Dad. Hey, do you think you can join me? We’re gonna have a field trip to the—.”

         Daniel cut him off. “Sorry kido but I can’t. I’ve got too many plans today, so I won’t be able to join you on your excursion.”

         “Ok then.”

         “Well I’ll see you later. Gotta go to work early today. See ya.”

         Aaron leaves the car and starts walking to school. Daniel waits for him to get to the school doors and go in, and then drives off after he went in. Daniel speeded his way through the streets to get to Manuel’s house to be equipped for the robbery.

         Daniel rings the doorbell.

         “Hey Danny, hurry up and get in. We gotta put on the gear.”

         “Alright then…Hey Manuel, do you think this is such a good idea? Going in to the bank and stealing stuff from all those guards? I’ve been having these dreams, we all ended up dead and—“

         One of Manuel’s friends cut him off, “Haha, we all have those kinds of dreams, but we’re still alive. Don’t worry ‘bout it, we’re all finna get out untouched and millionaires.”

         “Well, if ya say so then…”

         Daniel turns towards his guns and bullet-proof gear and starts to equip it onto himself. After an hour of being prepared, Manuel receives a call from the guard who is standing in the bank. He tells Manuel to come over and wait outside of the bank to be completely ready for the robbery to proceed. They all go to the bank in two cars-Daniel’s and one of Manuel’s friends’ cars.

         Manuel tells the team of eight armed killers through his walkie talkie, “Alright, we’re here. When ya’ll see an SUV drive up, you all wait for our inside source to give us the sign and we’ll run out and capture it. You get me?”

         The other seven men in the crew all reply, “Affirmative,” to Manuel. Another hour passes with the people sitting inside the cars.

         Daniel asked Manuel, “Hey, are those SUVs coming or not? We’ve been waiting here for over an hour already and we still don’t see anything.”

         “Yo, Danny, just wait up will ya? You’ve waited a few months for this day, another few hours won’t hurt.”

         “Fine, I’ll wait a bit more, but if we stay like this, we may become tired and we will slack on the heist.”

         “Stop worrying! Nothing can go wrong. We’ll all get out safe and alive…hey guys, there’s the SUV!”

         The inside source transmits to Manuel, “Yo, Manuel, the SUV are ready…get out and start…go!”

         Manuel then yelled through the transmitters, “Ok everyone, get out the car now and run!”

         The first group of four men gets out of one car and run towards the SUV. Two front men pull out their auto-machine guns and begin shooting at the SUV guards and leave them dead. The other two men from that group gather up the money inside of the SUV and take it back to one car, with the front men guarding them from any extra guards. The other group of four men, Daniel’s group, run towards the bank doors and begin to shoot down all the guards they could find within then building. While inside the building, Daniel’s eyes catch a glimpse of what he thought to be his own son. Daniel then gets a closer look at the kid, and he realizes that it is his son. Daniel hurries towards his own son, but one of the men in Daniel’s group catches him and tells him to stay on track, but Daniel revolts, and continues to run towards his son.

         “Daniel, what are you doing? You gotta stay on mission!”

         “That’s my son! I have to get him out of here!”

         “This bank is gonna be full of cops very soon. We can’t afford to waste time! You must leave your son…we must—.”

         The gunshot echoed throughout the bank building. Daniel just killed Manuel. Daniel is shocked at the sight of what he has done. Daniel becomes conscious again a few seconds later, and shoots down all of the other members of his group. Daniel then runs towards his son and asks him what he’s doing here.

         “I…Ima…I’m here on my field trip. Who are you?”

         “Aaron, I gotta get ya out of here…”

         Daniel picks up Aaron and carries him towards his escape car, but all of a sudden, there are many cop cars surrounding the bank. He manages to get in the car and escape after the first group runs. The first group escapes through the wrong escape route, and their car is shot down by the police force, killing the four men inside of it. Daniel’s car manages to escape the gunfire and is hit by only two bullets in the trunk of the car. A few cop cars begin to chase after Daniel’s car. Daniel has a good head-start, being four streets ahead of the police, but they are catching up to him fast. Daniel isn’t thinking right now; he is driving himself through the roads purely off of instincts. While he trying to evade the police, all of a sudden, Daniel’s dream comes to his mind. He remembers that his dream occurred just like what has happened in that moment. Daniel also remembers the part of his dream which showed him how his son died; his car falling off the bridge leading to an inevitable death to the both of them. Daniel decides to begin to slow down to avoid the falling off the bridge, but he didn’t slow down the car quick enough. All of a sudden, a cop car rams in to the side of Daniel’s car and forces it off of a bridge and into an interstate. After the car fell, an 18-wheeler truck clashes into the it, knocking off one of the car’s doors and forcing it to soar for yards. The car spins out of control and crashes into the interstate concrete road barriers. Daniel remains conscious throughout, and he stiffly opens the doors and limps out, falling immediately to the ground. His right leg is broken along with three ribs and his left arm. Daniel crawls towards his son’s side of the car and opens the door. Daniel turns away from what he sees. He begins to cry heavily, and releases a few wails of pain, not from his injured body, but of his son’s sad death.

         “What have I done?” Daniel asks himself. “I began to do this, all of the crimes and causing pain to others to keep my son alive, to give him a normal life, a life better than what he could ever have had. It overcame me. I went too far. I was good enough with what I had…I could have given him an excellent life living how I was before this…this…my greed has brought this to me. Because of my greed, my son died, along with my friends, and the lives of many innocent people who have rightfully earned their place in society. I have gone too far. I can not live like this…I do not deserve to keep living, and I can’t live without my son. He’s all I lived for…I no longer have any purpose in life.”

         Daniel pulls out his pistol out of his car, cocks the trigger, and points the gun to the side of his head.

         “This will be the end of the suffering to many people.”

         These were Daniel’s final words. Daniel pulls the trigger.