Derek and the Psychedelic Renegade: 1.

I look into the watering eyes of my little brother and put my finger up to my lips. He buries his head into the covers of my bed and I can see him physically shaken. I pull his head into my chest and try my hardest to reassure him it will all be okay. But truth be told I don't know if it really will be.

Suddenly there is a loud knock on my bedroom door. I yell out to the door "Mom?" There is no response for a few seconds. Once more I call out for my mother. I hear nothing but another loud knock on the door. I grab my brother and set him on the opposite side of my bed. "Whatever you do don't look over the bed, do you understand?" He shakes his head yes and pulls the blankets over his head.

I stand up and approach the door cautiously. I hear muffling behind the door and then my mom's yell. "Derek, don't answer the door!" Her sentence is cut off by a loud bang against the door and I can hear her crying. I quickly swing the door open, my mom's half-conscious body falls back into the doorway. I drop to a knee and grab her arms. She's bleeding from her mouth and her eye is bright red like she blew a blood vessel. I look up angered, staring straight into the pale white face of my hell. I look back at my mom as I pick her up and place her on my bed.

"Set her down god damn it, she had it coming." I look back at my step-father, Gary's, face. I set my mom on the bed and wipe the blood from her lip. Gary at this point had stumbled into my room and was now within arm's reach of me. I finish wiping the blood from her face, I feel a hand press onto my shoulder. "Derek, let me take care of her she's my damn wife" Gary tries to reassure me. I swing around face blood red with both of my hands balled into tight fists. "She stopped being your fucking wife when you put your hands on her!" I scream. He looks at me shocked and stepped back momentarily. A drunk smile comes across his face, and he says with a sarcastic tone "oh, you're a big man now aren't you?" I turn back to my mom and pull the blankets up on her, my brother quickly climbs back into the bed with her and pushes his face into her neck.

"You don't support this family like I do you punk kid!" Gary is now yelling across my room. I calmly turn around and look at him in the face. "You are scaring David, get out Gary." He gets even closer to me and begins to turn red with rage. "I said you don't do shit for this family boy, you all need me!" He grabs me by the shoulders and slaps me across the face. I sit back on the bed staring blankly into the eyes of this incubus using every amount of self-control I have left in my body. "Now if you don't want more of that you'll get your dramatic ass mother into my room and shut that brat up!" I struggle to exhale my last breathe, I can taste the lead flavor of blood running into my mouth. I feel my eyes begin to water with rage.

It all happened so fast, he reached violently to grab my forearm, I struggle to pull away and then I snapped, in a matter of seconds I blacked out. I heard screams from everybody in the room. I felt the thick wetness across my body, I thought he had cut me with something. I try to open my eyes but I can't. I felt a whirlwind of chaos around me and suddenly a cold eerie feeling. I go to grab for my body feeling for any wounds, I can't touch myself, I struggle just to move my arms from my face. I am sure that this was the end, the end I deserved.

My eyes finally open and I am caught off guard by what I see. I'm in a large field, its pitch black outside. There is nothing in front of me and a thick fog behind me. "MOM!?" I scream. I begin to panic in my mind as I feel the fog passing from behind me to the front of me. I can't move my body, it's like the fog has completely paralyzed me. Just as I feel like I have been completely consumed by the thick eerie fog, the entire world around me spins a 180 and begins to reveal to me why I'm here.

At first sight all I see is a large bonfire accompanied by a small structure of some sort near and over the fire. This structure has stairs leading up to a thin stone platform directly above the fire, the bottom of the stone is smoldering red and looks as if though it could melt down to a volcanic lava at any second.

I am drawn to the large crackling fire, I begin to move towards it as if I have no control of my body. As I get closer to the fire the sounds of the burning wood fade away and are replaced with faint screams of agony, I am startled at first but see no one around me so I continue to the small stairway, I stop to listen to the screams as I reach the bottom of the stairs and realize who the screams belong too. I try to stop myself from continuing for I know what waits for me at the top of the platform and I don't think I can face it. As I reach midway up the stairs I look over to the outer edge of the fire and I see 12 figures that I didn't see before. They are all dressed in large robes and are wearing a variety of animal masks. I want to ask who they are but cant find the words in myself to speak they say nothing at all but there presence urges me to climb the remainder of the stairs. Each step becomes harder and harder, and I can physically feel my nose begin to bleed. I can feel every limb in my body begin pulsing in pain as I reach the top. I reach the platform and look straight ahead of me, lying on the thin rock slab directly above the fire is Gary. He is fastened to the rock tightly with a metal chain and is being burnt on the back by the smoldering red hot rock. He screams desperately for help, he is melting to the rock and can feel every little bit of it. I don't understand how he hasn't passed from shock as I can see the back of his ribcage is now exposed and is still being pressed against the scorching stone. His screams continue only for a moment and begin to fade quieter and quieter. I can see him still screaming in pain but his voice is no longer there, actually there is no sound at all. I feel as if my sense of hearing has completely been taking from me and I once again start to panic. I hear a deep monotonous voice, it sounds like an old man but then as it grows louder becomes the sound of a group of people. The voices speak in perfect synchronization as if they were one large powerful voice. I look around to find the source of the voices and see the figures, they seem to be standing perfectly still with no signs of even them speaking. I realize that this voice wasn't coming from anywhere, it was in my head. The 12 figures were all channeling a message into my brain so powerful that it cut out any sense of the outer worlds sounds. The voice addresses me.

"Derek, this man has caused pain to you in every aspect of your life, he has emotionally, physically, and verbally abused you and the people you love most in this world. Every step you ascended in the flight of stairs gave you all of the pain he had caused till you reached this platform, he has pushed you to a point of numbness and you no longer feel compassion for him or the pain he is feeling. You will not feel the pain of the smoldering hot rock under your feet because the pain he has caused you has numbed you to everything at this point. You have the one man you hate the most in your hands right in front of you, and you have all the tools you need to make the most excruciating death possible for him. Will you make him suffer like he has made you suffer or will you put him out of his misery and pain giving him a quick and painless way out that he has refused to give you in life?"

I turn around to respond to the figures, but they are gone. As are the stairs, I'm on the platform with my dying stepfather alone left with the option of putting him out his misery or letting him suffer as long as I want. I look to my right side and see a small steaming towel folded up on the rock. As I approach the towel, the sound of Gary's screams return. He has now acknowledged my presence there and is begging for me to kill him, he looks more and more helpless every second I delay this. I kneel down to pull back the top of the towel. Inside the folded cloth is nothing but a 9 mm pistol.

I reach for the pistol hesitantly, no one on this planet deserves what he is going through right now. Hasn't he suffered enough in just the time I have walked up these stairs and stood here? I run my hand down the handle of the pistol and check the clip for ammo. There is a single hollow point bullet in the clip. I could put it into his temple and put him out of his misery for good. It would solve my problems with him and I still am doing the right thing by taking all of this pain from him. I feel like even all of the hatred he has shown towards me isn't deserving of the disgustingly brutal pain he is feeling now.

"Please Derek, just do it. I'm begging you!" He screams, I reach for the gun and wrap my hand around the handle. I pick it up to his head and see my hand is obviously shaking, I know this is the right thing to do but I'm still having trouble getting myself to do it. I take a deep breath and stare directly into his eyes, just then in the reflection of his blood red watering eyes I see the image of my mother, she is bloodied and beaten. She looks like she is at the edge of her life and then I see her mouth say something. The image of my mother's beaten face mouths to me, "think of our family". Just then I fall back and begin trembling, not in fear or guilt but in anger. I drop the gun to the stone and stare into the sky. Gary stops screaming temporarily and calmly says to me "what the fuck are you doing you piece of shit? Pick that gun up and pull the trigger boy, at least be slightly tougher than your piece of shit coward father." I am taken back by his boldness, he is obviously still in terrible pain and he had the audacity to trash my dead father.

I look up to the sky once more and close my eyes. I don't want to put him out of his misery, he deserves to feel the burn forever. I look back to the pistol and it's gone, I look around once more looking for where it could have gone and see the same towel now larger and folded up once more. I rise to my feet and approach the cloth once more and look into it. There in the towel I find a full gallon jug of kerosene, a blowtorch, and a pack of Marlboro blacks, the tools of a champion. I pick up the tools and the the cigarettes and put one in my mouth I begin to walk closer to the once again screaming crying Gary. He stops screaming and looks at me with a scared expression. "Please Derek just kill me, I'm begging you!"

I walk up to him and kneel down next to him. I light the cigarette with the torch and puff on it a few times. I look expressionlessly down at his face, His eyes are leaking red tears of blood now I can see he is in the most pain any human has ever felt, which is exactly what he deserved. I pull another cigarette from the pack, "Open your fucking mouth" I whisper to him. He looks at me, his face filled with fear, his mouth slightly parts open. I slip a cigarette in his mouth and walk back away from him. I slowly pour the can of kerosene in a circle around him. Running the last bit up the center of the circle to his stomach.

I kneel back down to him and smile, placing my hand behind his head. "Smoke them while you have them." I light the torch and point it at his face, lighting the cigarette while burning his face behind it. He screams in pain. I begin to laugh hysterically and stare at him while he cries. "Oh you don't want it? Okay then." I take the cigarette from his mouth and puff it once. "You know what Gary? Me neither." I throw the cigarette off to the side into the circle of kerosene and watch as it begins to light in a perfect circle. Gary kick his legs furiously as he watches the flame make it towards his body. The flame reaches his stomach and I watch as it engulfs his body. He screams and pleas until finally it's over. The flame from his body shoots straight into the air and I'm thrown onto my back. I shut my eyes tightly and cover my face.

Just as I open my eyes I hear a loud banging on my door. "Derek, you need to clean your fucking room it's Sunday." I realize I'm back in my bed and that was Gary at my door. I lean over and see that it's 2 p.m. and I still don't have anything to do. I throw on a pair of shorts and walk out of my room, as I pass Gary I smirk and say sarcastically "Who died and made you king prick?"