the end and the beginning

Ryan stepped out into the warm, sunny day, the air tainted with the scent of death- innocent death. "Fil died, last night; apparently Grandma Pearl found him." None of these names or these people were familiar to Ryan. The voice identified itself as Rizzo Sprayberry. Clio was leaving, and Ryan would be left all alone, to fend for himself. She'd explained to him that she wasn't his emotional life support. The chaotic swarm that engulfed Washington Heights seemed to speak to Ryan. For a split second he felt the pain caused by the club that struck him in the back of his head. The next thing he knew he was at the bottom of an unknown body of water. There was no question in Ryan's mind that the same people who had killed his family were behind this. In the present situation his mind slowed down time long enough for his dying thoughts. Would anyone know that he was gone? Any heart feel pain as a result of his absence? Clio was leaving. She would never know he was gone. What about the red girl, Nicole? "What, the one that you had meaningless sex with?" His mind seemed to argue. No, she would never know he was gone, or care, for that matter. Life had given Ryan a chance, a chance to be loved, but he had pushed away those who could potentially have cared about Ryan; hell, he pushed away those who DID care about him, so that he could focus on how angry he was. Suddenly, time released itself upon Ryan and everything happened at once. Water began to fill his lungs as anger began to yield itself to the sweeping current. Wherever Ryan had been dumped, he had been miraculously placed next to the remains of his car, with only one of the tires ruined by the explosion. Ryan fought against the water and the ropes that bound him to the metal chair keeping him submerged, and managed to extract the air out of the tires and into his lungs. This bought him valuable time that he used to locate a sharp rock with which to free himself. Ryan swam to the shore, released and ready to begin a new life.

Defeated...again.

The deafening silence ended with the creaking sound of the second level door leading to the rest of the building. These were surely the people that Ryan truly wanted, but he would need them to be incapacitated so that he could torture them thoroughly. He instantly threw down a gas bomb that would hide his location and put them all to sleep. He put on his gas mask and patiently waited for the haze he had induced to clear. Unfortunately his previous antics with the chopped up man had alerted them to his existence and had helped them prepare for his arrival; as the haze dissipated a second set of guards, knocked out cold, was revealed. He removed his mask and cast it aside angrily. He knew that they had left this place and would never return. Where were they now? He would have to spend even more time and effort locating them again, and he was hungrier than ever for his revenge. What if he never found them? Ryan found a sledge hammer and beat the remaining living bodies to separate bloody and unrecognizable pulps. Tired and soaked with blood, Ryan began to walk back to his car. Suddenly it exploded in a ball of flame, knocking Ryan back to watch it burn. This was unexpected, but not surprising, though he had thought that they would have rigged the entire building to explode instead. The car had obviously left too much opportunity for him to stay alive. Were they really that stupid? He pulled out his cellphone and tried to call his sister, knowing that she wouldn't pick up. Voicemail. Never picks up the damn phone. In his current bloodied state Ryan was certain that he would be unable to hitch a ride back to Washington Heights. He suddenly remembered the girl from the strip club; the red girl. He had her number. Did she even have a car? Hell, why not? He gave her a call, and she told him that she would "see what she could arrange." Whatever that meant. Almost as soon as he hung up she called him back and said she would be on her way if he gave her some directions. He informed her that she would have to go the wrong way on the exit ramp. "No problem!" She said gleefully. He wondered what her reaction would be to his soaked-with-blood appearance. She finally arrived. It was a nice car, a candy apple Mercedes Benz convertible. He was impressed; either she had a really nice car or she was damn good at stealing them since Mercedes cars are near impossible to hotwire. He got in. "Nice clothes," she said cooly. He decided not to reply. They didn't talk much in that car ride home, and he couldn't help but notice her poor driving abilities. Maybe she was impaired. In fact, after passing a mysterious ice cream truck they almost ran into _. "Get out, I need to ditch this car," she said in her calm voice. So this wasn't her car. He was liking her more and more. He exited the car and went back to apartment 420.

Hate

Ryan glanced at the mysterious black van before embarking on what he hoped would be his final journey. The weather was still overcast, and he wondered if the sun would ever shine again. Once again he performed his signature maneuver to access the freeway, and he was off. He did his best to enjoy his hour long drive, knowing that it could be his last. He only hoped that he would be able to kill every last one of them before he died.
He stopped his car at the cold gray building for the second time and unloaded his rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He fired several rounds at the building and was disappointed with the results when the building remained completely intact and unharmed. At least a guard opened the door to check out what was going on. Ryan lunged towards the guard and silently slit his throat with the curved blade of his knife. The sharp blade cut cleanly through his flesh and sent the contents of his arteries splattering across the cold gray exterior of the building. He then ran inside and pulled out his hand gun. At once gun fire came flying at him from all directions, and he dove under a desk near the front door as a bullet clipped his right ear. This was the lobby of the building, with a desk at the front and two spiral staircases leading up to a door which led to the rest of the building, where they were. Ryan heard the footsteps of what sounded like five people coming at him all at once. He leaped up and threw the desk in the general direction of the noise and immediately aimed 5 deft and silent shots at each of them. Three were killed and two were wounded. Coincidentally, Ryan had two hands, which he used to simultaneously throw two throwing stars by a snap of the wrist at their throats, landing perfect blows in both and stopping them dead in their tracks. Suddenly it was deafeningly silent, until Ryan heard the door creak open...

After a long day's work

After a long, hard day's work Ryan decided to take himself on an excursion to the local strip club owned by Big Rick. There he relaxed in the smoky air admiring the young and pretty hispanic woman working the pole. She was of a medium height with long, dark brown hair. For some reason that Ryan couldn't place, she didn't seem like she belonged there. Suddenly Ryan realized that the same chick he passed in the bar was there in the club. He worried that she would get the wrong impression of him in that place. But what was she doing there? Her body looked so perfectly shaped. Ryan decided that such a perfect figure should not go unacknowledged. He was still so angry he was worried it might interfere with any relationships he might try to forge. Oh well, he would try anyway.

This is NOW

He was finally ready to put his plan into action, but what was ready anyway? Sure, he had meticulously performed everything on his to do list; he tried to make everything perfect, but was he really ready to begin? His mind went back to his family. Yes. He was ready. He stepped out into the icy cold droplets of rain splashing onto the corner of Bucher Drive and Baker Street. The weather was perfectly ominous for what Ryan was about to do. He stepped into his car and drove the wrong way onto the off ramp in order to access the highway, and immediately accelerated to 120 miles an hour so he could reach his destination both quickly and dangerously. His eyes snapped to the blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. Ryan immediately pulled a lever that snapped a shield over his license plate so that he could not be identified. Hopefully they had not already run the number. He pulled over to the side of the highway and waited for the police car to slow to a halt behind him. Immediately he threw his car into reverse and rammed the car with the back of his own. Hopefully he hadn't seriously injured them, although if they would do their damn job his family would still be alive. There was no time to find out. He shifted back into first gear and pealed away as quickly as the car would take him. Finally he had reached his destination. It was a plain concrete building, cold and gray, an inconspicuous object that most people would pass without a second thought. But Ryan knew it for what it really was. It wasn't time to take them down just yet. He would need different weather than this, even if it did fit the situation perfectly. He wanted to fuck with their minds first. He had dug up the remains of the thug he had killed, and chopped him into pieces of various shapes and sizes. After sniffing the decaying flesh with delight, Ryan used a homemade launcher to distributed the pieces as evenly as possible over the property. If they had been wondering where he was, now they would find him. Ryan laughed maniacally to himself and drove away into the darkening sky.

a man, a plan, a bar

Ryan awoke to the crisp breeze that wrapped itself around his cold, chiseled body. He had grown accustomed to the broken window of apartment 420, and it was a convenient way to be woken up. After all, he could fix it, if he wanted to, but what the hell did he care anyway? Besides, an alarm clock might disturb the neighbors through the thin walls of Washington Heights, which would attract too much attention. He moved to his closet and extracted a new wrinkled black t-shirt before leaving the apartment. Headaches from hangovers no longer bothered or mattered to Ryan, but he figured he’d go have a hair of the dog at the bar to prevent distraction during the day. Screw the elevator; the piece of shit takes too long. Stairs would be fine. On the way down, Ryan passed a few indistinct faces; he was too focused on the day ahead to concern himself with others, though they seemed to pause expectantly as he descended towards the door. At last he made it outside. He eyed his 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500 and decided he would drive to the bar, in spite of the fact that it was only a few yards away from where he was standing. He lost himself in the beautiful growl the big-block V8 emanated. As soon as he placed his foot on the accelerator he was already at the bar. As he walked in, his face became magnetically attracted to the stunning figure walking the opposite direction. The rest of the time he was there, all he could think about was red…

Now that Ryan was done with his drinks, he was ready to begin. He took the car to the abandoned lot behind the Last Resort Thrift Store and began his work with the scrap metal he had stored behind the dumpster. After hours of hard work, the car was a vision of pure beauty. The car was in every way reinforced (which did put an unfortunate dent in the car’s horsepower) and there were weapons hidden in every crevice imaginable. Also, the car could, at the touch of a button, explode in the case of an extreme emergency that Ryan hoped would never come. In the absence of his human family, Ryan seemed to have made one out of the cold and unfeeling machinery that he now poured his misplaced love into. Ryan would probably be completely insane if it weren’t for his sister Clio. He wondered what would happen if she knew everything, or much of anything that was going on with Ryan for that matter. Hopefully she would never find out, but the fact was that it was inevitable that she would. He would worry about this when the time came. He had other more important matters to concern himself with at the moment. Through his sources he had managed to find an address. He thought about that source, one of their lowlife thugs who they had most likely hired. He recognized the face, and knew exactly what to do with him. After strapping the man to a table and grating his skin off, Ryan chopped his legs off and threw him into a child-size grave in the grave yard down Barton Street, while he was still breathing. Ryan then forcibly shoved a gravestone into the dirt and through his neck, to make sure that he never came back. He knew with further examination the plan would all come together. He could already feel the saw blade cutting into their flesh, smell the blood pouring out of them. His heart pounded with rage. They will pay.

Ryan Ford//Apartment 420

The world was blurry, but he was there. The sun shone brightly as the young and naive Ryan walked with his family along the pristinely white beach. Life had its ups and downs for Ryan, but he felt like he had finally made it; he'd finally achieved true happiness with his wife and his only son, James. "I am the luckiest guy in the world" he told his wife. She smiled at him while her eyes glistened in the sunlight. She was beautiful. They kissed. James ran ahead with the new kite he had made. Ryan put his arm around her as they continued their stroll. "7 years old," Ryan said wistfully. His wife continued to smile. Ryan suddenly noticed something flying out of the corner of his eye. The kite was flying away, no longer under the grip of its owner. "James?" Ryan yelled. No reply. "James?! JAMES?" Ryan felt his stomach twist with panic. He ran as fast as he could..."

Ryan awoke to the dingy, small room, apartment 420, reeking of sweat, his thin sheets wet with perspiration. He sobbed briefly, and remembered the bottle of whisky he kept within arms length at all times. He resisted momentarily before giving in and taking a shot. The alcohol slid warmly down his throat, on its way to numbing his soul, Ryan hoped. He wondered if the nightmares would ever stop, if the guilt would ever become bearable. One thing was certain: he would never stop thinking about that day, not until he died, after he killed them all. He looked around the discolored wall at the copious supply of sharp cutting tools he now owned. He loved those tools. They were the only things he could trust. The tools would always be there to help him, and they would never die; they were immortal, and they would help Ryan find vengeance. He knew it wouldn't make him feel any better, to kill them, but he wanted them dead; he wanted to watch them suffer the most horrific and agonizing end his mind could create. He stripped himself of his plain black t-shirt and worn black jeans and turned on the shower. Ryan still had his sister to worry about. She was the only thing he had left. At least his parents had died happily, maybe even peacefully. Peace... Ryan pondered the word, so foreign to his life. He went over the to-do list for the following day in his mind as he felt the cheap showerhead spray cold water on his body. Get parts for the car, find more areas to conceal weapons in his apartment, add to his arsenal of explosives, and map out the location of the people who killed his family. He knew that he was crazy, but was he still crazy if he knew it? Hopefully he had thus far been able to muster a somewhat believable facade of sanity, though in a place like this it wouldn't much matter. Ryan wanted to know everything about them. He knew if he posed as the right people and used his laptop hidden between the mattresses to hack into their computer he could get the knowledge he wanted. Ryan couldn't stop thinking about it. He needed to turn his mind off; perpetual rage was exhausting. He downed more whiskey, as much as he could take, tore the stained sheets from his bed, and laid down on the cold mattress until sleep returned.