Ironically, this was the place I first began thinking I was safe. In the comfort of my friend’s basement, continuously playing video games until we couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. I can’t keep my eyes open now either. But that’s for a totally different reason.

There’s currently three open wounds on my face, bleeding onto my clothes. The scent of the deceased lingers in the air, and I face the fact that this house no longer has three occupants. That number decreased about 30 minutes ago, but I must’ve been knocked out then. Painfully, I turn my body to face the side wall, and confirm my thoughts, seeing the mutilated body of Jasper.

Soon enough, footsteps begin to echo from the wooden stairs leading to my place of capture, and even though I know it can’t be, I still pray it’s someone here to rescue me. However, the masked face stands before me, and I know my fate lies in his hands- he’s going to kill me any second now.

Pleadingly, my mind forced me to beg, asking for my life.

“Please, you have to let me go. Please. Please! I’m begging you, let me go!”

His head tilts to the side, as if mocking my attempt of survival. Then, the room fills with shrill laughter sending shivers down my spine and forming goosebumps all over my body.

“You think this is funny? Capturing someone just to see them beg before you murder them?”

I realise now that this was my mistake. Provoking the attacker. The one who left me here to rot.

Suddenly, he starts charging towards me, frantically waving his knife around, and I know I’ve crossed the line.

“Please, stop, please! Stop! I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me!”

He stops, the knife centimetres away from my throat.

“Please, I’ll do anything. I can get you money, do you want money? Or I can give you something else, something else you want, what do you want? Please! Please tell me what you want, I’ll do anything!”

Five minutes. It seems like a long time, but when you’re begging for your life in the basement of your dead friend’s house, it’s much less shorter than you think. Five minutes was how long I had been begging for my life, before the psychopath finally spoke.

“I only want one thing from you. Not money, not gifts or trades or things I don’t need. The only thing I want from you, is for you to die.”

And that’s when he stabbed me in the abdomen, leaving me to bleed out, next to my dead friend, covered in dark red blood.