The tunnel was wide and tall, its cracked concrete walls marked with faded graffiti and the algae tinted lights flickering and fading, its sparks disappearing into the air as it flies from the semi-translucent lights and into the humid air. Under the lights, his faded mint hair looked paler, whiter, more lifeless as it shone dully. He was well aware of how many texts and missed calls he was receiving as well as the amount of people who were looking for him, but he had turned his phone off a long time ago. He had stopped thinking of their short, persistent texts and focused on the aches of his heels, how his arms felt sticky in his jacket and how his eyes were puffy and red from soaking them in his tears.

The envelope in his jacket pocket felt heavier as it beat against his thigh with each step he took, as if it were urging him to stop, to turn around and never come back. But it was his loyalty to his parents that forced his footsteps to persist. It took years for him to save that much money, years of shoving away erted, old bosses and drinking gallons of coffee just to keep all his scholarships and selling those precious songs –pieces of his fragile soul- to undeserving companies just to be able to fork up so much. He was done with selling himself.

He stopped at the junction, standing in the middle of four pathways with identical grey walls and faded spray paint. There, he waited, waited until a loud engine’s roar collides against the walls, echoes of roars merging into one loud scream of thunder. In a second, he is surrounded by motorcycles and masked figures clothed in black.

The engines growled.

He stands frozen.

One of them approaches him on foot.

He is suddenly aware of the weight of the envelope again.

The clothed man holds his hand out silently; even his hands are gloved with black. Numb hands reach into his jacket pockets to remove the crumpled envelope. He doesn’t even feel the man snatch it from his bony fingers until he feels his arm burning and he realizes that his arm was still stretched out toward the man. He watched the man tear open the envelope- its wrinkled paper with rough spots and sore glue- and fanned the bills out in front of him to count the amount.

He knew that the money was enough; more than enough, but that didn’t stop his heart from rattling inside his chest.

The man finally stopped and slipped the money back into the envelope, the large stack disappearing into his coat.

Relief was the only emotion that run through his body, freedom was what came after.

Then pain.

Then confusion.

Then suffocation.

And all that was left for his eyes to see, were the flashing lights behind the black cloth on his head, his body being dumped onto what felt like leather seats; and then the sickening feeling of unconsciousness.