Read Online Flesh Ravenous (Book 1) by James M. Gabagat - Free Book Online

sniffled. “You mean seppuku ?”
    “Yeah, seppuku ,” said Lawrence.
    Charlene rolled her eyes. “God, you two are such nerds.”
    For the first time, Lawrence felt hatred toward his best friend. “Tristan just seppuku yourself, okay? If all you’re gonna do is give up and die, then make it easy and quick and just fucking stab yourself.”
    More tears poured out of Tristan. He cried like a little bitch.

 
    It’s in the Past Now
     
     
    Lawrence
     
    When I was a kid, I was happy. Stupidly happy, yet happy nonetheless. I believed a lot in luck…
    As a kid, my older brothers thought I was a nuisance and a would-be homo, so I played by myself a lot.
    I had this obsession with finding “treasures” around my yard. I’d find nickels and pennies, bottle caps, paper clips, and foil gum wrappers lying around on the dirt. Anything that was shiny qualified as a treasure to me. Every time I found something shiny, I’d say to myself, “It’s my lucky day.”
    One day, I found a small gleaming object in the weeds. It was green and shiny. It might’ve been an emerald or a jade, or one of those gems with weird names. I was a five-year-old at the time, and when I saw that gem, my first thought was, “Wow! I’m gonna be rich! I’m gonna be a zillionaire! My family will be happy with what I found! My family will finally like me.”
    Hahahaha…I was a lonely kid. I was lonely before I even knew what the word “lonely” meant.
    I remembered how beautiful that green, shiny thing was, and how it sparkled in the sunlight. I went over to pick it up…
    The fucking small, green, shiny thing stabbed me in the thumb. As it turned out, it was a glass shard from a busted beer bottle. I screamed and cried, and all my hopes of becoming a zillionaire vanished in an instant. My dad went over to me and said…
    “What the hell are you crying about? Only faggots cry.”
    I replied, “I thought I found a gem with a weird name. I thought I’d become a zillionaire. I thought it was my lucky day again.”
    “That’s a load of shit, Lawrence. There’s no such thing as luck. If there were, it’s not gonna be lying out in the dirt. A person has to fight and suffer for their luck, they have to be brave enough to take what they want, and not be a crybaby like you. Do you understand? Yeah, you thought it was your “lucky day,” and that way of thinking bit your ass. Now stop fucking crying!”
    Then my dad smacked me around for being a “little faggot.” You can’t smack a five-year-old around to make him stop crying—the kid’s only gonna cry more. That man was a bit illogical. Yeah, definitely illogical.
    That was the only useful advice my dad gave me. A person has to fight.
    Since that beer bottle shard in the thumb incident, I stopped searching for treasure, and “luck” merely became a word, a very stupid word. I stopped believing in luck. I stopped believing in a lot of things.
    My housemates and I say the word “luck” quite often. But “luck” just means, glad to not be dead.
    We’re not dead, but I know we will be soon if we keep waiting for luck.
    This house isn’t safe.

 
    5
    Spanking it Doesn’t Help
     
     
    Lawrence
     
    Lawrence awoke to the chilled air of Thanksgiving morning. The rains went on and off for three days, no doubt it was a storm. Though it never snowed in the California Bay Area, the fall and winter seasons were still cruel and frosty. The house’s heater was unusable, as was the living room fireplace, seeing that there weren’t any logs or long branches lying around. Helena had once suggested burning pieces of cardboard in there, but no one in the house wanted to risk a fire hazard.
    It was probably seven or eight a.m. when Lawrence decided to push aside three layers of blanket and lift himself off from the family room couch. Usually he slept until eleven, but on this day, his housemates seemed to be in good spirits. Half of them were already up and in the kitchen, greeting one another with