Johny Vegas
I remember that night with brutal clarity. We had argued—though now, in the shadowed corners of memory, I cannot recall why. I stood on the balustrade in nothing but my nightgown, trembling, heart hammering against my ribs. The narrow veranda felt impossibly exposed. Neighbors loomed like silent witnesses, and I clung to the hope that if he struck me, someone might intervene.
He seized my phone and hurled it into the darkness. It shattered two floors below, shards scattering like tiny stars. Pain and fear coursed through me, but he did not hesitate. He tried to drag me back inside. I gripped every pillar, scraped my nails across cold stone, my mind screaming that behind closed doors, I was defenseless. His strength was overwhelming. He forced me into the apartment.
At the doorway, I slipped. My head struck the floor, pain lancing through my skull, stars exploding behind my eyes. He did not pause. He handed me a bag of frozen vegetables—a cruel, inadequate salve. No apology, no hesitation. Just the continuation of control.
Moments later, frantic knocking erupted at the door. Voices urgent, sharp, unyielding:
“Open up, you bastard! We saw everything! Open it, or we’ll break it down!”
Two young men, half-dressed from sleep, had been drawn by my cries. Jack froze, torn, eyes darting between the door and us. After a tense pause, he opened it. Behind the threshold, they stood, breath ragged, determined. One immediately wrapped me in a protective embrace, guiding me toward safety. The other confronted Jack without flinching.
“We called the police. Don’t you dare touch her again,” he said.
Jack muttered that we had only argued, but they did not falter. Minutes later, the police arrived, a fragile barrier between law and chaos. Jack remained technically untouchable, yet I understood: the danger had not vanished.
I thanked the boys, voice shaking, gratitude mingled with lingering fear. Without a phone, I was stranded. One of them invited me over to the place he shared with his girlfriend, Lynn. There, in the calm of her presence, I found a fleeting sense of safety—a fragile ember of security in a night stretched with terror.
But Jack returned. That night, he waited outside my door, relentless. Morning brought no reprieve. He confronted me again, demanding what I could not give. His persistence eroded my will, threading insidiously into every thought. I felt trapped in a web he had spun, each strand tightening, every escape route blocked.
Then there was Johny—Johny Vegas, as Jack mockingly named him. Fragile, undernourished, adrift in his own world, yet tender at heart. He smoked weed, perhaps used harder drugs, though I never confirmed. His apartment, a few blocks away, became a sanctuary of sorts. He spoke often of ghosts—unseen presences that trailed him, shifting objects when no one was near, whispering warnings in the dead of night. One, he said, appeared more than the others: a man who had taken his own life in the 1930s, wandering restlessly through his apartment as if time itself had never moved on. I believed a fraction, dismissed the rest, yet his conviction was unsettling, too vivid to ignore. One evening we even tried to catch proof, setting up a crude EVP recording. When we played it back, a strange, distorted voice rasped through the speaker—faint but unmistakable. For a moment, the air thickened with dread, the room holding its breath. Still, despite the eerie stories and shadows, Johnny’s quiet presence offered me refuge, a strange kind of safety amid everything else unraveling around me.
One night, Jack, Johny, and I went to Med’s Bar on Tullow Street. Johny and I shared a quiet fascination with the supernatural and with true crime—the strange, shadowy corners of life that most people preferred to ignore. We could spend hours swapping theories, retelling stories of infamous cases, or debating whether spirits lingered after death. Jack never engaged, but Johny listened with an intensity that made me feel, for once, less alone in my curiosities.
That night, our talk turned lighter, drifting into girls and relationships. Johny, shy and uncertain, asked questions, and I offered him advice—gentle, teasing, the way an older sister might. I laughed, encouraging him, telling him not to overthink, that kindness and honesty mattered more than bravado. But before the words could even settle, Jack erupted, his face twisted with sudden rage. He snatched up his glass and flung the half-drunk beer into my lap, drenching me in front of everyone, humiliation burning through me as sharply as the cold liquid.
Elaine, the bar owner, rushed over, her voice firm, unyielding, expelling us without hesitation. Moments later, I stood outside in the rain, tears mingling with the downpour, my sobs muffled by the night. It was Johny’s quiet empathy, Lynn’s steady kindness, that became fragile threads holding me together in those moments, keeping me from breaking entirely.
Even under the oppressive weight of that darkness, a quiet, unwavering fire grew within me. Strength I had not known, courage I had not recognized, began to assert itself. The terror was real. The threat was ongoing. But step by trembling step, I rose from the shadow, fragile yet unbroken, discovering that survival itself could be a kind of triumph.
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