Ok, so this one is a pretty wild ride from start to finish. I am gonna switch around names and locations and whatnot because the last thing I need is someone to be doxxed over this.
Skip down to the second time skip to get to the juicy part, the first half is just character building
Anyways:
It began when I was in the 8th grade. I just moved from Seoul, South Korea, My father was a diplomat and a fighter pilot. I knew absolutely no one at the middleschool in a small Texas town. I had only been living there for about a month before school started, I remember it was a few days after my 13th birthday. I was eating lunch by myself, I pick a nice empty table because I figured it would force people to sit next to me. I'm a pretty social person these days.. back then I wasn't. Somewhere between my junior and senior year I became what my mother referred to as a "social butterfly".
Back then I was prone to sitting alone, reading books and being bullied. I was doing 2 of the 3 when I was approached by two kids, one in an Iron Maiden T-shirt and the other in a Blink 182. Lets call them Allen and Brett. Brett, in the Blink182 T-shirt, was about my size but a little chunkier. He was a football player, but it was his punk rock attitude that defined him. Allen was in the maiden shirt, he was of indian descent (Native American), a guitar player and all around a friendly and intelligent guy. He was the first to talk to me:
"Hey man is it ok if we sit here?"
"Yeah guys, of course. I'm hogging this whole table" I responded. There were 7 empty chairs at the octagon shaped table I was reading at. The two boys sat next to me.
"I'm Allen, and this is Brett." A had said to me. We talked about music, we talked about girls. You know, the normal 8th grader stuff. In no time we were fast friends, and not just school friends but they invited me over to play Tekken, and backyard football. We rode our bikes around to 7/11 and bought slurpees and disgusting energy drinks, because it was 2004 after all. Years passed and though we all changed in our own ways we remained good friends, all 3 of us. Brett was a bit of a punk rocker, but Allen and I became what I to this day consider brothers.
Fast forward about 10 years. New city, same friends.
I had been going through some tough times, I was a painkiller addict since I left for college. I was successful in a maintenance program at this time however, I had 6 months of clean time under my belt. Allen and I still lived together, as we had since we left for college after graduating in '10. I hadn't seen Brett in probably two years, and the last I had heard of him he wasn't doing so well. A lot of people from my home town are involved in the crystal meth trade, he wasn't an exception. It destroyed his life, and to make things worse he was diagnosed with cancer. I was happy to hear from him out of the blue one day.
"Hey M, whats up man? I'm in Dallas and I thought we should hang out." Brett said over the phone.
Of course I accepted. He was an old friend? What could go wrong? Well... A lot... Quickly. That night after hanging out I had left to go see a female friend of mine. Staying the night I left my house vulnerable to being robbed... and that it was. About 1,000 dollars in money and property was stolen from me. A lot of it wasn't mine, I was storing a few friends musical equipment at the time at my place. I knew it was Brett though, I actually heard through a friend that it was him, and after calling him fruitlessly for a few days I just gave up on it. Brett however took it very personally.
This is where the story gets juicy.
So a few nights later I came home from the bar at 2 A.M. I was drunk. I smoked some weed and immediately passed out on my bed with my boots on. I have had issues with being robbed before because I don't live in the nicest area, but never while I was at home. I slept with a sheathed knife under my pillow, it was a KABAR combat knife given to me by my then girlfriend. It was fuckin' huge, like the knives they chop peoples heads off with in ISIS terror videos.
Anyways I awoke to a loud crash and my dog freaking the fuck out. A large man (not large-tall but large-thick, i now know over 300 pounds thick), in a black ski mask and yellow bandanna over his face entered my home through my back door, screaming bloody murder. I was getting out of bed when I felt two hands wrapped in latex disposable gloves around my throat. It wasn't the standard UFC choke, he had his thumbs on my windpipe and was able to do some serious damage if he wanted. The man was screaming at me unintelligibly and I was home alone. My dog was scared shitless cowering in the living room.
I have never been so scared in my life. There was a madman on top of me, holding the life from returning to my body. I saw a sick pleasure in his eyes, once I saw that I felt that I surely was going to die to some wannabe serial killer. I wanted so badly to grab the large combat knife behind me, and at one point I touched it with my hands. The attacker saw me searching and then grabbed my phone off of the bed I was being strangled on. I could still breathe through his grip, but it was as if fear had filled my lungs like that expanding foam they use to insulate houses. I was grabbing at his hands to stop him, and got a hold of one of his thumbs, tearing the latex glove off of his fingers, though it still hung loosely around his wrist. I saw his prison stick and poke hand tattoos and recognized who it was...
Brett came here to kill me
My mind raced.
"Brett? What the fuc--" He cut me off.
"If you fuckin tell anyone I'm here or scream I'll cut you and send pictures of your body to your mother." He sobbed through tears as he removed the mask from his face but kept it on beanie-style.
What an awful thing for someone to say to you. In the moment I had no idea what was going on but I believe he had a mental breakdown. He knew I also had drug problems and related to me, and in the few days I saw him I showed him a lot of compassion. Somehow in his drugged out mind he twisted me into some kind of bad guy. He stole my rent money and my friends music gear, he admits to it later. I still don't understand why me, but I do realize that he was having a mental health crisis and needed help.
He pulled a pocket knife from out of thin air it seems, a gruesome magic trick. I hoped there wasn't much left up his sleeve, I could only take so much. However I felt safer knowing it was my old friend behind those manic eyes. He released me from his death grip, and my lungs drank the air like I was a drinking water after 40 days in the desert. We were both standing at this time and we talked him occasionally punctuating his thoughts by scooping at the air in front of my nose with his knife. It was one hell of a roller coaster conversation.
He told me about how he thinks he got aids from a dirty needle, how hepatitis C was definitely flowing through him, how he gave up on treatment and how he tried to shoot himself a few nights before. He started to lose coherence as he began to talk about how he regained some repressed childhood memories; I remember him talking about how is step father killed his puppy when he was a kid and was too afraid to tell anyone. He began to talk about being molested as a kid. This took him over the edge again.
"Put that away man lets just talk" I tried reasoning with him. "Everything is going to be ok, I'm not gonna call the cops or tell anyone. Just put the knife down."
He responded by sticking the blade right up in my face. It was a pocket knife but it was no joke, it was about 3.5 inches long and partially serrated. It looked sharp.
"I don't want to go on. I'm sorry to bring you into this. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to end it all here." He said.
Before I could do anything he to the knife and started hacking on his wrists, first the left and then the right, horizontally. I've heard this is the "cry for attention" way to slice your wrists, and that you should cut the artery longways if you are trying to die. However, I had no doubt in my mind that Brett was trying to die. I smelled alcohol on him the minute he entered my room, but once the blood started pouring from him I could smell it worse, mixed with something else. I can still smell it sometimes. It smelled like one last attempt to solve a lifelong problem.
I knew I had to do something or my friend was going to die. But he minutes ago had just told me he was HIV positive. I'm no saint, I've used needles and had unprotected sex but I knew for a fact I had neither HIV or HEPC and I really didn't want either, but I couldn't just stand there. I grabbed his left wrist, the one holding the knife and spun myself beside him. One squeeze and he dropped the knife, which I kicked across the floor. He fell to his knees pretty quickly and started sobbing. He was apologizing and saying he didn't know what happened to him, he just went into a blind rage after drinking his nightly pint of plastic bottle vodka.
I comforted him some while I grabbed two bath sized towels. Using gaffers stage tape I taped the towels to his wrists as tightly as I could. There was so much more blood than I would have thought. Maybe my mind just has me remembering it wrong but he was drunk and was bleeding like a stuck pig. It was all over my hands, I had a pool at my floor. But I had to get him home, or to a hospital. I honestly just wanted him to leave though. I pretended like I was just getting us beers and I hid the knife deep in the fridge. We drank a beer and then he left.
I called my mom crying. It was 4:30 AM. She told me to bleach EVERYTHING, so I did. I was clean but I didn't feel clean, I felt awful. I was experiencing PTSD. For the first time in a long time I called a number I had blocked. It was my dope dealers number. I laid on the floor of a trap house that night, I remember there being needles on the floor that I had to sweep up to claim a spot to sleep. It wasn't the hamtons but at least it didn't have my childhood friends blood pooling near my bed or a killer standing over me.
I felt safer being at a place with a gun and people to protect me. They were very caring to me that night. They gave me some H and some valium to calm my nerves because I wouldn't stop shaking, and then we laid there and watched the XFiles together until the morning came and I could call Bretts mother to get him help. He was 5150'd and went to a hospital. He still writes me letters, and I want to write him back. But honestly, I'm afraid to. Does that make me a bad person? I want him to get better, I just don't think I can help anymore.
Thanks for reading. This is a true story, a lot truer than I meant for it to get. I hope that everyone reading enjoys and if you would please leave some constructive criticism. I'd love to write a book someday about all the crazy things that have happened to me in the past 10 years and this is definitely a chapter or two. Anyways thanks and enjoy!