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The street lights were a stark contrast to the pitch black sky outside. It must have been 1 or 2 AM; exactly how late, Keith hadn’t known for a long while. His gaze was fixed onto the small building outside of his office, the one that overlooked the entire city. It was a miracle that the restaurant could even be seen from this height. That was a specific request Keith held when being questioned about the structure of his label’s headquarters. He wanted to see everything. Especially the place he had his eye on at the moment.
It was dim inside, the “Closed” sign illuminating the dark space outside. The Revolver was a place for the outcasts, as it liked to brand itself. Not too run-down, but not nice enough for a man like him to show up regularly. However, it wasn’t exactly the building itself that was keeping him so entranced—it was the knowledge of who was inside of it.
Jealousy was always something that came easily to Keith Jurvek. He was unsure where it had started from, but he knew better than anyone how intensely it had taken over his being when Aaron was brought into the picture. It seemed almost pathetic for a person like him to be so infuriated by someone seven years younger than him, but it seemed that this was the only thing he couldn’t hold back his feelings about. Everything Aaron had, Keith wanted. That wouldn’t have been enough. He needed to be the emotionless, arrogant, pathetic man Aaron was and always had been. Once he had achieved this, his life would finally feel normal. Complete. He had to be above, always. Someone like HIM couldn’t take his place. It was the thing Keith feared above all. It wouldn’t have been fair.
A sudden idea came to Keith, and before he knew it he had finally pulled his gaze away from The Revolver. Walking over to his desk, he kneeled down to look through his filing cabinet. A small pad of paper had been carefully placed on top of it; a key barely big enough to fit between the pages fell out as Keith flipped through it. Taking the key, he shoved it into the keyhole of the drawers, turning it and opening the top one faster than he should have.
Meeting his expectations, a hand-sized booklet waited at the very top of the stack of papers, most which were labeled things like “Crossroads Experiment #1” and “An Analysis of a Jack In”. The obsessive nature of his work would have scared anyone else who came in contact with it, which was why it was secured with his hidden key. The booklet, small print reading “Cross Roads” at the top of it, was sharply grabbed by Keith. He flipped through it like a man on a mission, stopping as he reached the page he was looking for. The empty room felt tense, like you could cut the air with a knife. It would have been unusual in almost any other setting; for Keith, this might have well been any other day.
A noise cut through the silence of the room: quiet, indecipherable words. Keith had started muttering under his breath. By the sound of it, it wasn’t English, but it was very hard to tell because of how quiet it had started out. As he kept rambling, a soft glow came from the small booklet he held. No one else could have seen it, especially not from this height. A sharp piercing noise overcame Keith’s mind and it felt as if his head was going to explode, but he kept reading. He quickly became more confident as he saw his words were working; his voice was getting louder, his hand motions more exaggerated.
The glow became close to blinding as Keith practically yelled the last word of whatever he was reading. He became completely silent, hardly bothering to breathe. The light, the noise in his head, all of these outside factors couldn’t tear his thoughts away from what he knew was bound to happen next. He was the one who had documented this entire process, after all. It was going to work. It HAD to.
After a few minutes that felt more like hours, the white light began to taper off. Keith could feel his pulse spike; this was it. This was going to be the moment that he finally proved himself—better than his colleagues, better than his employees, and better than his damned cousin. Well, he was always better than Aaron, but now he could finally see it. His feeble brain could now understand that he was always destined to lose. He was always destined to be the worst, the one no one would ever choose.
The light was gone by now. Yet, nothing had changed. Now Keith just had a headache, and a very confused expression as he looked around his office. The book was still in his hands, open to the same page. Unlike any of these other rituals he had observed before, nothing had changed on the pages. There was supposed to be a new mark there; nothing. Was the result just… delayed? What was going on?
Then he remembered.
Keith’s eyes widened in pure rage. Throwing the book to the ground, he frantically looked around for anything that could have been the result of his words and hard work. Still nothing. He couldn’t believe it. In all his years studying the Crossroads phenomena, it had never just… not worked like this. It seemed like something out of a dream; or better yet, a nightmare. All of this time wasted! It seemed like for him it would work instantly, but instead it was not working at all. It wasn’t fair. Nothing ever was for a man of his status.
Grabbing a lighter from the same drawer, he flicked it on a few times. Keith held the light up to his face and, in a shaky motion, lit the “Cross Roads” book on fire. The flame started at the corner of one of the pages, but quickly spread throughout the entire thing. In seconds the entire manual was nothing but ash on the floor of JvekREC’s top office. Everything that so many of them had worked for to find and study was no more. Keith stood above the hot ash, breathing heavy yet again. So many turns in a night couldn’t have been good for him, but that was the least of his concerns. His plan–foolproof as it was–had failed.
Turning towards the large window yet again, he stared out at The Revolver. Although there was hardly any light before, there was even less now, and the “Closed” sign had been completely turned off. He didn’t notice it at first, but it was now raining, a hard downpour that added to the almost hopeless atmosphere in the building. It was like God was laughing down at poor Keith, mocking him for what he couldn’t get right. Attempting to make it as miserable as possible to make him feel even more terrible and jealous. Jealous of that man who by now might have realized what he had been given. A path he never would have chosen otherwise, but was now forced into by his greedy, envious cousin. But he more likely hadn’t noticed yet—that idiot couldn’t understand something unless it was proven with an absurd amount of research. It was a miracle that he had even made it this far in life.
Before Keith could think any further, the window was broken. Shattered instantly by the force of a punch from his own hand. His rage couldn’t be contained anymore. The longer he thought about it, the more regretful and idiotic he felt. Something had to have been done about it; whether this was the best course of action was debatable. His hand was now extremely bloody, with a few glass shards of various sizes poking out of his skin. The pain would’ve been extremely bad to any other person who had just done what he did, but it was like he was numb. The rain pelted on his clothes and uncovered skin, but he didn’t notice that either. He didn’t notice the shards everywhere, or the wind blowing at him, or the noise of distant late-night drivers. Nothing.
All he could think about was his mistake. The one thing he promised himself not to do, and now here it was, done. Keith would’ve loved to blame Aaron in this situation, but the only person to blame was himself. The fool at a carnival, a jester to be laughed at. A failure.
Once again, he started thinking. The Revolver looked almost uncanny with the lights off, much different than it usually did. Usually it was lively with “freaks” going in and out, such as his office was. Maybe it was a blessing that nobody was around to see the contradictory actions of the head of the biggest record company at the moment. It was good that no one would see how fast Keith’s mind traveled, how desperate he was for a solution to his own problem.
His cousin would be dead by the end of the month, if not sooner. Nothing would keep him from his destiny.