I was home from college for the summer and was sitting home watching my two younger brothers for two weeks while my parents went on vacation. I was 19 that year and my brothers were 17 and 16.
I was always your typical bad boy. It was a wonder I even got into college, but I did and I was having a blast. I joined a fraternity my Freshman year and was soon becoming the party king of campus. My brothers were still in high school and it seems they were both following the same path I did. The older of the two, Mike, was a skater punk and the younger one, Chris, was a suburban gangsta. If you had to type me, I guess you could call me a "biker." I was about 6'2", 215 pounds of muscle with dark hair and green eyes.
On the fifth day my parents were gone, the three of us were just lounging around in the living room watching movies. I had picked up a case of beer for the three of us and we had knocked back about half of it. I was dressed in my usual style: black leather biker boots, jeans, belt with Harley-Davidson buckle, a chain wallet, a Yankees T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and a blue bandana on my head. I had a neatly trimmed goatee, a gold hoop earring in my left ear and several tattoos on my arms and upper back.
Mike was a dirty blonde with blue eyes and had a patch of hair on his chin and two gold hoop earrings in his left ear. He was shorter than me, 6'0", and weighed about 170 pounds. He wasn't built like I was, but he was wiry strong. He wore work boots, baggy camouflage cargo pants, a chain wallet, a black hoodie and a backwards, black baseball cap. Both his hat and hoodie has the same skateboard company logo on them.
Chris, who had dark hair and green eyes like me, was the shortest of us at 5'10", but weighed 200 pounds and was almost as built as me. He was wearing work boots, baggy jeans with his boxers showing, a blue Fubu jersey and a blue nylon do-rag underneath a Yankees cap tilted to the left. He was clean-shaven but had a hoop earring in each ear.
At around 11:15 p.m. I got up and headed to the bathroom. When I was done I went out to the back porch to smoke a cigarette. Mike was already out on the back porch, sitting in one of the lounge chairs with a pack of Marlboros on the armrest.
"You smoke now?" I asked while lighting up my own Marlboro.
"Yeah," he said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Since last year. What, you gonna tell? Mom and Dad already know."
"I don't care," I said. "Fuck, I was 15 when I started."
Just then I thought I heard something in the living room. No, it was just the movie. Mike and I finished our cigarettes and then went back inside. When we got back to the living room, Mike and I got a big shock. The coffee table had been moved away and Chris was kneeling on the floor with his hands locked behind his head. Behind him, a guy all in black with a ski mask was holding a gun to his head. Before either of us could react, Mike and I each felt a gun pressed into our backs. Our hands went up immediately.
"Is that all of them?" the guy behind Chris asked.
"Yes," Chris quickly said.
"Good," the man said. "Now down on your stomach."
Chris lay down on his stomach and locked his fingers behind his head.
"You two, over here," the man said.
After a slight poke from the guns in our backs, Mike and I slowly walked over. The man held his gun on Chris while his unseen accomplices frisked Mike and me. They took our wallets, keys, cigarettes and lighters, my knife and a bag of weed Mike had.
"All right, down on the floor like him," the man said.
Mike and I grudgingly complied and when we were down the man reached behind the couch and grabbed a black duffel bag. He opened it and pulled out a pile of rope and a bunch of red bandanas. He threw the stuff on the couch and told Chris, "OK wigger boy, slowly put your hands behind your back."
Next chapter