Sugar Valley (Hollywood's Darkest Secret) (94 page)

“Well, the guy looks like every other person
from this height, it’s a cheap lens. Listen, I’m gonna shoot
anyway.” Curtis placed his hand on the trigger, when suddenly Mark
hit him on the head.

Mark was angry, speaking with drunkenness,
“No, because if it’s not Damen, then we’re not gonna get the
money.” All they could hear was the echoes of the audience,
clapping away, cheering toward the person, the winner of the
Oscar.

“Listen, I’m sure they said Damen Schultz. If
they didn’t, we could always kill him after the ceremony. At least
by shooting now, we have an extremely high chance at getting him,”
explained Curtis as the winner walked up on stage and grabbed onto
the Oscar trophy.

“Alright, but right after you shoot him, then
shoot Tom Fryer. Oh my God, I finally remembered his name.” Mark
paused, smiling with glee from remembering his name. “Anyway, shoot
him now.”

Curtis aimed the gun toward the target at the
podium and began feeling the trigger, caressing its iron body,
feeling his sweat touching the coldness of the iron. This was it,
the angels hid, the Valley cried out its wind, the fates of the
boys stood in the distance, and the moment of everything that was
seen, would come down and fall in this inevitable press of the
trigger. At that moment, silence hit the room, a brisk blow of
mysterious air blew against Curtis’ face, and he shot the gun once,
hitting the target in the stomach. He then aimed the gun toward the
next victim asking through the fear-stricken screams and moans of
the audience, “Which one is that Tom guy?”

“Here, give me that,” Mark demanded, knocking
Curtis out of the way. He immediately looked at Tom’s head through
the scope, feeling the trigger like it was a woman of passion, and
pulled it back without a thought.

Boom.

Chapter Eighty-One

Sugar Valley was a memory in this person’s
mind, drifting to a certain location, day in his thoughts, where
two boys sat, encompassed with grass that lay underneath them,
talking to each other on a serious note. “Damen, we’ll always be
best friends, right?” Jose’s young self asked, gawking at Damen
with bruises on his own face, showing Damen that his father hit him
again.

Damen grinned toward this serious moment,
felt the warm summer breeze, blowing into the Valley, swaying every
living thing, plant, blade of grass around, and speaking, “Yeah,
Jose, we’ll all be friends forever, not even death could break
that.”

A flash of light took hold, bringing this
person back to the present of his eyes, entering into a shock that
allowed that memory to be seen again, and gazed out toward the
stage of the hall of screams. “No, no. Jose ... Jose,” this person
shouted, it was Damen Schultz’s voice, seeing Jose lying on the
ground of the stage, with a gunshot to his stomach. All barriers of
anger that he had for him were lost, and the love came back again
without it even being noticed. Damen’s ears were blind and
paralyzed to sound, blocking out all voices, and his eyes were
deaf, showering tears that were automatic, like a rain cloud that
sat over each pupil.

Damen jumped up from his seat and began
running toward the stage, it felt like he was dreaming; the stage
was getting farther and farther away from him every time he took a
step toward it. He dodged the frantic people as he ran and jumped
over their bodies to get to Jose, seeing the audience filled with
pandemonium, fright, panic, and fury of fear that drenched their
elite minds. He ran up to the stage and saw Jose lying in a puddle
of blood, not wanting to accept through his tear-filled eyes that
this was his blood brother, lying in blood while holding the Oscar
that he’d just won. Damen couldn’t speak, couldn’t say a word,
seeing the people, out of the corner of his eye, running about in
fright, Damen didn’t want to accept this moment of ruptured
melancholy, tied in a bow of immense fear. Damen’s tears started to
fall on Jose’s face, and that’s when his voice was found, yelling,
“Somebody help me, please somebody. Help us!” Damen watched as the
crowd ran for their lives, stomping over each other, trying
desperately to reach the exit of the building. “Please, Jose, oh
God, please don’t die. Please, help me, Chuck,” he screamed even
louder as Chuck walked up to him with John.

Chuck grabbed onto Jose’s twitching,
shock-filled body, shouting toward Damen, “Here, help me carry him
to the exit.”

“Please don’t die on me, Jose, please,” cried
Damen in a nervous, frantic, and shocked manner, grabbing onto
Jose’s legs and helping John and Chuck carry him off the stage.

Julienne just gawked at Jose’s bloody body,
feeling tremendous shock, understanding deep in the depths of her
mind that she was to blame for this tragic happening. She ran
toward the stage, and shouted in a frantic way, “Oh my God, Jose,
Jose?”

“Julienne, call an ambulance now. Do it,”
moaned Damen with the blood from Jose’s stomach spilling out onto
Julienne’s dress, leaving her with a reminder that this was her
cause, her doings, this blood, reaching the outside air, was her
fault.

They carried Jose’s dying body away. Passing
by the first row, they saw Tom Fryer with blood rushing down from
his head. His scalp was blown off completely and the blood began
pouring out from it like a waterfall gushing down to a lake. But in
Tom’s incident, the waterfall was pouring down into a lake of
blood. As they passed by all of the rows, they saw women and men
lying on the floor with blood coming down from their faces. Chuck
knew they were trampled on by the rage and fear that the other
movie stars had in them that caused their feet to run over anything
in their way. As soon as they reached the outside of the building,
they placed Jose down on the red carpet. The ambulance showed up
and took Damen, Chuck, John, and Jose with them.

Meanwhile, Julienne sat down in her seat, in
the vacant hall, and called the ambulance. Feeling anxiety,
colossal and utter fear, draping her thoughts, her plans, her
deceits, and her past lies, Julienne felt guilty, and depressed. As
soon as she called the ambulance on her cell phone, shaking the
phone in her nervous, twitching hand, someone came up to her and
spoke, “The ambulance already showed up.”

“What?” Julienne turned around and saw Mark
and Curtis standing before her, in this vacant, still-echoing
auditorium. She hesitated, muting her words toward them, absorbing
confusion as to why they shot the wrong person, and why they were
still here; the police would show up very soon. She muttered, “What
happened?”

“Well, your plan didn’t work out like we
wanted it to, but don’t worry, we’ll still get Damen,” Mark replied
in a drunken voice while Curtis reached under Julienne’s seat and
grabbed the check.

She couldn’t understand it, couldn’t
comprehend on how her strategy, her scheme, her sinister workings
got screwed up so quickly, and inevitably changed and altered
everyone’s life, including hers. She couldn’t understand why they
were still here, why they didn’t do the job right, and why they
were taking the check, when they didn’t even deserve to have the
money. She filled her own mind with fury, screaming toward Mark,
“What happened, you bastard?”

Curtis slapped her in the face to calm her
down, seeing that her eyes showed that of delirious nature, and her
vein, in the middle of her head, was pulsating the beats of her
heart. Mark stared at Julienne, holding her face from the slap of
Curtis, and felt anger toward him. Mark then hit Curtis in the head
with his right hand, shouting, “What did you do that for?”

“What happened?” Julienne yelled out again;
her tears began to fall down to her bloody lap.

“Hey, I don’t like it when you hit me like
that,” Curtis spoke in seriousness.

Julienne stood up from her seat, and shouted
again, “What happened?”

“Your drunken ass has been hitting me all
night, and I’m sick of it,” Curtis announced toward Mark.

Julienne slapped Mark in the face, screaming
out, “So you’re drunk then? Why the hell, of all the fuckin nights
of the year, would you get drunk on this one, you piece of shit?”
Curtis pulled out his gun and hid it behind his back, seeing that
she was getting out of hand, waiting to use it on her if she didn’t
calm down. To Julienne, she saw these two men as businesspeople,
not as killers; she was ignorant to the true reality of this
situation.

Julienne just glared at Mark, awaiting an
answer from him, while Curtis hollered toward the side of her face,
“Listen to me, we’re not killing any more people, the job is done
with.”

Mark was still falling for Julienne’s lust,
her beauty, the way he liked to help people and hear their
problems. He didn’t want her to be mad at him, so just like a
little boy, he spoke in a childish way, “Julienne, I didn’t shoot
Jose, Curtis did.”

Julienne slapped Curtis in the face, not
knowing him, but still wanting to hit something, for the anger she
was feeling at this crying instant.

Curtis felt his face, after receiving the
blow from Julienne, and abruptly lost it, shouting out with a high
pitch, “That’s it, I’m sick of people hitting me.”

Bang.

Curtis pulled out his gun, and shot Julienne
in the arm. The force was so substantial, that it made Julienne
fall, screaming out with pain, but only screaming in her mind’s
voice. She was panicking, the realization of them being killers
finally got captured in her thoughts, and the realization and
clarification allowed her to go into deep fright, showing tears of
terror toward her life being in danger.

Mark was angry, shouting toward Curtis, “What
the hell did you do that for? You...”

Bang.

Curtis interrupted him by shooting Mark in
the head. His dead body fell to the red carpet, and bled out onto
it, being mixed in with the textures of the rug, turning it into a
dark, dark reddish color.

The terror built up on its own in Julienne’s
mind, seeing Mark lying dead on the ground, seeing Tom Fryer, in
the front row, sitting dead in his seat, and feeling her arm of
pain, bleeding out because of a bullet shattering through her
flesh. She couldn’t move, gazing toward Curtis’ gun, and him
glaring toward her beautiful blue eyes; she was in deep panic of
shock, embracing her worst fears, and bringing them into reality of
this crucial moment. She was webbed with terror, seeing the
darkened room, watching Curtis’ every move, knowing that he was
going to kill her, even if she tries to talk her way out of it or
not.

Julienne started running for her life down
the aisle, stepping over bodies that were trampled to death,
comprehending that she caused all of this, and maybe she deserves
to die; which she does. Julienne didn’t want to feel another gun
shot, didn’t want to feel death coming to her yet, she was panic
stricken, but also guilty, and this abundant puzzlement, just
allowed her legs to carry her body farther away from danger,
farther away from Curtis’ sight: instinct.

Bang.

As she came to the foyer, Curtis shot her in
the leg, allowing her to scream without even forcing her vocal
cords, without even knowing that she was using them. She screamed
out louder, crawling her way and reaching the red carpet on the
outside. She shouted, “Somebody, help me!”

Curtis walked up calmly, and stood next to
the exit of the building, looking at her helpless silhouette,
finding humor in it, smiling toward her frantic-filled eyes.
Julienne saw him pointing the gun toward her; she knew this was it.
She grabbed onto the carpet’s body, pulling out the fabric from
within it, showing fear in her pull of the material, and waited for
God to forgive her, to show pity on her soul for her malevolent,
villainous being. At that precise moment, a flash of red lights
occurred, being an ambulance that showed up at the curb’s level in
front of the Oscar building. Curtis saw it, and knew that police
would be surrounding soon, if not already, so he ran back into the
main part of the building. The ambulance took Julienne’s fragile,
but evil mind and injured body away, leaving her with trepidation,
terror, knowing that Curtis still lived, still lurked.

Curtis ran to the back alley of the building
and began laughing; he had eight million dollars all to himself.
But, what he didn’t realized is that Mark’s dead body held the
other check for two million dollars, plus the other two million
that Mr. Fryer gave him. As he took out the bloody
eight-million-dollar check, he noticed that Julienne didn’t sign
the bottom of it. This imbecile, this vacuous mind, this incredibly
bovine mind actually believed that he could get away with a check
for eight million, even if she signed it or not. That’s when he
shouted, “Shit, that bitch is dead.”

Chapter Eighty-Two

While Curtis was jumping up and down with
accentuation in his rhythm, Damen, Jose, Chuck, and John showed up
at the hospital. They dodged camera crews and media mobs, trying to
capture Jose’s body as he was wheeled in the doors on a stretcher,
yearning to get a picture of him. They rushed Jose to the emergency
room and began the process of helping him, hoping that it wasn’t
too late, praying that they were able to capture every second of
preserving his life. Damen just stood in the waiting room and
looked out the window of the hospital, seeing the media, cameramen,
journalists, and fans waiting outside and trying to bust their way
in through the hospital entrance.

My God.

Damen’s thoughts spoke those words over and
over again, in his perplexed, tear-filled, and terrorized mind.

Damen’s hatred, jealousy, and anger toward
Jose was lifted from his thoughts, and through the process of it
being hoisted, came tears of immense sadness. Damen was in shock,
the shock of seeing his best friend holding the Oscar, and at the
same time being shot. He began to think about Sugar Valley and his
childhood, wondering back on the day before they began their
journey to Hollywood. All these things flashed in his mind,
corrupting his brief thoughts of any tranquility, and obliterating
any form of a positive future into an oblivion, leaving his mind
empty to any other thoughts. That’s when Chuck approached him and
interrupted his flashback by saying, “Don’t worry, Damen,
everything will be okay.”