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Jan 6, 2017 06:38
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 20:40 |
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We're Not Supposed To 1,198 words. No Legos. "UNCLE!" Nothing. Just the wind. Sammy raised her hands back to her mouth to shout again, but Jeffrey jerked both arms into her way and stopped her. "He heard you! He had to! We only yell up to him when we absolutely, absolutely need to! He heard you that time. Don't yell again!" The pair looked up at the edge and waited. He would come down, and they would start fixing everything. The four children were in the courtyard of an old building. Most of it was a playground, holding a huge swing set and a jungle gym that was almost covered with rust. James had been leaping up the gym, like he had every day before. He'd slipped near the top, and while he hit the sand softly enough, his ankle had dragged against a bar on the way down. Aaron knelt over the wound and worried about it. They'd all been scraped out here. None of those scrapes bled like this. James kept trying to get his foot under him to stand up and walk it off with everyone still fussing over his accident, but he fell back on his rear end as soon as he put weight on the bleeding leg. "It's gonna ruin your sock." Aaron said. "That's my sock. I want to keep that sock. Take it off." James told him. Aaron untied the shoe and pulled it off slowly. He peeled off the sock, and the blood poured down the rest of the foot with the sock out of its way. James grabbed the shoe and stuffed the sock into it. He hugged them both tight to his chest. That was his shoe, and his sock. He wasn't going to lose them. Aaron walked over to the other two. Jeffrey stared at the edge of the roof, and Sammy turned to look over Aaron's shoulder at James. He would try to move his foot, wince, and squeeze his shoe and grit his teeth. "What's wrong?" Aaron asked the pair. Jeffrey didn't look away from the roof. "Is he not up there?" "Is James OK?" said Sammy. Jeffrey didn't move a muscle. "He has to be up there. He always tells us when he's coming down, and he always tells-" "I'm fine!" James called out. Jeffrey blinked. "He... uh..." His breath was speeding up. "He always moves where we can see him up there, so we know where he is." Aaron finally got to answer Sammy. "I think he's hurt bad. He can't hardly move, and it's bleeding a lot. We need-" "I'm fine!" James interrupted, more loudly. Aaron whispered, "We should get the big kit down and bring it over." "No. No. We're not supposed to." Jeffrey almost looked down to his shoes. "We always get Uncle. We're not supposed to touch the kits at all without him." "We can help! James needs help as fast as we can, and if we get the kit Uncle can come-" A gunshot. They all sighed. James even let his precious shoe drop to the ground, held in only one hand. It was over. He was coming now. Sammy walked over to James. "I can put your shoe under your bed." James smiled, and held it up to her. Everything would be alright. Another gunshot. Everyone froze. Jeffrey's face went pale. "There's never two." James hadn't shed a tear through anything before, not in front of everyone. He wouldn't cry in front of everyone. He started to cry now. "There's never two." Aaron echoed. " We've been here 93 days and it's always one. It is always one. Just one." Jeffrey was starting to shake. "We have to do something." "No! We're not supposed to!" "Something is wrong, Jeffrey! We have to do it ourself!" "We might make it worse! Something is wrong, and we might make it worse!" There was another gunshot. Jeffrey started to cry. Sammy ran back over. "Don't yell!" she told them both. Aaron took a deep breath. "We have to help ourselves. This is different. We can't wait." "This is different." Sammy said. "Jeffrey, you remember what he does, right? You remember what Uncle does when there's blood. You remember all that stuff." She tried to hold onto his shoulders. She hated it when he started shaking like this. Her eyes started to feel wet. "I remember what he pulls out. There's... uh... he uses..." he put his hands to his head. Another gunshot. Sammy stepped back. She pushed her hands through the air, miming out what she'd watched Uncle do before. "You wipe it off with a clean... a clean one, then pour..." They heard something new. Something was scratching at one of the walls outside. They all turned towards it. It was loud. It stopped for a second after another gunshot, but then it started again, at another spot. "We gotta move James. We gotta get the big kit." Aaron said. No one moved for a second. "The room on the third floor." Sammy said. They all took a step in a different direction, then they all hesitated. "J-James first." Jeffrey said. "We can carry him up. Then the kit." "Yeah." "Yeah." They all ran over together and lifted James up. Aaron and Sammy each took a shoulder and James pulled his knee to his chin with a groan. Jeffrey ran in front and held the doors open as they made their way to the stairs. They lurched up them, one by one. James slipped out of his curl, and his foot dragged against a stair. He howled. They limped into the room on the third floor and set James on a bed as slowly as they could. More gunshots. "The kit." Jeffrey said. "We should both get it." Sammy hurried out the door and towards the kit. Aaron had started crying now. "I'll.. I'll help." Jeffrey ran after Sammy. The big kit was heavy. The size of a suitcase and solid metal. More gunshots. More scratching. It took over a minute to wrestle the thing up one flight of stairs. They set it down with a thud. Jeffrey opened it and pulled out what Uncle had always pulled out. Sammy grabbed some gauze and wiped off the blood. She held her hands in the air for a second. "You pour..." Jeffrey put the brown bottle in her hand. She poured it slowly over the wound, then wiped it off again. She pressed a fresh pad of gauze down. "...and you hold it. You hold it for a long time." They held it on, until their arms were tired. They took turns. The gunshots had slowed, but they went on for what could've been hours to the four of them. Finally, they heard heavy footsteps, and a door opening. Their Uncle had forgotten where they would have gone, and they heard him storming around half the building. He finally ran in the door and stopped. Sammy had been the last to cry, but Uncle had been the first. His collar was soaked, and he'd forgotten to wipe his face dry this time. He looked around at the children, and he smiled. They all kept crying, and smiled back.
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Jan 9, 2017 02:38
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