crimson

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE

  just the beginnings, any feedback is appreciated! 

            I knew that it wouldn’t be fair to place blame on anyone but myself, but I did wish that the store clerk had told me no when I went to buy that box cutter.  Instead, he smiled kindly at me as he took my crisp twenty-dollar bill and returned my change.

            I declined his offer for a brown paper bag for my purchase and instead placed the package carefully in the front pocket of my backpack.  He hadn’t even asked me what a seventeen year old might need a box cutter for.  But I’d had a story mapped out in my head, just in case.

            I guess sometimes people just didn’t ask questions, they’d rather not know.

            I had gone to a hardware store two towns away and drove back to my house with the radio playing quietly in the background, if only to help keep the thoughts out of my head.  Was I really going to do this?  I asked myself out loud.

            I knew the answer already, though.

            I got home, and as expected, I was all alone save for our Labrador retriever, Stu, who wagged his tail anxiously, excited to see me home.  The only one who would be anyway, I thought.

            I locked the front door, plopped my backpack down on the kitchen counter and let Stu out the back door to our fenced in lawn.  I made sure his water dish was full and put some treats in his food dish.

            Before I could lose my nerve, I took my new possession out of my bag and walked up the stairs with purpose to the bathroom.  I sat on the cold tiles, leaning against the bathtub.  I took a deep breath, rolled up my left sleeve and pressed the razor into my arm.

            There was no going back now, I watched as crimson blood slowly dripped down my arm, until everything around me faded away and turned to black.

 ---

            His foot was firmly pressed down on the accelerator of his ’82 Camaro.  He shifted gears smoothly as he weaved his way through the slower traffic on Interstate 89.  His eyes stayed focused on the road, American Idiot thumped through the car’s speakers, the afternoon breeze blew through the open windows.

            The sky was darker than it normally was at 4 in the afternoon. 

The Camaro slowed and signaled to Exit 5.  The driver looked both ways, turned onto Livingston Street, then down Lilac Lane, where he and his family had lived for the past 17 years.

            The boy parked in the driveway, and the same dark feeling that had come over him the night before, appeared again.  It had prompted his unexpected journey home from college.

            He quickly got out of the car and jogged to the front door.  He tried three keys before he got the right one and swore to himself about getting rid of those damn old keys.

            “Rachel?” He yelled out to his baby sister.  “Rachel?  Where are ya birthday girl?”

            Stu was clawing and whining at the back screen door.  A purple backpack sitting on the kitchen counter, still zipped closed.

            He let the dog inside, and scratched behind his ears as he munched on the treats from his dish.

            “Stu, where is Rach?” he asked the puppy.  The dog tilted his head to the side curiously, one ear flapped over his head, like he was contemplating the question, and laid himself at the base of the stairs.

            The boy climbed to the house’s second level, two steps at a time.  He pushed the door open to his sister’s room, calling out her name.  He saw the bathroom door closed, and when she repeatedly didn’t answer, he picked the lock and broke his way inside.