Trouble in Tiltown

Blood on your hands

My eyes widened, "They finally found him?" I gasped. Jerrick took my wrist in a rush, pulling me out of the room.
"He was found in the ditch near the woods, where James works on those bodies." He whispered to me as random nurses stared at us.
"Is he badly hurt?" I asked him. His eyes trailed off to the ground as they avoided my gaze. This told me everything, but nothing at all. Looking around for Kat, I see her through a window in a room. Her hands over her face, not letting her appearance be shown to anybody. I pushed past Jerrick and into the room. As I entered, Kat stood up in front of her father who was asleep and had all different types of cords attached to him. His eyes bruised and abrasions all over his arms. Whatever, or whoever, did this to him, it's clear to me that he had put up a fight. This wasn't a friend who did this.
"I just wanted to check up on-
"We'll be fine. You should leave." She spats. She looks anywhere but my face as her lips quivered. A knock at the door interrupts.
"Kat? May I talk to you outside?" A nurse asks. Kat looks at me hesitantly, before leaving me alone in the room with her badly injured father. I take a few steps closer to her father, taking in his poor appearance. My stomach twisted with efforts of making me sick just looking at his new face. As I stood there, baffled by his state, He shocked me when he grabbed hold of my wrist.
"S-sir, It's Laurence." I assure him as his widened eyes relaxed again. However, not all the way. His eyes held a new kind of tense in them, perhaps fear.
"I joined his group, James's. It was getting out of hand, so I decided to leave." He explained vaguely. His eyes followed the people who walked back and forth outside of the room as if he were keeping an eye out for somebody.
"Leave what?" I inquired him. His hand tightened around my wrist and landed his intensifying focus on me instead.
"I didn't know that there were consequences, but there are. Oh, there are so many consequences to knowing James." He admitted to me. Kat came back in but this time with Jerrick following her from behind.
"It's time for you to go. Kat and I got this taken care of, you go take care of your people." Jerrick stated as he held his arm around Kat's shoulder. My eyes glanced back down to her father who now kept his eyes closed.
"Take care, then." I whispered aloud before shoving past Jerrick and out into the nurse filled hallways. Before going back to the room with Elouise, West and Abraham, I needed some time alone for myself. I walked outside to the darkened curbside with only a loudly buzzing street lamp to brighten the area surrounding me. My hands attempted to wipe away the exhaustion of my face but despite the effort, I still felt it under my eyes. I had too many thoughts. Like how I can stop James, or how I can help Jerrick and Kat? Or Elouise? And my last thought? Well, my last thought was my birthday coming up this Friday. I'll finally be eighteen in two days and I'm spending my life in fear. I let out a heavy filled sigh, hoping my worrisome thoughts would go along with it and thankfully, it had. My mind was the clearest it had been in months. Until, I hear it. A twig snapping from behind me. I spun my head around to face the trees that stood behind the hospital and saw nothing.
"Hello?" I said aloud. My fingers found their way to my hangnails and started picking away at them. I felt the blood trickle down my fingers and onto the concrete, but my focus was elsewhere. A creaking sound came from a nearby tree, so I walked closer to the darker side. Before I could reach the disturbing sounds from the tree though, a heavy hand was laid upon my shoulder.
"Hey, kid." He spun me around to face him, It was Abraham with a cigarette hanging off his lips.
"Oh." I sighed with relief. I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between West and Abraham if it hadn't been that Abraham looked like he had been stranded on an island for years to come.
"You okay?" He inquired, his head tilting to the side. His eyes looked through me, like he could see me for the real me. The scared, cowardly, me.
"Yeah, I'm okay," I pause for a moment, "You smoke?" I asked. He took out his unlit cigarette and threw it on the ground.
"No. Well, I try not to anyways." He says as he mushes it into the curb with his boot before his focus returns to me.
"It's nice out, huh?" I attempt at conversation as I tilt my head up at the stars that covered the darkened sky. It was almost too dark for my liking and that... that gave me chills.
I feel his eyes look at me before looking up at the sky along with me.
"This ain't a sky." He scoffs at the night sky. My eyebrows furrowed together before I glance at him again.
"Then what is it?" I laughed with nervousness.
"It's just simply a void. This town is a void and it's just only getting darker everyday." He says unbothered by the morbidity of the statement.
"What?" Was all I could say, because, well, I didn't know how to feel about that. He looked me up and down before his eyes landed in my hands.
"You better wash that blood of your hands, son." He says before nodding and returning back into the hospital. I raised my hands up and saw the trails of blood from my hangnails. I shoved them into my jean pockets and headed inside, before doing another look around. I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.