111 Crossbow Lane

Who's a rat.

I take a juice from the pantry and pour some in a glass, I remove the poison from underneath my clothes and pour some into the juice. I hope this will work. I walk over and hand Gideon the juice. He gulps it down in almost one swallow. He must be really thirsty.

"Give me some more." He hands me the glass and I pour him some more juice. Adding some more poison to the juice. I give him the juice and he drinks all of it.

He hands me the glass and tells me to get over to the otherside of the table. I do as I'm told. He stands over Brian's unconscious body on the kitchen table. He smiles deviously.

"Now. Finally we can go home and I can rectify the wrongs that were done to me."

He takes a big butcher knife and cuts Brian. His arms, his legs, his abdomen and lastly his throat. I turn around and vomit. I can't take more of this. I thought this would've ended with Gideon dying from the poison and Brian being saved. Sadly I was wrong.

I look at Gideon, still there's no sign of the poison doing it's job. He smears blood on himself and then on me. He forms the circle of blood again along with the strange symbols. He chants some strange words and everything lights up in flames.

It feels like all the oxygen is sucked from the air. He looks at me and smiles.

"I think I've done it. I think we can go home now." He walks over, but I'm not going to stand still and willy nilly go with him. I run away as fast as I can, but he catches up to me.

He tackles me and we both land on the floor by the front door. I manage to push myself up from the floor and open the door. As I'm about to exit the house he tackles me down to the floor again.

We exit the house together. He grabs me by the neck and forces me back into the house. The air has changed. It feels normal. Like my home felt before all of these strange things started happening.

"We're home." He smiles at me and let's go of me.

Suddenly his face contorts into a painful expression. He doubles over and grabs hold of his stomach. Groaning in pain.

I'm guessing the rat poison has started to kick in. How long does it take to kill a grown man?

He groans again, he grabs hold of me. He looks up at me in agony. Suddenly I don't feel as sure as I was that he's all bad.

No. He killed a little boy, not just once, but multiple times. Who does that? A psycho serial killer that's who. I struggle to get out of his grip.

His hands feel like a vice grip on my wrists. I can't seem to get his fingers pried open to release my wrists. He's in agony, suffering. I didn't want him to suffer. Dammit, I need to help him, I'm not a killer.

I look around and spot my cellphone on a nearby table.

"Gideon, please let go of my wrists, I need to get my phone so I can call for help." I look at him, he doesn't seem to understand what I'm trying to tell him.

"Gideon, do you understand me? I need to get you some help. I need to use my phone. It's over there." I use my head to motion in the table's direction.

Suddenly he let's go. I run to the table and pick up my phone. Amazingly it's battery isn't depleted and I can make a call.

No service. Dammit. I ran over to Gideon.

"Gideon I'll have to go out on the porch and make the call there, there's no service here. Okay?"

He nods, but his eyes seem to stare into nothingness. I ran out onto the porch. As soon as I'm out I have service and call nine one one.

The operator answers and while she asks me the necessary questions, the front door slams shut. I try to open the door, but it seems to be locked. I can see Gideon on the floor inside. I rush the door and try and shoulder it, to no avail. The phone line cut out, I lost the operator. I try to phone back, nothing.

I start to panic, maybe the next door neighbour can help me? I turn around, to my horror I see no neighbour. That's right, I don't have a neighbour in my timeline. The closest people to me are in town. And that's kilometers away. I run to the backdoor and try it. The same result as the front door.

I need to make it to town quickly, it's Gideon's only chance for survival. I run as fast as I can manage to get to town, along the way I've fallen twice, greatly injuring myself, but I don't even feel it.

I got to the hospital ER and one of the nurses ran up to me.

"Ma'am, can I help you? What happened?"

"I'm okay. It's Gideon. He's at my house, I think he's been poisoned. And I can't get to him. I tried phoning, but the line cut out. Please hurry."

"Okay ma'am. Let me get an ambulance to go to him." She runs over to some paramedics that just came from another room, I hear her instruct them to go to Gideon.

One of the men came over and asked me the address.

"It's hundred and eleven Crossbow Lane."

They look at me quite bewildered and look at each other.

"Oh come on! I'll go with you." I hurry outside and they follow. We get into the nearest ambulance and rush over to my house. I just hope Gideon is still alive.