𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌// 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐗𝐎𝐂

1.0 °𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐔𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄𝐒

JINX; AUGUST

"I'm gonna kill you! Oh I swear to God I'm gonna kill you!"

Trees flashed by me as I ran, boughs thick full of fruit. My homicidal companion followed me in hot pursuit, never breaking a sweat. Her longer legs gave her speed, an unfair advantage she held over me.

Her name was Becca. She was fourteen, three years older than my puny eleven. So far, all the time I'd spent with her family didn't make her like me too much.

"It was in the name of science!" I cried out. "It was dead when I found it!" The clearing of trees twisted. The nearby town lay ahead of my path. I was almost safe. All I'd have to do was climb the towering chainlink face guarding it.

"You murdered Cuddles!"

She was getting closer. The fence didn't look so bad anymore.

"That thing would've died if you flicked it!" My hands clawed into the metal criss-crosses. Swiftly, I clambered up the feat of architecture.

Becca was scared of heights. That was the only useful thing I found about while living with the Clarks. They were a dreadfully boring family. None of them seemed to have any imagination. Least of all Becca.

"So you did kill him!" She screamed from the ground, face ruddy from her pursuit. "Get down here, you little twerp!"

I had scaled my way to the top. Saddling on the sharp corners that the metal offered. The ground was far from up there, a dizzy feeling whirled me around.

"I put it out of it's misery!"

"You killed him!" Sobbed Becca, rattling the fence. I wobbled, holding the top beam in a death grip. "You fucking bitch!"

In my defense, Cuddles really had been on his last leg. Becca had been practically playing around with a corpse for the month I'd been around her. Cuddles was being kept alive with countless medications and regimens. He had been taken to the vet twice in the time I'd been at the house.

Mrs. Clark was even talking about getting him surgery so he'd straggle along for a few more months. That's right, she was going to pay a ridiculous sum of money to keep her daughter's miserable zombie gerbil alive.

She mentioned surgery and that stuck with me. Surgery. Surgery. Surgery. It's all I could think about. Cuddles was a good gerbil and he had lived a long life.

I decided to take initiative and do the surgery myself. I invited the neighbor boy Bradley Bash over to play Doctor. We cut Cuddles open with safety scissors.

I felt bad when his blood got everywhere. I thought I'd be able to fix him. I wasn't. Cuddles bled out. My hands were covered in him. All his blood.

Becca freaked when she saw his taped up body laying in his cage. The tape was supposed to be bandages.

"I'm sorry, Becca!" I shouted from my perch, the shaking she had been doing to the fence increased its intensity. My balance was off. "I was just trying to help!"

"Bull Fucking Shit!" The angry girls eyes bulged, popping from her head in raw rage. "I'm gonna kill you, Jinx! Just like you killed Cuddles!" I couldn't hold on to the fence anymore. The only thing attached to the chain-link were my thighs. "I'm gonna cut you up and gut you like a fish!"