"Evie wants to play!" Shrieked the little devil, his green eyes wide and bold, his mouth pouting.
"Evie can wait, it's not going to take long. Now come here, I'm not done yet." Said the scrawny, slim figure with bags descending from his eyes and white hairs growing from the sides of his head. He pulled the boy's arm to get him to sit back on the wooden stool face to face. The child swung his arm down, trying to release himself from the grasp of a tired yet determined adult, to no avail.
"You will sit." Commanded the father, scissors in hand.
"I will not! I need to go play with Evie!" The boy protested, moving his head from side to side, his overgrown hair waving with the motion.
"Sigh." The man let out, massaging his temple with his two fingers. "Please just listen to me once in your life! Why do you have to make everything so difficult?" He said, raising his voice. "You were so much easier to deal with when your mother was around."
"..."
He saw now a red-faced youngster holding back tears, hiccuping here and there, staring at the floor. A few tears fell on to the floor boards, and then the compulsive crying.
"Oh... Ok, Ivan... I'm sorry-"
"NO! LEAVE ME ALONE! The boy screeched, yanking a poor boney hand away from his head, jumping out of the stool and running towards the kitchen door. He opened it, after jumping to reach the old knob. "I wish you would have gone away instead of mom!"
Ivan said, before banging the door behind him.
"... Hmmm." Crawford muttered. "I wish that too buddy." He stared at the scissors. "I wish that too."
The child ran across a wide yard of tall grass and unkept wild life, till he reached the outskirts of the forest whose trees dangled with the wind.
"Evie! Eeevie! Where are you?" He screamed.
"Right here"
"AAAHH!" The boy jumped, holding his chest with his hand. In front of him stood a small, weakly figure, with bleach blond hair, half caught in a lazy ponytail with a blue ribbon. Her checks were rosey, as if she was permanently flushed, and her amber eyes hid behind a large curtain of bleached lashes.
"... You scared me. I thought you had gone already."
"Sorry. I decided to wait a bit. Why were you late?" Evie asked, walking barefoot towards the inside of the forest, a breathless Ivan with worn out brown shoes and a white tank top filled with sweat stains following.
"... My dad." The boy mumbled, nervous.
"Again?" The girl asked, rolling her eyes.
"Yes. I stood up to him this time, like you told me."
"About time! He never lets you do anything fun, you need to stand up to yourself." As she spoke, she found a stick that she grabbed and swung around the brown and orange leaves on the floor. "I'm just looking after you, you know."
"I know." The boy replied, watching his friend march and step on crunchy ground as she battled the air with her wooden sword. He sat on a log. "I still feel bad though. He's my dad."
"My mom says that we have to enjoy every second of our lives, or it'll all go to waste."
"What will?"
"Life."
"That doesn't make any sense." The boy said, grabbing some stones off the floor to throw at trees.
"She also said that being an adult is boring and bad, and that if a genie appeared at our house she'd ask to be a kid forever and that we'd play together." Evie continued, as if she hadn't heard the boy, circling him as she swung the stick one side to the other.
"That doesn't sound true."
"Well she said it." The girl said, annoyingly. "And everything my mom says is true. And you should know it too, you're my friend after all, I want you to know things if your mom is not around to tell you."
"..." A deaphening sound spread across the forest, with only bugs and wind for company. Ivan now stared at the floor, defeated by words.
"She's very worried about you you know?" Evie whispered to Ivan's ear.
"What?"
"Yeah, she's constantly asking for you. It's tiring talking about the same person every time and every day, especially when nothing much happened." She kept talking, sitting by Ivan's side, crushing ants with her thumb.
"You know where my mom is? Is she in town still?" Ivan questioned, his eyes glistening with hope, his voice growing more and more high pitched.
"Yeah, I know where she is." Evie said, uninterested.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier? Why didn't she come to get me?" Ivan asked, getting more agitated as his friend did not match the reaction.
"She wanted to wait because she's stuck." Evie replied, letting an ant climb up her thumb just to crush it between her fingers.
"Stuck where?"
"Come with me, I'll show you." Evie said, finally looking Ivan in the eyes. She jumped out of the log and ran, holding her navy blue dress with both her hands, an excited yet fearful Ivan following.
"Here, she's inside." Evie gestured with her hand to bring Ivan closer. They found themselves at the entrance of a cave whose inside was so dark you could not say if it was deep or not.
"I-I don't know about this."
"Come on, don't you want to see her? She asked, waving her arms around.
"..."
"She'll be really sad if she knows you were this close and didn't even say hi."
"...Ok, let's go." Ivan said, holding on to Evie's shoulder as they traversed the dark cave with no speck of a light. It was cold and humid inside, with moss underneath their feet growing more and more slippery.
"Where is she?" The boy asked, hearing his own echo traverse through the deep dark cave.
"Shh, I want it to be a surprise." Evie whispered.
"I don't like this." The boy cried.
"I said shh! You can't go back now. Just be quiet." The girl said, aggressively, with her index finger over her mouth.
"I don't wanna be here. I want my dad." Ivan cried.
"Wait-" Evie mustered, before being interrupted.
"Ivan?"
"..."
The drips of water hitting the stone were all that were heard after that moment.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
"Ivan, is that you?" The voice asked, from deep inside the cave, cutting through the silence like a hot knife on butter. It was a woman's voice, and not any woman's.
"Mom?" Ivan asked, scared. "Mommy... It's me."
"Oh Ivan, my boy! I've missed you so much!"
"Mommy?? Where are you?" The boy asked, leaving his friends back to which he had been glued this whole time, to stand right at the middle, facing the darkness from which the tender voice emerged.
"
I'm right here honey. Just follow my voice." She said, her words echoing all around Ivan.
"But... I'm scared. Why can't you come to me?" The boy asked, trembling.
"I'm stuck dear. I need your help to leave this place. I know you're a brave boy, now come here."
Ivan looked at Evie, who had been staring at him unmoving, unwavering, and unexpressive.
"...Ok." The little man said, walking towards his mother, each step further away from the only source of light.
The only exit.
"Bye bye." Said a lonely Evie, left in her place, smiling at the boy who considered her a friend.
Ivan looked back one last time to wave back at her, and kept on his way, hugging himself for the cold had become unbearable with just his attire.
"...Mom?" He asked, yet the cave did not speak. "Mom??" He asked louder, but all he could hear was his own echo.
"There you are!" The now grainier voice finally answered, in pitch black background. From within the blackness, an arm stretched farther than any arm had or should before, and with dirty, moldy and cold fingers and overgrown nails, it grabbed the little boy's cheecks, waving his face from one side to the other. "Oh how you've grown! Do you remember how much smaller and thinner you looked before I died?"
With his face stuck to the stone-like fingers, the boy did his best to shake his head from side to side, warm tears falling from his eyes.
"No matter, now you're much plumpier, you look just ripe!" As the voice said, the cracking of bones and stretching of skin was heard not too far from where Ivan stood. Then, another hand stretched from out of the black insides of the cave to caress the boy's short hair. "Mommy is so happy you're here."
Suddenly, a drop of liquid fell on the boy's face. It was warm, and gooey, like saliva.
"Bye bye!" It said, now mimiquing the voice of Evie.
