The Suicide Master (October Writing Challenge)

Chapter 3: The Strange Minds

Chapter 3

The Strange Minds

"Christy! Go back and find some bandage!" Aaron ordered, taking the towel from her and wrapping it around Ethan's shivering body. His teeth chattered, and his body shook, but he didn't hug the towel to him like someone else might. Instead, he held his foot with a dead man's grip. Silent, shameful tears ran down his still flushed cheeks.

"Can you feel it?" Emery asked, laying a hand on Ethan's shoulder.

"Barely," he answered quietly.

"What happened?" She continued to ask questions, hoping to get his mind off the pain.

"I-I'm not sure," Ethan answered. "I think I stepped on a rock or glass or something."

"Was it really that shallow?"

"I don't know... I think so..."

"But why?" Emery wondered aloud. "The dock shouldn't be this close to shallow water."

Ethan shook his head, letting out a shaky breath.

Meanwhile, a very flustered Christy searched through the downstairs bathroom cabinets, muttering "First aid, first aid...."

After finding nothing, she ran to the kitchen and hastily looked through the cabinets. She gasped with relief when she saw the large red cross of the first aid kit. She grabbed it with cold hands and ran out the door, into the darkness where only the light of Charlotte's phone made things visible.

She rushed down the hill where the pitch black water lapped up against the wooden posts of the dock. She slowed down once she got near. Ethan hadn't been crying anymore and was now sitting on the edge of the dock, talking with Emery. The oh-so rare creases at the corners of his mouth showed as he smiled brightly at the girl. In the few minutes since it had happened, he had forgotten all about the pain, but the tips of his hair still dripped. Christy slowed to a stop, watching the two of them with wonder.

Emery had always had this... way of handling people's emotions; pain, anger, sadness, she always made them better somehow. She didn't tell them it'd be okay, or to not be upset--she simply got their minds off of their troubles until they were happy again. That's the type of person Emery is, Christy guessed. Just like her older sister.

Christy snapped out of her reverie and walked to Aaron, handing the first aid kit to him absentmindedly. She watched the two.

Ethan said something that must have been funny, because Emery threw her head back, laughing. She said something back to him, and smiled down at her jean-clad legs, her honey colored hair falling into her face. Her eyes shifted, and Emery stopped smiling when she saw Ethan's foot, not bleeding as heavily, but still held carefully in his hand.

"Does it still hurt?" She asked him. He looked confused for a moment, then gazed down at the sole of his foot.

"Yeah, but not as much," he answered. "Thank you." Emery lifted her head back up and smiled again.

"Ethan," Aaron addressed, holding out the bandage from the first aid kit, along with a sterile wipe.

"Let me," Christy interjected, reaching for the supplies.

"No, I've got it," Aaron assured. Ethan turned his body toward him and moved his foot in Aaron's direction. He wiped it down carefully, earning a few gasps and winces from Ethan before putting a pad on it and wrapping it in an intricate pattern that Emery didn't really understand.

"There, that easy," Aaron said after he finished and Ethan let out a long-held sigh.

"We should go inside," Charlotte suggested. There was no more trace of sunshine left in the sky.

"Here, do you need help?" Emery asked Ethan, holding out a hand. He shook his head and struggled to get up. Emery sighed and grabbed his forearm anyway, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

"I could have done it myself," he claimed begrudgingly, but smiled to himself.

The pair hobbled into the dining room and she set him down in a chair.

"I just don't understand how -- or why -- it happened," Ethan muttered.

"It probably isn't anything to fret over," Benny said nonchalantly.

"D'you not care that somethin' weird tore Ethan's foot open?" Christy's accent only ever showed when she raised her voice, but now she looked at Benny with fury.

"Whoa, whoa, I just mean it probably wasn't anything. He stepped on a rock, case closed."

Christy narrowed her eyes.

"Something's going on here," Emery stated. "And I'm going to find out what."