Beast

Chapter 3 - Run

Start writing your storyTwo days have passed since the lashings. Nothing new has happened since. I heal substantially fast, but the lashings still hurt like hell. It's very tender. Today I don't have any work. Thomas doesn't have school. It's past noon and Lindsey and I are out at the tree. I've been distancing myself from Cam but I ensured to remind him that I was outside the walls. He isn't doing so good, but he tells me that the scars that will be left are his battle wounds. He is a boy. I on the other hand, am absolutely furious that I will be stuck with five intersecting lines on my back. It's not very attractive.

"Does it still bother you? The night beasts being created?" Lindsey asked, occupied with observing my drawings. She watches more than she actually draws.

"Yeah, now that you mentioned it." This caused her to chuckle. I had forgotten entirely. The lashings preoccupied my mind mostly. Whenever my mind diverts away, pain yells at me in the face and brings me back to reality.

"But do you think of them differently now?" She continued. I let the question sink in as I set my pencil down and looked forward at the sky instead.

"In what way do you mean?"

"I'm not as afraid. I feel like it's handleable," Lindsey explained.

"But they still kill people, they still destroyed a race, and took out other species with it," I point out, now facing her. She shrugged in defeat and looked forwards at the sky. But the more I considered it, I came across the fact that I had never seen somebody die from one before, not that I intend to.

Now I wouldn't be able to forget. People destroyed themselves. But perhaps we could fix ourselves also? I'd love to see what it was like before the night beasts. Before our creation. Were there other places that weren't destroyed?

Lindsey and I decided to head back early, now with the constant fear of being locked out in place. Once we were safely within the walls, we decided to go to my house, where my brother was.

"Hey Thomas," Lindsey greeted Thomas. He smiled then occupied himself with the little wooden train set which was passed down from our grandfather whom we never really knew. We didn't care much about him even though we knew we should, but my mother always got emotional over him. She cares about him like I care for Thomas. Thomas is the most important aspect of my life. I don't know what would happen if I was without him. He was always happy. Happiness is something most lack.

"Cris, do you wanna play too?" Thomas asked, holding out one of his little train attachments. I looked over to Lindsey and she shrugged. His dark eyes begged with innocence. He had my father's eyes.

"Aah! De-railed caboose!" I say while kneeling down near the train set. I carefully pull the caboose off the end of the train that Thomas is pulling around and set it sideways along the makeshift tracks I made for him out of sticks and twine. Lindsey joined in by taking hold of the little lever used to switch the line of the tracks just in time before Thomas and his nasally train sounds rushed the train down the switched tracks.

Later in the day, when the sun was at eye-height, Lindsey and I were doodling in our canvas books while Thomas was in the main room still playing with his train set. We knew this because he is one of the noisiest people I know. And most hyper. Give him a grain of sugar and he'll be bouncing of the walls for forty-eight hours. I looked over at Lindsey's drawing. Lindsey had come up with a picture of exactly what she saw outside of my window. She was okay at drawing. She has my drawing skill level in medicines, and I have her drawing skill level in medicine. We trade our talents. The picture was of a barbed-wire fence and the tall grass and wildflowers which grew straight outside of my window, with the water well in the middle of the path, with the cloudy sky as a background. It was a pretty drawing, but would better if she put more time into it.