The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 10.

"Oh my gosh," I choked. My breathing came fast, until I was backing away from the other three in total disregard to my injured ankle, hyperventilating. Paul held his hand up with all five of his fingers, strong and calloused, splayed neatly apart from each other.

"Misty, take a deep breath." I glanced at Paul through my tears. He was watching me with an assuring expression. He took a deep pull of air through his nostrils, held it for a moment before exhaling from his mouth. "Breathe like that, okay?" he told me. His eyes remained a steely grey, a reassuring barrier of worn silver. It was reassuring in a strong way. Different from Janice's, who's eyes reassured me through comfort, it was as if Paul's eyes gave me a feeling of safety. Janice joined me in vulnerability, making me feel less alone, but Paul built a sanctuary with his eyes, where I felt protected and safe. His eyes had a foundation. His eyes held trust. His eyes kept me grounded. They were like a healthy, reassuring dose of reality. I nodded, taking deep breathes with Paul. It was a bit of a strain breathing through my nose with how it was, but I managed. "This isn't your brother," Paul said after I finished taking a breath. I nodded, wiping away my tears. The hopes I had mistakenly held for my brother's life, plummeted. I felt the sadness wash over me again, but gradually, as it was easier in the fact that I wasn't encountering my brother's body.

"Who is it, then?" Leo asked Paul. Paul shook his head.

"We don't know," Paul said. "Did you ever notice anything strange about your parents' wrists?" He asked, turning to me. I furrowed my eye brows and looked at Paul, confused.

"Wrists?" I asked. Could Paul possibly mean wrists? What did my parents' wrists have to do with anything?

"Please just answer the question, Misty," Janice whispered quietly.

"Anything about the wrist? Anything at all?" I looked at Paul, Janice and Leo, and then finally at the body laying under the tarp on the floor. The only part of it that stuck out from the tarp was its arm, where on its wrist, a scratch lay imbedded deep and prominent into the wrist. The skin was practically sheered off, revealing torn tissue, muscles and ligaments.

"When I first saw my mom...ya'know the way she was..." I said, dredging up memories of my mom and the attack. "She was biting my dad's wrist. That's all I can think of regarding the wrist."

"Did your mom have a bite on her wrist?" Janice inquired.

"No. I didn't see one. Why do you ask?"

"This is why," Paul stated. Solemnly, he walked to me and placed a small object into my hand. It looked like an electronic gadget of sorts. About the size of a large marble, the device took the shape of a hemisphere, with fibrous, translucent wires splayed about the circumference of it's face. The curved part of the hemisphere, however, was ridged and pocked with hundreds of tiny wires and pieces that made it look like a convex computer chip. I turned it over in my hand. The small device was surprisingly heavy.

"What is it?" Leo whispered, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the device.

"We don't know," Paul asserted, indicating Janice in the 'we'. "We found it imbedded in this one's mutilated wrist. I was wondering, Misty," Paul cleared his throat. "-with your approval, if it would be alright if we looked at your parents' wrists as well?" his expression was kindly and hopeful. I weighed the device in my hand, weighing with it, my options. The question, in some ways, stunned me. Did he mean slit open my parents' wrists, or just observe them? Whatever the case, it wouldn't be mutilating my parents to the point of disrespect. It couldn't hurt if the wrist device meant anything relevant. I nodded.

"It's fine. Thank you for asking me."

Not a word was said as we all made our way upstairs, with Leo supporting me along the way. In the kitchen, Paul used one of my father's multi-tools to probe the contents of his bitten wrist. Within seconds, Paul, with great effort, used the needle-nosed pliers from the multi-tool to grip what was in my father's wrist and hoist it out from the knot of ligaments and torn muscle. Another hemisphere came forth, bringing with it some bloody residue. Disregarding the blood, Paul gripped the hemisphere and pulled. It took a few minutes of careful pulling to gently remove the long spools of clear wire. They seemed to have vacated the entire body with how long they were. However, they soon retracted to a shorter length once they were removed completely. After five minutes of laborious work in Paul's part, he held a device much alike to the one that I held in my hand.