Desired Honour

Chapter 5:The Shed

I spent a lot of time in my back garden.Thinking about things that worried me or things that have happened. It was a lovely garden; a rectangle of even grass with charming green bushes at its edge, split by a stone path which led to the brown shed, behind an odd heap of rubbish. A washing line was stretched between two posts that were the entire length of it, pegs on it and sagging in the middle.

My brother came into the garden, the back door was slammed so hard that the panes rattled. Through the glass I could see mother washing up whilst talking to our "uncle". I noticed that my brother was practicing his shooting on cans he shot bolts across the garden through the cans.
"Target practice,eh?" I asked
"Yeah, I have to stay fit and ready for duty." He replied
I hadn't the right expression on my face during my time in the garden. Even though I was sitting down without complaint, my attitude has changed, a lot.

"I'm going to town boys I expect the garden to be clean and weed-free. I won't be back until time for dinner so if you want food there's bread inside." Mum said

She looked at me for a moment. I decided to remain expressionless. "And lighten up will you Edward!" She snapped then turned around and left.

I let out a sigh of relief and sank down in my chair which was a few feet away from my brother still shooting cans. I sat still and sat quietly. At the front of the house I heard the door open and slam shut, mum's voice from the driveway, my supposed uncle's reply,keys jingling and,finally, the car driving off.In the silence that followed, anyone watching me maybe my brother or "uncle" would've thought that I was calm. Meditating, even. And that was indeed true.

I have never shouted until recently when my brother ate my toast at breakfast but other than that I had never shouted before. I barely even raised my voice at home. It wasn't that I didn't get angry. I sometimes got so angry that I could explode. There had been times where I'd gotten so angry that I even scared myself,like that time when my mother took all of my prized possessions out of my room and sold them to pay for a new chair in her room. At the time I was 7. I was filled with so much fury and bitterness that I almost-truly, honestly-run at her and pushed her down the stairs. I saw myself do it, felt the warm gasp of air from her shocked mouth in the second before I shoved her.Only,of course, I didn't. I just screwed up my fists in my pocket and stayed unhappy. But I was seven so it was just me being a baby.

I walked down the stone path to the brown shed to find a hoe for breaking up the weedy patches that were around the garden and the thick brambles at the far end of the garden. When mother said weed-free I knew that she wasn't joking so I called my brother to help me clean up the weeds. The shed was big enough for both of us to fit in and we'd had the shed for ages.

Inside the shed it was warm. It contained plastic pots,bags of sand, and a couple old carpets.The door was unlocked ,but kept swinging open whatever the weather. My brother and I spent a fair amount of time in there looking for the weed whacker. We rummaged through the shed for the stuff we needed and didn't get any luck.

Our supposed uncle came to us and asked if we needed any help. We declined it. I found the weed whacker I needed and hauled it out of the back of the shed. My brother bumped into me and it dropped on the floor but that was the least of my worries.

The door to the shed slammed shut and we barged the door and it wouldn't budge. The shed door had never done this before, it was almost like someone slammed it shut and barred it. We were shut in. I gritted my teeth as my brother was panicking, he was older than me so I never understood why or how he was more scared than I.

"Calm down, we'll get out of here." I said
I moved the sacks and there was a small hole, there was no way I could fit through that gap.

With a sigh, me and my brother sank to the floor prepared to wait until someone came to open the door. By now mother would've just reached the shopping centre on the edge of the town, with quite a bit of money and seeing lots of nice things. The windows in the shed were bullet-proof,shatter-proof and straight up unbreakable so there was no escape. My dad originally intended to change one of the windows so it could be used as an escape in case this sort of event happened but he never came back home.

My brother soon moaned about being hungry and thirsty and so was I. The only liquid we had inside the shed was a turpentine and a white spirit that would burn off your tongue if you tried to drink any but to my brother it was like it looked like lemonade. I tried to keep my brother's mind off of the lemonade but it was no use, he just stared at it uncontrollably. I turned around to check for any ways of exit but I couldn't find any.

We were sitting for a few hours now and the shed started to heat up a lot. Now to me the white spirit looked a lot like lemonade. I unscrewed the cap of the bottle and I smelt it, the smell was horrific and it caused me to drop the bottle. My brother quickly lifted it up and inspected it. He drank the liquid until the bottle was empty and after he dropped the bottle.

The smell of the white spirit hit me like a bad gas, cutting across every smell in the shed. I saw my brother, he looked as if he was dizzy and sick. I knew at that point that he was definitely going to faint, he fainted. His head dropped beside the gap in the shed and I immediately tried to wake him up, it was no use, he wasn't moving one bit.

Eventually I started to get dazed and dizzy and tired. The smell of the white spirit now spread inside the shed, it was terrible. I slowly closed my eyes and fell asleep.