Poison- H.S

nine

Song of the chapter

Promise – Ben Howard

Slowly, I bend down and detach the note from the rock, opening it up and reading it. In messy red ink, it reads "Don't forget, she's waiting."

I'm in shock. Why would someone take a joke this far? How could this be a joke? That's because it's not a joke. Deep down, my subconscious knows the truth, and it is not a joke.

"What the hell?" Four says. He wipes a few pieces of glass off his shoulders as he gets up. "Are you okay? What the hell was that?"

I quickly tear the note into little pieces and stuff it in my pocket before Four can see it. It's not his problem. He can't help. "Yeah, I'm okay, and I have no idea." I get up but something sharp touches the sole of my foot and i'm instantly in pain. "Ouch," I lift my foot up and a tiny bit of blood trickle out the bottom of my foot.

"What's wrong?" Four asks; his eyes fall to my feet.

"Nothing, I just stepped on a small piece of glass. It's no big deal," I say.

"That looks bad," he says, walking towards me. "Is the glass still in there?"

"Yeah." I start to limp towards the kitchen and hear Four follow behind. I prop myself up on the kitchen counter and stick one foot in the sink and the other on my knee so I can see the wound. "Can you turn on the kitchen light? I can't see."

Four turns the light on as more blood trickles down my leg. I swallow hard and try not to think about the blood dripping down my foot into the sink, but the sight of warm liquid dripping down my leg and pooling into the sink, the smell of iron rust infiltrating the air, it all makes me a little dizzy.

"Are you okay?" Four asks, coming closer. "You look like you're going to be sick."

"Yeah," I answer a little too quickly. "Can you grab me some tweezers? They're in the cabinet of the bathroom that's just right down the hall."

He nods and exits the kitchen. I turn my head away from the blood and try not to pay attention to the smell of blood around me.

Four returns with the tweezers and instead of handing them to me, he picks up my foot with his hand and examines it. I give him a strange look but he doesn't look at me. "I'm not hemophobic," he says.

"What?"

"I don't have a fear of blood." He turns the sink on and slowly washes away all the blood off my foot and out of the sink."

Slowly, he lifts my foot up near his face and examines the wound. "It's pretty deep in there, isn't it?" I don't say anything, just watch him as he brings the tweezers up and begins to take out the glass.

I wince when the tweezers touch my skin. He pulls a shard of glass out of my foot, and then another, and another. There's pain from the open wound, but I definitely feel the relief.

"Do you have anything to stop the bleeding?" He asks. I don't say anything, just point to a drawer next to the fridge.

He grabs a Band-Aid from the drawer before walking back over to me. I watch as he carefully unwraps it. A couple of curls hang over his bandana onto his face and his lips part as he concentrates on my foot. There's something different about his eyes, they aren't as dark as they usually are and I can see more of the opalescent green in his irises.

Gently, he places the bandage on my foot and secures it with his thumbs. "Thank you," I say.

He looks up at me when he's done and for a split second, our eyes lock on each other. His eyes are soft for one second of his life before he quickly looks away.