Ashes

Chapter 4

Rishi awoke, his head stinging. He tried to recollect what happened to him. He slowly began to recall. The house, the footsteps, the thuds. He looked at his surroundings. It was the house, but not the room he was in. He was on the ground, lying next to the front door. He saw Lil waiting a little further from him, still unconscious. He tried to get up, only to notice his hands were tied together with rope. He slid himself towards the wall, and pushed himself up against it. He quietly walked towards Lil to see if she was alright. Her hands were tied together as well, but with a more plastic looking material. He looked around, and saw a curved, rusty nail sticking out from the wall, above a fallen painting. He put the ropes over it, and began pulling in hopes of breaking them. "Dammit, break already." He whispered to himself, almost immediately followed by him stumbling back, his hands now freed from his binds. He managed to stop himself from falling over and falling, and kept looking around. His bags were gone, and so were Lil's. He heard noises coming from the next room. A loud, metallic scraping. He hid behind a door that lead deeper into the house, only for a person to walk out. The man, rather large and bald, was holding Rishi's knife, and immediately noticed that one of his prisoners had disappeared. Rishi rammed himself into the man's back, pushing him to the ground, and forcing him to drop Rishi's weapon. 

Rishi began to go for the knife, but he was grabbed by the ankle and pulled back, dropping him to the ground. He kept trying to crawl to the knife, which was almost in arm's reach, but the man kept pulling him back. Rishi heard a loud crack, and turned around, Rishi could now fully see the man's face. Dirty, with a greasy beard and a misshapen nose, looking as if it had been broken and healed multiple times. Rishi kicked him, resulting in the man letting Rishi loose and grasping his face. Rishi finally could reach the knife, and attempted to stand up, but immediately fell to the ground. He turned and looked at his leg, only to notice the lower half of his leg shifted to the side in an unnatural way, and the shape of a broken bone being pushed into the skin. He had broken his leg in the heat of battle. As he looked up, he was met with a kick in his chest, knocking him on his back and pushing the air out of his lungs. As he struggled to breathe for a bit, the bearded man grabbed the knife and walked over to Rishi. "You lost, kid. Good fight." As he raised the knife, Rishi used his good leg to give the man one final kick, which pushed him against a nearby wall, and into the fallen painting. He stopped, reached for the back of his head, and fell to the ground, almost landing on Rishi. A trail of blood flowing from a hole on the top of his neck. Rishi looked up, and saw the culprit. A curved, rusty nail, covered in blood. 

Rishi grabbed his knife out of the man's hand, and crawled over to Lil, cutting her binds and attempting to shake her awake. "Lil, wake up." No response. Rishi began to feel stinging in his leg as the adrenaline wore off, and remembered his broken bone. He turned around. He crawled to the room now dead man came from, and looked around. He saw a large pole with a peculiar wooden shape at the back. A thick, rounded shape which widened from the pole, ending at a flat, slightly inward curved end. He grabbed it, and used it to pull himself up. He saw his and his sister's bag laying on a nearby table, put the knife in his pocket, and grabbed both bags in one hand, stumbled back to Lil, and set the bags down next to him before sitting down himself. He opened Lil's bag, grabbing a few Aspirin from one of the bottles, swallowing them. He put his own bag under his broken leg, and waited for Lil to wake up.

A painful moan caught Rishi's attention. Lil was getting up. She looked up, looking lost. "You're awake. Took long enough." "What happened? And what happened to your leg? We need to fix this." She immediately got up, and looked around, noticing the corpse behind her. She jumped and screamed. "Who is that?!" she yelled, backed up against the wall as if to stay as far away from the body as possible. "I barely know. All I know is he's the only guy around, and he tried to kill me, probably both of us." "How did he die?" Rishi shook his head. He hadn't really thought of what he did. "I... I don't really know. He was about to stab me with my knife, when I kicked him back against the wall, against that nail over there." Rishi looked. She then turned to Rishi, sat down and hugged him. "I'm sorry you had to do that." Rishi just looked at the man, finally really taking in what just happened. He just killed a man. Sure, it was for survival, but it was still murder. He teared up a little. He looked back at his leg. "We still have another problem. He broke my leg." Lil turned around. "Oh, shit." She moved her body a little to be able to look at the broken leg. "This isn't good. I'll go and find some things that might help. We'll need a stilt to keep the bone in place, and it's best if I give you something to bite on so you don't shatter your teeth while I place the bone back in place." She got up, and walked into the next room. After a very loud noise of something breaking, she walked back with two pieces of wood. "Found a chair." She handed the shorter piece to Rishi, and sat herself back next to Rishi's leg. "I don't need to tell you this is going to hurt a lot." Rishi nodded, and put the piece of wood in his mouth. "Alright, three... Two... One." A pain filled Rishi's body, radiating out from his leg. He bit down hard, piercing the surface of the wooden leg and splintering the top. The pain lasted for what seemed like forever, and everything went black once more.