Cherry Bomb

C'est la Mort

It echoed throughout the street at night, that whirring noise that came with cars and people jumping out of the way. The flickering lights of the ambulance vehicle dashing through the neighborhood in a dark streak of red, like the blood that was pouring onto the bathroom floor. Police vehicles were in front of the home, flickering their lights. EMTs were jumping out of the ambulance and running into the house. Some officers were tapping off the front of the house, neighbors turning on their living room and bedroom lights, some leaving their homes. The one-story home of the Spencer family seemed shaken like the trees that waved in the summer wind.

The small suburb of Brook Leaf would no longer be the same.

The tub became red, pale flesh exposing every vein in that lifeless body. Long streaks of cuts on the wrists pumped what was left of the life of the boy that is now long gone. His long blonde hair was glistening in the light of the fluorescent bulbs that were above the shower. Hazel eyes glazed over in that pearl discoloration of death. Blue tile and flecks of blood rimmed the tub as the police and EMTs worked to bring the body out of the submerged red pool.

One EMT pulled out the on-site defibrillator, the other pumped a few syringes of adrenaline. The other started a bag of fluids. The last EMT was sewing up the knife marks on the boy's arms. Everyone worked around the clock. As one last resort, an EMT pulled out a type O blood bag and began to insert the needle into the other arm.

After ten minutes, the defibrillator, fluids, and blood, were not enough to bring Ryan Spencer's body back to life. The heart was too long gone, too empty to fill back up again.

"Call it guys," one EMT shouted. He took the defibrillator and headed towards the truck. The EMT that wrapped up the knife marks and sewed the cuts followed suit.

The blood-red ambulance was parked on the street near the one lamp post that had the light out in the neighborhood. Instead of looking like an ambulance, it looked like the hearse people use in funerals.

Scott Burgess was hiding behind the other home across the street from the Spencer house. His curly dirty blond hair looked brown against the dark shadow of the building. His dark brown eyes peered around the darkness, watching the EMTs bring out the gurney and take it into the house. Carlos Martinez was with him, his Italian and Mexican heritage mixed in that wavy long brunette hair, long slender fingernails, and tanned complexion. Carlos tugged at Scott who turned around and looked at the boy.

"Hurry it up man or we're going to get caught," Carlos hissed. He looked back at the ambulance and saw them walk a wrapped gurney towards the back. Scott pushed Carlos off of him and looked back at the home. He looked down at his pocket and felt the tip of the Exacto knife against his finger. Ryan's mother often sewed items for people as gifts. She always kept the Exacto knife in the top drawer, never locked, readily available for anything. A red spot appeared in the corner part of Scott's jacket, he cut himself accidentally. The prick in his finger felt numb.

"Come on man," Carlos hissed. Scott slowly turned away from the house, the sound of the EMTs closing the door, hopping into the ambulance, and driving away. The echo of the sirens wailing in Scott's ears. He remembers walking into the house, Ryan answering the door. Ryan's parents were gone for the evening. Both were celebrating his mother's birthday, despite the estrangement, they were still good friends.

Ryan answered the door in just his pajama bottoms. He held onto a bowl of ice cream and the television was blasting a movie on the screen. The living room as a large open space. Ryan's parents had a bedroom closer to the kitchen, their bathroom was near the closet. Ryan's bedroom was behind the television on the wall with his bathroom. The cats were hiding in the garage, the smell of an unchanged litterbox fumed from the door leading into their space.