"I Love You Arvin Russell" || The Devil All The Time

Section 6

What i can see past my blurry vision is hard to make out, my eyes keep opening and closing and nothing is getting clearer. I can smell blood, it's close, i feel myself reach up and then a hand is around my wrist, "you probably don't want to touch that," it's Arvin. I jump up and look over at him, he has scratches on him and his shirt is dirty, i look around and we're driving, good, but Arvin is in the back with me, shit. "Howdy ma'am, nice to see you up and awake," I dart my eyes to the driver and its a woman with a man beside her, probably a married couple, i open my mouth and its so dry, I point to my mouth signaling i want water, he reaches into his bag and hands me a bottle half filled but wrinkled like someone stepped on it. After i take a drink i sigh and put a hand on Arvin's shoulder, "what.. happened," it took everything out of me to say that, "we crashed, I'm not sure what caused it but you must of hit your head because you blacked out, i dragged you out the truck and we sat by the side of the road for a while, but these fine folks picked us up, this is Carl and Sandy," they both turn and smile at me and their eyes are on the road again, i sit back and wench at the pain at my side, Arvin notices and he's instantly pulling my dress up to see the wound. "It's just a bruise," he said while putting my dress down, I turn on my good side which is luckily towards him and i try to control the throbbing pain in my head, "where we headed?" I ask while trying to get comfortable, Arvin suddenly picks my legs up and places them on his lap, he starts examining them like its a big question he's trying to answer and then he says, "i was thinking back to my old town, where i grew up," he sits back and rests his arms on my legs that are slightly bruised and cut, "you think that house is still there?" I ask, "it's gotta be," he replies but he doesn't sound determined, but more worried. There was a silence when the man, Carl, turns and looks at us and says, "man my ol billy don't work like it used to, we might have to pull over so i can take a leak," the woman, Sandy, looks at him with a disgusted face and pulls over, he gets out and there was just silence. Then Carl's by the window to where Arvin and i are and he basically yells in my face about the sunset being pretty and he wants to take some photos, I look over at Arvin and I know he's thinking the same thing, they're suspicious. Arvin leans slowly to my ear and whispers barely loud enough for even me to hear, "get my gun out the bag," I look at him in confusion and he mouths to me "they're no good," I try to calmly grab his gun and slide it over to him, he tells me to get on the ground of the car and i do so, from what I can make out Carl started towards the car and then Arvin shoots, not once, but twice, and then I hear Sandy from above me repeatedly cursing and I can see the barrel of her gun from over the seat, Arvin's begging her to put the gun down when Sandy keeps saying she's sorry to him, I close my eyes and then there's two shots at the same time. I hear Sandy gargling and then her hair falls over the seat, arvin looks down at me and grabs me, he's basically carrying me out the car when we fall to the ground and we're panting, I feel the tears building behind my eye lids and I sit up and point to Carl's dead body, "check.. them," I say with barely any breath. Arvin sits up and crawls to the lifeless body and he starts rummaging through the pockets and then he pulls a polaroid picture out, he looks at it and then at me and then back at the picture, I ask what it is and he hands it to me, I can't believe what I'm looking at. Sandy topless sitting over a dead or very drunk man, I'm guessing Carl took the picture since he's not in it and he was talking about the sunset and taking photos of it. Arvin stands up while grabbing all the money out of the wallet and he reaches out to me to help me up. I stand up and fix my dress that has all kind of rips and tears in and I sigh as I climb into the car next to Sandy's body and I go through her purse, nothing very important but I pick up her gun and open the barrel, I notice the shells don't look like normal ones so I empty it into my hands and run my thumb over the five bullets left, as I climb out the car I say to Arvin, "these were blanks, that's why you didn't get shot," he grabs one from my hand and examines it, "I wonder how that happened," he tosses the bullet and grabs our bags from the car and we start walking down the road, I notice the street sign labeled with a logo that is barely visible but I know what it means, we're close to his hometown. After walking for what felt like hours we reach a podunk gas station in the middle of nowhere, Arvin tells me to wait by the gravelly road about 10 feet from the door, I see him talking and smiling like he recognizes the man that's talking with him, Arvin jogs back down to me and says, "the house is burnt to the ground but I still want to show you something," I nod and he grabs my hand and we're walking up the tiny hill when Arvin stops but doesn't drop my hand, "I never did thank you for that night," he says to the old man, they're talking about Arvin as a kid and having pie all over his face which makes me smile down at the ground and then we're off up the hill. When we finally stop walking through the woods we stop by what looks like a huge log and a barely standing cross above it, "my dog was killed, I never did give him a good burry," he drops everything to the ground and he digs up a hole and grabs a bunch of bones from behind the log, he neatly places them in the hole and covers them up, I squat next to him and run my hand up and down his back, "I'll go try to find some flowers to put on it," he looks at me with tears in his eyes and nods with a sniffle, I smile back gently and I start walking towards the woods behind us. It's late fall so leaves cover the ground and I slide my foot through the leaves trying to see if maybe any flowers were still around, I didn't realize how far I wondered from Arvin until I hear footsteps near us, I yell Arvin and then that's when it happened, the gunshot through my stomach. I drop to my knees and look up towards the hill and there's a sheriff with a pistol close to what Arvin's looks like, I fall onto a tree and slide down it with my hands over the wound, I see Arvin from afar hiding behind the huge log and he's starring at me shaking and I slowly turn around the tree so I'm totally hidden from sight. I hear the sheriff yelling for Arvin to come out and they're arguing about Arvin killing his sister and her husband, Sandy was his sister, the sheriff's. I wince with the pain and blood is pouring down my dress and I can taste it forming in my throat, "I'm not a bad person sheriff," I hear Arvin yelling and he's talking about the picture and them wanting to kill him, then, 2 shots ring out and echo through the woods. I hear a body fall and I hope its not Arvin, I hear running coming towards me and Arvin's cute face pops around the tree and he's squatting in front of me, he's practically sobbing asking me if I'm okay and what can he do to help me, "I need your... pocket knife," I sputter out in pain, Arvin fishes for the knife and hands it to me, i cut the complete bottom of my dress so its like a bandage and I say to Arvin, "I need you to look at my back to see if it went clean through, if it did I'll be fine," I slowly sit forward and Arvin pulls my dress up and stutters, "Y-yeah it went through, I think," I reach my hand around and i can feel it but I almost yell out in pain. I wrap the cloth completely around me and tie in on my side so the bleeding slows down, I put my cold white hand covered in blood on his cheek and smile, "I'll be okay Arvin," he nods with my bloody finger marks on his cheek but it wasn't a confident one, he helps me up and I wrap my arm around him and he wraps his around me to support me up and we slowly walk away from the scene. We reach the log and Arvin barely bends down to pick up the bags and I wince and put my hand over my wound that I think has stopped bleeding. We slowly make our way to the gas station from earlier again and the guy sees what's going and runs inside and back out with towels and alcohol, Arvin sits me down in front of the window and he takes the offer from the old man, he looks at the man with a look that asks if he can look away, the man jumps like he realized what he wanted and walks in the store. Arvin turns to me and I sit up enough for him to pull my dress up, he unties the cloth which is more painful than I showed and I hear the liquid pouring onto the towel which I know is going to hurt, "I'm sorry Violet," I think he's apologizing for what happened and I was about to say something when the stinging of the alcohol roars through my wound and body and I groan and yell in pain. I grab the handle to the door and squeeze so hard my hand turns white, Arvin pulls the towel away and tells me to lay back, I lay down slowly and he repeats the same pain giving treatment to the wound on my stomach and I'm crying at this point. When he's done I sit up and he finishes tying the bandage the man gave him around me and when he's finished he pulls me onto his lap, I place my head on his shoulder and he sighs and wraps his arms around my waist but barely misses my wound, causing me to squirm. "I wish I could take that from you and give it to me, I wish i saw him earlier and stopped him from hurting you," I don't have the strength to talk so I just look up at him, he places his thumb on my lip and runs it across, "your lips are turning blue," he says, I lift my hand to my lips and smile, "I'm good," is all I spit out. "If you die-," I interrupted him, "I won't," "but if you do-" "if," "yes, if you die, where do you wanna be buried?" I feel my eyes widen in surprise and I stutter, "I- I have no idea," my parents were cremated so I have no family anywhere, "you wanna be buried by my momma?" He surprises me again with this question and I shake my head yes, I'd love to be buried by Charlotte, who was my second mother. "And if you live-" "i will Arvin," "if you do, you wanna marry me?" I once again open my eyes wide and smile huge, "yeah, I guess I'll marry you," he smiles back and softly kisses my blue lips. The old man comes back out and says, "i um, I called for someone to come get you fellows and take you to a doctor," Arvin thanks him and helps me up with him, we start walking towards the main road when a car pulls up and we get in slowly trying to not cause my wound to start bleeding again. I hold Arvin's hand and lay my head on his shoulder and he lays his head on mine back, "I don't think we should go to the doctors, you're wanted," he looks down at me and then out the windshield, he sighs heavily, "yeah, we got only $5, maybe a motel?" He asks, I nod, "that sounds better than getting arrested," he smiles and kisses my forehead, he tells the driver to go to the motel closest to where we are and he stops the car, "I know you're wanted boy, I am the doctor," Arvin and I give each other a confused look and then back at him, "okay? Can you help her?" The doctor nods and gets out, he grabs what looks like a brief case and a blanket and helps me out the car with Arvin behind me. The man lays the blanket out on the grass beside where we parked, I look at Arvin hesitantly and he nods like it's okay. I lay down on the blanket and the man opens the brief case, a bunch of surgical tools and needles with thread are in it, I sigh and lift my dress up so he can preform the stitching, he looks closely at it and says, "you're lucky it went through clean the way it did, or you'd probably be dead," he puts the thread through the needle and cleans his hands off with the alcohol and rubs it down the needle as well the thread and gets everything prepared for me. Arvin moves my head under his lap and he grabs my hand while rubbing my hair and telling me its going to be okay repeatedly. He puts the needle to my skin and tells me to take a big deep breath in and I do so, then the needle is slowly pushed into my skin and I groan hard at the pain, it's taking so much energy out of me that my vision gets blurry again, then he works the needle again. This time I yell and squeeze Arvin's hand so hard he's cringing as well, the needle is like a hot coal being dragged through my skin and closing my bullet hole, I start getting dizzy, I feel him tug the thread through and I sigh and turn my head towards the road, I watch a butterfly land on a leaf and fly off, as I'm watching it fly away I feel the needle piercing my skin again, this time I don't make a sound, I just watch the butterfly. Arvin must of thought it was weird because he starts rubbing my head faster and turns my head towards him, "Violet?" He asks, "I'm okay," I completely forget I'm getting stitched up, but once I sit up for him to get my back wound I winch and groan, Arvin's hand is on my back trying to comfort me and help me flip over, once that needle was pushed into my wound I lost complete sight around me, I feel Arvin under me and the man's hands working the needle but I don't at the same time, "mom?" Is the last thing I remember hearing.