6
Roy
I wake up having a major headache and a bad feeling in my stomach. I take a deep breath and walk out of the room after making the bed. I walk out and see Elder Rose knitting what looks like a scarf. “Good Morning Elder Rose. Any updates about Toby?”
“Ah, yes actually. Go outside and see for yourself. You’ll see a wooden wheelbarrow, look for that by the wood line.”
I rush to the door and slide on my shoes running out the door slamming it behind me. She found him! I run around looking for the clue that she gave me and then I spot it under the shade of the tree and covered with a blanket. I walk up closer to it and notice that the blanket has spots of blood on it. Some of it was dry and some of it seemed fresh. I slowly remove the blanket to see Toby having bloodied bandages wrapped around his abdomen and elbow.
Toby! “TOBY! What the hell happened to you!?” I feel tears of sadness and anger start to stream down my cheeks. “Toby! You gotta wake up!” I shake him but he doesn’t even flinch. “Wake up, Toby! Come on, WAKE UP! Please! You can’t leave me too! Please! This is all my fault. Just please wake up!”
He can’t be dead right!? I pull him towards me, putting my head against head chest. I listen closely. I hear a very low and dangerously slow heart beat. No! Damn it, Toby! Stay with me! I know! I gotta stop the bleeding! I start to grab leaves and dip them in water as fast as I can and slide them under the bandages. I then pull the bandages tighter to apply pressure. His parents! I gotta tell his parents! Hang on, Toby! I’ll be right back. I run across the bridge and into the village, my hands covered in blood and tears wetting the ground like scattered rain. I run and run, almost out of breath and then stop in front of Toby’s house’s door.
The door is cracked open? I open it and look around. Instantly, seeing a long line of blood leading to the kitchen. What happened here!? I hesitantly follow the blood to the kitchen and see what looks like a scene from someone’s worst nightmares. A big puddle of blood in front of a chair covered in blood with bloodied ropes dangling from it. Then beside it Toby’s mother laying on the ground with her own crimson puddle.
What happened here?! I start to feel nauseous and run out of the house and to the side and vomit. How horrible and…gross……Oh! Toby! I run back through the village, across the bridge, to the side of the cottage, and to Toby. I don’t know what to do! I fall to my knees and start to sob into my hands covered with the unwanted crimson gift that came from Toby.
“R-Roy…W-where am I?”
I look up and see him slowly getting out of the wheelbarrow. I wipe my eyes and stand up with him. Toby?! “Toby! I thought you were going to die! I-I didn’t know what to do!”
I resist the urge to hug him and squeeze him, to never let him go, out of fear that I would hurt him. “Roy…I am sorry for what happened, but seriously where am I? Is that….Elder Rose’s cottage?”
His face looks disgusted and full of realization. I wonder what is going on in that mysterious mind of his. “Toby?”
“Yes?” He remains his disgusted gaze at the cottage.
“Before you get mad. I am sorry. I went to Elder Rose for help… I was worried about you…I…I had no one else to turn to.”
He slowly turns his gaze to me. I hope he isn’t mad at me. Then the disgusted look on his face turns to grief, his eyes watery. He falls down to his knees and screams, pounding his fist on the ground, bruising them, and making them bleed. I can’t help but watch as his body shakes and as he sobs into the ground. Why is he crying? Is he mad or something?
“Toby-”
“Roy..She…she…”
I sit down on the ground beside him and pat his back. He sits up and he wipes the tears from his reddened face. He coughs harshly and a small bit of blood drips from his mouth. “Roy, my mother….she is dead. Why do I not mourn her death? She was m-murdered. I was there. Elder Rose killed her, right in front of me. I think….she was, however, trying to p-protect me…..I remember last night, my mother and father caught me sneaking into the house to grab some parsley. They tied me to a chair and interrogated me. Mother and Father must’ve really hated my answers. F-father…he walked out of the door without saying a word. After that my mother and I got into an argument. She…took the kitchen knife and shoved it into my a-abdomen…,” he says as he holds himself with a look of pain on his face, “I-I wasn’t even worried about me…She was bad mouthing you, Roy,….I couldn’t just sit there and listen to that. Not after all that we went through…Not after all that you went through..You mean a lot to me, Roy.” He looks up to me and smiles. He slowly raised his arm and ruffled my hair. How is he able to smile after all that? I mean,...he looks so calm.
“Toby. You mean a lot to me too. With that I hate to ask this and you don’t have to answer but what were you arguing about? I mean I know you said that she was bad mouthing me but I mean, why did I get brought up?”
“It’s easier if I show you.”
“Show me? How come you don’t just tell me?”
“Cuz Roy, I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Well, just say it then.”
“No.” With that he stands up and grabs my hand. He then takes me around and across the bridge, down past the other’s houses, and finally to his. He opens the door. Wincing a little as he walks around. He walks inside with a blank look on his face the entire time. “Go to my room and sit on my bed. I will be back with what I gotta show you in a sec.”
I do as he says and he comes back holding a small make-shift journal. He hands it to me and says, “Go ahead read it. Any questions and I’ll answer.”
He then lays on the floor and takes a deep breath as I open his journal and start to read it.
Most of this is about me? All good things but still. Why would he waste his time on writing this stuff when it's all about me, and why have me read it? I eventually come to a stop with the last sentence being. “I don’t know how else to word it right now but I have grown, well, really fond of him. -Toby.”
I came to a realization that the whole argument was over what this journal states. To go as far to stab your own son over this…. “Toby?”
“Mm?”
“Was the argument about what you said in this journal?”
“Yep, mainly.”
“Why write about me tho?”
He smiles at me. “Maybe cuz I love you, silly.”
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