Seven (Completed)

CHAPTER 13 ~ Pull the trigger

CHAPTER 13

Pull the trigger

 

Carlos felt a hand touching his back and jumped out of his sleeping back in alarm.

'Hush! Are you trying to scare everyone?' Sonia asked. Carlos realized the hand that scared him so much belonged to her and his body warmed up as he came closer to her.

'I'm so dumb,' he answered. 'But I don't want to stay up,' he complained like a big baby and his eyes begged Sonia to let him be.

'You can't, Carlos. I didn't want to force Lucas to stay up tonight as well,' she explained herself.

'Fine. Am I with Anne?' he asked while trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

'Yeah. And I think I'll stay with you two for a little while. I can't even pretend I'm sleepy,' she responded.

'Oh, no, no, miss. You need to go to sleep at some point. And don't make me sing some lullaby because your ears may bleed and I'm too manly for such things anyway,' he said jokingly.

Sonia tried to laugh quietly while throwing quick glares at her friends sleeping nearby. 'I'll try to keep my eyes shut then. Can you check up on Anne? Make sure she's awake?' she asked.

'Sure, goodnight,' he answered. He lingered on the spot and put an arm around Sonia's shoulder. 'We'll have a talk tomorrow, okay?' he asked, more like announcing his decision to talk to her. She did not protest.

When he left with a smile, Sonia returned to her desperate need to kill time before she could finally fall asleep for a couple of hours.

***

After Anne was up and ready, she joined Carlos' side on top of the hill that overlooked the lake and the small campfire.

'So, why are we up here?' she asked paying close attention to him.

'I just thought it would be easier to watch over them from up here. It's a great night too,' he answered and looked back at her.

Anne then slowly lay with her back on the ground, her arms wide open on both sides of her body.

'Do you want to look at the stars with me?' she unexpectedly asked.

'Um, sure, yeah,' he responded in doubt. Carlos followed Anne's lead and lied down on the ground as well.

'When I was little,' Anne said, 'I believed that when a person died they became stars. Actually, I think my mum used to say that to me.'

Carlos turned and looked at her momentarily, trying to smile back. Was he supposed to share a relevant childhood memory of his too?

'Sonia,' he begun talking just to cover his anxiety, 'couldn't sleep one night so she stayed up and the next morning she came over to my house and said she'd counted all the stars in the sky,' he said and sighed. 'I believed her,' he spontaneously confessed with a genuine smile.

'Sonia ... you guys are pretty close...'she said even though a little voice inside her tried to stop her.

'Ah, yeah, I guess. I sometimes think of her as my sister,' he whispered numbly.

'But sometimes, you don't...' she thought to herself and turned to the other side.

***

Pierre's body shifted from the right to the left, to the right again.

Darkness filled the place in front of him, causing him to fall on his knees until his eyes would adjust to the lack of any source of light. A whisper echoed inside the walls of what seemed to be an endless black room.