Zipped

6: The Criminal

Thomas

After a long, peaceful sleep in my room, I woke up and decided to check on Elsie. I slowly sat up and ran a hand through my messy dark hair before I left the room.

I was quite tired, to be honest, even though I had gotten a nice night’s sleep. With all that was happening, I was stressed out to think about it. But, it was impossible to go back to sleep even if I wanted to.

The halls in my area were somewhat dark. There must have been a breeze that went through the hall or something else that I don’t quite understand that blew out all the torches throughout the area. One of the people down here was running down the hall, a torch in his hand that he was using to light each of the dark ones. He was going faster than me, though, so I was able to get the light I needed as I wandered through the area.

As I passed by one of the curtains, I heard Molly’s voice through it. “You’re here?” she asked someone, sounding surprised.

“Yeah. You saw me fall down here anyway. Of course I would be here,” a male voice replied. It sounded familiar, and at first I couldn’t quite identify who was talking. It bothered me, in all honesty. But I chose to continue listening, just to hear what was going on before I possibly went in.

“And you were taking care of my sister. You were doing this,” Molly said, her voice small. I could hardly hear it, but the echoes from the surrounding halls helped me hear it by bouncing the sound towards me.

“Elsie is such a sweetheart. How could I not help her out while she was down here? She was scared and confused. She needed someone to help her out, you know?” the voice replied.

Then it hit me. Was it really Mitchell? Well, it made sense. If all these people had survived their falls, of course he lived through it too. But the fact that it was really Mitchell, that was the weirdest piece of all of this.

There was a moment of silence, and then a slight rustle before I heard something mumbled in my sister’s voice. “Thank you for doing this,” she said.

“No problem,” I heard Mitchell’s voice reply. His voice was clear, unlike my sister’s, as he spoke. Then, his voice dropped a bit lower. “Anything to help you guys out.”

At this point, I chose to check on what was going on. I pushed the curtain aside and entered the room. What I saw was a bit surprising to me.

Elsie was laying in the bed by the far wall, sleeping peacefully. I was glad to see that. She was fine, and it was great. Neil and Shailene stood by the other wall, right near the door I had just come in. They were both smiling, even though both of theirs were faint on their lips, but it was still a smile.

Molly and Mitchell were sitting in front of the bed, and Molly had her arms thrown around him in the tightest hug possible. Her head was buried in his shoulder, and Mitchell was holding her, whispering to her to help her feel better about what was going on. It looked like it was working, actually, which surprised me because I could never get Molly to feel better about anything, even when I tried to comfort her in a way similar to what Mitchell was doing. What did he have that I didn’t?