Silly Things

Silent scream

Chapter 3

            The next day, Tai woke up later than usual. He rolled over, almost falling from the soft couch, and slowly cracked his eyes open. His foggy brain couldn't quite recollect why, but he felt last night had been a good one.

Unable and unwilling to move, he stared pathetically at the DVD player beneath the gargantuan television as it winked its green LED screen on and off at him. The digits slowly came into focus.

According to the DVD player, it was half-past eight in the morning. It seemed later than that though.

He sat up and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. He felt weary despite his sleep, as if last night had been particularly exhausting, or he'd overslept. Or more likely, he just didn't really want to get up.

Bright light streamed in through the large French windows of the games room, and Tai, from his sitting position under his cotton covers, admired the view.

The incandescent morning sun had risen, bright and glorious, behind the sky scrapers of the sprawling city. Tai was forced to reluctantly admit that even here in the city the sun rose with its usual impeccable grace.

Entranced by the sun's performance, slowly rising between the buildings, reducing them to nothing but dark, wavering shadows, Tai just lay there. Ears flat. Not thinking. Not moving.

Then he jumped to his feet, heart pounding. Where had Mike gone?!

Tai scampered around the couch and started tearing the flat apart in a frantic search, darting from room to room as if he'd find Mike just standing in a corner. He finally arrived, his search fruitless, back at the games room.

"No!" His voice was tiny and quiet, but that single exclamation held so much unutterable, inexplicable frustration.

Tears welled up and blurred his sight. With a sharp cry, Tai lashed out at an unoffending table. He kicked out with his unshod foot-paw.

The table didn't really care. It was made of polished oak. Tai's paw however, protested most strenuously.

The naked little fox pushed aside the pain eventually, after it settled into a throbbing ache, and simply stared long at the floor.

Why did his friends—no, everybody, do this to him?! Make him think they cared, then slink away? Did he say something to the older boy?

Desolate, Tai slowly walked to his pile of clothes that lay next to the couch. He dressed himself without much vigor, not even really sure why he bothered – what did it matter if he was nude in his own home, alone? Not like anyone cared anyway.

He ambled to the fridge in the kitchen and yanked the silver monstrosity's door open. Still sniffing, he pulled out the remainder of his apple juice. He spun the top off and adroitly threw it into the bin from five feet away.

Just as he was sitting down on the couch to spend the day with that hated television for his only company, there was a loud knocking on the front door.

Tai set his apple juice on the cabinet. "One second, please!" he said loudly. Quickly, he rubbed his eyes dry and went to the front of the apartment.

The door wasn't chained, so he just undid the simple lock and opened the door. Raised in a crime-free area, the kit didn't even think about it.