Oasis in Ohio

Chapter Fifteen

As I woke up, my stomach made weird noises, angry at the fact that our dinner wasn't my normal. Honestly my normal dinner is way worse than having cold meat and rice. Normal dinner for Bella and I was instant Ramon or sometimes Poptarts, nothing healthy, especially sense our greenhouses weren't being taken care of anymore.

Rubbing my stomach I sat up, rolling Bella lightly out of my arms. Looking around I saw Honey was still asleep but our mom was sitting next to the carrier, watching her.

"Good morning." I said.

"Oh! Good morning Xavier." My mom happily said, taking her eyes away from Honey to look at me. "Pfff, nice mohawk." She laughed.

"Huh?" I reached up and felt my hair and it was definitely sticking straight up. "Oh, haha." I half laughed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"Squeak squeak!" We heard from the shadows.

"Awwww there's a little mousey here." Mom cooed.

"It's not a mouse, it's a rat."

Looking at Bella peacefully sleeping I saw a giant brown rat sitting on her side, getting ready to bite her. It's little pink noise was twitching in anticipation, leathery tail flowing back and forth.

"No!" I cried, grabbing it by the torso and tossing it far away from Bella. As I did so it twisted it's little body around, bitting me in the arm. "Ow! Shit..." I said through grinded teeth, looking at my now bloodied arm.

"Oh my God, hun are you okay?" My mom was at my side in seconds, examining the rat bite in my arm. "I think I might throw up." Cupping her hand to her mouth she turned around.

Finally looking down at the wound myself I saw what was so bad. Some the skin had been pulled away from my left arm, exposing everything underneath it. My arm red from my own blood, my hand sticky from having held it on top of the gash. The non-bloodstained parts of my arm were red from irritation.

I was stuck staring at it, too frightened to scream in pain. I swore I could see muscles, some with bite marks.

"I-I, We, have soon s-stuff in our bags." I told Mom.

"Okay, just stay calm, stay calm..." I was pretty sure that last "stay calm" was for her.

I took deep breaths as Mom went through our bags, looking for the resources I grabbed.

At this point Bella and Dad were up, confused and concerned on what the screaming and yelling was from.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked.

"Oh nothing, Xavier just got a scratch on his arm." Mom said reassuringly.

"Is everything OK?" Dad asked, walking over to join us. "Oh Lord..." He whispered once he saw the terrible, gruesome sight in front of him. "Hey Bella, want to go for a walk?" He asked, leading her away from me.

Dragging my eyes away from my arm I locked eyes with Mom. She had everything she needed next to her, ready to work on my arm.

"It's gonna sting but only for a second." She told me.

"O-OK." It already hurt, I couldn't possibly get worse, right?

"Aggghhhh!" Yep, it can definitely get worse.

I kept my arm as still as possible while the rest of my body wriggled, twisted, and withered in pain. I couldn't tell what the name was but I knew that whatever she poured on my wound, stung like a fucking bitch.

"Almost done, I'm almost done." Mom said, a hint of sadness in her voice.

Squeezing my eyes shut and turning away, I took even deeper breaths as the pain reached it's climax, before it sizzled out. As my breathing slowly relaxed and my heart rate dropped I turned back to my mom, eyes open wide.

"Now I just have to bandage it."

I kept my arm in front of me as she grabbed gauze, tissues, and stuff to stitch my skin up with.

Now my eyes were widening with fear. Even since I was little I never wanted stitches, never! But now I needed to.

First she used some tissues to clean up the blood before getting ready to use the needle. Gulping I watched as she carefully threaded the string through the needle. Following her every moments I watched as she brought the needle up to my skin and........ stopped?

I looked up, equally confused and relieved, and asked Mom, "Why'd you stop?"

"I stopped because I don't know if I can stitch your arm back up properly."

"I mean, something is better than nothing... right?" I questioned, still anxious about getting stitches.

"I guess you're right. This may hurt, way less than the hydrogen peroxide but it'll still hurt."

Ohh! She poured hydrogen peroxide on my- ow!!

As she poked the needle into my arm it felt like I was being stabbed by a fairy who had a tiny knife. Mom was right though, it didn't hurt that much! It was such a relief after the hydrogen peroxide that I relaxed a little.

Stitch, pull. Stitch, pull. Stitch, pull.

I looked around the concrete tunnel as my flesh got stitched back together, noticing the small imperfections in it when we heard footsteps.

Turning my head around best I could I tried to make out if it was someone we knew. My heart and body started going tense again, before I realized it was Dad and Bella.

"Oh you guys are back." I said, just starting to notice my dad's heavy breathing.

My mom stopped and asked what's wrong.

That's when my dad told us something that made me shiver from head to toe.

~Thanks for reading!
I hope this cliff hanger is intriguing.
Well until next time...
Enjoy the story :)~