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Part Twenty-Two

Twenty Minutes Earlier

   A human was in the room.

   Axel knew it was a bad idea to go borrowing without Mama and papa, and yet he went regardless. They were running low on their breakfast supply, so he took a quick trip without permission to find the box of cereal that remained consistent on Jamie's floor.

    It was always there; a blue and red box with yellow logos and filled to the brim with stale circles of sweet tasting cereal that Jamie never ate for one reason or another. The supply was easily accessible and familiar; two things in which Axel knew were most important in borrowing trips. He would race down, grab as much cereal as he could in his malnourished hands, and scamper back to prove something.

   He was just as strong as his adoptive parents, even if he was smaller.

   Axel grew up tiny. 'The runt of the litter,' they called him, right before his family decided it best to let him fend for himself. Honestly, it was so long ago that he had trouble remembering, but Axel figured that was for the best. After all, who would want to remember a family that left you for no reason other than being physically incapable.

   Sure, he had a limp on his right leg that wasn't noticeable unless you squint hard enough. Sure, his stutter forced him into silence for several years after his previous family left him. And sure, Axel was nearly half an inch shorter than the average height for a borrower. But all that didn't matter anymore, especially not after his new family came in and accepted him with open arms.

   They came in a new human's book bag one day, found in the dark void of a closet and were lost. Axel was lucky he knew the layout of the place, because as soon as they came, they needed his help scoping out the area to find a secure location. A temporary location, they said, but it had been four years since then and there was no sign of leaving it yet.

   These new borrowers, a couple named Drizzle and Jack, were about as loving as any parents could be. They kept Axel warm at night, fed him, quoted stories to help him fall asleep. And although they often mentioned the loss of a previous son, and a look of sorrow passed on both their faces, Axel knew he wasn't a replacement. He couldn't be. Drizzle and Jack were too good to him for Axel to be nothing more than a coping method for their lost son, and he refused to believe any differently. It was as if he finally found happiness and a perfect family to go with it.

   Only for everything to be taken away the moment Axel was found by a human.

   To be fair, he wasn't found yet. But the boots that stomped around and scuffed the side of the box, forcing it to tumble over and making Axel fall along with it, had him scared for his life. Cereal flooded his body at every angle until he feared he might drown in it, and then the box was picked up.

   Axel wasn't ashamed to admit that he started crying once he recognized the sensation of being lifted in the air. He was going to be discovered, tortured, and killed, all because he wanted to borrow some food for his parents. Drizzle and Jack might never know what happened to him, and the family that left him behind would be proven right in their assumptions that all he could do was make mistakes.

   And then the box was placed on the desk, and Axel wasn't seen at all.

   Voices started shouting soon after, two different humans in one room, seemingly fighting each other. He covered his sensitive ears with both hands and trembled inside the box, waiting for the whole thing to be over and done with. As if the yelling wasn't bad enough, thuds on the wooden floor rose up and shook the thin walls of the cereal box, yanking him this was and that until he feared he might be sick. Axel was beyond confused at what the humans were doing outside his box, but he knew one thing for sure; he would be dead from the terror if they didn't find and kill him first.