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006. Apathetic
For the past three days Moses had lay in his bed, curled up in the fetal position, gobbling morosely to himself.
"H - hey little guy, want some food?" Enzo poked his head in through the doorway, left ajar. His little brother did nothing more than cease the gobbling.
"What happened to you, anyway?"
All Enzo knew was that his brother came home from staying over at Nicolai's one day, bruised and bloodied and mumbling about the turkey.
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It was definitely a good day; the breeze was slight, the air was warm, sky just light enough to see by. The sunset had been magnificent as well, according to Canada. Who happened to be the one behind this whole 'camping' idea in the first place.
Nicolai and Moses were truly roughing it. Sure, as kids they'd dragged their blankets and a few chairs out into the living room and made tents out of that, but never had they spent an actual night out in the wilderness. Which, granted, was only fifty yards or so from the house's front door, but real men don't think about that. Or bears. Definitely not bears.
Moses, legs hidden inside the tent they'd managed to put up after an hour's work and a quick urgent call Canada's way, leaned in on his forearms and glanced around anxiously. There was no TV, no computer, no siblings to entertain himself and Nicolai. Just... themselves. And a deck of cards; Nicolai's papa swore that all you needed to keep you from boredom on a camping trip was a fishing pole, walking stick, and a deck of cards.
"What do we even do out here?" Moses asked softly after a while. Nicolai, sitting outside the tent with his Gameboy in hand, shrugged distractedly.
"I - I thought you knew! You've done this lots of times, right?" the Neapolitan cried. No way had be ever done something like this. The garden was as far outside as he'd ever slept, and even then it was only siesta. Not darkness.
"... Well... Yeah ... " Behind his glasses, guilt was almost apparent on Nicolai's face. Moses narrowed his eyes; he was half-Spanish, yes, but he had learned to read people's faces like his brothers read Dr. Seuss. He was about to ask, when...
gobble. gobble.
Both boys looked towards the line of trees that spread out around them, like arms poised to hug. Moses narrowed his eyes as he searched, was about to lose hope of finding the mystery gobbler, when out of the vegetation a magnificent beast strode. It looked... delicious.
But friendly, as well. Nicolai and Moses exchanged a glance, both of them immediately knowing what the other was thinking. Girls liked cooking, and turkeys were food, right?
They crept towards it. The perfect chick magnet, the turkey's feathers were poetry, luscious brown mixed with the flamboyant fan of tail feathers and mottled wings. It almost made up for how ugly it was everywhere else.
Nicolai piped up first, reproducing the gobbling sound as best as he could, grinning. Moses reached into his pocket for some string, something to make a leash with. The bird looked rather heavy, though fun to pick up; he wouldn't risk anything until it was house trained. Or dead.
The turkey, however, did not want to come.
It wanted to kill.
Pecked, torn, beaten, bruised and bloody saw the two no more than five minutes later, the turkey strutting off into the undergrowth.
"Perché, Dio? perché?" Moses shrieked, finding himself barely able to stand without swaying because he'd lost so much blood he was going to become nothing more than a fluttery bag of Campanian skin. He screamed as Nicolai wrapped a hand around his ankle. This was straight out of a horror film, he knew it.
"C'mon - mon dieu .. - man." Nicolai's voice was raspy, quite like that of a solder's after a long battle. Moses fell down to the ground and stared into the other's face, which looked like it was just loosing life by the second...
"We hafta get back home."
Moses rubbed his eyes, blurry with tears and dirt and probably a little blood. He decided not to look at his hand.
"How? ..."
"We'll take turns." Nicolai struggled to his hands and knees, started crawling in the general direction of his house; he nodded towards his leg, a signal Moses took as one for him to hang on while they inched towards Ukraine's care and warmth and a game of Brawl.
Something behind them gobbled ominously.
They would both be hearing that sound in their nightmares for years to come.
men getting pregnant · Wed Jan 13, 2010 @ 03:12am · 0 Comments |
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