One Quirk Later #7~ In Which Basically I Just Gravitate To The Blood Part

Greetings, chums of the blogger world!

Today I am participating (for the fourth time) in Jem Jones‘s immensely fun flash fiction series, One Quirk Later. Previously these posts have included screaming maps, kidnapping, and dragons.

This one will not include any of the above, which is what makes this series so exciting. You never know what may happen.

For those of you who don’t know by now, Jem created this series and she gives us prompts and we write Things and everyone should join in because it is greatly enjoyable.

Here is the prompt:

I kind of wanted to do the unexpected and write something super funny even though the prompt is angsty, but…angst is much too tempting and I definitely went full angst on this one.

Also I definitely got too excited about the blood and left the last picture out entirely, but you know. The point is I wrote something, right?

Well, here it is:

Acting Weird

Denise was trying to do her homework, but she wasn’t succeeding. Her thoughts were frazzled. She kept wondering if she should even be doing homework in the first place or if she should try calling Zach or his mom again or—

She shook her head. Why was she so worried? It’s not like Zach was the kind of kid who did stupid things on purpose. He was probably just fine.

Denise tapped her pencil on her notebook. She stared at the words she’d just written there, not sure if they were actually intelligible sentences or not.

But he’d been acting weird yesterday. He’d been acting so weird that it had actually kind of freaked her out.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She quickly took it out and answered it.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Zach,” Denise said. “Where are you? Why did you disappear on me like that?”

“Sorry—”

“Where are you right now?”

“Um…the hospital?”

“What?” Denise squawked. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I mean…you know,” Zach stammered vaguely.

“No, I have no idea,” Denise snapped. “You haven’t told me a thing.”

“Please don’t be mad,” Zach said quietly.

“I’m not mad,” Denise said through gritted teeth. “Okay, maybe I’m a little mad. You can’t just crash my place and then disappear in the middle of the night and not expect me to be a little mad about that. Do you know how worried I’ve been?”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing and tell me what’s going on.”

Denise didn’t know what to think. This wasn’t like Zach. It just wasn’t like him.

He’d always been kind of an odd kid. But that was because he did things like make animal sculptures out of noodles and he didn’t like watching TV. It wasn’t because he did things like skip classes to stalk his half-sister at college or just show up at her apartment and ask if he could spend the night, only to disappear before two in the morning.

Only that’s exactly what he’d done yesterday.

He’d seemed scared, but he didn’t want to talk about it. She figured she’d get it out of him in the morning. Obviously that hadn’t happened. And now he was in the hospital? What had he been doing? Was he hurt, or was he there for some other reason?

Zach took a shaky breath. He swallowed. “It was my fault,” he said in a low voice.

“What was?” Denise asked, trying not to sound too impatient.

“At least, I think it was,” Zach went on in a rush, his voice higher than usual. “It kind of happened really fast. She was mad—because of something I did, I can’t remember what it was. I feel like I should remember…but anyway, then I was suddenly on the floor and my head felt wrong. It hurt. And then she was yelling. At first I couldn’t figure out what she was saying, but then I realized she was telling me not to bleed on her carpet. Then I noticed that I was bleeding. I hadn’t noticed before. I feel like I should have noticed.”

Denise listened, trying to make sense of his words. Her stomach churned. “Zach, what…who was yelling at you?” she asked, wishing she didn’t already know the answer.

“My mom. But it was because of the blood I was getting on the carpet. I don’t think we’ll be able to get it out.” He sounded upset. “I would have cleaned it up, but I—”

“How badly are you hurt?”

“Not, like…not really badly.”

Denise doubted that. “I’m coming to the hospital,” she said.

“What? No, you don’t need to do that,” Zach said quickly.

“Well, I’m coming. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Okay, but—”

Denise hung up before he could argue any more.

Epilogue

There you have it, a random slice of angst for you. I would offer you ice cream with that, but I don’t have any.