Sons of Night

Andy's POV
We all had been sitting around the table for a while. We’d eaten, as my mother had ordered, but not the whole kitchen. We’d eaten as much as it seemed polite. We all felt sick though, we couldn’t eat much more. I personally was overwhelmed with emotions. I was worried about CC, I had no idea how to react to being home after all these years. It was nothing how I expected. I had expected a huge welcoming home, just us sitting around a table together. Talking. Me telling them all the things that had happened in the years I was gone. Them telling the same things to me. Getting reaquainted over a hot meal and then life would continue on. That’s what I wanted. Not this. For a moment as I sat there quietly running my hands over the coffee mug I resented CC. I stopped those thoughts right away. I couldn’t blame him, it was not his fault.
My dad was staring at me. Not saying anything at all. He watched me like I was a ghost and I understood why. I didn’t react to it though. I just felt the ridges on the sides of the cup and said nothing. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t even begin to imagine what I would say to him. So I sat with my thoughts. The rest of the group sat around the table too. Also silent. The physical signs of stress could be seen so clearly from them, rubbing temples, hands through hair, and subconscious table tapping. I knew that they were waiting for me to break the silence, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Maybe it was because I knew that I would cry and they hadn’t seen me cry since I was still a teenager. My pride did not allow me to put myself in such a vulnerable position. What a great way to reintroduce myself to my father, with even more tears than he’d already seen from me this evening.
I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else. Of course, instead of finding relaxing thoughts I found more disturbing ones. I thought about Mayden. Had she lied convincingly enough? Where the cops on their way here right now? Did she rat on us? More important, was she happy? Did she feel safe again? Was she laying in bed and putting away the whole experience? I hoped so. I hoped she was going to move on and forget that all of that shit happened. That was the good side of me though. My selfish side never wanted her to forget. That side of me wanted her to be lying awake, wishing that I was there holding her. That’s what I wanted. She’d single handedly managed to tear me from being a solid emotionless wall to being fluffy, feeling, mess. I wanted her more than anything. I couldn’t have her though.
I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and I just about jumped a foot in the air. I was prepared to slap the hand away when I realized that it was my mom. I had been falling asleep at the table without realizing it.
“Jinxx and I have figured it out,” She said, “Jinxx says he can fix CC,”
“What do you mean?” I rasped.
“Appendicitis,” Jinxx stated from the doorway.
“Jinxx has something of a medical background from what understand. He tells me that with the right tools he can fix it now that he knows what it is,”
“You mean you’re going to open him up and take `out his appendix, here and now?” I gasped, fully awake now. This sounded insane and the rest of the group was staring in shock and so was Dad. Jinxx nodded. That was something that terrified me about Jinxx. He was so quiet and unassuming that you would take him as the kid who was kind of dumb and very shy. Then suddenly he revealed remarkable intelligence and that he could kill you seven ways to Sunday. He wasn’t quiet just because he was shy, he was quiet because he was gathering information on how to best torture you to death. You specifically. Not that he ever would hurt you, but just in case he needed to, he knew just how to make you grovel. His secrets, and his thought processes where so in depth that in that moment I realized that he knew far more about all of us than we knew of him. I knew right then that since he stepped foot in my house he had been gathering information, picking up on little tidbits here and there about who my family was. Storing random facts away in his files in case he ever needed them. A madman. A madman that had simply not yet gone mad entirely, that was soaking in his own twisted genius. A madman that I also trusted with my life, also he was probably the most qualified person we could muster to remove an internal organ from someone.
“Okay,” I said swallowing hard. Jinxx maintained complete eye contact with me.
“Andy, you’re mom is going to go to the hospital and take the things that we need. I’ve explained to her the intensity of our situation. She’d going to get what I need for the surgery. I’m going to prep the bathroom and do the surgery in there. There rest of you will go to bed, in the morning CC will be on the recovery,” Jinxx demanded. That was something else that scared me about him. He hid his secrets so well. I looked at Mom and she nodded in agreement. Jinxx rarely even spoke. When he commanded something, you listened. Unless you wanted to wake up very dazed and confused in a ditch in Texas, you did what Jinxx said.
“Okay,” I said again. Jinxx nodded calmly, pleased with how compliant I was being.I stood up and straightened my clothes.
“Wait a minute, honey won’t you get fired if they find out that you’re stealing from the hospital,” My dad said.
“Yes, but they won’t find out,” My mom replied with a bit of a smirk.
“You’re sure?” Dad said raising his eyebrows.
“Absolutely,” Mom said with a nod.
“Okay,” Dad replied, with a similar tone to that of my own. I couldn’t help but smile a bit.
“Just show the rest of them to bed, and go to bed yourself. I’m going to stay up and help Jinxx. CC has to be fixed tonight or his appendix may burst and that could kill him, so we must get started now,” Mom said and so it was set in motion. Mom was out the door, Jinxx was showed to the bathroom with a bathtub, where the surgery would be done. Ashley and Jake were shuttled off to sleep in the same room. They were too tired and scared of Jinxx to argue. Before I knew it I was alone and standing outside a closed door. I knew what was behind it. My bedroom. I wondered if they had changed it at all since I had left. I wouldn’t know until I opened the door. I held onto the knob, took a deep breath and pushed the door open. I reached to the side and flicked the light switch.
Suddenly I was fourteen again. I had never lost my cool at school and I was just coming home and getting ready to go to bed for another day. Not a thing had changed. Everything was clean and dusted, but nothing was moved. The clothes had been picked up off the floor and my bed was made, waiting for me to get back in it at the end of the day, but that time had never come. I hadn’t come back to sleep for ten years. Now here I stood, twenty four years old and finally about to get back into the bed that there had been no point in me making because I was just going to get back in in a few hours. My mother must have made it at some point. I stepped into the room and looked at the posters the bands there, the music still played in my head sometimes. I closed the door. I stripped off the clothes that I had on, down to my boxers and placed the clothes on the bedside table, nicely folded. I flopped down on the quilt, feeling the soft fibers beneath my fingers. I rolled over and smelled the clean sheets.
I let myself pretend that the day I killed Cody had never happened. I was fourteen I had had a good day at school. I was falling asleep to go back tomorrow. That’s how it was. I was not twenty four years old, I was not a wanted murderer. My friend was not dying while my other friend prepared to do unofficial surgery on him. I was just a kid. That was how I got myself to relax enough to go to sleep.
Jinxx’s POV
I scrubbed the tub thoroughly again before I out CC in it there could be no risk of infection. He was already so near the abyss of death, one little tap would send him spiraling, lost forever. I wiped the tub dry with towels and removed them from the room, scrubbing my own hands just as hard as I had the tub I went and got CC. I carried him from the couch and laid him down in the bottom of the white porcelain tub. It would be red soon. I thought about putting a pillow under his head to make him a bit more comfortable. Then I realised that he’d been unconscious for hours already, he wouldn’t feel a thing. There was a light tap on the bathroom door and Amy came in a second later. She was a good lady. Very friendly, very smart, I could see her in the way that Andy acted.
Clutched in her hands was a large plastic bag of all the things I would need. I started to shake as I realised that I was doing something I swore to never do again. I had to this time. For CC, just like I had to last time. To save two lives that I loved. That was different though, and so was this. I had to push away the old and focus on right now, on fixing CC. Amy and I scrubbed our hands and arms again. We put on face shields, aprons, and gloves, CC could not get infected. I pulled my hair back and put a bandanna around it to keep it away. I breathed deeply, going over in my mind. I knew how to do this. I knew that I did I just had to do it. I had to cut him. Amy put together an IV drip and stuck it in CC’s arm. He wouldn’t feel a thing. She connected him to all sorts of monitors that would tell me how alive he was while we worked.
The prep was all but done. I had to man up and do it right then or lose a friend. I had to keep telling myself that. I took a washable marker and marked a rectangle around the area where I’d be cutting, and cleaned it a s best I could. This procedure was simple. A cut, two snips, and some sewing and he was done. I held out a gloved hand, I was pretending to be okay but my vision swam. I felt like I was about to blackout, but I could not. Amy placed the sterile scalpel in my hand. With a deep breath I made the first cut. Blood seeped from the wound. I forced back the flashbacks that I knew were coming. I could let myself weaken later, but not now. Not when CC was open and bleeding, not when he needed me to be strong. I pulled apart the wound. blood gurgled out, but I saw the problem. A largely swollen appendix, blackened and ready to burst. I gave the scalpel back to Amy and she handed me scissors. I snipped at the top and bottom of the organ, not letting any of the infected liquid from inside spill out. Amy held out a jar and I put the organ in it.
I was almost done. The fact that I would be closing the wound soon made my head a bit less fuzzy. I checked inside the wound first, to make sure everything looked fine, and it did. I had hit no major arteries, so the bleeding was quite minimal and I was sure that once I stitched him up there would be bruising but no major internal bleeding. Amy gave me the needle and thread. All of these things had come straight from packaging, so we knew that they were clean. I pushed the needle through his skin and pulled the thread through and into the other side. One stitch, two stitch, three stitch, four, five stitch, six stitch more. I stopped counting after that. If he really wanted to know I could count later and tell him. That was that and It was done. I was sure that he would live.

Notes

For the record I have no idea how surgery is done, this is not accurate and do not try this at home kids go to a freaken doctor if you're sick. Also for the record Jinxx is my bae and I love him. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of this chapter.