The Short Life of a Tissue Box part 2

The following entry is a record of the night June 24^th 2004. As the sole eyewitness of the events that took place on said night I believe it is my duty to submit my observations, to the literate world. This was taken during the events, and although they may seem biased towards one party’s favour, let the record reflect that no physical or audible action has been embellished or fabricated in any way.

Thursday, June 24^th, 2004

6:47 pm

I am about to write from where I have been sitting for the past 79 hours, on the cold and hideously dusty floorboards under Eva’s bed. Needless to say, these past few days have not been the highlight of my week, but alas I am powerless to cause any change that may remove my discomfort. On the bright side, Eva’s tendency to never get a job done has left her bed fairly uncovered, bare enough for the duvet not to obstruct my vision from the rest of the room. It is not entirely dark, the bedroom door has been left open and the fluorescent lighting from the corridor has been kind enough to shed some of itself here. It’s not that I fear the dark, or that I’ve been having terrifyingly vivid hallucinations of certain masked dust monsters pulling my deeper into the dark, or anything, It’s just that I would appreciate someone noticing my absence, and then retrieving me from the underworld.

I’ve been devising a genius plan to get myself out from under the bed. One which includes the toy car on my left being brought to life by its remote control and then carrying me out with it as it zooms out with brilliant strength and agility. However since I have had no such luck, I’ve decided to just wait for Devine intervention. I waited for a few more minutes when I heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. They were light and slow-paced, like that of a small animal wearing ballet slippers. I listened intently and then looked up to find Eva’s brother entering the room. He looked about 2 or 3 years old and dressed the part, with crème coloured dungarees, a soft blue t-shirt and small blue trainers. His soft brown hair flopped over his face as he bounced around the room, holding his arms out in front of him and making strange noises that I was unable to translate into anything.

As amusing as it was to watch this strange human being explore the wonders of this new world he had just discovered, and knock over various objects within it, I couldn’t help but feeling a hunch towards impending doom. This child was obviously not supposed to be in here, especially not trying to climb over a stack of books and shoe boxes. What exactly are you trying to do little person? You are probably going to get injured. This is a very bad idea. Please get down! That’s when I saw it, the reason behind the boy’s sacrifice of his own short life, a large red ball mounted on top of the wardrobe. Even I, could see through my narrow field of vision that this plan of his was about to go south. The shoe-boxes were mounted unevenly on high stack of books that lay between the wardrobe and the dresser. The boy placed a foot on the highest shoebox, and held himself steady with a hand on the dresser as he mounted his feeble tower. GET DOWN NOW!

 Just as he balanced the rest of his weight on his climbing leg the shoebox gave in and slipped from beneath his foot. His body fell backwards, back arched, fists clenched. He let out a terrible scream as his back hit the floor hard, followed by his head with a loud thump.  

The sound of the boy’s head hitting the ground kicked the breath out of me. I felt as if I had just received a blow to the stomach and the panic overwhelmed me. The boy lay still on the floor, and dark red liquid seeped slowly from beneath him.

To be continued…