The Fifth Word

Chapter Six

"Kai come on get your ass out here!"

I reluctantly leave my phone on my bed and walk out of my room. I walk towards the door and follow Darrel out of it. 

"Oh, what a coincidence." I hear a familiar voice say. I look up to see a girl standing there. 

"Do you know who this is Kai?" Darrel asks.

I stare at the girl and nod my head. Her name is Taylor. I have her phone number cause I stole it from a group chat I was thrown into. 

"I didn't know you lived her Kai," says Taylor.

"Actually I'm her brother and she's just staying with me for a bit," Darrel says. 

I look at him knowing that he isn't my brother, I look over at Taylor to see if she believed him. 

"Oh cool." She smiles and walks into her apartment. 

Taylor is a freshman. She is in the band too just I don't talk to her as often as I would like to. 

Darrel walks forward and I follow him to his car. There's no one at the parking lot station today. 

"Hm that's weird there's always some woman here, yesterday we had that old guy. I've never seen him before yesterday. Oh well, the woman must have gotten fired. The old guy though, I have no clue where he is." Darrel says while ripping the red colored paper off his dash and shoving it in his pocket. 

Darrel puts his foot on the break and puts the truck in reverse. A backup camera shows up on his screen but there's a problem with it. There seems to be clear tape on the camera. 

"God damnit!" yells Darrel "Who the hell put that on my camera." 

He reaches for his door handle to open it. I quickly grab his arm and shake my head no. 

Darrel turns his head towards me and says "Kai let go. I need to remove the tape."

I don't let go of his arm and I keep shaking my head no. 

"Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?"

I tighten my grip on his arm. 

"Kai want to explain to me why you won't let go?"

I stick out my other hand with my pinky extended. Darrel looks at it then makes a pinky promise not to leave while I sign what I think is wrong. 

I let go and sign Darrel I think someone is trying to do something very bad. I think if you get out of your truck someone is going to come up behind you and hurt you.

"Pfft- that's the dumbest thing ever. I literally work for the government Kai. If someone were to try and take me I would fight back and you know I'm strong enough to win."

I grab his arm again and shake my head no. 

"Kai let go....Kai....let. Go."

I aggressively shake my head no. 

"Kai, I said let go!" yells Darrel as he rips his arm out of my grip. 

Darrel gets out of his truck and walks back towards the camera. I stare at it in the truck, hoping everything goes fine. He reaches for the tap and rips it off. As he rips it off a round while circle falls off onto the ground. Darrel scratches his head and looks down at it. He bends over and a person in all black jumps onto him.

Darrel shoves the man off him and goes for a punch but misses. The bandit punches Darrel in the gut and he falls backward onto his ass. Darrel quickly gets up and tackles the guy to the ground. The guy shoves Darrel off and pulls out a knife. I swing the truck door open and yell "Darrel watch out knife."

The man swings the knife at Darrel but he moves out of the way just in time. Darrel grabs the man's wrists and twists them making him drop the knife. The man elbows Darrel in the face and Darrel does it back. I know what I must do. I run toward the knife. Darrel sees me and knows what I'm doing and punches the bandit in the face to distract him. 

"Fuck" yells the man in all black and he reaches out for the knife.  I lunge towards the knife and I grab it before the man. He grabs my arm and swings at me. Darrel blocks his punch and his nose starts to bleed. I scramble to get away and manage to do so. Both the bandit and Darrel stand up and start beating the shit out of each other. Eventually, the man overtakes Darrel and starts to beat him up. Darrel tries to shove the man off of him while also trying to protect his face. 

I look at the knife in my hand then I look at the man sitting on top of Darrel beating him up. I stand up and run at the man stabbing him in the shoulder. 

"Bitch!" he screams and rolls off of Darrel while holding his shoulder. I run at him and rip the knife out of his shoulder and stab him again but this time in the chest. I pull the knife out again and he sputters in pain. 

"Fuck you!" He sputters out while laying on the ground holding his chest. Darrel gets up off the blacktop and walks towards the man.

"I hope you burn in hell," Darrel says while spitting on the ground beside the man. 

Darrel gets down on his knees and grimaces in pain. He reaches towards the ski mask the bandit was wearing and pulls it off. The bandit was none other than the old man. 

"You? I thought you were like sixty?" Darrel states. 

"You dumbass, I'm only 34." the man replies.

"Why do you have grey hair then?" asks Darrel. 

" It runs in...." was all the man was able to reply with before he bled out. 

I stare at the man then I look down at the knife that's still in my hands. I throw it away from me and look at Darrel in horror. He looks at me then looks at the knife I just thrown. He looks back at me opens his mouth then quickly closes it. He starts to cough and some blood comes out of his mouth. 

"I'm fine, I'm fine. It's just a little blood." He pauses wiping his mouth. I tap him and he looks at me. "It will be okay Kai, I can easily explain this to the government and the police. We won't get in trouble at all. You saved my life so I must thank you."

I shake my head, yes while he gets up and walks towards his truck. He leans in, grabs his phone, and returns with it. I stare at him and he's covered in blood. He looks down at me and frowns. 

"I'm sorry, I should have listened to you," he pauses "Wait Kai did you use your last words?"

I look up at him and shake my head yes. 

"So you have zero words?"

I answer with yes again. 

"I know you hate this but since you saved my life I think you deserve five more words."

What? I sign. I don't take words from people it makes me feel greedy. 

"I know that Kai but you've had a rough couple of days and you literally just stabbed a man. Please it's the least I could do."

I reluctantly sign Fine, give me the words. Only five no more than that. He smiles and transfers me the words. I only received the five words I asked for. Don't do this ever again I sign. He nods his head in agreement and then calls the cops on the phone. 


                                                                               {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

Twenty minutes later the cops arrive in the parking lot. They asked a bunch of questions and eventually took the body and left. Darrel and I were forced to change into different clothes so the cops could take our bloody ones as evidence. Before we could leave we had to wait for the clean-up crew to show up to clean up the parking lot. Eventually, they showed up and Darrel and I  got into his truck. I looked at the clock and it read 12:30. 

"Well, I guess we should find something to do," Darrel says. 

I look at him and sign What about what you woke me up at 4 for?

"Well, I was going to go to the store then bring you to a movie at 10. Then we were going to go home and decorate for Halloween. It's a little late for the movie, I mean we can still go to the store and get groceries and Halloween decorations but I kinda don't feel like it, and it's only October 1st."

I look at him and shrug, I don't care what we do. I sign. We sit there and think for a couple of minutes.  As we are sitting there my stomach growls. 

"Ooh, what if we go out to lunch then get ice cream afterward?"

I quickly shake my head, yes and he starts to back up. We pull away from the parking lot and start to drive towards the dine-in restaurants when it hits me. I tug on Darrel's arm. 

"Ow, shit that hurts don't do that Kai. What do you want?"

What do you think happened to that woman you were talking about? 

"Oh, I don't know. Let's just hope she quit and nothing bad has happened to her."

I nod along with what he's saying. I look back out the window at the sidewalk. A lot of people were walking and talking today. Friends laughing and having good times. Families trying to find a place to look at toys and random people riding bikes.

"Ugh, it's too silent for me. Here pick a song." Darrel says while shoving his blood-covered phone into my hands. I open the music app and pick a random playlist of his.

He looks at me and says "Not going to play one of your songs?"

I shake my head no and start to listen to his song. He shakes his head in disapproval then starts to sing along. 

After some time we turn into a parking lot for a diner. We get out and go in to eat. It's 1:30 when we go in and when we leave it's 2:45. We then go across the street and get ice cream. In both the restaurant and the ice cream shop we both kept getting stared at. You can tell we are injured just by looking at us and people clearly liked to stare. 

Darrel seemed to squirm with all the attention but didn't want to rush the fun. When we were done eating our ice cream we got back into Darrel's truck. 

"Did you have fun? I know today didn't go very well..." He trailed off. 

Yeah, it was pretty nice, I enjoyed dinner. I signed 

"Good," he said and drove us home. 

When we walked into his house it was 4:17. We watched a few movies together until it was 9:00 pm. 

"Well, we should both go to bed. Today was a day." He chuckled. "Good night."

I nodded in agreement. I went into my room, brushed my phone onto the floor without even looking at it. I stopped myself, shrugged then climbed into my bed and fell asleep.

*End of Chapter Six*