Control Me

Chapter Six

   I'm so confused at the slow rising and falling of my pillow. Maybe it's me. I am laying right on top of it so my breathing could just be moving it.
Did it just move?
I whip my head up, my panic sets in and the bed shoves against the wall. I stare down at the petrified face in front of me. "Oh god, Caleb! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to wake you!" I crawl off of him, my limbs screaming to go back into the comfy position.
Caleb just looks down at the way his body is laying, arm still out from me moving.
Was that arm laying on my back?
I swallow hard. "I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't mean to wake you!"
His fingers brush my knee and he stares at them, confused for a second, then uses his other hand to rub his face.
A groaning noise emerges from his nose and I giggle. "Did you have a good sleep?" I tilt my head at him.
With his eyes still closed he nods, still groaning. I laugh, "Wake" I poke his shoulder with every word I make, "up. sleepy. head."
He grabs my arms and pulls my down into a cuddly hug. I laugh even more and he forces his head into my neck. "We don't wake up yet." He says, his voice all groggy and deep from sleep.
I laugh some more and lightly press my teeth into his shoulder, so he releases me.
"Did you just bite me?"
I nod my head and sit over him. "We need to get up!" I shake the bed side to side. "Get up!"
He refuses.
I grab his shoulders and shake him now, instead. "Uppy!"
All of a sudden a strong arm bumps me and I end up on the floor with a thud. "Oh jesus!" Caleb looks over the edge at me in panic. He realizes that I'm not crying, but laughing and laughs too. "I'm sorry!" He stretches off the bed, grabs my hip and picks me up back onto the bed.
I'm sitting in his lap.
He doesn't seem to notice and rubs his eye with his palm. I stare at him waiting for him to stop waking up and realize the position we're in.
He does but doesn't care. He simple rests his hands on my hips and leans back again, closing his eyes.
I squirm after another second and sit at the end of the bed.
"Sorry," he grumbles. I don't think he means it.
"No, it's fine." I watch him lay there all spread out, eyes closed. In my bed.
His voice is no longer as deep as before, still groggy though. "Did we fall asleep?"
I raise an eyebrow at the stupid question. "Obviously."
He smiles and breathes a laugh. "Okay well, I meant when?"
I shrug. "I feel like it could have been only, what? 8:45? It was probably still bright out." I tell him.
"Ya think? That early, huh?" He finally opens his observing eyes and watches me.
I stand up and walk into my closet. "Yeah. Bout then." I scan through my shirts.
"Huh. I take it the barn wasn't a dream?"
I chuckle and pull out a white top. "Yeahhhh. No. I don't think so."
I slip off my tight red t-shirt and slid the new one over my head. It snatches on my bra.
"Uh, Caleb?"
"What?"
I panic a little, realizing I really can't get it unhooked. "Can you help me?"
He doesn't answer for a second. "With what?"
I know what he's thinking and it's not that. "Unlipping my shirt. I can't get it." I stumble out in front of him, still attempting.
He smirks a bit at my struggle and watches for a second. "With unclipping it?"
I feel my face go warm with red. "Yes, unclipping it! Now help me!"
He sighs in fake disappointment and climbs off the bed. Swinging my body around I feel the bra clips release. "Oh no, wait! I got it!"
I spin and smack my face straight into his chest. He tenses, "Oh! Hi there!"
I laugh and move back staring at the place My face was just at. "Where did your top go?"
He raises an eyebrow and looks down at his toned body. "Uh, I took it off?"
I'm so confused. "You took off your shirt, to help me unclip mine?"
He chuckles, pointing down at his ashy shirt behind him. "No no. I took it off before I was about to help because when I was done I was going to go down stairs and change." He chuckles again like what he just said made sense.
"And you couldn't just take it off down there?"
His face goes serious, trying to comprehend what I just said. "I don't know. I just, took it off! Is that a bad thing?"
"No. I guess not." I turn back into my closet. "I just thought maybe you were trying to make me jealous of your abs."
I hear him laugh. "Alright well, you be jealous and I'll go get a new shirt. Be back."
I wait for the stairs to squeak from the weight of pure muscle going down them before taking my pants off. I toss them into the paint splattered hamper and grab my high waisted black shorts.
They feel cool on my butt but I don't mind. It's summer and the heat coming through all my windows is turning my floor into a sauna.
I twirl in front of my paint splattered mirror, leaning against my paint splattered wall. My room is what makes me Me. The wild paint everywhere makes it feel hipster like, almost free spirited.
Like a bird.
   Like a Blue Jay.
I inhale all the air my lungs can hold and bask in the sun for a moment. I rarely ever get to do this in the summer for our Earth's line of orbit around the sun is becoming too great. Our cold winters twenty-five years ago would have been nothing compared to our freezing ones now. And our summers? They get so hot the whole world goes through a mass drought for two months.
Those are the hardest months to live in.
With all the heat generated downstairs, it all rises, seeping through the hairline cracks in the floors. The sun hits all my windows at all angles, creating air waves that I tend to like to draw.
Fall and spring just seem to fade. They're the 'between' seasons. They don't seem to do much. Caleb told me a story his grandfather told him, about the bees and how they once came out in the spring. It's weird to think that they came out at a certain time. Bees are always out, everyone knows that. He said that there were lots of them too.
Huh... You never really see them anymore...
He said that this was before the government relocated society. Before they said we needed to rely on the rest of our race to keep it going. Before they moved all the rest of the survivors to this giant piece of land.
Together States? No. That's not right. States. States of Unite. That is not it. The United States!
The government moved us all to the United States of Merica, or something like that, to keep us all together. To 'keep the race going.'
Of course people with my abilities would be considered an advantage in this changing world, making me valuable. Making me a test subject. Making me a small little mouse running through a maze to find the block of cheese, only to find out its cheddar, not much favourited mozzarella.
   Since the rest of the world is either burning up or freezing into nothing, most animals moved to this place with us. Maybe not at first but once they realized that we were the only ones who can create sanctuaries for dogs, or llamas, or even the bees.
   I guess maybe since we moved them all into a 'safe environment,' they made their own routines. So I guess maybe, just maybe, bees really did come out in spring.
Thump!
   I roll my eyes.
Caleb can't even stand on two feet for gods sake.
   I move to the top of the stairs and here groaning like he's in pain.
Did he fall?
   I start down the stairs. "Caleb? Caleb, are you all right?"
   "Yeah. Yeah I'm just fine." His words flow like they're being force out between his teeth.
   I tip toe into his empty bedroom, then look across the hall into the spare. "Caleb? Where are you?"
   I wonder around the corner to the bathroom to find him shoving himself into the corner of the room, knife digging in his forearm. "What are you doing?!" I rush over to pull the blade out of his hands but he points it at me.
   "Wha-"
   "No! You don't know what's going on! Let me be! Go upstairs, Ingrid! Right now!"
   I stare at him, then the knife, then his arm gushing blood. "Are you trying to hurt yourself?" I look up at him.
I'm surprised I'm not crying. Shock. It must be shock.
   "Get out!"
   Something snaps. I grab the knife out of his hand and throw it at the ground. The knife blade slides through the cracks between the wood, sticking straight up.
   Caleb seems furious at me. "Ingrid! What the hell! I need that!" I ignore him and apply pressure to the cut.
What is that?
   I feel a small, hard square in his forearm just before the fold of his elbow. "What the..." I lift my hand and study the square shape in his arm.
He's trying to get it out.
"Caleb what is this?" I pinch around the sides of it so he knows what I'm talking about.
"Something I want out of me!" He spits his words out between his teeth.
I stare at his pain infused face and decide to do what I think is right. "Okay, hold still. I don't want to hurt you anymore than you already are."
I feel his confused gaze land on me but all I do is put one leg up on the wall beside him, twist a bit so he can't see what I'm doing, and pull.
"Ow! Ingrid what are you-!" All his muscles tense as I pull hard at the thing in his arm. I loose my balance and fall onto my butt, Caleb screaming in agony.
"What the hell was that! My arm!" His eyes water as he inspects his arm. He finally gets it and looks over at me, amazed with tears running down his face.
I hold the white, bloody box up for him to see. "Thank me later," I say tossing it at him.
I have too many questions, I can't be down here.
Moving as fast as I can, I grab two towels form under the cream coloured sink and wrap one so tightly above the incision blood pools out of his arm.
Caleb's screaming at me for helping him but at the same time is thanking me. I ignore him completely and think of what comes next.
Okay, now wrap the other around the bleeding hole in his arm then leave.
I turn to leave but a tight arm pulls me back. "No no no! Ingrid, no! We need to talk about this. Please."
I do the only thing I know will stop his every movement. I slam my lips into his and kiss him, so passionately I almost like it. He freezes, about to kiss back but I break it, stare into his watery hazel eyes then bolt.
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