Opening Cages Opens Graves

Chapter 13 - I Just Want To Make Your Pain Go Away

        Tiger stood by the dresser. His fingernails prying the wooden edges off of the dresser. He stared at the carefully wrapped box that sat facing him. The giant blue wrapped box with a yellow bow over it. That carefully wrapped box had been behind closed doors for sometime. Tiger had even forgotten about it. The goodbye present Liv gave to him weeks ago, was still unwrapped, untouched, and unmentioned.

        His fingers gripped the fabricated bow, and slowly began to tug on it. The smooth fabric slowly slipped off of the wrapped box, and fell onto the hardwood dresser. His fingernails reached the wrapping paper, and slowly began to rip the edges off of the present. Soon, the blue wrapping paper was pulled aside and revealed a white box. He cocked an eyebrow, and began to rip the sides of the box open.

        He scrunched his eyebrows as he pulled some sort of touch screen phone out of the box. He cocked his head. Maybe that was what she thought normal teenage boys wanted, but Tiger didn't. Tiger wasn't a normal teenage boy. It did look expensive though, and it did look like everyone had those type of phones. It was nice of her too get him something so expensive like that for him, but that was not what he wanted.

        He only wanted love, and he knew very well money couldn't buy love. Though, it might have been an early birthday present. His birthday was only days away. He smiled at the thought. Although, it was the same day as the wretched holiday known as Halloween. He frowned at the thought. Halloween, what a pathetic excuse for a holiday, he thought.

        Even at his weakness, he still had nasty remarks about Halloween. Why he hated it so much was a mystery. Maybe he was always forgotten on his birthday due to Halloween, or maybe it just gave a reason for people to call him evil. He hated being born on Halloween, absolutely hated it.

        He let out a heavy a sigh, and simply shrugged his shoulders. He gingerly laid the phone back into the white box. The thought about love always made him want to shed tears. After his big fight with Echo, he went onto a nervous breakdown. He wanted nothing but too apologize to her, but he couldn't. They might have never even met.

        Maybe he just confused Echo with someone else, but she looked so familiar.Facing her could be the death of him. Also, Adrienne did lock him in his room so he couldn't get out. A little while ago, he tried escaping through the window, but found out it had locks on it. If he tried breaking through the window, he would be a pile of blood and guts on the the driveway. He couldn't leave the room if he tried. Things had changed.

        Tiger was becoming very spooked by Adrienne. She always had an angry distant look in her eyes, as if she was in deep thought or in a painful disagreement with her thoughts.

        She was a lot more physical with Tiger, as well. She would walk around the house with a scow, just talking to herself. She was just about always angry or sad, never happy like she used too. It was quite creepy, maybe intimidating. Adrienne was turning into a completely different person, and that fact scared Tiger. Something was wrong with her, and something bad. Maybe it was the fact that he kept running away from her.

        Maybe she was under a lot of stress, but he still wanted to run away from her. Adrienne didn't look like he was under stress, she looked disturbed. Maybe as if she was thinking about disturbing things. Whatever it was, it really spooked him. He crawled into his bed and hid under the large blanket. If he couldn't run away from her, he would hide from her. He curled into the warm blanket and began to drift off into sleep.

        The tension he began feeling from inside of the room was eerie, maybe a little ghastly. Apart from the fact that rain suddenly started hitting the windows, hard, and the sky growing immensely dark, the room still felt very unnerving. After a while of hiding under his covers, he glanced at the clock. 12:08am, the blue numbers read. He cocked an eyebrow.