He watched the larger men sleeping rather peacefully. Their chests heaving in and out with every breath. They were here with him….but they weren't the ones he wanted there. He was grateful for the company, I mean wouldn't anyone be? It had been a year today. A year since Keith had told him he was worthless and of no use. He left him virtually alone. He didn't mind Sid or Zygor but neither of them raised him. Neither of them had pulled him from the ditch when he was 3 and worked on him for 5 days to make sure he would live.
Neither of them had been there for every cut or scrape. They hadn't been the ones to hold him during the really bad thunderstorms where he would get scared and hide under the blanket. They were not the ones who he spent every holiday with, or every birthday. Worst of all, they weren't the ones who held him every day and whispered the words, 'I'll never leave you.'
The tears were silently coming like a river now. The small boy pulled his legs up to hug his chest so he could make himself seem as small as he could. He didn't want to be here or anywhere for that matter. Why was he punished? He had listened….To everything, and even then why did that matter. He was Keith's little Bonzy, yet he had just left him alone.
When the small boy heard footsteps he didn't bother following through with any plans, he lifted himself up from his spot and hid behind one of the tombstones. It had nothing to do with locator cards or scaring anyone. He didn't want to be found. There were only two reasons' he even agreed to enter the contest.
One he didn't have much of a choice but to follow them, that or be left even more alone than he already was.
And two he was hoping that by some miracle…that maybe Keith would see he was good, and worth something, and come running to take him home. Take him back to the bed he loved at the apartment. Back to the spots he would curl up with Keith, on lazy or rainy days. Because with something like this…he could make Keith...love him again.
He did his best to curl up behind the stone using his arms as somewhere to lay his head. The tears kept falling one by one now as he couldn't seem to find anything that could stop them. He figured at this point it wasn't going to get any better, so letting his thoughts go where they wanted couldn't really hurt anything…..
The night air was the kind of freezing that actually made it hurt to breath. One of those nights where most people would have looked at the man like he was crazy, but he loved his bike and didn't plan to stop riding it. The cold never really bothered him anyway.
The road was beautiful and empty giving him plenty on clearance to do whatever he wanted. He was doing well over 80mph before he hit the wood line. He didn't prefer any surprises, if he had to swerve to stop something, like a big buck, from hitting him he would probably end up right in the ditch. Even being carful he had to swerve a little bit when he got close enough to a little black kitten that wasn't planning to move.
He decided to stop for a moment and see what was wrong with the poor little thing, he was in no hurry. By the time he got off the motorcycle and over to the little kitten, it had moved, but only slightly closer to the ditch. These were the reason he always kept a flash light in his side bag, you never know when you're going to need one. He moved the beam around looking for where the small ball of black fuzz had scampered to. He found the kitten, but it was sitting next to something….what looked like a body?
Keith worked his way down into the large ditch trying not to slide and hit whatever was down there. When he reached the bottom he stood over the object and was horrified to find out he was right. It was a body, and one that had clearly been there a while. When he moved the light over it he could see how skinny and grey the corpse was. Though he was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him, he swore he could see it, breathing? He bent down touching the shoulder gently getting a slight groan as a response.
The groan was to his relief if it had been a corpse it would have been a child's and that was nothing he would have been happy to see. He gently tugged the child off of its side onto its back. It was so frail he was afraid to touch it anymore due to the fact that he thought he might break it. The eyes were had large rings around them from what he could see and the cheeks were badly sunken in.
Without another thought he pulled his jacket off grabbing the kitten and wrapping both the child and the kitten in the jacket to try to keep them at least somewhat sheltered from the cold. The trek home was much slower and Keith was much more cautious than he had been coming out here. He swore this kid was nothing but skin and bones.