~July 11, 2006

So yeah. I was still pretty shaken up by the fact that Matthew wouldn't let me talk to his parents about their relationship. But later I decided that I'd talk to them privately and make sure he doesn't know. The thing is, I needed to make sure that Matthew had a distraction so I went to Roxie's house to discuss this with her. I approached the white wooden door of the house and knocked lightly. Mrs. Road came to the door and smiled when she first looked at me. "Well, howdy there, Rusty! You know you don't need to knock when you come over! Come on in! Roxie's just cleaning the kitchen."

"Ok, thanks, Mrs. Road." I walked in and saw the entire Road family sitting on couches around the fireplace talking about God only knows what. I turned to the kitchen and saw Roxie wiping down counters and organizing their canned foods. I walked over to her and tapped on her shoulder. She looked back and grinned. "Howdy, Rusty. What's up?"

"Do ya think you can come outside fer a bit? I needa talk to ya about somethin'." She agreed and put her rag down and walked outside with me. We walked past her cow pens and up some stairs to a small cliff that supposedly her cow, Clarabelle, liked to climb up to look at the view. We sat on the edge of the cliff and I told her about what Matthew had said. She was shocked.

"W-well, what are we gonna do about this? We can't just leave this alone! He's too suspicious now!" she exclaimed, waving her arms around frantically. "I'm gonna have to talk to 'em. Thing is, we can't let Matthew see. He'd beat mah ass to next week."

Roxie crossed her arms and gave me a look. "Rusty, please. You are so much stronger than that little creep. You'd take him down before he could ever throw a punch! But anyway, what do you mean we can't let him see you talking to his parents?"

I too gave Roxie a look right back. "Yer gonna have to help me. I think yer gonna have to be his distraction. Ya know, take him someplace far away from us." Roxie's eyes widened. I knew it was a bit much to ask since she was afraid of him and all but I had no other choice. Matthew usually walked around everywhere when he was by himself but if you get him in one place to talk he wouldn't move an inch unless you did.

"But, RUSTY! You know I'm afraid of him! Why would you make me do this? Please don't make me do this!"

"Roxie, how else am I supposed to get him maintained fer the few minutes I'm gonna be talkin' to his parents? Just make simple conversation with him! He does most of the talkin' anyway! Ya gotta do this, Rox. Fer me?"

That's how ya get her to do what you want her to do. Just throw a little "For me?" in there and she's a sucker for anything! Works every time. "Well, for you I could. Fine. I'll be brave for once. When are we going through with this?"

"Now."

"Oh. Well shit, let's go find him!"

She and I jump off the edge, since we were both too lazy to take the stairs, and ran off to find Matthew. We found him over by the docks staring into the water (possibly talking to himself again) and that's when I motioned for Roxie to go get him. She started to go but then stopped and looked back at me. She ran back over and asked, "Where should I take him?" I told her to go take him to the mining wall on the other side of the mountain where I talked to him yesterday and with that she was off. I watched her as she tapped on his shoulder, he turned around and smiled, and then he got up to face Roxie. I heard her ask to go talk and he bluntly agreed. They began walking towards me (I saw standing by the broken down cover wagon next to Roxie's house) and when they walked past me I saw Roxie wink and Matthew gave a polite "good evening" to me.

I walked over to the café where the Kai parents sat at a table for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Delicioso were making pizzas and Gino and Charlie were over in their tomato farm picking tomatoes for the pizza sauce. I strolled over to Mr. and Mrs. Kai and stopped at their table. "Good evenin', guys. How are ya?"

Mrs. Kai finished chewing her bite of pizza and wiped her mouth. "Hello, Rusty. So nice to see you this evening! We're doing, eh, fine, I suppose. Would you care to eat with us." I took the empty seat on my side of the table and smiled. I knew I was gonna have to start questioning them soon. Mr. Delicioso set a piece of pizza down in front of me and patted my head. I simply smiled at him in thanks and then turned my attention back to the Kai parents.

"So, there was somethin' I wanted to talk to ya about. Somethin' about Matthew." I stated to both of them. Their eyes widened and they nonchalantly kept eating their dinner like they didn't know what I was talking about. From there I knew there was definitely something wrong. "Would it be ok if we could talk about it? Matthew ain't around. I had Roxie keep him busy elsewhere."

They seemed hesitant, but they agreed. Mr. Kai swallowed the last bit of his dinner and looked down at the table. "Well, we really aren't supposed to tell anyone, but I suppose we can trust you. Just as long as Matthew doesn't find out."

"Why else would I have him maintained far away from here?"

"True. Ok we'll tell you. Every night before we go to sleep, we hear our son whispering things to us through our tent. He says things about how he's going to end up murdering us one day and how he thinks we don't care about him. We care about him very much, Rusty, but he threatens to kill us every night."

After a while of Mrs. Kai being silent, she spoke up. "We don't know what to make of it. We aren't sure if he's talking in his sleep or if he really means it! We're just so afraid, and he said if we told anyone we'd be killed right here on the spot."

"Mrs. Kai, I can assure you it ain't sleep talk. I was talkin' to him yesterday and he was complainin' about how you guys don't love him and how you guys wish I were yer son instead. I told him that I'd talk to ya to set things straight but he got extremely angry and told me to say nothin' to ya."

"Oh God, honey! What are we going to do? Our son wants to kill us!" Mrs. Kai cried to her husband. Mr. Kai took her hand lightly and held it in his. "Shannon, it's gonna be alright. We'll think of something." He turned to me. "Don't you say anything, got it?" I nodded. "Good. It's nice to have someone we can trust to talk to about this. Thank you, Rusty. We're gonna go up and talk with your parents no, so you run along."

I nodded again, stood up, and ran off to find Roxie and Matthew. I found them on the other side of the mountain talking to Ol' Gabby. I was so relieved because at first, knowing Matthew, I almost thought he'd leave Roxie and hide somewhere to hear what his parents and I were talking about. Thank God Roxie kept him busy. I walked over to them and tapped on Roxie's shoulder. She looked at me and breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness!" she whispered to me. I patted her back and looked at Matthew. He had just wrapped up his conversation with Gabby and saw me.

"Rusty! Where have you been all this time? I was hoping you could spend some time with Roxie and I. She was so kind to have invited me to engage in conversation as you were away doing whatever it was you were doing. Shall we go catch dinner?"

I shook my head. "Nah, I already had dinner. I just finished a little while ago. You go ahead. I need to talk to Roxie for a minute then we'll be right over."

"Alright, but don't be long now!" He walked off towards the café and I pulled Roxie over to the cow pens to tell her what was up. "So apparently, to put this in the simplest terms, he whispers to his parents through their tent at night that he's gonna kill 'em. That's basically it." Roxie gasped but quickly covered her mouth. I knew she wanted to say something, but she was speechless at the moment so I spoke up again.

"I highly doubt he's gonna kill 'em when we've got all these people around. They'll be ok for now. But we still gotta make sure they're gonna be ok. I'm tellin' ya, Rox, this kid's got a major problem." Roxie removed her hand from her mouth. Her face twisted from fear to rage as she screamed, "HE'S CRAZY!"

I squeezed my eyes and waved my hands around. "Shhhh! Not so loud! I know he's crazy, alright? There's nothin' we can do about it."

"He's gonna keep getting more and more insane as he gets older, Rusty. You see why I'm so scared of him now?"

I stared at her but then looked out. "Yeah. I see now."