The Thirst

"Why can't I drink from the bath?" Jake whispered into the night. Frustration and tiredness forced a few tears from his eyes.

He knew he shouldn't drink from the bathroom, his mum had been very clear about that,"You can't drink from the bath or sink upstairs Jake, there's chemicals in that water. It makes you mad," she had said, "They'll take you away."

Jake didn't want to be taken away but he didn't want to go downstairs either, "I should just go to sleep again," he thought. He closed his eyes. The thirst scratched up his throat and sat in his mouth like a curse. Sleep would not cover him. He opened his eyes.

It was very dark. A flickering street light stencilled leafy shadows on the bedroom wall. His room, the entire house, was a dark forest.

Jake knew that older, braver people filled this time with life but to him it was dead time. His sister Penny would be awake in her room at her computer. She wouldn't help him. She would shout again if he asked for help.

Jake sat up, shaking, and dismounted the bed. He breathed like a diver about to plum the deeps and exited his room.

He tried being quiet but his little lungs tore the still air around him into sheets and sucked them in with a rasp. Nothing could possibly be louder than the panting and pulsing of his inner tubes. He knew that his movements were known. Like a small fish darting between reeds in a pond, his movements stirred up the beast.

At the top of the stairs, staring down into the dark, He tried to still his panic. In the end the thirst nudged him on again, like a badly chosen friend, "Go downstairs. We must drink."

Every step contained a creak and every creak lived a nomadic life on the steps. The chords of the stairs would always confound him. They'd dart under his feet just as he put his weight down in a previous safe spot.

He reached the bottom of the stairs with a fanfare of creaks and echoing breaths. The hall and kitchen floors were tiled. Slippery under his socks but silent.

Jake moved to the sink and grabbed the nearest glass and held it, vibrating, under the flow of water he twisted from the tap.

The beast stalked him from the moment he set foot in the kitchen. Creeping round wall and over ceiling, it waited for him to turn his back on the sink.

Jake took in a shuddering breath, gathered all the courage of his seven years and spun. He pelted across the kitchen floor as the beast lashed a spiney limb toward him. A near miss.

He ran into the hall, shadows of leaves whipping at his face. He turned his head to avoid their sting and lost his footing. He splayed his arms ahead as he tumbled but in that slow moment before he hit the floor he thought of the water, how he couldn't lose it. Not now. Not after all this.

He clutched the glass to his chest and fell with his other arm across his face.

The crash woke his mother. Moments later, her scream catapulted his father from his last deep sleep. Penny, headphones blaring, was dragged into the car with her dad in the wake of the ambulance. She stared wide eyed at the blood on the way out.

As Jake lay beside his weeping mother, he strained to hear the paramedics telling him to hold on. The beast had cut deep and they were pressing on his chest so hard it hurt.

One by one they shut the lights off in the back of the ambulance. Everything stopped. Staring at his mum frozen beside him, Jake tried to reach out to pat her hand, to tell her he was sure everything was going to be okay. Everyone was awake now. Everyone would help him.

He couldn't move. He shut his eyes and let sleep come.

He wasn't thirsty, not any more.