Free To Probe A Beating Heart by John B Wren Page A

went up to the top of the stairs and sat down and waited. He waited until he had to use the bathroom. He looked in his room at the alarm clock and noted that the time was 2:54. As he coming out of the bathroom, the front door opened. Sarah came in and Ellie behind her.
                  Sarah came up the stairs and saw Averell. “You couldn’t come ’cause you’re bad. Mommy said so.”
                  “Averell, I told you to stay in your room ’til I called you.”
                  “I had to use the bathroom”
                  “Averell, get in your room, and stay there, understand, l will call you when I want to see your face!”
                  “Mommy said, you are a bad boy, she hates you.”
                  “She hates you,” repeated Stelian.
                  Three hours later Averell was called downstairs and Ellie said, “Set the table for dinner.”
                  “Set the table,” repeated Stelian again.
     
    * * *

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
     
    Do you hate me now . . .
     
     
    The week passed and Averell’s punishment ended and he was allowed
    out of his room. The time spent in solitary was utilized in planning and
    preparing for his next visit to the woods. He wanted to have better tools for his sessions with the small animals that he captured. Sticks were crude, he did not see them as dependable and they would be easily broken. He was playing with the wire cutters that Steve had left laying about and a hanger from his closet. He used the wire cutters to cut the hanger into two pieces about ten inches in length and bent one end into a loop with a short arm sticking out to one side. He thought about wrapping tape around the loop end to be used as a handle and cut the other end at an angle leaving a sharp point. He could use this as a probe to pierce an animal’s skin. One was not enough, so he cut three hangers and bent the pieces into six probes of close but different lengths. These were his new probes, they would not break, they would be easy to cleanup and he could hide them in his room, or in the woods. As he sat in his room, he spread them out on the floor and pretended to select specific probes as a doctor would select a scalpel. Averell thought about Ellie punishing him for anything he did, he thought about Ellie scolding him for things he did not do. He sat in his corner and said things he knew he was not allowed to say. “Bastard, damn it,” he muttered and with a stone he kept in his room, he rubbed the pointed ends of the wire probes into sharper points.
                  “Damn it, she hates you”, added Stelian.
                  His eyes would moisten, but he would not cry. His head would hurt, but he would not scream. He felt alone, and he hurt. He thought about Ellie, he thought about Sarah, he thought about the squirrel. He thought about pushing a sharp probe through Ellie’s neck. He could see the blood dripping on her white shoes, he could see her eyes, he could see her go limp. He smiled.
                  “She hates you,” Stelian said again.
                  “I hate her.” He sat in his corner thinking about going back to the woods. The next opportunity came when Ellie went out with a man and Charlotte was in charge. Averell waited until Charlotte was busy with her current boyfriend, then went out through his bedroom window, across the garage roof, to the tree, down to the ground and straight to the woods. He took a few minutes to check the area and be sure he was alone, he then built a small fire, retrieved the trap and set it up with bait, sat down with his probes and continued to sharpen them. It did not take long for the trap to snap closed. Averell lined up his probes on a log and walked over to the trap. He had caught a rabbit, a grayish colored rabbit that had almost achieved full development. This one was