DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Max whispered words to Emily she couldn’t hear. Her closed eyes were squeezed tight, lids trembling like his hands pressed over her ears.
“It’s far away,” Max said. “I’m here.”
Here was a small bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment. A bed in the center. Glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Some on the floor. Some stuck to the wood-paneled wall behind Emily. She looked so small, wedged in the corner of the room farthest from the door, which bowed with every punch.
Max didn’t know if they were punches for sure, but he couldn’t imagine anything else making a sound like that, making the door shake like that. His sister as calm as she’d been since all this started, Max glanced over his shoulder to face what they couldn’t escape.
All was still. Silent. Max’s heart filled his throat. He couldn’t breathe. How long could he hold his breath? He watched the door through the stillness that didn’t seem real, and imagined himself deep underwater, like out at Meade River, where he and his little sister used to dive for river rocks, and they’d let those rocks soak up the sun on the bank, and then when they were good and hot they’d lay on them and pretend they were smoldering coals like Max had seen a man walk over barefoot. He’d tell Emily he would one day be a famous fire sleeper, because fire walking was too easy, and she’d say:
“Max.”
Max inhaled. His heart fluttered as their room and his sister came back into focus. “Y-yeah?” He wished he could start over, take that stutter back.
Emily’s eyes were still closed tight. “Your hands hurt.”
Max threw his hands down, foreign and heavy as bricks. He put them behind his back before they became fists. “I’m sorry.”
Emily opened her eyes. Tears budded in their corners. They looked like pearls. “Is it gone?”
Max tested his voice at the back of his throat, considering another look over his shoulder to check the door, so he wouldn’t be a liar. Either way. But his throat betrayed him, and he said, “I don’t know.”
Emily frowned, and her tears no longer looked like pearls. “Can we go out the window?”
“We’re on the second floor.”
“Hide under the bed?”
“Emily? You know that’s for kids.”
Her eyes were like deep river rocks. “But we are kids.”
That pained Max’s heart before burrowing down into his stomach. He almost said he would be thirteen in twenty-six days, and that a teenager wasn’t a kid. But Emily knew his birthday, and she knew that when you were thirteen you were still a kid. Just like he did.
Emily darted under the bed.
“Hey!” Max whisper-yelled.
Her shoes stayed out as she dug around, and Max thought of her little brass baby shoes she’d put in the fire, because she didn’t believe there were real shoes underneath. She’d really got it then. Max hated himself more now than then for not doing anything. That guilt was a hole in his chest he could never fill. If only they both could crawl through it right now.
Emily scooted out with a stick in her hands. She was at the riverbank again, ponytail and cutoffs dripping, kneeling in the mud. “Look at this.”
“It’s just an old piece of wood,” he said.
“Driftwood.”
“That’s only at the ocean.”
“Nuh-uh. Rivers, too.”
“Someone brought it from the ocean and tossed it in.”
Emily stabbed the mud and stood. “Look at it.”
Max shrugged.
Emily lifted it high by one end. “A sword.”
“It’s just a dumb stick.”
“Can I bring it home?”
“Naw. Bugs and who knows what else.”
“I looked.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I did.”
She’d been right. No bugs, and Max had checked, even tried to tease any out with food.
She looked at him now how she’d looked at him that day.
“That dumb old stick,” Max said.
“Glad I brought it back, huh?”
Thunder pounded on the door. Lighting flashed in the cracks as it bulged from the force. Emily leaped into the corner again, dropping the stick, which rolled across the floor to Max’s balled hands that were still heavy as bricks.
He didn’t look away as the storm raged on. He couldn’t believe those were words.
“Take it,” Emily said in a moment of quiet.
“You take it.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not a big brother.”
Max felt that hole in his chest grow so big he thought it might swallow all of Earth. Take him and Emily with it.
Then another hole formed. In the door, with sharp teeth, and through it fire shone.
Max’s hands had somehow picked up the stick, and his feet had somehow stood him up.
“See?” Emily said, by his side, her tears cut like diamonds.
He didn’t see anything much through his own tears that muddied his vision. “Driftwood is only at the ocean,” he said.
All manner of sounds roared through that hole in the door.
“Okay,” Emily said.
“Okay,” Max said.
Max tensed his muscles so they’d stop shaking, the stick stabbed to the floor at his side.
“You’re holding it wrong,” Emily said. She mimed the pose she’d had that day at the river. “Sword, remember?”
This was stupid. He was stupid. She was–
“To fight the monster in the cave.”
Yeah, she was stupid, too. “It’s not a cave,” he said. “It’s an old giant tree on the ocean shore with a dragon inside. This sword is the only thing that can kill it, because it was part of that tree at one time, washed up on the shore, and no one thought it was powerful. They thought it was just a dumb stick.” He looked at her. “Except a brave little girl.”
The hole in the door widened. Splinters fell. Fire flared. The dragon roared.
Max held the driftwood that was a sword high, like the brave little girl had showed him, and he faced the dragon.
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