Overturned Tower

When I opened my eyes, the whole world seemed to be several times bigger.

…Or, Russell got smaller.

He is not as tall as the dining table at the moment, and he is only about five or six years old. Maybe even smaller.

And he was standing on the stool he brought over, leaning on the frosted window and looking out of the house.

The snow fell all over the sky, and the streets were empty.

The snow-covered winter has frozen the flowing silence into ice.

The heating pipes in the house were also frozen and cracked, but the door was locked with a monitoring system and could not be opened from the inside.

The windows were also locked with a system, and the sound insulation of the windows was too good, blocking his shouting inside.

It's no use shouting. He yelled.

He has no neighbors, and the building is occupied by less than a quarter of its residents.

His family didn't have the money to buy medical insurance services, so they couldn't use the chip to call for help... Not to mention, he didn't even know all the words that appeared in front of his eyes.

It had been six days since his dad had left the house, and the snow hadn't stopped.

He may be dead.

Such a thought popped up in his mind.

He'd seen dead people...his mother had died before that.

Dad said that to die is to never come back.

Dad won't come back either.

...For some reason, I feel like crying.

Perhaps he has cried.

The comedians on TV were still making jokes that he didn't understand, and the audience was still bursting into bursts of harsh laughter, but that made him feel sick for some reason.

This home is like a cage. Or maybe it's a prison.

By the time Dad left home, the meals he had prepared had already been finished.

His stockpile of snacks lasted through the third and fourth days, and the last packet of biscuits was eaten the night before when he was starving.

He ate the lettuce from the refrigerator with honey in the morning, but for some reason he got diarrhea. Hungry now.

And the snow hasn't stopped.

What should I do?

Should I call for help?

Who should I turn to for help?

Still he said nothing.

He had already lost the strength to shout.

Stepping on the cold floor that hurt his ankles, he searched the house in a daze.

There are still some breads on the top shelf of the refrigerator, which have been frozen hard. After all, it's been over a week.

But he couldn't reach something that was too tall, so he didn't think about taking it down at the beginning.

Although there is still flour at home, he doesn't know how to cook it. There were some raw eggs too, but he couldn't cook them. He didn't even know why, but when he broke them they turned into a puddle of liquid—he thought eggs were white solids.

He tried to eat flour, but it didn't taste good at all, and his stomach hurt after eating it.

The kitchen knife is too heavy to lift. And he couldn't reach the cutting board either.

Honey is a good thing, but there are not many stocks. Accompanied by veggies and biscuits had been eaten before.

These breads are already the last food.

Otherwise, you can only drink the flour with water.

And half a sack of flour, and a lot of water...probably a long time to live, he thought.

He couldn't reach the topmost food in the refrigerator at all, and had to step on a stool to get there.

So he propped up a stool and took out the bread that had been stored for more than a week with difficulty.

When closing the refrigerator door, he accidentally knocked himself off the chair and fell to the ground.

The child's body is quite soft, so he didn't actually fall.

It doesn't hurt to say the least...

But as an inexplicable grievance hit his heart, he couldn't help but hugged the frozen bread, curled up on the cold ground and cried.

as if abandoned by the whole world;

It's like I'm the only one left in the world...

—In the past, as long as I cried, my mother would come to comfort me.

After the mother died, the father would pick him up.

But this time he cried until he was tired and his voice became hoarse, and no one cared about him.

Vaguely realizing what this meant, he cried even more aggrieved and saddened.

He kept crying until his whole body started to twitch and he couldn't cry anymore, then he slowly got up from the ground.

He sat on the ground, hugged the cold bread, and ate slowly mouthful by mouthful.

It has changed its taste and is not tasty.

No hot milk and porridge, no eggs and butter... only the same cold water to aid swallowing. But at least it's filling.

This bread is bigger than his head, so it can be eaten for several meals.

He thought optimistically.

Maybe half a day... another day, another day or two.

...Dad is coming back soon?

As he thought about it, he couldn't help but shed tears silently.

He didn't believe it himself.

Dad probably died outside...he's never coming back.

"Will I die too..."

He murmured softly, "Am I going to starve to death?"

Dad told him before that if he didn't eat well, he would starve to death.

He only now knows what it means to be "hungry".

But he wanted to eat well... He couldn't find anything to eat.

When the bread is finished, you can only take pills to fill your stomach. he thought.

Before that, while he still had strength, he dug out all the pills at home.

Toothpaste should also be edible. The toothpaste tastes like fruit... Dad won't let it, but it should be ok now.

So he thought so, and took out the toothpaste. The final reserve is the flowers grown at home. They should also be edible.

But not long after eating the bread, he started to feel pain in his stomach.

If you are sick, you have to take medicine—thinking about it, he took all the medicine he could take.

But the body is more uncomfortable.

There were waves of chills in his body, but his eyelids and ears were hot. My limbs hurt so much... I can't breathe.

He curled up on the couch, and the high-pitched laughter coming from the TV was sickening to listen to. stabbing headache.

But instead he let go...

I'm going to die.

He thought at ease.

After you die, you won't be hungry...

Just then, he heard a voice coming from the door.

"—Phila!"

It was a crisp sound.

It was the voice of his playmate Shirley.

"I am here…"

He managed to pull himself together, and replied weakly: "I'm so uncomfortable..."

"Are you sick? Haven't you eaten? Can you open the door now!"

Her voice was urgent and a little dialect.

There was a crying tone in his voice: "I can't open it...the window is locked...it's locked from the outside..."

"You wait!"

Soon, Shirley's voice disappeared.

He actually wanted to say, you are here to talk to me... But he didn't even have the strength to say this.

He could only whimper and mutter nonsense that only he could hear~www.readwn.com~ He felt dizzy in his head and hot in his body. An uncomfortable feeling in the abdomen.

The whole person seemed to have fallen into an abyss, and felt that the sofa began to spin.

He didn't know how long it had passed when he heard a knock on the window.

"Fila, you are here!"

"Come down, Shirley, it's dangerous!"

The voices of Shirley and a grown man sounded from outside the house.

Fila raised her head reluctantly and looked out the window.

A Maltese girl with black hair jumped out of the window of his house somehow.

But his house is on the fourth floor...

Shirley lifted a rock and slammed it hard against the window.

There were iron bars on the outside of the window, and she had to stretch her arm in to smash the window.

The windows were not smashed, but the alarm was set off.

The sharp whistling sound finally attracted the attention of the neighbors.

"Shirley, come down!"

"Dad, put the ladder up!"

"Father is here to open the window, come down quickly!"

"what happened?"

"The father of the boy on the fourth floor was taken away by the company, and he was trapped at home alone for almost a week..."

"And this?"

The voices outside gradually became louder, and the winter silence was broken. But Fila slowly lost consciousness.

He took one last look out the window.

Outside the window like a birdcage...

The snow is about to stop.