Overturned Tower

When I opened my eyes, the whole world seemed to have become several times larger.

...In other words, Russell has become smaller.

His height at this moment is not as high as the dining table, and he is only about five or six years old. Maybe even smaller.

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

The falling snow was falling all over the sky, and the streets were deserted.

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

The heating pipes in the home were also cracked by the freeze, 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 windows were too well insulated, blocking his shouts inside.

There's no point in shouting. He shouted.

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

Their family had no money to purchase medical insurance, so they couldn't call for emergency help through the chip... Not to mention, he didn't even fully understand the words that appeared in front of him.

His father had been away from home for six days, and the snow hadn't stopped yet.

He may be dead.

Such thoughts came to his mind.

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

Dad said that if you die, you will never come back.

Dad will never come back.

...I don’t know why, but I feel like I want to cry.

Maybe he had cried.

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

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

The meal prepared by Dad had already been finished when he left home.

The snacks he stocked lasted through the third and fourth days, and the last pack of biscuits had been eaten the night before when he was so hungry.

He ate the lettuce he took out of the refrigerator with honey in the morning, but for some reason he had diarrhea. Even hungrier now.

And the snow hasn't stopped yet.

What should I do?

Should I ask for help?

Who should I turn to for help?

He remained silent.

He had long since lost the strength to shout.

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

There is still some bread on the top shelf of the refrigerator, which is frozen and hard. After all, it has been there for more than a week.

But he couldn't reach anything that was too high, so he didn't think about taking it down at first.

Although he still had flour at home, he couldn't make it into rice. There are also some raw eggs, but he doesn't cook them. He didn't even know why, but when he broke them, they turned into a puddle of liquid - he thought eggs should be white solids.

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

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

Honey is a good thing, but there is not much in stock. The vegetables and biscuits that came with it have all been eaten.

These breads were the last of the food.

Otherwise, you can only drink the flour with water.

There was still half a bag of flour, and a lot of water... He probably had a long time to live, he thought.

He couldn't reach the food on the top shelf of the refrigerator, so he had to step on a stool to reach it.

So he used a stool and struggled to take out the bread that had been there for more than a week.

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 was not actually injured.

To be honest, it doesn't hurt...

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.

It’s like being abandoned by the whole world;

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

——In the past, whenever I started crying, my mother would come over to comfort me.

After mom dies, dad will pick himself up.

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

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

He cried until his whole body began to convulse and he could no longer cry out, then he slowly got up from the ground.

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

It has changed its taste and is not tasty.

There was no hot milk or porridge, no eggs or butter... only the same cold water to assist swallowing. But at least it's filling.

This bread is bigger than his head, so you can eat several meals if you save some.

he thought optimistically.

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

...Dad is coming back soon?

While he was thinking this, he couldn't help but shed tears silently.

He didn't believe it himself.

Dad probably died outside...he will never come back.

"Am I going to die too..."

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

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

Only now did he know what "hungry" meant.

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

After all the bread is finished, all I can do is take pills to fill my stomach. he thought.

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

Toothpaste should also be edible. The toothpaste tastes like fruit... Although my father won't let me eat it, it should be okay now.

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

But soon after eating the bread, he began to feel a pain in his stomach.

When you are sick, you need to take medicine - with this thought in mind, he took all the medicine he could.

But my body felt even worse.

Waves of chills ran through his body, but his eyelids and ears were burning. My limbs hurt so much... I couldn't breathe.

He curled up on the sofa, the high-pitched laughter coming from the TV making people feel sick. Stinging headache.

But instead he felt relieved...

I'm going to die.

He thought reassuringly.

After death, you will no longer be hungry...

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

"——Fila!"

It was a crisp sound.

It was the voice of his playmate Shirley.

"I am here……"

He reluctantly cheered up and replied feebly: "I feel so uncomfortable..."

"Are you sick? Have you not eaten? Can you open the door now!"

Her voice was urgent and had a hint of dialect.

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

"Wait!"

Soon, Shirley's voice disappeared.

He actually wanted to say, you stay here and 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.

He felt his head start to feel dizzy and his body began to heat up. There was a very uncomfortable feeling in my abdomen.

The whole person felt as if he had fallen into an abyss, and he felt that the sofa began to rotate.

He didn't know how much time had passed before he heard a knock on the window.

"Fila, you are here!"

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

Shirley and a grown man's voice sounded from outside the house.

Fila reluctantly raised her head and looked out the window.

I saw a horse-eared girl with black hair, somehow she jumped out of the window of his house.

But his home is on the fourth floor...

Shirley raised a rock and smashed it against the window.

There were iron bars on the outside of the window, and she had to put her arms in to break the window.

The window was not shattered, 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!"

"Dad, come open the window, come down quickly!"

"what happens?"

"The father of the boy on the fourth floor was arrested by the company. He has been trapped at home alone for almost a week..."

"Is there still this matter?"

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

He looked out the window one last time.

That birdcage-like window outside the window...

The snow is about to stop.

Still feeling sleepy and not feeling very energetic...

Do I have a cold...

There's also a second chapter - I guess I'll have to deal with it in the evening...