Kid's Play

The kid yelled out and when nobody answered, he realized that he was completely alone. Nobody was around to come and pick him up off of the looming tower that was the trash can. He realized this and began to try to climb down.
At first step there was the handle that he barely missed, which scared him at once. Then he jolted his foot back and sat on top again. Again, he yelled out. Again, nobody responded. Again, he realized he had to get down. So with tears in his eyes, he went to try to climb down again.
His foot hit the handle and slipped off, but this time it didn’t scare him. He decided he had to get down somehow, so he continued to climb down. He reached down with his tiny claw-like hand to grab the handle and hang down. His hand just barely reached, and he moved his foot off of the handle now hanging on.
For almost a minute, he was a cliffhanger, precariously holding onto a tiny piece of rock hoping that he doesn’t fall. He let go finally and landed just fine without hurting his feet, which surprised him so fully that he jerked his head back, striking the receptacle behind him. Then, rubbing the back of his head he walked off in the direction he had heard the scream in the first place.
He picked a hallway he thought would lead to the right place, and he walked down the path. The hallway was a canyon against him, tall and wide with a tiny river running in the middle of it. He couldn’t yet tell where the water was coming from, though he had a feeling that it had something to do with the man’s scream that he had heard.
Endlessly he walked on, trying to avoid getting his bare feet wet because the little stream snaked back and forth across the hallway. It took the child a few minutes to recognize that this corridor he picked was uphill, and he blew out a tired breath.
Of course, when he did so, he noticed that there was an opening coming shortly. He felt a sudden burst of energy, and began to run. Like a phantom, he was gone from sight and at the end of the hall, where he heard the scream again. It was like a banshee’s shriek, resonating and echoing throughout the room.
Then he saw the man in distress, chained up on a torture rack. Another man was there, asleep by the side of the machine, with a bottle of beer in his left hand, a burnt-out cigar hanging out of his right forefingers.
The little boy ran over to the man on the table, who was set under a showerhead aimed directly at his head. He could tell the man had been there for quite a while, with the water running, because there were indentions in his head where the water hit. The grimace on the man’s face showed the immense pain that he absolutely had to be in.
Walking around the table, the child looked for a way to take off the man’s chains, and turn the shower off. Finding no way to do either, he looked at the man. He decided he had to find out why the man was chained to the table and how he could get the chains off. He asked him this question, and almost as a response the man opened his mouth, half-heartedly; the boy had to turn away.
The boy could not release the worst image in his head about how such a thing could happen. So much blood: the boy saw that the man could not speak because his tongue had been cut out.
When he had his head turned he noticed an axe leaned up against the wall, its head in the middle of a glowing red circle. Refusing to turn his head back, the little boy walked over to grab the axe, and when he went to pick it up, it was hot and burned his strong left hand. Immediately the pain shot through his hand up to his elbow, then on to the rest of his body. He kicked the axe, afterward, making it fly off of the fiery circle.
After picking it up a second time, this time with his right hand under his shirt, he walked it over to the showerhead and ran the handle under the water. Then it was cool enough to swing, so he looked at the man, whose mouth was closed. He held the axe tightly with his right hand, raising it up to swing it down swiftly. Of course that was just the plan, so it didn’t work out right.
When he started to swing it down, the snoring man stopped snoring and grabbed the head of the axe, the man’s hand recoiling as the slipslipped out of the kid’s hand.
The man had set down his bottle of beer and what was left of his cigar, so, quick like lightning the boy grabbed the bottle, slammed it over the man’s head, stabbed him in the back with the broken end of it, and grabbed the cigar. He touched the end of the cigar to the head of the axe, immediately igniting the tip of the cigar.
Then he raised it up to his mouth slowly, took a long drag, and put it out in the snoring man’s eye. After deciding that this man was no longer a threat, the boy picked up the axe with his right hand and slammed it down swiftly onto the chains, breaking them. He then cut the showerhead in half so it wouldn’t pour onto the man’s face anymore, helping the man pull off the chains afterward. The man got up off of the table, stood next to the boy and looked down at the man that the boy had simply put down.
All of a sudden a click sounded, and the wall to their left began to rise like a garage door, and applause began sweeping into the room like osmosis. Then the kid looked around and saw that both the tortured man and the man with a cigar in his eye were clapping, too, and he heard his name over a loudspeaker.
“Jake, you have done well,” it said, “we at the academy are most proud of you. It is my pleasure to announce that you are completely ready to be a spy for the government.”
Jake then bowed his head, then his entire body, then just his head again. He turned around and walked through a door that seemed to suddenly open. Then the door closed behind him.
The PA system spoke again, except now to the staff, saying, “Ok everybody let’s get ready for the next test.”