Abel Ladd - The Crying Child | Day 8 : 1113 words

Neal unlocked the door to their apartment and walked in to the sound of Abel screaming at full blast. The door had blocked the majority of the sound but he had heard the rising wave of sound as the key slid into the lock. He quickly closed the door behind him to keep the blast of sound from echoing down the hallway. The neighbors had to know by this point but there was no point in pushing their luck. He walked to the kitchen and went directly to the coffee pot and felt the side of the carafe for warmth, feeling it luke warm he sighed and poured the coffee to a cup and slid it into the microwave.
The ding of the microwave popped him out of his head and he grabbed the cup and walked to the living room where Esme and Abel sat on the couch with gentle music playing on the screen and Abel no longer at full volume.
“Everything go good?” she asked as Neal sat on the couch next to them, his cup of coffee held in his lap and his pda tossed on the table next to the couch.
Neal just sat and stared at the screen without answering, then slowly he took a sip of his coffee. His hand lowered and he said flatly, “Doctor Stetler was who I met.”
“Really? What did he say?” Esme asked in surprise.
“Abel is immune to DAWN which is why he’s the Crying Child. That makes him the only one to ever be immune and lots of groups are likely to want him for their own purposes. We have to keep him safe and keep him from hurting himself.” Neal was still speaking monotone as the shock of the situation was filling his head.
“Are you okay?” Esme asked as her head tilted while she looked closely at Neal.
“No, I’m not,” Neal said with a shake of his head. “This is all so insane. Why us? Why our child?” He turned to look at Esme, “I think I’m actually figuring some of it out though,” he said, his voice returned to a normal tone.
Esme raised her eyebrows at his statement and she became instantly curious, “oh, like what?” she asked.
“He said that ‘there are those few of us that are aiming to protect him and to ensure he fulfills his part in the future of our world and our species’. This must mean he is a Diviner or one of them somehow, who else would want to protect the Crying Child? Which also means that our child’s doctor, or both of them, is a Diviner.” Neal felt the dots connecting themselves as the words tumbled from his mouth.
Esme sat watching and listening as Neal talked, her mind awash in emotions and a flood of doubt. “What part could he have to play in our species? What? Our survival as a species or?”
“I don’t know Es, he said something about Abel is the one they will, what was it...” Neal interrupted then paused as he tried to remember the details. After a long pause he remembered and continued, “ah, isolate a means for reversing damage done by DAWN. I still don’t know what he meant by that.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. I sounds like they want to dissect him. I don’t care if the species is at stake they won’t ever do that to him,” Esme said as she squeezed Abel in her arms.
“I don’t think it’s anything like that, but I don’t want to find out either. Doctor Stetler said that if he gets hurt to contact them for care so as to keep him from public,” he said.
“Oh great, so we can’t take him anywhere, and what about school eventually? Will he be allowed to have friends?” Esme became suddenly upset as her mind raced down a single lane road.
“Calm down, I asked him about school but he said we can worry about that when it gets closer. Try not to worry babe,” Neal said as he tried to comfort her.
She sat holding Abel tightly with her cheek on his head rocking from side to side then after a long pause asked, “Why him? Why must he bear this burden?”
“I’m asking the same thing,” Neal said softly.
They sat in silence on the couch save the burbles and babbles of Abel until Esme said, “I’m just going to have to homeschool then.”
“We have a while before we really have to decide that sort of thing,” Neal said with a slight shrug.
“No, I can start as soon as he is aware enough and it will give him a good head start. The resources are all available so why not?” she asked.
Neal nodded but said nothing, he knew better than to question her right now and they had time to worry about school. His worry was now about Division and the fact that he needed to keep Abel safe from them, and others. How he had no idea though with Abel being the only child on the planet who cries it is pretty obvious who he is.
“Let’s try and let him enjoy his childhood without any pressure, he will have more than enough pressure in life being who he is,” Neal suggested after a long pause.
Esme looked down at Abel and said to him, “you need to be a child don’t you? Yeah, you want to play and learn and not have a worry for that, huh?” She lightly tussled his tiny head and his giggles made her smile.
Neal reached over to his pda and as soon as he picked it up the screen lit to show a bevy of notifications and he slid them into view to have his shoulders fall as he began to read them. “Shit,” he said to himself as he read on and Esme turned to look at him with a questioning look. He was engrossed in the barrage of messages and finally he said without looking up from the pda, “the H1050 went down and production has been at a stand still for hours. I have to go in and deal with it.”
“You’re on leave, let someone else fix it. You’re not the only repair tech they have.” Esme was suddenly annoyed.
“I can’t, I’m the only one who knows this machine. It shouldn’t take me long, I hope,” Neal said as he stood from the couch. He leaned down and kissed Esme then Abel’s head and headed for his work clothes.
“They better make this up to you,” Esme called after him.