The Dreadful Ring

I gulped, walked up to her, leaned in, showed her my finger and said, “I’m in a dilemma….”

I would have never entered the store if I knew what it was going to lead to.

Passing through the glass door of  Blue Door Beads, I had a goal: to make my grandma a birthday gift. In front of me was a plethora of small wooden tubs of beads, strings of small beads hanging on the wall, and to the left of me there was the checkout. Looking through the different rings, searching for a price tag, I was thinking about how expensive the beads were when I saw it… it was very shiny and shaped like a ring. It was as golden as the sun in a fairy tale book. 

I slipped it on my pointer finger. It looked okay, but when I tried to slide it off, it didn’t budge. I tried a few more times with different techniques, like pushing up on the finger. I thought about putting the finger in my mouth to pull off the ring.

Ew too many germs. … Should I tell Mom?

I was afraid to tell her. What if I told her and she had steam fuming out of her ears like a cartoon character? I gulped, walked up to her, leaned in, showed her my finger and said, “I’m in a dilemma….”

“What!!!” Mom screamed and grabbed my hand trying to pry the ring off with her nails. “You got a bead stuck on your finger!?”

Everybody turned to look at me. A sneering employee in the store yelled, “Call the cops! This kid is trying to steal a bead!”

A crackly old lady was nice. She said, “Call an ambulance!”

Mom got red like a tomato. I'm in such deep trouble.

My mom started fuming and yelling like a demon, “Levon Christopher Allen!” 

I was sweating profusely, like Niagara Falls down my forehead.

“You are in such deep trouble! I thought you’d be responsible. You are thirteen you should know better!’

I felt so embarrassed and guilty. I just wanted to go home and play off brand mobile games! 

Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I heard it the unmistakable sound of sirens “Weewoo! Weewooo!” 

I really hoped it was the ambulance to take me to the hospital and not the police to arrest me. The EMT’s ran in, and yelled “Where is the victim?”

The whole store, including me, pointed at me. They loaded me, but first the police handcuffed me to the stretcher.

“Mom!” I shouted. “Help me!”

“No son, you are on your own!” she said, turning her back on me. 

They closed the doors, and I was rushed away, zooming at top speed like an F1 car to the hospital. I became a ragdoll thrown around the pristine white inside of the ambulance. 

At the hospital, the doctor said, “Your whole body is paralyzed because of the ambulance from hitting the bar too hard. Except for your head. Unfortunately, you also have necrotizing fasciitis. We have to chop off all your infected body parts.”

“WHAAZAAATTT!?” 

They put me under. When I woke in a musty, dusty, crusty, rusty prison cell, I was just a head and 90% robot…

Twenty years later…

I was scraping a mark for another day, when it happened, I heard footsteps approaching. Then a guard opened up my cell. And I was out. After twenty years in jail I wondered what the outside world had to offer right after the jaildoors closed behind me. Then I fainted from heat exhaustion. 

“Are you okay? Does your finger hurt?” My mom asked, bringing me back to reality. I almost fainted for real from that nightmarish hell. 

I said, “I’m fine except for my finger kind of hurts.” I leaned in and whispered, “I got  a bead stuck on my finger.

“How?” Mom asked. Then she said, “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Let’s go to the bathroom and run it under cold water and soap.”

In the bathroom, I felt like the ring was a Chinese finger trap. I thought it would never come off, but after running it under warm water for thirty seconds, it slipped off like butter.

As I left the store, I thought that nightmare wasn’t very accurate, I made it a way bigger problem than it was… stupid imagination.