They'll Never Take My Heart

“But out here in the desert, your shadow lives on without you. This is Dr. Death Defying signing off.” I heard Dr. D finishing off his broadcast from my room. I was turning off the first two cameras. I heard someone knocking on my door. Or, more like knocked around the beads that separated my room from the main room.
“What?” I called, too busy with my hacking to pay attention.
“Can I ask you something?” Poison said. I nodded. “Give me a tattoo? Please? I know you know how.” Fun taught me how when we had found an old tattoo parlor. Needless to say, we took all of the equipment.
“Aren’t you, like, deathly afraid of needles?” I pointed out. He blushed a little.
“Yeah... so?”
“Well, wouldn’t that complicate things? I mean, it’s not like I can do one without a needle.” I said.
“I can suck it up once. It’s important.” He said, trying to sound confident. He failed miserably.
“Fine. I can do it once I’m finished with this camera. What’s so important that you’ll face a needle?”
“I want you to tattoo a name on me.”
“What name?”
“Bandit.”
Poison was lying down on the booth table, getting ready to get his tattoo. Even though he was getting something so small, it seemed like he was getting ready to face off against every scarecrow in existence.
“Are you ready?” I asked. He shook his head so hard I thought it would fall off. “Do you want me to distract you?” He nodded. “Okay,” I said, starting to trace the outline of the ‘B’, “Tell me about Bandit.”
“Well, she was just the most awesome little kid ever. She nearly gave me a heart attack the time she climbed on top of one of the huge amps. Oh, and there was the one time when I was in the middle of an interview for Spin, she ran in and started playing around with my art stuff.” He said, flinching every now and again, but smiling. I almost slipped a few times.
“Okay, tell me what happened to her.”
“She was taken be BLI. It was her and her mom. Lindsey. I miss them both so much... they’re probably dead. They were fighting the dracs. She was only four, it wasn’t supposed to happen. We were supposed to live with your family, Fun’s, Jet’s, and Kobra and Alicia were supposed to come too. It would all be fine. We would survive. But, some didn’t. They were carried out of the house. I should’ve done something. It was just... they had needles in their arms. They were injected with something. I thought it was poison. I panicked. I ran. It’s all my fault.” He said. I finished up the ‘T’ and found him lost in his memory.
“Wait, you THINK it was poison?” I said.
“Yeah, I assumed it was. Why else would they do that?” He said.
“They’re BLI! They probably used some type of sedative!” I shouted at Poison. His eyes went wide.
“So, that means...” He pulled on his jacket and ran to tell everyone. They all freaked out, most because, as I later learned, that was what happened to most of their families. Some because of Poison’s new tattoo, right over his heart.