months before Death disappeared. The sickness never left, so his mind did.
I used to like climbing trees, feeling the rough bark beneath my feet as I scaled the sky. Now I know nothing but the four cement walls back home—eroded by time, blood, my brother’s fits of mania—and the next eternity laid out before me. Neither fits right. Maybe it’s me that doesn’t fit.
I have not yet been broken.
I won’t shiver now.
They say everything falls to time, but we don’t. It makes us seem… detached. Distant. From the withering world around us.
Fall is settling again, but that’s not what gives the leaves their bruises. Earth, as we know it, is curling in on itself—like a giant, smooshed bug. The lucky bastard. It might seem painful, from afar, but I know the truth. What is a few moments of pain to a lifetime of release?
My brother is not afforded such a luxury.
He withers too.
Last I saw him—only hours ago, before I got up once more and slipped out the door, unable to look at him, a bubble of something rising inside me, needing to get out, needing to get away—he was lying in his chair, the one that always bleeds stuffing and smells like wet. He was flopped over it like an abandoned marionette, silent and with painted eyes.
He is my blood and my flesh and I hate him.
Oh, how I hate the way his body decorates our home.
But I cannot wander forever. So I turn back, shove open the front door again, expecting to hear his gargled rambling, expecting to see the light of the TV slipping over his sweaty cheeks. Nothing greets me. Nothing but silence, and a kind“Dad?” I call. The crying hiccups. Then there’s a sniffle. Sliding the door shut, I tiptoe towards the room.