Quote:
Occurs following Unreasonable Behaviour.
there wasn't a soul that sung like yours
Word Count: 2207
The whole place felt surreal.
The pitch of apprehension burrowing in his gut, Elex stood as a lone boy - an unassuming figure. Gone were the pipes, the blackened hands, the dead eyes. He lingered on one of many great shopping strips, where gold beaded purses and lacquered leathers and fine, hand-carved driftwood tables courted appeal from the upper class. Here, a teen waited for his family against one of many wrought-iron benches. He looked toward flowering bouquets that only now waned for autumn. He looked at cars passing by, searching for white-wall tires and a drawn convertible hood.
But the scene felt crooked. The boy ostensibly fit into his surroundings well, yet the discerning would find him of note. Too-long hair marked him as disheveled. His clothes fit much too tightly for one who led a sedentary life. He sat on the edge of his seat like a violinist, yet lacked the posture for it. Something about him left a queer feeling in onlookers, whose steady gazes lingered for too long.
Elex felt like they peeled the second skin back with their eyes.
But his hate held no great tenure. Familiar tires grazed the ground in careful fashion. The older Mustang rolled forward with care, jerking just so when its occupant tested the pedal. He found parking with relative ease; overcast days seldom made for good complexions and conversation. And when he parked, the man emerging looked a far cry from his brother.
Some months passed since Elex set eyes on his brother directly. They looked similar in years past. Kept similar haircuts, similar dress styles, similar mannerisms all to their mother's delight. But in the past year, that paradigm shifted. Now, Erol cared little for his natural black and opted for a burnished blonde. Now cropped short, he looked prepped for ROTC club (or perhaps boot camp, which crossed Elex's mind with revulsion). Gone were the suits and vests and slacks. Now he wore ripped jeans like an 80's throwback and enlisted flannel in an understated anti-establishment revolution. His ear looked pierced -- just one, Elex noted -- and his eyes roamed with a certain petulant boredom that they lacked before.
Elex hesitated; what if the inside matched the outside? What if he cared not for little brothers gone astray? The thought nearly stayed him.
But his brother swept the thought aside with countenance alone. He spotted Elex nigh immediately. He froze mid-step, confusion screwing up his features, jamming up his thoughts. He second-guessed himself. His foot, caught mid-fall, retreated next to its twin. His jaw slackened just so. Reams of thoughts echoed through his visage before his expression changed. Consternation gave way to shock. Shock conceded to welcome surprise. Welcome surprise shifted to genuine happiness. And, at last, genuine happiness withered into anger and sorrow and grief.
The shift happened over a pair of seconds at most. He started again in stride, perhaps forgetting himself, perhaps forgetting his new visage, and the rest of the world fell into twilit ambivalence as he barreled toward his brother. "Oh my god, Elex!" Sprinting now, he opened arms to catch his dead-not-dead little brother in a sweeping hug.
Elex's strength as faustite escaped him. He could no longer dodge his brother's gesture with ease, and soon found himself trapped in an iron grip. He feared for the pipes in his back that were no longer; his brother's hands searched bone and flesh with grateful purchase. Slowly Elex raised his own arms around his brother, thicker now than they were before, though he offered a gentler embrace. "Erol," he began, then cut himself off.
Erol sobbed. He loosed pitched wails into Elex's shirt, which he pinched between calloused fingers, and drew his haggard breaths against a sibling once lost. He pounded his anger against Elex's back, spilled his sorrow over his shoulder, and gasped sorrow against his lapel. His grip tightened, slackened, tightened again. His jaw worked for words that never came, buried as they were beneath layers of careful scars. Under the wide grey sky, he looked washed out with his own overwrought emotions.
Elex felt hesitant to move. His fingers flexed and itched, restless beneath their too-tight skin, searching for answers just out of his reach. Should he return the embrace in full? Pat his brother? Leave Erol to sulk in his own emotion? Push him away? Instinctively his hand twitched for the center of his brother's back, where his palm lit against the warmest part of him. For a bare moment, he lost himself to imagination -- a time where flesh stood as no barrier --
A car horn shrieked, breaking the daydream. Elex caught himself with his palm flatted over vertebra. A tightness welled in his chest then, threatening to drown him and wash away all his careful focus. He drew back his hand, gratefully empty. He pressed it to forehead and leaned against his brother, entrusted him at once, and closed black-not-black eyes to his own wracking sorrows.
When tears satisfied the dry day, the pair parted -- but Erol was first to speak. "What the hell happened to you? You have no damn clue how long we've been looking for some sign of you, EL! Dad's been crying nonstop, mom's been all weird and silent, and every other dinner party's been clogged up with ******** nonsense speculation about you! What's your problem?"
Elex faltered. "I --"
"We thought you were dead. We really did. We really ******** did. Mom saw a counselor once that told her to have a closed-casket funeral. Put it all behind us. Move on. I'm serious, Elex."
Elex sighed, his gaze casting about the ground. When did you start calling her Mom? When did she stop being Mother to you? Was it my fault? "It wasn't my choice." Faust had his choices. My name, a false homage. He looked to Erol then, with his thoughts darting about too quickly for him to seize with sluggish hands. "I didn't want to leave. But I had to. They didn't give me an option."
"Who?" The word rang out too loud, too lurid on the greyed landscape. People stared. People watched. Erol disregarded the lot of them with wide gestures. "God's sake, just tell us who did this! Who took you from us? You know Mom will have the police on their asses in half a second flat! Elex, you're not making any sense."
And when did you become so vulgar? "I know. It's better that I don't. But someone was going to tell you that I was dead and gone, and they were right in a way --"
Erol's roll of eyes cut him off more cleanly than any interjection could. "Don't start with this stupid s**t…"
"I'm serious." He drew his own withering glare at his brother. "I mean it when I say he's right in a way. The me you knew is gone for good. Dead and scattered like ashes. I shouldn't have come back here," he finished with a shake of his head. Narrow shoulders stooped, compensating for an unseen load, and he pushed himself to his full height,
which his brother opposed vigorously. "Stop it, Elex. Just sit down and talk sense. You're not dead."
"Aren't you?" Elex bit back. "Where's the brother I used to know? What happened with this?" Elex pulled at a meager spike of hair. "What happened to dressing respectably? What caused you to start spouting vulgarities like they're the key to winning an argument? Parts of you have died too. Parts of you have changed -- for better or worse. Isn't that right, Erol?"
"You're starting to sound like mom. And you're dodging the point."
"Am I?"
"Yes! ******** sake, haven't you been listening? I've been asking this whole time 'what happened to you', and you've been ducking around it like I'm waving a goddamned machete at you. For the last time: What. Happened? Are you going to tell me or not?" His brother's arms crossed in a manner finally familiar, finally acceptable against the jarring backdrop of memory.
Elex relaxed, if slightly. "This isn't some easy story to tell. It's going to wrench at you in ways that my disappearance never did." At least you had an untarnished memory of me then. "If I'm going to tell you, then you have to keep it a secret from our parents."
"So you'd have me hurt them more. Is that what you're saying? Because that's what you're asking. If I go make that promise with you, mom's gonna keep on grieving for a son that's standing right the ******** in front of me. And dad's gonna keep crawling in every bottle he can find. You want that, Elex? Just tell all of us. At once." He brought out his keys, a familiar jingle against the too-quiet backdrop of grey. "I'll take you home right now. You can tell them yourself."
"No." He sighed; Erol proved far more stubborn than he anticipated. "I don't have time for that."
"What, like you got somewhere more important to be?"
They stood, they stared each other down. They let silence cut a swath through their relationship.
"I'm not going home, Erol. I'm not going back to living with our parents. I'm not attending dinner parties and anniversaries and fundraisers. I'm not going back to school. I'm not going to sit on a dock and waste the hours away while our father gets drunk on his boat. I found something different. Something better. Something so vast and terrible that I finally know what it means to be a part of something. For once in my life, I'm not spectating. I'm not playing someone else's well-kept doll. I'm finally getting to know myself with a chance that was forced on me.
"What happened -- it doesn't matter. It won't matter. It's just a catalyst. I've changed, Erol. So have you. Are you going to take the time to accept that or not?" Elex let his offer stand with finality. He himself stood with finality. There, a disheveled boy with too-tight clothes against the picturesque bench and the picturesque street, looking like a dream within a dream. And opposite him stood the willful rebel, the shock of blonde hair and the frayed clothes when the shops behind him featured tailored suits, silk ties. They stood at odds with one another, with their sameness weaponized.
Erol finally relented. His shoulders slacked with a burden too heavy to see. "Fine. Okay, El. Have it your way. But will you promise me something?"
"What is it?" The words felt clumsy as they passed his lips.
"Promise me you won't leave them out of the loop for long. We --" He paused, fumbled for words. "We can talk about it over lunch. I know this dive taco place that mom hates, it's in the s**t end of the town, but they've got these great burritos and as long as you don't use their taco sauce --"
"Erol. I can't do that right now. I spent two hours waiting for you. I'm running out of time."
"You're late for a very important date?" Erol cocked a brow in levity,
which only irritated his brother. Elex sighed as he tried to summon the tolerance he kept as a child -- a younger child. "No. It's complicated." How do you explain to someone that your skin starts coming apart, and cracks in the visage betray the real you? "Just give me the address. We'll meet around five. You're sure it's quiet? That no one will recognize us?"
"No one will recognize us for sure, but it isn't anywhere close to quiet. We can go around back with our food, though. Eat by the dumpsters. Nobody goes there for obvious reasons. It's…" Erol drew his phone at once and thumbed through the apps. In a few presses of a thumb, lights flickered and flashed until a familiar interface displayed the address. "Fifty-one sixty-five Ash street. It's below the old Metal Records sign. You're actually going to meet me there, right? Not ditch out on me?"
A click of a pen announced Elex's careful writing. He scrawled the address onto his arm, ever careful around the minute tears that started to form. "Five-one-six-five Ash street. Yes, I'll be there." How quaint. I don't feel like myself.
Maybe this is part of learning who I am.
"Five o'clock," Elex reiterated with a turn of his form. His brother seized him for a hug against his will. At this, Elex scowled, yet drowned his venom in silence.
He left then, against his brother's protests, and rounded the wide street into an alley cutting a warehouse in half. He paused once he reached the telltale sign of the old floor. He looked about for any sign of movement -- any creeping cat or nosy vagrant -- and found nothing to encroach on his privacy. Elex peeled the magical skin from himself in long, gauzy strips, and the glamour broke away at once. Pipes erupted from overwrought skin, shredding it easily. Black coated his hands, his eyes. He felt peculiarly whole.
Peculiarly, fantastically, terribly whole.
