My Brother and I only have one thing in common.
It’s not that strange of a thing when you’re looking at it from the outside.
But it IS strange.
I mean nothing is really strange about us to begin with, we go to school, we have lots of friends. we have parents, things to do, lives beyond this, is my point. we’re not sititng at home with tin foil hats on or anything.
Let me explain what I’m talking about.
My Brother Dominick and I, When we look up at the night sky and see all the twinkling stars, glistening in the dark abyss of the night sky, whenever we regard not the sky, but the stars themselves, suspended in the timelessness of Lovecraft’s Vast black ocean, we don’t feel wonder.
We feel some sort of sad longing. A homesickness if you will, gnawing at the pit of our stomachs. With lumps in our throats and tears streaming down our cheeks as we behold the stars and something deep inside us screams with painful longing of a place we’ve never lived, nor have ever thought of living, but we miss it all the same.
Up there.
The worst case of this was one evening when I found my brother, who was then 3 years of age, crouched in the back yard, reaching skyward, sobbing like an infant, repeating only the phrase, “I want to go, I want to go.”
We’re in our teens now and the experience is so painful for him that he doesn’t go outside at night anymore.
I still do however, heavy introspection in these times has revealed to me that there really is no memory in my head of any sort of otherworldly home, no memory of alien soil or the taste of extrasolar wind.
But my heart burns all the same.
I’ve looked these things up on the internet and I’ve found a word for what I think we are.
But I cringe when I think of the people we’d be associating ourselves with.
Bald cap wearing, over obsessed bloggers and basement fiends, grown adults calling themselves “Star-Seed.”
They think that something like this brings “fabulous secret powers.” To quote an old meme.
But before recent events all it’s done has cause my brother and I pain.
I’d even like some cool sci-fi dreams.
Anything to give the aching in my heart and mind some meaning.
And yes I know I said “before recent events.”
This explanation has gone long, let me get down to the issue.
Dominick is sick, he’s in pain, he hasn’t gone to school in months because he’s gotten sick with some sort of pox or rash or something similar.
His body has begun to manifest these masses of huge boils and sores, he’s covered in scabs at all times. When he moves more than a few inches, his body violently chaves off what looks like dust, but the doctors say is layers of dead skin.
The sores and wounds on his body are parts of his skin that have died but refuse to slough off, creating infections.
He’s a weeping necrotic mass, melting into his mattress in a dark room and nothing the doctors can do has helped him.
Last night it was horrible, he walked into my room sobbing and wailing as his arms and legs dripped blood, weep and more skin-dust as he just stands there, flailing in pain and screaming.
I couldn’t even bring myself to touch him as I watched his arms pulse as the bleeding got worse and worse.
Finally I got up the nerve to call 911 as he passed out on my floor.
I couldn’t leave my bed, he’s covered the entire floor in his mess.
Just Before the paramedics arrived, he opened his eyes and looked at me from where he lay.
“Dominic….what the fuck!?” Was all I could think to ask him.
He blinked at me, “They’re coming.” He croaked, “They’re coming for me.”
I nodded frantically, creeping closer to the edge of my bed as he began to try and get up unsuccessfully, “Yea the Paramedics are almost here just sit still.”
“No Jacob, they’re coming for me…That’s why I’m shedding so much…to get ready for them…”
I was getting more and more worried as he pointed a bloody hand up at the ceiling of my bedroom where our mother had put hundreds of glow in the dark stars back when we were kids, thinking that it would help what she called our “silly little phobia.”
“I saw them…they’re coming Jacob…you have to shed too! You have to shed too or we’re FUCKED!!” and like a popsicle that’s been put under a magnifying glass, his hand melted in front of me, liquefying the muscle tissue that dribbed down his already bloody arm until his skin clung limply to the now disassociated bones of his filanges.
I screamed and screamed as Dominic laughed maniacally before passing out.
The paramedics came then and got him up. I couldn’t speak, they asked me questions, I had no answers to.
My parents left with Dominic in the ambulance, but I couldn’t think about that now, I couldn’t think about whatever strange psychotic metamorphosis my brother was going through, I needed answers.
I went up on to the roof to look up at the stars.
In regular fashion, that familiar feeling began to manifest, that longing.
I laid back on the roof to contemplate everything that just happened.
Subconsciously, perhaps even pathologically asking the stars or whatever was out there the questions I couldn’t answer myself.
What had Dominic meant “shed”?
Why was this all happening now?
Why wasn’t any doctor able to Diagnose my poor little brother?
Was he dying?
Would this eventually happen to me?
Mid wondering, I stopped short as something became apparent to me in the starry sky.
The sky was no longer starry in a certain spot.
The center of the sky had suddenly become a mass of blackness as if all the stars in that one spot had gone out all at once.
I squinted, but I wasn’t mistaken, there were NO stars in that particular spot.
My breath caught in my chest as I stared into this new void, as, In the void I saw a massive shape.
It didn’t look much like anything at the time, but then it became more and more evident, something was there, a grotesquely familiar shadow shape that parted in the middle to reveal to me in that moment, only in silhouette, but with frightening, stark, textured detail, a massive peering eye, the pupil of which was Trifuricated into 3 separate lobes.
Just the eye itself was so massive that it was larger than our moon. when the endless darkness that surrounded it began shifting, I almost threw up when I realized that I wasn’t looking at some sort of free floating eye, there was a creature, in earth’s orbit right now that was blocking out the stars.
And it was looking at me.
How it was able to percieve me from all the way up there was anyone’s guess but one thing to me at least was certain.
I needed to get off this roof.
I sat up on the roof, taking my gaze away from the massive creature, a massive shockwave rocked me to my core, a shrill, keening shriek that suddenly made my body feel like it was full of static, my muscles went limp and I began to roll off the roof.
I was exceedingly thankful for the soft lawn when I landed.
My eyes fluttered open when I landed, nowhere else to look, I reluctantly looked up and saw with the utmost relief that the massive shadow had left the sky and I could see the stars again.
I need to find Dominic, if he knows more about this, maybe a trip to the hospital is worth it.