“What the fuck? April?”
Jean’s voice is far away, distant, as if he’s not really here. Am I dreaming? I must be.
“Jean.” I whisper, looking right into his eyes with fear in mine. Jean looks confused and afraid.
“April, please, tell me what the fuck’s going on. I’m worried. Your brother is, too.”
My eyes begin to close. “…My brother?”
He nods. “Yes. He’s worried.”
“My brother.” The whisper is hoarse as everything turns dark.
I wake up a few hours later, in a bright room that looks like a hospital room. But a chill sneaks up my spine when I realize it isn’t. It’s a laboratory.
My brother stares down at me with his icy eyes, his hair messy. I can’t move my arms, or my legs, or my head. Everything is strictly strapped into place with these stupid ropes.
“Well, how does it feel, huh?”
His voice isn’t the voice of my brother. My brother doesn’t sound like a deranged psychopath. He sounds like a kid, sweet and innocent.
This can’t be my brother.
Can it?
“How does it feel to be in my place, for once?” He spits the words out as if they taste bad in his mouth, but then that same mouth curves into a chilly smile.
Suddenly his face is right in front of mine. His eyes are wide and bloodshot. His skin is pale and cracking at places. His hair is covered in dirt, grime, bugs, twigs. And he smells like a sewer. I struggle not to gag.
“Where’s Jean?” My throat hurts and my voice is small, but he hears perfectly because he’s only a few inches from me.
“Who cares?” he shrugs nonchalantly. “Who cares where Jean is? How he’s feeling? What he’s doing? Is he safe? We don’t know. We don’t care.”
“I care!” I yell, and my throat burns. I struggle to move my arms.
He widens his eyes as his smile grows bigger. He begins walking around my chair in circles, keeping his eyes on mine.
“You care.” His voice is quiet. He sounds sad for a minute. “Of course you care.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” I scream.
“You care about Jean,” he says slowly, and his eyes burn with hate. “Because he’s your boyfriend. Because he’s pretty. Because he loves you.”
I say nothing.
“But did you ever care about me?” he asks, his voice cracking. “Did you ever, April? Because I don’t recall.”
“You don’t love me, either,” I reply quietly.
“I did!” He yells suddenly, the veins on his head and face flexing. “I fucking loved you! You were my sister. I loved you. I protected you, as a big brother. I kept the bullies away. I got in trouble for you. And you? What did you do for me?”
My mouth feels dry. My skin prickles.
His eyes are stained with tears and his voice is thick. “You did nothing. Absolutely nothing to love me. You didn’t even want to be my sister. You didn’t even care when your stupid fucking boyfriend almost killed me.”
My eyes widen and my mouth opens in shock. I struggle to speak. He sees this and his smile returns, but it’s cold and bitter.
“Of course. You had no idea. You were so wrapped up with your own life, your own friends, your shitty boyfriend that you didn’t give a single fuck about what was going on.”
“I didn’t know,” My own eyes prickle with tears. “I didn’t know what he was doing to you. I still don’t.”
He licks his lips. “Well, let me tell you, April,” he says, more put together now. “Last winter, when you were at the math festival, your boyfriend Jean wanted to come over to our house to play video games. I was just a 15 year old kid, I wanted to play. So of course I said yes.”
I swallow.
“And he came over, locked the door. I trusted him. I wanted him to play with me. To pay attention to me. But it wasn’t the type of attention I was thinking of.”
I close my eyes.
“You know what he did? That motherfucker pulled out a knife from the kitchen and pinned me down on the floor, yelled in my face. Said I was getting in his way because I was always craving attention from you.”
His eyes look lost.
“He fucking put that knife to my throat, April. I was crying, begging him to let me go. I told him I’d do anything.”
My chest closes in itself. I can’t breathe.
“He told me I had to bring you here, to this lab so that he can have you. So that he can kill you. Because he didn’t love you, April, believe it or not. He wasn’t who he told you he was.”
I can’t believe any of his words. This feels like a dream. A nightmare.
“And of course, I had to agree. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live my life, I was just too young to die. So when you were sleeping I drugged you so that you’d be unconscious for a few more hours. Then I told him to come to the lab. And when he did, I was scared shitless. Do you think I wanted to watch him kill you?”
I feel cold.
“No, I didn’t. So when he came I told him to wait for you to wake up. So that I can watch as he skinned you alive. That’s what I told him, and he believed it. He waited until you woke up.”
I remember waking up.
“When he did he pretended to care about you. He pretended to be worried. Such a shit bag. When you turned away he was going to stab you in the throat.”
My tears are falling into my shirt, hot and quick.
“But I didn’t let him. I grabbed a chair and hit him in the head. He’s dead. I’ve killed him, April. Are you happy?”
No.
“Of course you’re not. Because Jean was your dream man and he loved you and that’s what you care about. You won’t believe me.”
He stops walking around my chair and looks me in my eyes, and his eyes are colder than ever.
“Well, guess what, April?” he says quietly. “I don’t care anymore, either.”
That’s when he points to the floor. I look and there’s a long dark bag, almost bursting. Inside is definitely a body.
Bile rises in my throat. I’m going to be sick. That’s Jean.
“I don’t care at all,” he repeats, even quieter, but his smile is still there. “About you, about him. Because you never cared for me, April, did you?”
He unties the rope from my arms and my legs and immediately I fall to the floor. He pulls me up by my hair roughly. I try to fight him but my arms and legs feel like lead. The drug.
He unzips the dark bag and I take a look at my dead boyfriend. His face pale, forehead and hair covered by a mess of blood, brains, tissue. My stomach turns. His eyes are closed but I can feel them watching me.
“Since you love him so much,” Jean says. “More than me, in fact, I’ll do you a favor. You’re destined to be together, am I right? So you will. You will be together.”
He pushes me into the bag, forcing me in. My screams are muffled as I get squished in the bag with the dead body.
Blood rubs on my dress. It’s too tight in here. No air. Just me and this dead body of my lover. In the same bag. It smells disgusting.
I can make out the silhouette of my brother, through the thin material of this bag. Thin as it might be, my nails do nothing at all to rip it. I’m trapped.
I can feel my brother’s smile as he says, “Now you can love him forever, April. You’ll be together forever. Because you aren’t getting out.”