5

A young boy and his older brother woke up to the crack of thunder. The flashes of lightning stirred them awake for the next crack. They knew the sound well as it had been their natural alarm clock for the past few mornings. Storms in the region had been so bad that all of the other families in Salem had to board their doors shut to prevent the rain from surging in. Almost every family within a five mile radius had laughed off the initial forecasts as Salem was in the middle of a summer’s drought. Rain had been scarce and not a cloud had seated itself in the sky. The boys’ home was mainly dry save for the damp towels placed under the cracks of the front door. Those had to be switched out every half our or else they’d leak into the family room. Their mother would kill them if that happened.

The storms weren’t expected to last this long—only a day or two at the most was what the weathermen originally predicted, but even a few hours of the downpour was enough to cause some serious damage to some of the neighborhood homes.

The younger brother yawned a loud sound stretched the length of his body across the bed. He reached out and noticed that his older brother had already gotten out of their bed; the bedroom door was wide open.

He walked through the door just as the younger brother looked. The older had a streak of sweat across his forehead that glistened against his blue eyes. The younger’s eyes were more gray, but held a deeper curiosity of everything behind them. The older came back to the bed and sat facing the opposite direction of the younger.

How close they were in age made it an easy decision on their parents to save costs by having them share their bed. It seemed like a fine plan except for those who actually had to sleep in the bed. Disputes aside, they didn’t argue too much about it—they generally got along with most everything, only choosing to spat about something if they truly believed it was worth fighting over.

"You think this rain’s going to end soon?" The younger asked. “I feel like it’s been going on forever.”

The older looked up from the foot of the bed, raising his little brunet head, his eyes spinning. "I don’t know. Mom and Dad keep saying that it’ll end soon."

"Maybe God hates us."

The elder’s focus seemed elsewhere, the rashness of the comment didn’t seem to stir him. "Don’t let Mom catch you saying that. Wouldn’t be your brightest day."

"I bet she believes it too..." The younger said. “I bet it and a half.”

"I don’t buy it. She wouldn’t care about bringing us every Sunday if that were true."

"I thought that too..." the younger rested his head back down opposite his brother who promptly shoved his lower end away from him.

"Come on, dude! Your feet are rank."

"Sorry," the younger said. "You know I don’t mean to..." He pivoted his arms around to swing his lower body off the side of the bed.

"You were saying something...? About Mom, I mean," the older asked.

"I think she’s scared of the rain."

"No way. That’s a lousy thing to be afraid of..." he swung his own legs over the side and sat beside his brother. He thought on it a moment and looked aside, "What’d you hear?"

"It was last night when we were brushing our teeth—when you hogged the sink, remember?"

"What? Come on, I thought you-"

"After you said you’d race me. You dashed back real fast."

"Yeah, and you were slow. You know what they say. I don’t want to go fast I go slow.” He said rhythmically. “What about it?" The elder cocked his head, his glasses fell just short of the bridge of his nose. He pushed them up and then scrunched his nose real tight to get them just right.

"I stopped in the hallway because I heard Mom crying."

"Crying about what?"

The younger bit his lip, looking down at his legs dangling by themselves. "I didn’t know at first...I looked in the doorway and she didn’t notice me—it was half open like it always is."

"Yeah, and?"

"She was really scary, crying without sounding like she was crying. She was quiet, but her face was so sad."

"How’d you see her face without her seeing you?"

"It was in her mirror. Her makeup was streaming down her face like she was trying to be a clown and Dad was in there not saying anything. She just kept asking ‘Why God, why?’ I didn’t know what to do...so I went back into the room and that’s why I was so slow I guess. I don’t know. You know what happened last time it rained like this."

The older boy swallowed hard. "Come here," He brought his arm around his brother, pulling close. "You got me here, okay? You always have me here. What do I always say?"

"If there’s ever a guy I need to have beaten up to come to you."

The elder shook his head, "No, no. That sounds much too harsh—like I’m some...hitman or something." He said, his voice breaking, both sadly and not.

This made the younger brother chuckle. "Right...if someone’s ever giving me any problems to come to you."

"There you go. Sympathy, not hitman...y. Anything you need, I’ve got your back, you know that, right?"

He nodded his head. "I’ve got yours too."

"There’s no need for that..."

"You’ve got no bullies?" The younger asked, less humor in his voice.

He shook his head, "Nah, it’s not your job to protect me."

The younger looked out the window to the river that used to be his street—Cardale Avenue. He saw a small dog caught up in the current, trying its hardest to swim upstream, but it couldn’t overcome the powerful currents.

"I’m sorry," the younger said.

"No..." he shook his head. "Don’t apologize for anything. Not tonight."

"I have one," he said, looking back to his brother with a worried look. "A bully...I think. I don’t think you could beat him up, though."

The elder looked at him with a look somewhere halfway between a reassuring smile and a glum frown. A halfie, the younger would have called it. It was easy to see, but hard to describe. The feelings that came with it were hard to describe, too. The younger had seen a lot of halfies from his family, and he’d given his fair share of them as well. He always hated noticing them.

"Hey Cain?" the younger asked.

"Yeah?" Cain answered.

"Could we go get something to eat? I’m hungry and this rain is making me sad."

"Sure thing," and he had said no more. Cain hopped up off the bed and walked across the small room that they had called home. Not too long ago a boy named Light called this room his home, but that would be a much different story for a much different time. Now, the two brothers who take shelter from the rain share between them what they could. Two halves of a whole they were called typically in public. You couldn’t separate them if you tried. Cain grabbed his brother’s wheelchair from the side of the desk and began to unfold it before lifting him into it.

"Ergh, Damn it Abel," Cain grunted "...Did you sneak out to grab a snack while I was asleep? Feel three times heavier than last night."

"That joke was funnier when you said it yesterday," Abel said, turning his head only slightly.

"Yeah, it probably was. I should look up some new jokes when I stop by the library next. All this rain had been throwing off my chance to go."

"Yeah, I miss going out. could we go the next time it’s sunny...that is if God doesn’t drown us all?"

"I don’t think he’s going to drown us."

"I dunno. I didn’t think that he’d put me in that accident, but here we are."

Once Cain got his brother set up in the chair he began to push him out of the room.

"Man, it’s a good thing you’ve still got your sense of humor, or else I would have dumped you like the sandwich I had for lunch yesterday." Cain said.

"You still ate it though!" Abel accused, "And you tell me that my feet stink, imagine how your breath must smell! Sophie must hate kissing you."

"Yeah yeah," Cain shook his head, "Go on and keep your jabbering. Least I could get a girl."

"Yeah yeah ten bucks says once you kiss her next and she smells that stuff on you she’d rather take the cripple."

Cain chuckled, "Yeah, pigs will fly and God will descend upon us."

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Sometimes I wish he would..." his voice was somber. "...so I could punch him in his stupid face."

"Yeah, me too. Shit sucks down here..." Cain thought a moment as he passed the bookshelf in their family room stocked to the brim of holy texts of all kinds and shapes. "Know what? Yeah, next time the sun clears up you and I are taking a trip to the library. I’ve been planning something that will make things better."

"Really? You promise?"

"I promise."

6

Cain was born on a rainy morning. It was sometime in late April of 1972 that his parents had rushed to the hospital for the birth of their new baby boy. They had almost been sideswiped on the interstate highway by a young teen driving home from her boyfriend’s a few exits up. The cars narrowly passed each other as the young teen screamed out—her momentary glance from the road had almost cost her life and the lives of two expecting parents. The morning had been cold for them, but they had been too busy to notice until after Cain’s birth. It was as if they were allowed to feel again after the initial concern had spread through. The boy had been delivered to two smiling faces.

"Cain," the mother whispered to her husband. "Just like we promised." She bounced the crying baby in her arms, its pink slimy flesh was new to the air and this world.

The father smiled and nodded, he wiped his rimmed glasses with a thick cloth he kept in his shirt pocket. "He’s beautiful."

The rain had continued through the day, pouring so hard that lightning scratched the sky, imprinting scars onto their eyes. It had been too much for the two parents to drive home safely—flash flood warnings kept them to the hospital—the mother stayed to rest in her own room while the father remained awake to speak with various medical staff. The staff did their best to listen, but after the tenth time they refused to listen to his psalms of glory.

The rain eventually stopped and the sun began to creep out past the clouds, extending its rays onto the Earth like a possessive demon. The Earth began to warm, accepting its rays as if the rain hadn’t throttled its surface for the past day and a half. It had certainly been forgiving. The Earth had moved on. The parents, too, had moved on. They brought their son home after a week longer in the hospital; Cain had some difficulties breathing on his own at first, but that soon subsided. He was as healthy as could be and his parents loved him through every moment.

Four years later Abel would enter their life. For him, the sun would not leave the sky. It dared not let light flicker. It on some planetary level knew that this boy was to be different than his brother. It might even be theorized that it knew that this boy would be in the fateful accident in years time, and that it had prepared to start him off with his best days almost as a cosmic apology. Earth, always willing to oblige, had let it be so.

It had moved on.

7

Cain grew to like soccer in what little there was of their front yard as early as five years old. He and his father would kick a fabric ball stuffed and sewn from old pillow cases to one another. They’d each smile wide as the ball thumped and rolled unevenly against the ground. It worked...not rolling very far or very fast, but to a five year old it had served its purpose.

Cain and Abel’s father used to play soccer in college. It is where Cain’s interests in the sport blossomed from and how his parents had met. They’d both attended the same private school up on the far end of Salem. She would hesitantly join some of her friends while they checked out and whooped at the players as they ran across the field. She always felt embarrassed at going, but knew it was worth it when their father noticed her on the bleachers. She’d later tell the boys that that had been the moment they had fallen for each other. This had been true for their father, but only a half truth for their mother. She didn’t really fall for him until he revealed that he was a man who studied his faith privately on their first date. She felt a sudden warmth in her heart and instantly knew that they had connected.

It wasn’t so much that she wouldn’t date outside of her faith...it was more like his faith was an extra set of hands over her heart that made her feel safe. As such, Cain’s mother was always the stronger of faith. Their father’s tapered off after college, much like his career in soccer. The reason for both? He was assured a fine paying job in marine biology at the end of his college years and started a family. He would of course find himself slipping into prayer at times of relevance, like the birth of both of their sons. Their mother more than made up for his withdrawal from private faith studies with an increase in her own. She would teach local children whose families weren’t church regulars during Sunday school. She sat with Abel on the sidelines and waved various cheers for whoever currently was in control of the ball.

Abel didn’t understand the words she’d been saying—the cheers she had been chanting, but he did know that it made her smile, so he smiled. He even laughed. It was that simple; someone smiled and you would smile back. Someone frowned and you frowned back—or you smiled to make them smile. The halfie didn’t exist back then.

That came with the accident.

8

Cain and Abel were out shopping with their parents one humid day almost seven full years later. It was late May and the sky had been barren of clouds for weeks. Drought, they called it. There were many things you could say about the patch of Oregon that encompassed both Salem and Sunnyside—the suburb just south of Salem that Cain and Abel lived in before the accident—being prepared for storms was not one of them. Often history repeats itself for those that do not learn from it, and this fit these small towns to a “T”. Sun in the sky meant relaxing days out in the yard with sprinklers turned on HIGH and parties with friends and family. Unrelenting sun in the sky also hinted at a big return with rain soon. The clouds in Sunnyside were trained on very strict rain and sun seasons with little variance. So when a particularly cloudy or sunny day came through out of season the people should expect a heavy reaction in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, the people aren’t too keen on the words of the weather forecasters aside from the immediate concerns, so every time that these reactions come through it is as a total surprise to the general populace.

This hurt the farmers. No rain had meant no crops. It wasn’t enough to kill their business, but it was enough to trickle down to Cain and Abel’s parents driving to the store for a larger grocery trip than they had originally planned. The drive took nought but ten minutes. They were lucky enough to live close by. After realizing that the two boys had begun play-fighting in the car on the drive up as most boys their age did their mother had chosen to avoid the opportunity for their play-fighting to spill out into the grocery store. Once they parked she turned to both of the boys, "Why don’t you come help me shop, Cain? Then Abel and your father could pack everything up when we get out?"

Cain seemed to like the idea of his brother getting the harder job. All he had to do was walk around with Mom. Besides, Abel went for Cain’s sides which was explicitly agreed upon that they would avoid any spots that would send either of them into fits of laughter. He might as well get a taste of his own medicine, Cain had thought. “Sure, Mom." he said, opening his door and stepping out of the station wagon to follow his mother into the store.

Abel sat behind with a smile on his face. Cain had gotten duped into taking the harder job. All he had to do was sit around with Dad. Even with that he knew that his father was going to step out of the car for a smoke as he normally did when his mother stepped into the grocery store—it was the main reason why he didn't join her inside. And besides, Abel thought, Cain had the unfair advantage of having longer arms whenever they would get into one of their sessions of ninja, if he didn’t take the weak points where he could get them Cain would surely win. He didn’t like that outcome one bit.

At the bank just across the parking lot a young man with slime in his black hair and a terrible shake in his bones named Donovan tucked his shirt over a metal handle that was plum stuck out of his baggy pants. He looked over a slip of paper in his hands before folding and sliding it into his left jeans pocket. Donovan, or Donny as he liked to go by, heard a faint singing sound in the back of his mind that reminded him of the choirs that sang in the church his parents had taken him to as a child. What ironic thoughts. He spoke to himself in his station wagon parked just out of sight of the bank.

Donny stepped out of the car and bounced onto the pavement with vigor. Adrenaline shot through his body like the blood in his veins. He slid a black mask over his face like a glove over a sweaty hand. He strolled toward the entrance of the building and shook his head. Nobody was around, nobody had seen him...yet. He could still back out if he wanted to. He walked inside and not three minutes later shots erupt from within. Screams followed from inside and those that had been closest to the door after the shots rang out were able to slip out, running for their lives. After a successful heist Donny ducked out the front with a large sack in one hand and the waist of his pants in another. A black mask obscured his face, but the protrusion just above the lip suggested he had a bushy mustache underneath. He wasn’t physically intimidating in any way, but most would cower to the weapon in his pants.

His getaway car had been sitting outside—he hadn't planned the jump with anybody else so he had to park close. As soon as he barreled out into traffic he eyed the man in the tweed jacket holding a bright cigarette in his hands with an arm resting on an old station wagon that looked almost identical to the very one he had. The man thought on it only for the moment as his eyes turned back to the road, swerving back into his lane. He shook it off as he continued to drive. He pulled down a left hand turn onto Swerry Avenue—cutting off a minivan about to turn onto his street. He kept driving straight until he noticed the blaring of sirens behind him. One look in his mirror told Donny all he needed to know—he was being tailed. He smacked his hand off the steering wheel and cursed. Donny’s mind began to travel, imagining how a guy like him would fare in prison. The thought didn’t inspire much confidence in him...and yet he knew it was a possibility. He had prepared himself for it, but it hadn’t seemed so real until this very moment.

Just then a wicked plan sat in his mind. He remembered the man in the tweed back at the grocery store. Maybe if he got some distance he could pull it off. He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and hung a left—cutting ahead of a black Camaro whose driver promptly blared their horn and stopped in the middle of the intersection.

He picked up speed and turned quickly, following the road down to a bend before the final turn that would take him to the grocery store parking lot. He heard the singing in his ears again, louder and louder slamming against his brain. They were wordless hymns that filled his mind with nothingness and his right leg felt heavier. He set his foot down on the gas pedal harder, pushing it into the floorboard. "Wha-" was all he could get out as his car slammed into its twin, molding right into the rear driver side door and crumpling up like a tin can. His head was thrown forward and right into the steering wheel, busting his nose into a flurry of blood and mucus. He died instantly as the force of the impact went straight to his brain and spinal cord. The blood spurted in an arc upward spraying onto the windshield and ceiling before it dripped back down.

The family's station wagon had collapsed on Abel's side, pinning the young boy’s legs underneath sharp metal. His screams pierced the sky as the first rain in weeks began to pour on the wreckage—Donny’s car started to smoke. Abel’s parents were stunned by the hit, turning back to see half of their youngest son and the blood from his torso-down pooled in the seat beside Cain, who had been knocked unconscious by the hit.

The policeman who had been chasing Donny down arrived on scene moments later, called for his partner and then moved out of his car as he saw the face of a young boy that was in mortal danger through the back window. The mother and father were easy enough, they had only risk of concussion which it would turn out they were lucky enough not to have. Cain would also make it through the accident physically unscathed. His father carried him out easily enough to check his vitals. Abel wouldn’t be so lucky. The blood was spraying out of his right leg fast; the boy threatened loss of consciousness.

The sight of Abel’s blood both scared him and intrigued him in one horrible mixture. He didn’t know what was happening except there being a terrible weight on his legs and it stuck right into his body. The paramedics arrived not long after—the police officer was unable to separate the boy from the car. Abel had managed some herculean strength to hold onto his life. His mother had begged the paramedics to do anything they could to help him keep his legs. Abel remembered a poignant feeling of irritation at this through everything else. Here he lay dying, his body impaled by the cruddy station wagon and she was worried if he’d walk again. He was worried if he’d live. To his mother, he assumed, they weren’t any different.

At least he would look normal his mother had said, but only once.

Abel's screams stopped once his brain caught up to what had happened to him. Somewhere deep within him he knew that the human brain would do anything to protect its owner—even go so far as to trick the body to release endorphins to free him from pain. He was dying...at least...he believed so. As he looked up toward the police officer the lights began to fade from his eyes as his body began to prepare itself for the end. He smiled as the raindrops began to fall all around them, the pain in his legs had subsided. He would never feel pain there again. For the slightest of moments he heard a ringing sound like a voice singing out for him. It lulled his consciousness to its depths.

The singing sounded so lovely.