Nola stood frozen at the front door. Her large eyes bulged out making them appear even larger than usual, her mouth agape.
"Hiyo," said Allie meekly
"Allie!" Nola screamed an untypical high pitch girly scream. Her little crippled brother crawled on the floor. Dark red blood was running down his forehead.
She rushed over with her shoes on in the house even though the house rules were no shoes inside. She was Belarusian and her family was a survivor of the dark commie era that plagued Eastern Europe and they didn't wear shoes in the house even then.
"What happened?!"
"I was on the kitchen table... I was trying to grab some icing. I slipped-" Allie stammered his words out, afraid that she was angry. "And fell."
In shock, Nola threw down her handbag and the paper bag containing the book she bought today and ran with urgency to her little brother. Her look of concern showed she didn't register a single thing the child said.
The blood was caked dry on his flaxen hair. The cut was a long gash above his ear. Nola lifted him up in her arms, cradling him like a newborn. The act brought back nostalgic memories of when she was seventeen, holding her newborn brother in her arms. She'd sworn on her life that she would not let him get hurt. Her arms were bloody with the child’s blood.
She lay Allie on their bed in the master bedroom and rummaged through the drawers for the medikit. Thankfully the cut wasn't deep and it didn't require stitches. His face and hands were bloody dirty. She wiped him clean with disinfectant wet wipes. She wetted his hair to wipe away some caked blood with a face cloth and applied antiseptic to the wound. After wrapping his head around with a gauze roll, he looked comically like an injured cartoon character. He looked cute even when hurt. She finished patching Allie up. Nola let him rest and took off her shoes back at the doorway. Then she went to the kitchen to check the scene of the crime.
She scrubbed the floor with a cloth sprayed with kitchen detergent. She bent over placing her nose an inch from the bloody ground and sniffed the blood. What a nice smell, she thought, maybe I should lick it. On second thought, it was unhygienic and tasting his sweet blood would send her into a catatonic bliss that she may not awaken from.
She loved anything with Allie. She would smell him whenever she hugged him. It was a therapeutic experience for her. This was how an ideal loving sibling relationship were in real life.
She looked at the kitchen table and saw a blob of a cake dough with a hastily squeezed Happy Birthday on it. The words were red and the first thought that came to her head was blood. Noting the thick gooey texture, it was ketchup. Ketchup on cake.
On seeing this, she felt tears well up if just a bit. No wonder he was watching videos tutorials secretly on baking for a whole week on the tablet. She thought of Allie with his small little hands crafting as carefully as he could making this cake of what looks to be some mixture of flour and dough.
My birthday. I didn't even remember it was my birthday until Allie reminded me.
She cleaned the blood in a more lightened mood. She went back to the bedroom and saw Allie sleeping softly. That loss of blood must have drained his energy somewhat. She wondered if he was feeling anxiety. She did appear really unenergetic and cold today while bandaging him up. It was work that made her that way.
She realised she was still in her formal work dress and stripped off. Whenever she did this, she felt the nostalgia of changing from her school uniform. I guess things just don't change. Maybe when I hit sixty or get married will things finally change.
She walked over to the ensuite bathroom. She splashed water on her face and she gave a hard long look at herself in the mirror. Her eye bags looked heavier than usual.
She changed into a pair of comfortable linen shorts and threw on an oversized t-shirt.
She went to the sitting room and sunk into the couch. I have to find out comfortable accommodation that would suit Allie. New school, new friends, new everything and things I couldn't even imagine to start over again. I would leave my parents’ house. Maybe rent this place out. Maybe I’ll give it to Eleanor if she wants. All these thoughts tired her out. She'd think about it later if the time comes and plan it during work since that time was good for nothing. One thing at a time. I'd have to do the application first.
She decided to order takeaway for tonight from Deliveriloo. She ordered from a restaurant within a fifteen minute walk. Many people make the rookie mistake of ordering from long distances even though the costs were negligible. What happens is that the courier service, normally cyclists, would take a very long time to accept the order. Long distances also meant that the food would be colder by the time it gets here. The food may also turn into a stir fry mess with how bumpy and unmaintained the roads were.
She felt like getting a burger today. Chips and burgers are always welcome to Allie as well. You can't go wrong with fried food. All that work and scrubbing today made her really hungry.
I have to tell him of the new book I bought. We'll read it together tonight.
She went to the bedroom to check the side of Allie's head. No blood was seeping out. She's dealt with much worse and survived as a child from a broken Slavic country. Nothing phased the bravery of little kids when they didn't fully understand the consequences.
She roused him up very gently.
"Wakey wakey, dosey mosey," this was one of the waking chants in her book of child speech.
"Is it time for school?"
Maybe he did hit his head too hard, she joked to herself.
"I'm hungry," he said while his hand pushed her face away with his little hands.
"I've ordered your favourite dinner. It should be here soon so let's get you up and ready."
She reached out to lift him with the intention of putting him in his wheelchair.
"I can do it," he said enthusiastically, all energised again.
"Let me get your wheelchair over." She got up and moved the wheelchair's front to face the bed.
She watched as he lifted his own self with those thin little child arms of his into the child-sized wheelchair. He was well used to the motion to do it himself and he enjoyed the look of admiration it brought onto Nola's face.
She wheeled him through the hallway.
"Where're we going? The playroom's back there? We have to finish our games."
"The games can wait. We have to do homework."
"Homework?!" Allie let out an exaggerated exasperation that signalled his defeat.
"I know you skipped out on homework since you were making the cake."
He let out a cute little sigh of defeat.
"You didn't eat it did you?"
"I licked all the ketchup. We could try baking it in the oven. I've put it into the fridge for now."
"Sorry, I didn't know how to use the oven. I would have burned the house down." He giggled.
The kitchen was a large room that connected openly to the main living room of the house. One side of the kitchen was a lounge with the dining table. There was also a little table with the perfect height for Allie in his child-sized wheelchair. On the other half was a modern kitchen that was renovated three times. It was an enormous open-air that had a stylish marbled look. Nola remembered her sister Silvie begging her parents to dedicate most of the resources in. She hand picked out the design and all the appliances and she didn't do a bad job at it. No surprise because she was the cook of the family. She loved cooking and was now a chef in a fancy restaurant in Paris after graduating from culinary school.
"I'm thirsty." He moaned.
His left hand rolled back the left wheel of his wheelchair to make a turn to the sink. His actions were clumsy in manoeuvring the wheelchair.
He was too short when he got to the sink but was able to reach up blindly knowing the exact positions of getting the cup, turning the faucet and filling the cup just the amount he expected. He was used to it.
He gulped the water down and then reached up with his left hand placing the cup on the kitchen table.
Nola thought how if they moved, he would have to adjust a slight bit to the new surroundings. She didn't think it'd stop him. Kids were more adaptable than adults.
After homework, they went to the playroom which was what they called the second sitting room.
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A large TV sat in one corner of the room. On the wide side of the room was a large, deep bookshelf lined with all sorts of complicated board games and the large cook books of her sister. A thinner ,just as tall, bookshelf of books stood on the other wall. A shelf with her mother's favourite science fiction books, another one with her dad's mainstream crime novels and her own with gothic and romance fiction. The bottom was lined with Allie's books. Anna, their eldest sister, was the only one that wasn't an avid reader and didn't have her own shelf. She moved out of the house when Nola was ten years old.
They took out Connect 4 as Nola requested. Her last defeats didn't sit well in her stomach. Five losses in a row. She practised today at work on a free gaming website. It always surprised Nola at how lightning quick he decided on his moves while she had to slowly mull over the options. Losing so many times to a child had made Nola feel humility. Some people forget how much smarter and determined a child can be compared to an adult. They played sitting on the floor. The game was over soon and she won three games but lost four in the end. She accepted it.
Next they took out the checkers board. They set out the board. It was house customs that the winner gets the black pieces. As such, the white army was Nola's and the black army was for the reigning king of checkers, Allie.
Nola took up her traditional playing posture. She sat cross legged and one hand on the chin. Allie took the same posture, using his arms to position his thin legs. There was something sagely the way Allie sat compared to Nola. Immense pressure could be felt. If she lost as much as yesterday, it would mean that yesterday's defeat was no fluke. As much as she told herself that about humility, the stinging was still there and the consequences would follow. Soon he would think himself better and taunt her. Her pride was in danger of being crushed by a child sized hand. She could not lose today. Her authority was at stake. Such was the weight that exists in a simple game of checkers.
Allie suddenly stuck out and moved the first piece with absolute confidence. This meant nothing to Nola. There was only a limited set of moves can be made at the beginning. The second move is the one that counts which is why the loser starts second.
In a few turns, Nola had her white army in a diagonal defense line. The battle for the centre was taking place, each move was carefully calculated to maximise profit and minimise loss, traps within traps.
Nola succeeded in executing a multifold layered attack that exploited an area of high probability in winning the centre. Nola raised her head to glance at Alexander the Great of checkers. His head was down, unfazed at the sight of losing a stronghold. No doubt he was running through various simulations of potential play that his sister cold make.
Once she saw him move his pieces further back, she knew she had him cornered. Allie always made his moves instantaneous after Nola's deeply pondered moves. For such reasons, Nola had to use a chess clock to please Allie. Her internal clock was ticking as well. Her mental faculties would slow down as she aged. She imagined herself as a wrinkled old lady forever losing in the same spot, forever and ever.
Within a few more moves she won her game with two pieces remaining. Not an overwhelming victory as she hoped with all the practice she's been putting in during office hours. Within their games, it was not enough to win, but to win with minimal losses to secure bragging rights. Such was sibling rivalry.
In the next match, Allie baited Nola with what looked like a careless move. Her slip up lead to a double triple jumps that wiped out her attack line and back line in one sweep. Drunk with victory from the last match, she now cried out in harrowing despair. In a real war, a wrong move could cost the lives of humans. Nola treated her soldiers as nothing more than plastic pieces, carelessly. This led to greater risks but also bigger spoils.
They played intensely for a few more rounds before the doorbell sounded. Nola had a win more than Allie. Hard work during her office work hours had paid off. This round was looking to be Allie's and she was thankful that the game was interrupted. She would use this as a tactical advantage.
"Ah, we have to end it," she said casually.
"I'm winning!"
"The rules are that matches always end when the doorbell rang." This was house rules made up by Nola. "Heh-heh! Luck is an important attribute of a winner."
Nola danced out of the room to answer the door while Allie cleaned up the pieces. Nola had used this excuse countless times. One thing he learned is that if you want to beat luck, you have to be crushingly good to destroy luck.
Nola opened the door and breathed in much needed cool fresh air after the intensity of competitive checkers. She was in a winner's high after beating the seven year old. The food courier saw a bead of sweat on her forehead and he thought she was in the middle of working out. He also thought she was attractive in a deranged way. Nola had remarkably large eyes, psycho-like eyes. The food courier was a young man who looked around sixteen. His bike was a worn out mountain bike lying on the ground behind him. He had a nice tanned complexion. Nola guess he was from a country along the Mediterranean. Maybe Italy. He looked really cute, she thought. He was totally her type in looks.
"You're really cute." she said outright.
He laughed a shy laugh.
"Thanks, I guess?"
"Where're you from?"
"Portugal."
"Ah, Portugal. That's my favourite country", she lied, Italy was her favourite country. "What brings you down to this rain flooded country?"
"I'm studying in Trinity here,” he paused hesitantly and then added, "I'm doing an Erasmus here in commerce."
Commerce in Trinity College. He must be really smart, she thought. That's where she studied as well. Smart and pretty yet reduced to cycling and delivering food. Nola felt a tinge of melancholy. Normally these jobs were done by immigrants who spoke three words of English well: Hi, bye and thanks. She knew that it was good money since they paid under the table so they could ignore taxes and the city was always bustling with non-stop deliveries. She knew all this because she had worked this job before. The most important thing to her was flexibility so she could go back to play and look over Allie from time to time. She had to, her family had moved out of the house, leaving them two behind.
"You?" the boy asked.
"I'm working in an insurance company. As an assessor."
"Oh, yeah." He paused thinking of what to continue on with, "Is it a lucrative career?"
"The money's good but it's boring," she exhaled an exhausted sigh. “I’m thinking of going back to college as well. I never lived the college life. It's been so long. I don't even remember what college life was like for me."
"College life is good. If you mean the partying and night life," he laughed, "I would like to stay to study as long as possible. A student for life. I don't really look forward to the day I have to graduate."
"So you're not hunting for a job afterwards?"
He stood there deep in thought, pondering over his future on the spot. "I'll probably do a post graduate course. A one year course in a different specialisation. Something I'm passionate about."
"Yeah?"
"Oh yeah. It'll be sure a different area. Maybe you'd want to try something else. Life's too short to stay at one place is what I tell myself. I might do a PhD afterwards then."
Nola tipped him a generous ten euro note. The deliver man's mouth was agape and he wouldn't accept it. Nola pushed it onto him. That would have made her day if somebody was that generous to her back then. He'll be sure to remember the biggest tip in his life.
When she closed the door, she regretted not asking for his number. She quickly opened the door again but he was gone without a trace. He was too young for her anyway. She comforted herself with those words and closed the door gently.
They ate lying on the ground in the sitting room with the TV on. Afterwards, they took a relaxing bath together with the HI-FI in their bedroom playing relaxing classical music that Allie likes. She carried him like a princess after she dried him and flung him like a big tuna fish out of land. The bed went plop when he landed.
"Hah!" Allie giggled uncontrollably at the mere audacity that she threw him as opposed to how gentle she was to him.
Nola feigned a monster act as per ritual every night. He just doesn't get bored of it. Neither did she in relishing in her make belief act of eating him by devouring his intestines as a zombie.
"Eurrgh!", she careful mimicked the whole disabled looking zombie walk quite accurately, complete with twitching and all from the movie her favourite zombie movie, Braindead. "Eurgh-wer-wer!"
Allie laughed and screamed. He couldn't escape since his legs were to no avail. He was disabled from the waist down.
Nola tickled his soft, while skin and licked behind the ear on the side without the bandages. Nola drooled sloppily. He truly was delicious, the soft child flesh tingled her with delight. Nola searched his skin for a certain blemish. Luckily finding none. It was such fine, smooth, tender skin. Almost translucent and it seemed to glow in the light. More so than hers even though she was a fair maiden of twenty-three years old. She wrapped her legs around his small body and chomped her chompers softly just below his little neck. Allie froze and stuck his tongue out.
"Again!" Allie shook her off.
"I can't." Nola threw her head onto the pillow. "I'm too full. I can't move. It's like that time we were at the buffet all over again." This time it was her turn to play dead. She stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes.
Unsatisfied, Allie took upon the responsibility himself as the new zombie.
"Rawr!"
"Oh No! A dinosaur!" Nola said.
"Dinosaur?"
Nola quickly corrected herself when she a disappointed look formed in Allie's face. "A zombie dinosaur!" With the bandages around his head, he certainly had the make-up down to pat.
Allie's face lit up again. Kids were remarkably sensitive, she had to be careful.
Allie was on top of her now and holding down Nola's wrist. The seven year old was aggressively licking a twenty-three year old woman to taste her maiden flesh. This felt a bit too good for Nola who was having trouble stifling her moans. If heaven was on Earth, this was it. This and being swarmed on top by puppies as long as they weren't the evil Chihuahua breed.
She couldn't rein herself anymore and grabbed him and flipped him over to be in the dominant position now. I ruined it, she thought, I lack control. She performed her zombie eating a dinosaur zombie routine again to Allie's great enjoyment.
By the end, both of their faces were beet red and they were both panting and lying in obtuse angles to each other. Allie was going to have a good sleep tonight. Nola too. She got up and grabbed him a glass of water. Allie left half the glass for Nola. Allie was incredibly considerate for a young age. Maybe it was natural to some children, it was possibly in their genetics but it was most likely due to Nola's own good example that she set for him. He also grew with the consideration of others to him as a disabled child. Nola herself remembered how selfish and unsharing she was to her sisters when she was growing up. She shared everything good with Allie now. She grew up.
Nola turned her head and saw that Allie was asleep already. She scooped him up gently and nudged him until he was in a natural bed position where previously he was sideways. His soft breaths blowing into her face. She tucked him in.
She smothered him with kisses all over his face as a normal loving sibling should do.
The new book laid on the bedside cabinet. We'll read it together tomorrow. There was something nice about having new things to look forward to.
They shared the bed together on the queen size bed. He could not walk and she needed to be on the call.
She turned off the lights and crawled back beside him. It was only 9pm but her sleep schedule was the same as his. Her eye bags were starting to get heavier by the passing second and she quickly fell into slumber. That was their sibling life and she didn't want to change it for anything. At least that's what she told herself.