“How could you do this to me! You’ve ruined everything!” A little boy shrieked at Josephine as he struggled to blink away his tears from swollen black eyes. He choked on his sobs as he tried to hold them back, his nose dripping into his mouth as his salty tears burned the still bleeding cuts on his face. Rain slammed into the windows, leaving fat beads.
Her indifferent face peered at his contorted one without any empathy. “Mom and Dad said you’re supposed to protect me. You’re my older brother.”
“I did protect you! I protected you every single day!” Victor sobbed into his bleeding hands. Hands too young to be so torn up. “No one at school hits you anymore, because you act weird. They hit me now, and you don’t do a thing about it! You sit there and watch! You sit there, stand up, then walk away!” All the days Victor pushed Josephine on the swing set or held her hand as they jumped in puddles seemed to vanish before him with every shout.
“Why are you so upset? I didn’t care when they hit me.”
Victor stared daggers at her. “That’s exactly what’s wrong with you. You don’t care about anything or anyone. They’re all right about you! And now you skipped grades and left me all alone!”
He was definitely an ugly crier. An ugly, loud crier. It should have been no surprise when the door swung open and he would scramble across the ground, his shrill voice still wailing out as his Dad came in, a wooden paddle in hand. Or that his mother would run toward Josephine and coddle her, crying, too, but not in a little boy’s way. Not in the way that would have gotten her dragged out the room, pants already pulled down, and spanked until red skin became scarlet with maroon dew.
Victor covered his mouth with his hand but failed to muffle his cries, his body convulsing. “I won’t stop until you stop that ugly crying. You’re creating a ruckus over nothing.”
Victor wished the rain outside would drown him. Flood the lungs that would not stop heaving.
After his dad left, another figure remained. One that silently cried in the other room while hugging Josephine against her breast, stroking her hair. Victor shut his eyes and wished his bed would suck him into its mattress and smother him. He could feel his feet, first, sinking into its hug.
“You need to apologize to Josephine.”
“Okay.”
“... Is that all you have to say? After you yelled at her?”
“I’m sorry.” He could feel his bed crawling over his head and dragging him down.
“I’m disappointed in you, Victor. You’re supposed to protect her and be an example. But here you are,” she paused for a second, as if it hurt her more to say that she hated her own son than it would hurt him to hear it from his mother. “You need to be more like her.”
So, he complied. He tried to force open his swollen eyes and peer at her with the same, dead eyes Josephine always gave. She scrunched her nose and took a step back. Perhaps that was also a habit she picked up from her mother.
“Go and apologize to her now. Guests will arrive soon. If you don’t behave, I’ll have your father take care of you.” She slammed the door shut behind her. Victor could see her shadow linger outside her doorway before small footsteps scurried away.
He lay there for a while, feeling the breathing bed around his stone skin. He peeled himself free of its plush grasp when the raindrops got too heavy for him to ignore. Too heavy and fat and fast and too desperate to break their way through his window. His Mom and Dad were right. He had a nice house, especially for someone ordinary unlike the Leiths. Yet here he was, crying uncontrollably and wasting away the opportunity that millions would die for.
His feet hauled him into Josephine’s bejeweled room. It was lined in golden trophies, ones that boasted of her vast accomplishments, since she was a toddler. Even though she was still in elementary school, not one person had ever come close to her, not even highschoolers or university students. Victor’s closet was only lined in silver. A “good job” silver that embarrassed his family. Not the gold that lined Josephine’s walls. That was real, special gold. That gold belonged to the smartest person in all of Leith. That gold was their ticket into the higher ranks.
“I’m sorry, Josephine. I shouldn’t have blamed you.”
He waited a bit for a response, hoping she’d say anything. Even if it met looking at him with those eyes. Yet, nothing came.
He probed. “Are we ok? I’ll try to be a better older brother.”
She didn’t bother looking up from whatever diagrams she was fidgeting with on her desk. “Yes. I don’t mind.” Her voice still remained indifferent, unlike the staggering beats that defined Victor’s speech.
Victor wanted to throw her on her bed. To wrap his small hands around her small neck and watch her bed eat her alive, too. Watch her drown in its embrace and his angry hands. But he knew that she would not care. Her dead, dead eyes would watch him do it all and never try anything. Her dead, dead eyes would keep living in his head until he died and his eyes became dead, too.
So he simply stood beside her and watched and hoped that someday, he wouldn’t mind either.
A knock at the front door interrupted his thoughts. “Josephine! Come out and greet some of your guests!” Mom never called for Victor, and he knew he was never needed at these events, but he still bothered to show up. He watched as Josephine stood up, grabbed her papers, and left the room, unwavering.
Victor pondered for a moment if he should join Josephine with his battered face and runny nose. He quickly came to an affirmative conclusion—why wouldn’t he join them? An animalistic fear roamed somewhere inside of him: would they forget him if he did not show? Would they only focus on Josephine and forget that a part of her lingered in a room down the hall? Perhaps they wouldn’t forget who he was but only his name, and simply whisper of the “other one” that lay on a bed. A part of him also feared the rain and the thin glass that barely held on.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“Victor! You’re so big now!” A tall woman with glassy eyes and auburn hair crouched down, shining an endearing smile at Victor. “I brought you this,” she gently placed a bear keychain into his bruised hands.
Did Victor have any recollection of the woman who acknowledged him? Not at all. But he still could feel the fence around his heart crack a bit as he looked up with those childish eyes. He beamed at her, replying, “thank you so much, Miss! I love it.” The soft plush on his bruised fingers almost made him forget his entire day. Someone acknowledged him.
As more guests began to arrive, they sat at the large dinner table with Victor sitting beside the pretty woman. “Thank you so much for joining us, everyone! We are so grateful to celebrate Josephine’s success!” his Dad cheered, standing up while holding a glass of wine in his hand.
These dinners were common. They were a great way for the family to network and negotiate terms with the government. As long as Josephine kept supplying them with technology and work when she became an adult, they wouldn’t be drafted into the war like other ordinary citizens. They would be safe, plump, well fed, and happy, never having to worry about the hardships.
“Recently, she’s been working on a research project about the Great Famine. She’s created a full statistical analysis, prediction, and analysis on the future impacts. Josephine, will you please show them?” He glanced at her, still boasting a wide, prideful smile.
Josephine laid all her papers out on the table. “As we can see from this graph, Leith has been struggling with the famine for a few years now, but the ordinary citizens have been keeping any major impacts at bay through the tax system. That being said, they are getting even poorer, especially with increasing food tax. As the Leiths keep taking more of their crops, we will eventually run out of people to work as they begin to die, especially since the Leiths refuse to work.” The room was burdened with an aching silence. The room, which was filled with Leith’s highest government officials, seemed to still. Even Josephine’s father seemed to waver at her words.
“If this isn’t fixed, Leith will die. However, if we want to continue the segregation between the Leiths and citizens, our next best course of action is to go to war with a neighboring country. We can distract the citizens while initiating a mass draft to kill off the excess population. Border skirmishes are already frequent. We can use it as a trigger for mass escalation.” She pulled up another graph from the stack in front of her. “If we do this, we buy ourselves another decade of time. If we don’t, Leith will collapse in approximately three years. In that decade, we can conquer more land and grow the Leith’s power.”
Victor’s eyes widened at her words. His family was ordinary. They couldn’t shoot air out of their palms, control wildfires and earthquakes, or traverse in the shadows of people. Yet here Josephine was, advocating for the destruction of millions of those ordinary citizens to boost the government’s strength. To boost their family. His hands trembled as he squeezed the bear, feeling words bundle up in his throat, opening his mouth to shout out, but he was overtaken by the stampeding applause that came for Josephine.
“You truly have yourself an incredible daughter. As the powers of the Leith weaken, I have faith that she’ll be the solution,” said a man with a thick, dark gray beard. It was clear he was aging by the bald spot that on the top of his head and the little gray strands that sprinkled his beard. “Your family will always have our undying support,” he added, awe filling his facial expression as he leaned back on his chair.
“Thank you so much, Lieutenant Colonel,” replied his Mom, joyous tears spilling out from her eyes. “Josephine is truly the light of our lives. We couldn’t do anything without her.”
Dad wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she began to cry, fervently apologizing. He shook her closer to him and kissed the top of her head. “Sometimes we’re even surprised Victor is related to her,” he laughed, “Victor is always getting into fights while Josephine is working hard in her room. He must have taken all the bad genes and left none for her!" He roared out into laughter.
If the chair beneath him was a bit bigger, Victor hoped he would be swallowed up. But he could only sit and watch, clutching the teddy bear tighter between his two hands. He couldn’t even disagree with anyone in his family; that was where his insecurities began to bloom. He couldn’t deny anything, couldn’t refute any of it. They were right, he truly was inferior to his sister.
As the red-headed woman put down the drink beside her, a drunken flush glowing from under her cheeks, Victor looked up at her, admiration and hope glimmering in her eyes. So, when she sneered, turned towards Victor and said, “I hope my children turn out just like Josephine, God forbid I have one as violent as you, Victor. Looking at you all bruised, it disgusts me.” He felt his grip on the bear tighten, his nose start burning as if he had to sneeze, and the rain finally leaked through the window, he could not stop the sobs that wracked his body. He felt his heart finally shatter in his chest, the bear’s demeaning smile reminding him of his failure as a son. All of the love and affection he had ever hoped to receive was gone, and he was left with nothing but the bitter realization that he would always be alone.
“What is wrong with you, Victor! Are you seriously doing this again?” Dad shoved his chair back as it screeched on the old floorboards, picking up Victor by his collar.
“She… she said that I was…” he buried his face in his hands again, weeping as it leaked from beneath his hands, the bear on the floor behind him.
“What are you talking about? She didn’t say anything about you.” He slammed his feet on the ground as Victor wobbled, struggling to gain his balance back. “I’m so sorry about this everyone, I will deal with him quickly.”
Victor continued to scream as he was dragged outside, catching a glimpse of her green eyes full of pity and empathy. Before he could say anything, he was thrown outside into the rain, scraping his arms on the gravel as his dad stood towering before him.
“Don’t ever embarrass me like that again. We will let you in after dinner.” He slammed the door shut, the sound echoing out into the dark night as warm light leaked from beneath it.
He crawled his way under a tree to try and protect himself from the beating and whipping of the rain that dug their way into his skin, hoping the expansive leaves would shelter him. He wrapped his arms around his body, trying to hold himself together. The pain that coursed through eyes, face, hands, arms, entire body, and mind was excruciating, and he could feel his strength slipping away with each passing moment. He crawled into a small nook at the base of the tree, mud coating his fingernails.
What could he do other than curse the world that made him live like this? He couldn’t do anything at his age. He couldn’t do anything without being a Leith. He couldn’t do anything with Josephine beside him. His thoughts were filled with despair and hopelessness, as he realized he was all alone in the world. No one cared about him, and no one would come to his aid. He was nothing but a discarded, angry boy left to die in the rain.
Victor lay on his back and looked up at the mocking sky; the large moon appeared to him as a sort of distorted and mangled face, or perhaps a lost eye that peered down upon civilization.
No matter how bitter and spiteful he was, he hated more people that failed to take any initiative. So he swore to himself two things. One, he would defeat Josephine. He’d bring power back to the Leiths, regardless of what it took. He would be a hero in the country, praised for his cunning intelligence. A refusal of Josephine’s stagnant standard.
Two, he would never cry again. Even now, he couldn’t tell if he was crying. The rain ran down his face and cried for him, streaming down into the ground. Victor shut his eyes and let the angry, beating rain cry for his last time.