Tragedies seem to always pair with bad weather. As though the world is matching the outrage of its inhabitants, it mirrors the same loss. The clouds may weep with tears of sorrow or roar with a thunderous temper, blocking the sun lest others wish to feel its warmth. Yet that day, the weather was unremarkable. The sky was blue and held clouds shaped in white and thready puffs, not pretty enough to be spared a second glance; the sun shone lazily as if it lost all passion in its job. All was unfazed, ignorant of the events set in motion. Even nature had no way to predict what would come.
Through a window on that day,
on the floor of that room,
lay a limp hand,
loosely clutching a yellow sticky note:
Your Fault.
The funeral was as unremarkable as the day he died. There were tears and gloom, but no boisterous displays of heartbreak, no sobbing over his coffin or screams of anguish. Each speech was as plain as the next: he was so young, he was so loved, he will be missed. They did not move the hearts of the mourners, who had barely known him, who only cried for the life lost, not for the man it was taken from.
A wake was held at his apartment, most gathered to remember the loss of a stranger. They did not have stories to tell nor reason to stay longer than expected. Eventually they had all gone home, leaving five to remain. The five had been the closest to him: his father, Richard; his brother, Lucas; his colleague, Avery; his most recent lover, Elaine; and his closest confidant, Grant. All sat in that bedroom, together in proximity yet alone in their sorrow.
“It’s your fault, you know.” Richard broke the silence. Elaine flinched at the accusation “I loved him-” “You broke him!” He cried before she could finish.
-
Elaine had met him when they were both 22. They practically ran into each other on campus. She had been so enamored that she fell into his step, walking with him even if her class was in the other direction. The two laughed and talked for the rest of the day, their classes completely forgotten. That night he had gone home with a ridiculous smile on his face and a light blush painted on his cheeks.
The two shared a cliche puppy love, attached at the hip. They possessed a fairytale love envied by their peers: date nights every Friday, flowers for every success, and a warm embrace for the hardest of days. Elaine moved in with him two years into their relationship, his home welcomed her as if it had always been prepared for her arrival. Her belongings fit in each empty shelf and cupboard like they had always been there; her scent blended perfectly with his. They completed each other in a way that others thought to be impossible, truthfully, it turned out to be impossible.
One day, he decided to surprise her. They were now 26 with stable and fulfilling jobs that they both loved, so he came home early from work, fiddling nervously with a small ring box in his jacket pocket. In his mind he had it all planned, Elaine never cared for a public display of affection. He would make her favourite meal and set up her favourite movie, making sure to finish before her shift ended; he should’ve known that plans never work. When he arrived home he was met with a trail of clothing leading to their bedroom, clothes that did not belong to him. As he followed the trail to his room his mind raced with every excuse he could think of, but no excuse could blind what his eyes saw: Elaine, who was supposed to still be at work, and another man in his bed.
Their love had ended just as easily as it began. His face felt numb and his ears rung as she began to recite every excuse he had thought of just moments before, wrapping her body in the closest article of clothing: the other man’s dress-shirt. Her attempt to cover up the situation shifted to pleas of guilt. Elaine tailed behind him as he walked back to his front door, she sobbed ugly and begged for his forgiveness. “This was the first time, I swear” “It was a mistake” “I wasn’t thinking” a mantra of reasons left her lips and fell on deaf ears. She felt her heart jump when he stopped in front of the door, but her hope was crushed immediately. “I’m going to stay at Grant’s, you have a week to find a new place and get your things out,” he spoke softly, “after that, I will change the locks and throw away anything you leave behind.” She could see the tears roll down his cheeks, longing to kiss them away like she had done many times before; but she knew she had lost that right.
He spared her a last glance before he left, placing the small ring box in her hands with a pained smile. “Goodbye, Elaine.”
-
Lucas scoffed “oh that’s rich coming from the man who broke him first, if anything it’s your fault.” He glared at his father who began to fume. “I sacrificed everything for you two.”
-
Richard had raised his sons with an iron fist, pushing them to be independent and resilient men. After Lucas was born his wife abandoned them, leaving him to raise two toddlers alone. His sons were to be strong men, assertive and dominant; something his older son struggled to achieve. While Lucas would naturally join the school sport teams, his brother had more interest in the arts. With every year that passed he would continue to bring home low gym grades and find new ways to skip the athletics team meetings Richard would force him in. Men had to be strong, Richard had to ensure his son knew this. His favourite punishment was to make the boy kneel on rice, an hour for each practice skipped, for each gym grade unmet. He knew he was doing his son a favour, men had to be strong.
As the boy grew older he became more defiant, Richard couldn’t understand why. He had sacrificed his entire being to provide good lives for his children, why couldn’t his son just listen? His rebellion peaked when he reached high school. One day he had walked in to the boy painting his nails, he saw red. “No son of mine will be a fucking queer” he hollered. That night he poured the entire vial of polish over his head, made him kneel on rice until the sun rose. The vile substance dried on his face and irritated his skin.
Richard almost lost his composure while carrying out that punishment. As he watched, he only saw the small two year-old he had raised. All he could see was his little baby covered in the polish as he kneeled and sobbed on the hard floor. The man forced himself to hide in his room, lest he be tempted to stop the discipline prematurely. He made himself ignore the cries of pain from the other room. He told himself that it had to be done, that this was out of love, that he was protecting him from a much crueller world.
He was a saint to the boy in the morning, cleaning his face and disinfecting his bloodied knees with a guilt-ridden gentleness. It must’ve stung, but he was too tired to flinch away. Quietly, he defended himself against his own thoughts. Some fathers do much worse to their children, he never laid a hand on his, this was just a punishment. Regardless of how hard he tried to justify it, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had committed a horrendous crime. Richard carried the boy to bed and tucked him in, rasping out a pathetic “get some sleep”. By the time Lucas left his room for school the two didn’t dare meet each other's eyes.
When his boy chose to stay at Grant’s house for a while after, Richard couldn’t offer a single word of protest.
-
In a poor attempt to diffuse the situation Avery spoke up, “Don’t be so hard on your father, he’s the reason he became so successful.” Lucas only grew angrier “Okay then is it your fault?, after all you’re the one who stole that success from him”
-
Avery was his colleague. He joined the company when he was 23, shortly after he received his degree. They had both hit it off after his first day, bonding over their love for historical fiction novels and quickly became good work friends. She held the same position as he did, the two would schedule their breaks together and try their best to pick out the same schedules. He was the most genuine person she knew, kind for the sake of being kind, trusting because he had no reason to not. Although she only met the people from his personal life a handful of times, he would often confide in her during conflicts with his family and lover, he never had problems with Grant.
One day, he arrived at work in a terrible state. When she asked he told her about Elaine's affair, rapidly losing his composure. Avery felt her heart ache for the younger man, a hollow shell now replaced the bubbly personality he was known for just days before. With the passing of each week the circles under his eyes got darker, his face and body visibly slimmer.
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Two months after the affair she was called to their boss’ office. Simply put, either him or Avery would be given a promotion that both had been working towards for years. Their boss wanted to know why it should be given to her. She knew that her argument had to be strong. Although she had been employed there for 2 years longer, the younger had impressively reached the same status as her. Before she could stop herself she began exposing his recent struggles to her employer, stating that the mental state of her colleague compromised his ability to perform his job. She couldn’t stop it, it was as if her mouth had turned into a motor. For what felt like hours she painted him as dramatically unstable, saying far more than necessary. After her tangent had finally ended her boss could only stare at her in bewilderment, “this is very concerning, thank you for informing me.” With that, she was filled with an overwhelming feeling of dread.
Avery knew she was to blame when he was told to pack his things and go home. Management had ultimately decided that he was too unstable to work at the company all together, let alone with a promotion. She knew they asked him about the affair from the look of betrayal in his eyes as he looked at her. It was the first time she had ever seen him with a fake smile and heard his voice so monotone, “Congratulations on your promotion.”
-
“Oh shut up Lucas, don’t act like you’re innocent in this,” Elaine spat, annoyed with how quick the younger was to blame everyone else, “if its anyone’s fault, its yours.”
-
Despite their father’s actions, the two brothers kept a close relationship throughout their lives. At one point he considered Lucas one of his best friends, even if his only other friend was Grant. Until that day he had trusted his little brother with his whole heart, his Elaine. As he stood at the door of his bedroom, he stared at Lucas with glazed eyes. Neither brother acknowledged Elaine as she fumbled and cried out excuses. Lucas had never seen him look so crushed, not even after their father’s worst punishments. He wanted him to scream, to beat him unconscious, to say something if it meant that he would stop looking at him like that.
The younger didn’t really know how it had happened. One night he was staying at the couple’s apartment, his brother had gone to bed but Elaine stayed up drinking with him. Through drunken rambles the two got closer than either one of them intended. Then began the texts, innocent at first, but becoming more risky as the days passed. Before they knew it scandalous texts and pictures were being sent back and forth. Lucas knew he had to put a stop to it, but he would always tell himself “just one more day.” Elaine wasn’t lying when she told him it had only happened once, but how could that matter when they had been sending messages to each other for months before. He couldn’t even bring himself to beg him for forgiveness as he left his house, he just wallowed in his own regret.
To his surprise, when his brother told their father about the affair he didn’t mention Lucas’ contribution. A part of him knew that the older was protecting him from their father’s wrath again, just as he would when they were children. The more he thought about his kind brother, the more Lucas was consumed by his own regret. He still didn’t dare come clean to his father. Day after day the younger attempted to apologize to him, sending text after text begging for an answer but it never came. At one point he had grown desperate enough to ask Grant, he was met with a simple “fuck off.” Eventually, he stopped trying. He told their father that the older was too busy to keep in contact with him, so Richard would regularly update him on his brother’s situations.
Lucas guessed that he would be able to wait it out, that one day his brother would forgive him and his life would go back to normal. The next time he saw him was as he laid lifeless in a coffin.
-
“It was you?!” Richard and Avery wailed in uncanny unison, shouting a tangled string of “how could you! he was your brother!” Lucas was quick to defend himself, deflecting the blame onto Elaine.
The four went in circles defending themselves and accusing anyone else, refusing to believe they had any part in his death. Akin to a broken record, “your fault” was shouted over and over again. They all feared his note was meant for them.
A quiet chuckle started from where Grant sat, silencing the other four. With how quiet he’d been they had forgotten he was in the room.
“So what did you do?” Avery asked hesitantly, staring at the man who laughed with teary eyes.
“Nothing.”
-
It was true that he did nothing. He had known everything, and he watched as his own everything slowly died.
Grant met him during the first year of high school, he was a quiet boy with peculiar scars littered on his knees. He only approached the boy because of his overbearing curiosity to know what caused the scars. Of course, he refused to tell him. It became a routine, he would search for the strange boy during his free time then follow him around in an attempt to annoy the answer out of him. Soon their conversations strayed from the scars to other topics: music, art, movies, they shared many interests. Once they became used to the company of the other, they quickly realized that they couldn’t bear to be separated. Their peers were quick to judge, confused on whether the two boys were dating or just really good friends. Grant himself didn’t know the answer; he didn’t really care either way, he was happy as long as the other was in his life.
He told him where the scars came from halfway into the 10th grade school year. His father had made him kneel on the rice for three hours as punishment for receiving a 60 on his gym assignment. Grant had noticed a spot on his jeans was slowly becoming darker and the other boy just let himself tell him. From that day on he would always dress the other’s wounds, joking about how he’d beat Richard up while meaning it slightly. Though he knew he never would, he just hoped it would get better soon. On the particularly rough days, he would let the other spend a night or two at his house; his parents were far too busy to care if he had a friend over or not, so the arrangement worked well for the two. The worst it got was during their 12th year, the night Richard poured the nail polish on his poor friend’s head. A 10th grade Lucas told him the situation after he didn’t show up to school the next day. It was the closest he had ever gotten to running over and punching the older man. When he appeared at Grant’s doorstep that afternoon, he told him to stay for as long as he wanted.
They never grew apart as they aged. His friend was there to celebrate his every achievement and Grant was always there to celebrate his; he watched as he opened his university acceptance letter; helped him move into his own place; encouraged him to confess to Elaine. He was the first to clap at his graduation ceremony, and the first to know he got his dream job. Grant was also the first to know about his plan to propose to Elaine. He watched as his friend crashed from nervous excitement to complete heartbreak in a matter of weeks. He held the other for days as he sobbed at the betrayal of his love and his brother. The more he watched his most favorite person spiral into self destruction the more he despised the two; Elaine for becoming his heart and shattering it, Lucas for his inability to keep his hands to himself. Yet, he never did anything but believe his friend would eventually prevail over his pain.
The last straw was when he lost his job. Grant knew first hand how much the other had worked for that job, only for it to have been stripped away by someone who decided to run her mouth. Once again, he held the other as he cried himself to sleep, a routine he wished would end soon. He declined the offer to stay at Grant’s place again, something the man tried his best not to stress over; bit god, Grant wished he insisted more.
Naturally, he was the one who had found the body. His dearest person hadn’t been answering his phone for a day, unusual for the two who would talk on a daily basis, so he used his spare key to enter the other’s apartment. Grant found him limp and lifeless beside an empty pill bottle, it was his turn to cry as he wailed and cradled his entire world.
While the weather was unnoteworthy that day, in Grant’s eyes it had lost all its colour. There was no beauty to find as the brightness life once brought him was taken in the blink of an eye.
-
He sat directly in the spot his everything breathed his last breath, listening to those who caused his world to end deny that they had ever harmed it. In that second, Grant felt the box that kept his temper slowly unlock, clouding his every thought. Before the other four could utter another excuse he bolted out of the room and hurled into the kitchen sink. At the sound, Lucas quickly followed behind the other man. Silence suffocated the apartment, now drowning in their own shame. That is until a loud crash sounded from the kitchen followed by a blood curdling scream, interrupting the pity party of the remaining three as they rushed towards the noise.
It was beyond the police’s knowledge how a single man managed to overpower four other people, let alone achieve what he managed to do. They had arrived after a report of violent screaming from an apartment unit, they were met with blood stained walls and five different bodies. They were able to identify each petrifying body.
Richard was found in the kitchen. A knife was used to sever the femoral artery just above each knee. He was slumped forward on a spilled bag of dry rice. From how he was positioned it is presumed he was kneeling on the grains.
Entangled in the bathtub were Elaine and Lucas, both bodies naked and halfway submerged in water. Elaine was killed with a quick stab to the heart, which was then carved out of her chest postmortem. Similarly, Lucas had his wrists slit deeply before both hands were cut off sloppily. In a horrifying display, the hands were left cradling the heart on top of the two bodies.
Avery’s body was found sagging across a desk. From a distance it looked as if she simply fell asleep while working, but as the officers got closer this was far from the case. Her throat was slit so far she was nearly decapitated, and lodged within the crevice of her throat was her own severed tongue.
The last body found was Grant, the man who had ended all five lives. He lay in the exact spot his friend had died just a week ago. He had carved his own eyes out of their sockets and stabbed himself straight through the heart. The bloodied knife used for each murder embedded in his chest.
Blood covered the apartment and its stench embedded itself into the walls. Most of the officers had thrown up at the sight, unable to stomach the violent scene.
The wall behind Grant’s body was the only one that remained untouched by the sloppy blood splatter, instead two words were written in bright, red, dripping letters: OUR FAULT.