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fuck sake
Topic Started: Aug 4 2015, 08:09 PM (8 Views)
Atticus
Administrator
I could still hear him screaming in the attic, raving and droning on and on in that same madman tone of his. I knew what was best for him, and yet, I still could not go through with it. I could not end the life of someone I had once called family. Whenever I wasn't in his presence, he would do nothing but what he was doing now. Releasing all of his rage and anger out, letting everything he had let gather out. But whenever I went up there to see him, whenever he could sense that I was there, he tried to hide his true feelings and his awareness of what he actually was. He would utterly refute any claims of what his current existence had become. He would declare that he was perfectly fine, perfectly alive... perfectly human. But I knew, that while I was reluctant to end his suffering, his misery, it was the only thing I could do. I could not trust him anymore as he was... for he had already attacked me once, before I had locked him up. He had almost killed me, and if he had successfully done so, he would have gained his such badly desired freedom... but in gaining it, it would assure the destruction of whatever humanity remained in him.
For while I may have locked him up and barred him from the outside world, here, in this house that had once carried so many memories for him with his brother, I was capable of helping him barely preserve that little precious amount of humanity a little while longer. But it had, as I gradually found out, been a mistake. For it made him a wayward soul, stuck between two sides, continually pulling at him in two different directions, threatening to rip him in two if he didn't let one go. I had saved my brother from fully devolving into a inhuman monster... only to feel unending torment, and feel both fear and hatred towards me. Keeping him locked up... I couldn't continue to do it, for his sake or for mine. But I could not let him go free. I could not release him knowing that he would most likely go out into the world and kill others. Let alone what he would do to me after I freed him from his restraints. Freedom and imprisonment were not the solutions I sought... only death was. But yet, even as I held the rifle in my hands and proceeded up into the attic... I struggled with the decision that I had felt forced to make.
Was there a hint of selfishness in making the decision to end his suffering but also end my own? I suppose so, but the other options were hardly options at all. But just because there is only one option to choose does not mean it's easy to go through with it. Every step I took up those stairs, I had to fight a deep and overpowering sense of dread that wanted to force me to go back down. That tried to tell me that if I just kept him locked up for another day or two some sort of miracle would happen. That the monstrous changes he had underwent would undo themselves, and he would be the brother I had always known. But these were just futile and desperate hopes of a man who was at the end of his rope.
In the darkness of the attic, all at once, I felt surrounded by the feeling of complete hopelessness, as I looked around at my brother's abode... his prison. Mementos and old things left up here by our family years ago, years before the world lost its light, were scattered around and smashed on the floor. As I proceeded towards the chained figure huddled near the attic's windows, I almost stepped on a framed picture of my family that my brother had perhaps carelessly tossed here... or much more likely, cast it here in a fit of rage. I stopped, set my rifle down for a moment, and picked up the picture. A large crack in the glass had been formed over the faces of my father, mother, and brother. My mother and father had thankfully died years before the world became this way, leaving only myself and my brother in this house... as the world broke down and became a place of nothing but nightmares.
My eyes flew from the family picture I held up to my brother, for I heard him stand from where he was sitting. His clothes, like mine, had become little more than tattered and colorless rags as time passed. My brother had always been a bit unstable, even before the world became like this. He had been the quiet and bullied one. But even then, as I looked upon him in disgust and horror, I knew somewhere within... he was still there. He remained far from me, his appearance still hidden behind the shadows of our attic.
"You came back." His voice was tired, strained. He had spent the entire day screaming, after all. I still could remember what he was like before... his voice at home had been full of pep and cheer... but now, now... it sounded as if he was waiting for the end. Which end it was going to be, an end to his imprisonment or his life... he still wasn't sure. The words he had used implied surprise at seeing me again... as if he expected that one day, I would simply just leave him trapped in the attic and wander off somewhere.
"I will always come back. You're my brother, Caleb."
"Am I? Part of me... part of me embraces what I've become. Do you remember that day, Victor? All of this... my decay, started with a single cough. We thought nothing of it at the time. But that was how it began with all the others too. Sickness... gave way to corruption... and corruption... gave way to a fate worse than death. The dreams began... and I began to change. Some people said they dreamed of nightmarish monsters chasing them as if they sought to consume their very soul... but the creatures I dreamed of did not chase me. They spoke to me, as if I were one of them. And at long last, I finally realize why... why this was the case... I am rotted on the inside. If the world hadn't crumbled away... I would have been a serial killer. A murderer. But now, I am destined to only be an inhuman monster."
"Caleb, I..."
"Victor, why haven't you done it already? Why do you continue to allow my suffering to go on? Your sleep is broken repeatedly with the sounds of my screams. Either allow me to go free and... and allow me to become what my curse has determined I will be, or end it right now."
"I... I cannot."
"...Then why not just slide the gun over to me? I will do it myself."
Silence hung between us. He would have maybe fooled me with that if I hadn't already seen his "worse" side. I hadn't expected my brother to be the way he was acting. He wasn't pretending he was still the same even though it was an obvious lie. To hear Caleb speak like this, his voice calm, but completely devoid of any semblance of hope, derailed what I had come up here to do.
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Atticus
Administrator
A dying man sat on a hill, staring up at the sky, watching as the sun began to set. His life had been a rotten one, but somehow, in this moment of tranquility, even as he found himself bleeding to death... somehow made it all worth it. After so many years of living in a world ravaged and corrupted by darkness, he thought he had finally reached the supposed light at the end of the tunnel.
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