Brotherhood, a short story by Sugar_Sour_Mandolin. Date added: 2012-08-20. Times viewed: 846.
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- Intro: adventure of 2 brothers.girl in danger. dangerous situation
A short story I have written. I hope that you enjoy it!
Brotherhood
Midnight. A street corner. Two boys. Dark shops. Broken lights.
Down the road another pair of boys approach.
They join the other two at the corner.
‘Wana see the stuff before we give the money innit!’
‘Ya ya got it.’
Street corner boys take out a package and dangle it like bait in front of the pair opposite them.
Package disappears into a pocket. Money changes hands.
What Marco and Hugo have in common is their blood; they share the same mother but not the same father. This is this story of their linage.
A lit up building. They walk inside. A grim faced man at a desk.
Both approach but one talks.
‘We want to see, Irene’
The man deeply looks at the boys, ‘Whose looking for her?’
Marco responds, ‘we are clients. Is she busy?’
Sometimes lying is the thin line between survival and death.
His dudgeon eyes are daggers, ‘you two are clients? Both of you? At the same time with the same girl? – don’t answer cause I don’t give a fuck –
Where’s the money?’
They flash the green notes at him.
‘Pay up now.’
They throw $150 dollars at him.
No story starts at the beginning does it!
He points them over to a corridor, ‘along, left and then 3rd door down. Got it!’
Hugo speaks this time, ‘we been before init. Remember!’
‘Get a move on.’
They slowly make their way through the corridor. No words are spoken – at least not out loud. The understanding that exists between them is silent. Failing is not an option at least not one they plan to face, death would be better than failing. Succeeding is the only path they are willing to go down on. That knowledge is always there, it’s even here now a lining these corridors, and makes it even difficult to breath.
Along, left and the 3rd door go the instructions. They follow the coordinates and arrive to their destination.
Knocking once – twice. The door opens cautiously and near the door stands a girl. A girl with dark long sweeping hair and grand eyelashes that she bats at them. She isn’t just a girl but Irene.
She ushers them inside. They stand around not knowing what to do. In a raggy discoloured white robe she is dressed. Disbelieving she looks at them. They haven’t changed at all – an year might have passed by but even at seventeen their appearance hasn’t altered. Not knowing what to say she begins to play with the ends of her sleeves. Marco takes her hand and presses against it to his face.
‘Irene’ whispers Marco as his voice fads out heading into tears.
‘How did you – ’ her voices get’s lost in her disbelief.
‘Does it really matter as this time’ states Hugo who paces around the room.
‘I’ve been waiting to get out for so long! You can’t fail’
Hugo spins around and looks wide-eyed at her, ‘Why would we fail?’
‘Look at yourselves – you’ve paid for a service and what would it look like if somebody walks in while we are having a discussion – fully dressed’
Both gawp at what she is getting at. They take of their jackets and t-shirts. She nods.
‘That’s fine, Now make yourself fit into the scenery’
Hugo finds a chair and uncomfortably sits on it. He leans his head back and it looks like he is watching Irene and Marco but actually his eyes look over to the curtained window, thinking it would be awkward to watch their reunion. Indeed he is letting them have their private moment as long as he possibly can.
Marco leans into her and kisses her hand. She blushes at this gesture and he stokes her fingers with his cold cut ones. They embrace feverishly and quickly like the world is about to end any minute now. He leans into her filthy smelling robe.
He muffles against it, ‘I’m sorry. So sorry!’
‘You came as soon as you found me.’
‘Yea’ but I’m still sorry.’
‘I know you are’
‘How did you find me?’
Hugo intercepts ‘no time for these questions now’
Then the actual smell of her skin pierces through the robe and reaches his noise, which makes him wriggle because it brings back those memories of her. He leans into her and gives her the most tender kiss as if she is the most delicate yet thorny thing in the world. What her response is that she isn’t afraid of him nor does she seem to have forgotten that feeling of his kisses on her lips and neck. Nobody can stain this moment, even if it isn’t perfect, it’s real. They are both together and there is no heroism.
Hugo mechanically sits up.
‘Lovey moment over – Sorry!’
Marco breaks of the kiss.
‘Hugo is right. We are working against time.’
Irene nods, ‘What do I need to do?’
‘Just put on my coat, if you can tie your hair and hide it under the hood’
‘And then’
‘we are working on his step by step’
Irene ties her hair, puts on Marco’s coat and the hood up. In the meanwhile both the boys get dressed.
Footsteps along the corridor. Fade away.
Hugo opens the door, looks both ways – doesn’t see anybody – takes a step outside. The boys know of the high up window to which they have to reach.
On Marco’s shoulders he climbs and his face is pressed to the window. It’s no surprise to him that it is locked.
Life always has to be difficult doesn’t it!
He takes out a knife and stabs the lock numerous times before it begins to give. The last stab is the one that sets the window free. Getting off his brothers shoulders to let Irene get up on them now so she can get out to the free world.
It’s not really a free world is it!
Distant footsteps can be heard.
Marco is about to get Irene out the window when he hears his brother curse.
‘Fuck this.’
‘We need a distraction’ stumbles Marco
‘Yeah I think it’s to late for that bro’ ’
Marco whispers, ‘just get into da room and hide behind the door.’
‘I don’t know what’s your plan but I hope it works man’
‘Trust bro’.’
While the boys have been scheming Irene has discovered the pocketknife in Marco’s jacket.
The footsteps are getting near and nearer.
The game of life is a trail.
The grim man is standing at the end of the corridor.
He finds the spectacle of somebody trying to escape. Can’t believe his own eyes. Who would try to escape from him? It’s obviously one of his girls but which one. Which girl would have the guts? His eyes register Marco. Realisation hits him. – The girl on the right hand corridor in the 3rd room. What was her name? He can’t remember.
At that moment she looks down on him. She really looks at the face of man who has gagged, tied, hit and raped her over the past year.
There’s no mercy in the game of life!
He grabs at her but misses. Again he tries and she twists away from his hands. It’s obvious that his anger and frustration are growing. Even more eager is he to get her – to have caught the catch.
Marco finds it difficult to keep balance and starts to sway that’s when the grim man manages to get hold of her. She screams when his hands touch her. It’s a scream of anguish. A little girl tormented.
‘Little bitch be quite’
That’s when all those memories hit her head into a whirlpool of hell. She remembers his hands on her naked body and creeping along her shivering skin. His gruesome lips kissing her over scrubbed body. How she survived those days she doesn’t know. Just the feel of his horrid eyes upon her stretched out body sends her into an over drive madness.
Irene takes out the pocketknife.
A desperate scream escapes his throat.
She stabs his exposed and naked throat. The knife enters. She retracts the knife. Stabs him again. His grim eyes bulge in pain and surprise, an equal mixture of the two.
There’s blood. Blood gushing from his throat.
He collapses. Starts to twitch. Looking ghastly, paralysed and powerless he lays on the floor. His plastic eyelids lash back and forth.
She puts the knife away.
They both gawk at her. They have that look in their eyes wow this girl knows how to handle a weapon.
Marco instantly picks her up, she grabs the ledge and then out the window she goes sliding against the rough wall. Into the outside world she makes it. There she stands waiting for which ever of the boys is next. Hugo quickly scrambles onto his brothers shoulders and it seems that Irene is there to receive him at the other end.
‘Now we pull out Marco.’
‘yeah I know’
‘Thank you Irene.’
‘The least I could do for rescuing me from this place’
‘You played as much a part of that too’
‘Yeah I guess I did – didn’t I’
He lowers himself down to get hold of his brother, tightly holds his arms and Irene begins to pull Hugo back out. As soon as Marco’s hands grip the window edge slowly Hugo slides onto ground of the dark dead end road. Marco holsters himself out, into Irene’s arms and lands on the road.
Thunderous footsteps are heard.
A crowd of faces appears at the window.
They start to aim and shoot.
Surviving the game of life is never easy!
Bullets part the air particles. They have the strength, power and speed to cause harm. Intent – to cause grievous harm.
They start running.
But their movements feel like a slow motion compared to those of the bullets.
Running they go yet the bullets fly faster.
All the elements work in favour of the bullets the wind, the angle and the timing.
Their target they have zoned in on.
Attack.
Some fly into the empty air while others are near misses.
But one connects with flesh.
Irene’s tender skin is punctured and the bullet nests inside her leg. She falters for the brief split second then she walks again – limping. Marco looks over at Irene his eyelids flicker in the aguish of his discovery and equally Hugo gasps.
Blood drips down her leg.
In life we endure.
Her breath lowers. There’s more weight in her leg – dead weight. The pain has no escape except through the burning in her irises. Her wound has cut her flesh and begins to burn her. Pain has overtaken her leg and her mind. Straight thinking has been ceased by the pain. The pain that wants to break us.
The game of life is about the survival of the fittest!
On and on they go. Put then distance between them and their attackers. Far away from the danger, harm and when they are sure nobody is following them.
They stop. Irene’s in pain. A lot of pain.
Blood has coated her leg. It has swirled and travelled down to her ankle like an angel-winged tattoo.
Marco slumps on the floor and inspects Irene’s wound. His finger pokes and her leg shivers then convulses in pain. Irene breathes out – harshly.
Pain lives in her. Pain breathes out and in. Pain suffocates her normality. She feels nothing but pain. Pain wants to consume her. It wants to through her into darkness. The world of the beyond, where she is close to the thin layer veil that separates, the leaving and the dead.
Who knows how long the bullet has stayed in? But you know what they say about penetration bullets – they could be life threatening!
Marco without warning opens her wound and his fingers go inside. His fingers are in her open bleeding flesh. Now his hand is covered in blood.
Irene has lost the ability to even express her pain. Her sound is consume by the torment. She holds back because she knows how hard it is for him as it is and the sound of her agony will only make that worse.
Marco successfully takes out the bullet. He holds it in his fingers like a trophy prize he has just reclaimed.
Marco demands, ‘Gim’ me your robe.
Irene unzips the coat but has no balance to take it off so Hugo helps her. She slips off the robe and when she hands it to Marco rips it into pieces.
The pieces he ties around her wound tightly. Tightness. Dizziness overtakes her. Her wound tie makes her leg pulsate. She feels the blood throbbing
Sometimes faith is all we have!
So in the depths of the after midnight hours they go. There’s no choice but to carry Irene all the way there. Hugo carries while Marco walks along side them with the bloody hand in his pocket.
She doesn’t have the strength and can’t take the pain that comes with every step. Indeed she has surrendered to the pain and it has possessed her soul.
Sometimes the soul wonders between the realm of the living and the dead!
Destination reached. A bus stop.
They wait. Who knows how long?
Maybe an hour passes. Maybe it’s not an hour.
It just feels like forever.
Irene falls into Marco’s arms. She’s numb. The pain, shock and cold have had that effect upon her.
The bus comes. They get on. Pay their tickets. Sit down.
Into the nightfall road they go. They are blind to the future.
It’s a long bus ride and they fall asleep.
******
When they wake up its morning.
The sun looks brighter than usual.
Today Irene smiles for the first time in an year. Hugo see’s that dimness in his brother’s slip away.
Bus stops. It’s their time to get off.
They walk. Come to a cream house. Hugo knocks on the door and a kind woman greets them.
She isn’t their mother or step mum. Indeed she is their foster mum.
‘Oh boys your home. I was worried – You must be Irene. I’m glad you are here. I’ll treat your gunshot wound now. ’
Their mother died in a car accident. Time has passed. Life goes on.
They all descend under the threshold of the door.
Nothing is fine but as long as they remain together then they will be transformed.
The door closes.
What we hear is their voices and we can be assured that they will in time be alright.
Never is the murder of the grim man solved.
The police just discover a brothel and a dead brothel leader.
All the girls are set free and the brothel associates caught.
The end
I hope that you can take a few seconds to provde me some feedback. I will appreciate it :)
Again thank you for reading.
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