Brothers

You say nothing as the bigger kid lands fist after fist into your stomach. Your insides feel like jelly and you begin throwing up blood while he continues to wail upon you. Mikey is practically crying repeating the same obscenities over and over again. "Fucking bastards... Fucking bastards..."

Then he gets free from his captor, connecting with a backwards kick which lands solidly in the boys testicles. Mikey rushes forward with a rock in his hand and smacks the boy over the head with it. The kid who was hitting you seems suddenly very dead in the eyes when Mikey hits him with the rock, and he falls to the ground with a patch of hair soaked with blood. He lies still on the ground while Mikey kicks him over and over again. The other kid runs away when an adult comes over to pull Mikey away from the fallen bully.

You go to a doctor who looks at you and determines that you have a few broken ribs and are suffering from some internal bleeding. The kid Mikey hit died a few days later in a hospital. Mikey becomes very depressed as a result of this, more so than ever before and begins taking beers from your father and experimenting with drugs.

You can't help but feel responsible for this. Your family has fallen apart, and now you've fucked things up for Mikey as well. If only you had spoken...

Years go by and Paul graduates high school and goes away to college. You are alone with Mikey and your parents now. Mikey is the only one who seems to care about you, but he's usually so out of it that it doesn't matter.

Maybe you should end it all. There's a sharp knife in the kitchen drawer. You could just slit your wrists and end the torture your family endures because of your existence. You know how to slit your wrists properly, down not across.

Certainly your family will be pained by your death, but along with that pain must come some sort of relief. No more Kenny to fuck everything up.

Sometimes you feel like you're already dead. Like you died when you were abducted and raped at the age of nine. Your body just presses on without a soul inside. Death to the body can bring an end to everything.