The Blind, The Cruel, And the True

B- Brother, I have been thinking about our family for quite a while now.

E- …

B- I’m ready to move on. I’m so tired of holding on to this hate of what happened to me. I want to be able to come home, to end this animosity that bubbles between us.

E- So you are, are you?

B- Don’t smile at me like that, I’m really trying to put things aside here.

E- Oh, are you now?

B- Yes, I am. You could not even begin to comprehend how much I have been hurt in the past ten years, how much I have suffered and lost. I want to end this madness of hate that forces us apart.

E- Madness, you say, I think you will find it quite logical, actually.

B- LOGICAL? Was it logical that I was born into the crimes of our father and grandfather? Logical that I was to be judged, insulted, and ridiculed for the mere fact that we shared blood? Was it logical that you convinced our sister that I was a monster so she would never speak to me again? Was it logical for my grandfather to cripple me, break me, for the mere fact that I was acting out? That I was thrown out of the family?

E- Completely and entirely.

B- Fuck you, Encore.

E- No, thank you, I just ate.

B- I’m leaving, and I never want to see you again.

E- I never hated you.

B- …

E- I may have thought many things of you, but I never hated you.

B- Then why?

E- Because I could not bring myself to overcome the monstrous wave of disgust and pity I felt whenever you entered my vision.

B- You son of a b-

E- YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ANGRY.

B- …

E- I pitied you. You were born under two great shadows—the legacies of the great Tone and the monstrous Brass. You were destined to be judged, to be compared to your family. Who isn’t? People would look at you and be afraid of what you might be capable of, feel fear that you may possess the tremendous power of our grandfather and use it against them, because they would be incapable of stopping you. That you would have our father’s cruelty and hurt them. It is natural to be afraid. To be terrified of what came before. It is unfair to be judged and hurt for crimes you never committed. I have lost more than one life to that judgment. So I pitied you, for I could understand so much more than most.

B- Encore, I -

E- I made my way into that world, with the entirety of their eyes pressed into me. They would watch every step, every gait, every smile that would cross my face and make their decision over me before I ever got to speak. But I persevered, and slowly I began not to be seen as the descendant of our family, but as me. I was Encore Choir, and they could see that.

E- I did not expect you to live your life as I did, to change your personality to mine to be accepted. But when you made your way into the world, you fought it. You punched and kicked it, before looking upwards and screaming at the top of your lungs until your voice hurt, and then whining about how the world hurt your throat. Pathetically, as if anything that happened to you is the fault of everyone... But… YOU.

E- I returned home to find our little sister, a girl of ten years old, locked in her room with our grandfather unable to coax her out. You, in your infinite blindness, had convinced her that the world hated her. That outside her home, she would be despised, ridiculed, and hated. You did not return home for two years, and for those two years, I spent every day with her. Coaxing her out of her room, promising her that she was an incredible person who nobody could help but love. Sitting with her late into the night, trying to explain things she could not yet fully understand, standing by the open doorway to our house, holding her hand, as she took one step outside and then ran behind me, trying to hide from a random passerby. I spent two years undoing what you did to her, helping her talk to people, to be able to go to school, to know that she was safe and able to be loved.

E- Then you returned home. Ugly, horrible you. Upon seeing our sister happy, barely having recovered from the damage you caused, you did what only you would have the cruelty to do and tried to hurt her again. You were so oblivious to everything but your own pain that you tried to ruin your own sister because you had lost your crutch. When I tried to reason, to explain, and help, you beat the shit out of me. Screaming delusions that you were trying to help our sister, rejecting any of the blame, and placing it solely on me. Screaming that I had stolen the one person who ever understood and supported you.

E- Grandfather was never an emotional person; he never smiled, and you would never know what he was thinking, but he loved us. He loved us so much that he chose children he had never met over the life of his own son. You forced him to intervene. He was terrified that you would kill me and cage our sister. And he could not kill another one of his children, so he chose to cripple you, to give you the chance to recover and change without the risk of you murdering your siblings.

B- Encore Please, I -

E- Nobody threw you out of the family. You left, abandoning all the problems you caused and running. I spent the next few years travelling from town to town, city to city, country to country, trying to put out the fires you had started. Attempting to explain and cover the damage you had done while shitting over everyone who even looked at you funny. But you never had to deal with that, did you, Ballad? No, of course not. Nothing could be the fault of the great Ballad; he was perfection after all. You went to the other side of the world and did not even have the balls to start anew.

E- But I can ignore all of that if you were not so blind. You found people who had never heard of us, and then you lied. You lied day after day after day to everyone who would listen. Telling them about the horrible Encore, your disgusting sister who betrayed you, and your bastard grandfather who never loved you. You left and took nothing but your hatred and delusions.

B- I didn’t know, I -

E- YES YOU DID. It is impossible that you couldn’t. You did know, saw the signs, and closed your eyes. I do not blame the blind for tripping, but I blame the stupid for closing them in the first place before running into the fucking street. You built a cult around yourself because you did nothing but lie about what happened to you. And then you had to let go of your anger, to actually improve as a decent human being because you had surrounded yourself with actually decent people. A shitstain surrounded by diamonds. You did not even return when grandfather died; he was buried asking if you were alright and I told him that you were getting better. It looks like I was wrong.

E- Ten years of this shit. Ten years of dealing with the consequences of your actions, of dealing with everything you had caused, because I was cursed with the fact that I loved you. That I wanted you to be happy. And after ten years of this, you come to me and say you are ready to move on? That you want to place it all behind us?

E- “Oh Encore, I am ready to come home. Please can you lie down so I can step on you, the floor is dirty and I am too perfect to stain my shoes. Once you are done, can you masturbate me as well? I just don’t have the energy to do it myself.”

E- You haven’t changed, you just managed to plug your ears after closing your eyes. The only thing left is for you to complain about the fact that you can’t use your hands because you are sticking them in your ears.

B- Encore, please, I…I

E- “I…I” Well? Sit out your own cock and annunciate correctly.

B- What can I do?

E- Let me think, hmm. I’ve got it. You can go to a street corner in the middle of a busy street, take off all of your clothes and starve until I can see every rib poking through your skin. Refuse every bit of water offered and every scrap of food given. And after ten years of this, you…can…Die. And while they lower your dry corpse into a shallow grave with no name placed upon the gravestone, I will forgive you. Fully and honestly.

B- Brother-

E- You don’t get to call me that. As of today, you no longer have the right to call yourself my brother; you don’t have the right to call yourself by the last name “Choir”. You no longer have a home to come back to or a family to support you. The only reason I do not gut you now is because Chime still cares about you, and I love my little sister.

B- Please don’t go, I want -

E- Goodbye