It's All His Fault

I’m surprised at how well I’m dragging a body along Cory Pier at midnight. I never expected that I—an existence grounding itself on emaciation—was capable of such a feat. My body had never been muscular, had never been past skinny. And now, I have to thank it because it will be the reason why I won’t be charged with kidnapping and, probably, murder.

Keith had always been good to me, my brother after all. I just never expected him to do all of that. He ruined my business, made me penniless—my wife left me for that—and bombard me with debt that I never could have prepared myself for. He made me lose my job as a police investigator because he was affiliated with the mafia. And having affiliations with people dealing illegal drugs wasn’t tolerated in this country.

I spent five years of my life nurturing that business. I handled it as I worked my heart catching all of those murderers, after all, my parents were murdered and I wanted to catch the scum who dismembered their bodies and shoved their parts under the wooden boards that formed the floor as if the murderer was a big fan of Poe. I wonder if that guy—or gal—was still alive?

When the chance of my business to go international came, like a godsend, all of it blew up. It blew up like a bubble, disappearing without a single trace.

Even the famous Icarus had time to free fall. He didn’t instantly pummel to the ground; he fell and felt the air around him signaling his impending doom. But my business. It instantly plummeted. No heralds, no omens, no at-the-last-moment epiphanies. Nothing.

I only know one thing: He betrayed me and it’s all his fault.

He did help me, gave me shelter when the bank seized my properties. Even after our parents’ deaths—well, murder to be exact—he was the one to give it his all and took every job he could, even though he was only seven, to feed us, to feed me, his only brother, the only family he had left. I was forever grateful to him, but that didn’t mean that I would let this pass. I won’t. Never.

I stopped in my tracks and threw him on the road, kicked him in the gut. I clenched my hands to a fist as I held back all the anger deep inside of me.

“Why did you do it?”

He panted as he barely muttered a sound with his lips. Though it was inaudible, I could tell from his lips what he’s saying. It’s not me, Nathan.

I remembered how I shoved my fingers inside his throat at his house as I kidnapped him—well, technically, it was man-napped; he’s already an adult, not a kid. I thrust a few pens as well to make him suffer like they did, not able to make a sound for help.

Fearing that I might do something like accidentally kill him when he moves his lips to form a sound, finding more excuses or begging for mercy or denying my accusation of him when I have concrete evidence, I gagged his mouth with the handkerchief that I took out from my left pocket. After tying it tightly, I punched in the chest. I think I broke a rib or two as I heard a crunch. Well, that’s not a problem. He’s going to die anyway.

As I held him from the knot that I restricted his feet with, not bothering to care if his face was scratched from the rough ground, I dragged him along the road once again. After a few steps, my feet stumbled into something, like the feeling of stubbing your toe in the feet of a table or chair. It hurt. But the pain was in my chest, not my toe.

There, I saw my wallet, open. It probably fell from when I took out the handkerchief-gag. And, as I attempted to pick it up, all the madness, all the wrath inside of me just blew up. I threw his feet on the ground as he made a thud and kicked him again with all of my might—this time on the small of his back. I punched him with my squeezed fists, thrust my feet into his groin, and slapped him left and right.

I couldn’t stop. Not when I saw my one and only daughter Alicia and my wife smiling in that picture.

After all, it’s all his fault.

After I was lost, had thrown about thirty punches that were my upper limit because of my low stamina—most likely because of how I’m all bones, no muscles nor fat—panting, crying, my face wet with sweat, tears, and blood—most probably his—I found myself on top of him, his abdomen in between my knees. I kept my head down as I stared at him eye-to-eye.

His face was swollen and I could barely outline the few dark spots in between his fangs. He probably lost a few teeth from my punching. I didn’t know that I could do that, not with my bony punches. The face I was staring at was not the Keith I knew. This was the face of the people he beat up—the people who beat me up. I thought he was the one doing the beating in this family, but apparently, we both were. It’s probably in the genes.

I found myself beating at his chest with my knuckled hands, and I could feel him wince in pain. Tears just fell. I could’ve sworn it was sweat that was lining my cheeks, but it apparently wasn’t when I saw his gaze. It was the gaze he gave me whenever I was sad or crying. The same gaze he had when he was comforting me after our parents died. The same gaze that was full of concern and love. How I missed seeing that.

“Why?” I pounded on his chest. “Why? Why did you do it?”

I saw him squirming his way into getting up, preparing to embrace me with his non-existent hands—his real hands were on his back, tied up—but I stood up and wiped my face with my sleeve.

I took the wallet on the ground and caressed the picture in it: Rose carrying Alicia in her arms and me by her side, my arm dangling on her shoulder. I shoved it into my pocket and proceeded to drag him again.

I’ll make him suffer like how they did. I’ll make him feel that wrenching pain of false hope he gave them.

I found the abandoned warehouse.

I opened its doors and flung him inside. I took my phone and used it as a flashlight to illuminate the surroundings, looking for chairs, tables, anything I could make him sit in.  As soon as I found one, I set it in the middle of the warehouse. After that, I sat him in it and hung my phone using a cable wire that I found in the corner of the warehouse. It was hung where the flash was directly on his face.

Looking down at the gagged man, his face drenched with sweat, tears, and mostly saliva, his eyes bruised, left me pondering on whether this was really my Keith or not.

“Brother, are you ready?”

I snatched the handkerchief-gag from his mouth and threw it to the far corner of the warehouse. I don’t know where that went, but I could see in my peripheral a few rats munching on it as if they were rabbits to a carrot.

“So, let’s start with the least pressing matter. Why order all your underlings to attack my business?”

He squirmed. I think he also shut his left eye, but I couldn’t tell as it was swollen from the barrage of slaps, kicks, and punches earlier. I wasn’t looking for an answer. I could care less if my business went under, but my wife, my child. They were indispensable.

He started squirming again. He started rocking his shoulder up and down as if he had roaches crawling up his neck, and I could tell that the chance of that happening in an abandoned warehouse in the suburbs—which was very likely—was the chance that I won’t hesitate to make him suffer as Alicia and Rose did.

I took hold of his shoulders and gripped them tight.

“Hey! Answer!”

He avoided my glance by looking at his right. So that’s how you’re going to play? I thought. I slapped his face and gripped his chin and pulled it towards mine, almost touching. I could smell his blood-stained breath. The thought of this madman bleeding felt good. I’m making him suffer.

“You don’t get to avoid my questions. You will—”

He kissed me.

His tongue kept licking at my lips as if asking for it to part and allow itself to enter, intermingle with its brother-tongue and play with each other. I didn’t open my mouth and I was stern on it.

I could tell that he was releasing all the pent-up emotions, lusts, and desires right now. I could tell that all these years, those nights when he was by my side, comforting me after dreaming of the gruesome image of my parents’ corpses—mutilated, dismembered, and hidden underneath floor covers, the spaces between their ribs slashed open with a knife, their eyeballs staked with barbeque sticks—were not out of simple brotherly love, not of familial love but of something else.

I wasn’t disgusted by a man kissing me. I wasn’t disgusted by my brother kissing me. I wasn’t disgusted that he was kissing me. I was disgusted by the fact that he did all that—murder, arson, assault, and kidnapping—just for a kiss.

Just a kiss because that’s all I can give him.

I pushed him back with all the force I could muster and he complied as let me do so. I turned my head away and looked at the side, not sparing him a glance.

“Then, is this your reason for doing that?”

He was still quiet, although his mouth opened. He didn’t make a sound. At the back of my mind, the thought of how I plunged my fingers to the inside of his mouth and scratched at his throat kept ringing again.

He kept opening his mouth. I could tell from the shape of his mouth that he was telling me that he couldn’t speak, that his voice box kept failing him. But I know that that’s just a ruse, a guise for him to not tell me anything, for me to let him go and stop this torture—which I won’t.

“Nod for yes. Shake your head for no,” I ordered.

Like I’d believe him. he betrayed me; he betrayed my trust. He was the only family I had left and the pain of knowing that he was the instigator of all the killing that was happening to the people around me meant that I had to get rid of him. Though I won’t stop at that, getting rid of him. He needs to experience what my wife and Alicia suffered—they couldn’t cry out for help because their throats were crushed, they had to suffer from a convulsing agent for thirty minutes, and they had their bodies mutilated, undiscernible if we were still in the middle ages—a time without DNA tests.

“Since when?”

He neither nodded nor shook his head.

“In high school?”

I scoffed. He still kept the stoicism of a statue.

Jokingly, I said, “don’t tell me it was before I was five?”

Keith shook startled. He was vigorously shaking his head, vehemently denying the accusation against him.

I grimaced. “What the… Seriously?”

That was before our parents died, well, were murdered. Did he hold feelings for me even before then? When we were children? “Were you… the one who murdered our parents?”

He trembled intensely. He was blatantly denying everything I was saying. This only proved that he was indeed responsible for their murder. Why would you go so far as to defend yourself like that? I didn’t get it. He could’ve had just maintained that stoic face while answering. I could’ve believed him—I probably wouldn’t. Why would he deny it so unreservedly as if I was a devil in front of him? I’m his brother. Why can’t he trust me?

He killed them. He killed everyone that I was close with. From our parents to my wife, to Alicia, my daughter. He killed my life, my business. Everything. He’s a psychopath!

“But, how? How did you kill them? You were seven at the time!”

I stopped myself from continuing. I remembered how I was talking to a psycho. And I know psychopaths because I was an investigator. Anything was possible for them, especially when it comes to murder.

I sighed.

“Brother, do you know what I have here?” I said as I took out a box from my left vest pocket, the inside of it containing a syringe and a vial of red liquid. “Just like how they all felt, like how you did it. Now, wait for your agony and your imminent death.”

I took the syringe and filled it up with the red liquid. I didn’t bother checking the amount. Just pulling its plunger till the vial was empty. The more, the merrier it was for me, the more suffering it was for him.

I pricked on his olecranon—the behind of his elbow—with the syringe a few times, deliberately taking it out a few times so he could feel the pain at a maximum.

He struggled as he forced his cuffed arms free. I could hear him letting out muffled screams, probably hoping that someone outside could hear him. But that’s all for naught. Not only were his screams really soft, barely making it past the warehouse door, but there was not a single person here, not a single life form apart from the squeaking rats in the corners still munching on that handkerchief-gag and the roaches climbing the walls, defying the concept of gravity.

After a few minutes, he convulsed. His hands stiffened and his eyes rolled backward. I could tell that it was working, that he was suffering. But it felt eerie, that there was something wrong.

“Ten minutes, brother.”

To my surprise, as if to annoy me, to leave his mark inside my mind, his lips crept up to a smile, showing his bare white teeth tainted with a few hints of red. I sneered at him in disgust.

His eyes told me he was enjoying it.

“Nathan…” he said with a voice that trailed. I could barely make out what he was saying as if I was dyslexic. “Le…emi. L-lib…”

Was he asking me to let him live? I clicked my tongue, kicking him in the abdomen as hard as I could. I thought I heard a few bones crack, but I dismissed that thought when I saw the fracture at the feet of the chair that he sat on. Tied up on the floor, he was panting as he made moaning noises. I could tell that he was enjoying everything from the kicks to the punches, from the spits to the pisses. Everything seemed to turn him on.

“Nathan,” said Keith as his eyes formed an eerie smile, ones that squinted into crescents. “Lm-Live…”

Three minutes left and I give up. I could now understand what he was actually saying. Live. Even at his death, he wanted me to live. He was giving me his final wish.

“You ruined everything. From our parents to my business, my finances, to Alicia, to Rose. You motherfucker.”

Was this even my brother, the brother who looked at me with those eyes, ones that pierced through me with bliss, the feeling of being cared for, of being worried about? Were those times he comforted me during my ruts just a way to fulfill his lust? Did he ever look at me as a family, a brother? Did I even have a brother?

“Psychopathic trash.”

I gave him a kick to the chin. Though I now knew that he was a full-fledged masochist, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to relieve the stress, the pain, the disappointment, the potent blend of hatred and betrayal, one enough to make you crazy.

I took the gun from my waist, pointed it at him, and didn’t hesitate to shoot. I gave him no time to enjoy anything anymore. Even my revenge. Everything. Ruined. He was enjoying everything.

At the back of my mind, I thought of how his smile and moans could’ve been the effect of the convulsing agent, but I dismissed that thought. He was just faking it.

Soon, the muzzle of my gun shifted to my temples, the heat from firing it earlier at him seeping through it. A psychopath. A brother I truly trusted. The only family I had left.

At least now, I’d get the revenge I so longed for. And to make sure that the revenge was as painful for him as possible, I won’t fulfill his final wish. He shouldn’t get wishes.

After all, it’s all his fault.