Now, don’t lose your FIGHT, kid,                    it only takes a little push to pull on through,                    with so much left to do;                   you’ll be missing out, and we’ll be missing you 

                                        deathxbystereo

“You know you really shouldn’t be out this late.” 

“You should speak for yourself; beautiful woman are more prone to disappearing over kids.”

i want my muses to have more deep conversations. like reacting to things is cool & putting them on the spot is fun but exploring their mind with the help of another muse & watching your muse discover who they are gradually & dig into the depths of their soul man i need more of this.

Another step forward. Fingers curl gently around to cup the younger’s cheek  like  he  can’t  be  real–    FEELS SO REAL.    “I saw you torn to pieces,  Sammy.”    He  murmurs,  empty  street becoming the  once  HOME   where  he  found the remnants of his little  brother.  Scourged over a time forgotten that seems so much  more   pleasant   than  the scent of rotten  fish  and    DEAD  MEN    on that rough,  Santa Carla humidity.   “Why’re you haunting me like this?   What did I do to you, huh?”   The touch becomes ever so slightly rough  before he pushes the other away, takes a step back and in a FLASH it’s back to empty, pallid lamplight, still looking at his goddamn dead brother.

“Mike, what’s going on.” He wants to know what’s wrong, and yeah he knows he’s part of the problem too, but whatever this is it’s not fully a reaction of his presence. That much he can just feel. He lets Michael get angry, taking his  own step forwards to frown at the sight of his disheveled brother. Just wants to cling to him, but a loud part of him tells him its a bad idea.

“The world likes to keep secrets. Things aren’t always what they seem, and  I’m sorry. But you have to tell me what’s wrong. Tell me why you’re acting this way. Michael, please.” There’s another step forwards, reaching childishly for his older brother. Like years before, like the young kid asking to sleep in  his brother’s bed because they watched a horror movie that mom said that Sam wasn’t old enough to see yet. “Mikey.”

One Hundred Ways to Say ‘I Love You’

And…

—deathxbystereo​

There’s a line ( or two ) of cocaine still rattling his rib cage, heart thrumming in a dangerous rhythm that makes his head spin and his problems dissipate  in whir of hyper erratic sights and sounds. Doesn’t feel like himself… likes it; the  distance from it all the way he fingers tremble as he clutches  lamppost in desolate street for stability.           A wave of Santa Carla heat makes him pleasantly nauseous, an indescribable soundness in the feeling.  And then he sees him, hazy and dreamlike at first as if it’s all a       HALLUCINATION  forged by the drugs and he practically  vomits  but contains it with half of a heave, the back of his hand pressed to lips. 

“I doing this… to  forget  about you, Sammy… You can’t just do this. You can’t… you can’t… it’s not  fair  to me, Sammy.”   Prays his words don’t slur to terribly.  Doesn’t want his BROTHER to see him like this even if he’s a mere phantom. 

                       It’s the drugs…  it’s just the fucking drugs, Mike.

Life’s been weird, fucked up, strange, any sense of the word since the very day he ‘died ’ (for lack of a better word). Tonight’s just another night on his own, and it’s a rarity when he does spend the entire night with someone.  He lives on his own, is slumming it in a different hotel room every night really living though? Sleeps all day, tapes down the blinds, bought a new dog. Doesn’t quite know much else of his life besides food. Tonight’s one of those nights where he can’t hold back being absolutely starving any more.

The voice just screams the words of THIS WAS A BAD IDEA everywhere. In the deepest darkest corners of his mind, until his brother speaks. And  the way he acts is just ever so slightly... off. “Mikey? What’s up with you? What’s going on?”

“So you want me to do this  alone?”  The vocalization is  brittle,  sounds as if he’s starting to come apart at the  seams  and in all earnestness it was likely he was. His brother–  his  little brother,  the one he sought to protect, the one he held most dear–  was a   VAMPIRE.    Sam, his  brother, a half of him, had   taken a life   and sealed the deal on immortality.  “She doesn’t have to know,    Sam,   she    doesn’t    have   to   find   out,    you   could   at     least SAY SOMETHING TO HER , ANYTHING ,     I  don’t  care!     But  you  can’t  just abandon me,  we   PROMISED!”

“Mikey, she can’t know. She knows and... that’s it. I’m gone. I don’t want to leave, but mom can’t know anything.” He demands, and it’s pretty clear that he’s not gonna drop it on Michael’s side of the conversation. He’s almost amazed he hasn’t just up and left is brother alone by now. But the promise, it’s the only reason he hasn’t left.  “Can we go... like to my hotel or a restaurant? I can pay for it if you wanted food.” Mostly because the people he needs to stay alive, pay his rent.

For you graphic makers out there.

“You think  she’ll believe that, Sam?  I’ve already done just about everything I   can,    lied    to  her in every way I know how to make her feel  better,  it’s  not  like she’ll  buy  it  for  much  longer.”  He  hisses, the anger in his tone eclipsed by a deep-rooted sadness, the seedling of LOSS planted just over the morbidity of RAGE. Because no matter how hard he tries,  no matter the fact this is his  BROTHER,  he can’t help but feel a certain anger that chewed through to the bone.

“What else  am I supposed to have you say? Michael, she can’t know. All she ever wanted was to protect me, and I fucked it up. I’m disgusting and everything she wanted to protect me from. I can’t telll her this, and you won’t either.” He practically demands it to him. He can’t tell his mother, because if he does, he has to leave. Because he can’t do that to her. Or his grandpa. It’s amazing he let Michael know.

Was it acceptable to mourn the loss of his brother when he wasn’t really gone? Michael doesn’t know what to think; it had the weight of a loss  and  yet  his brother was still standing there,  physical  and  in  all technicality not dead   ( exactly ).   “She hasn’t left the  house  in  days.” He whispers. “The least you could do is leave a  note,  tell her you just need  to get  away or something,  I don’t know  anything. She’s  killing  herself like that, Sam!”

Sam’s heart tugs a little, just letting his eyes slide shut. He isn’t sure just what to say to Michael. But his lips part to answer him anyways, because mom can’t know. She can’t know anything. “Tell her... Tell her you bumped into me, tell her I told you I was sorry, and suffocating and  booked it before you could stop me.” He offers, attempting to offer some resolution so that his mother doesn’t just waste away all by herself. Well with Michael. But still alone. “Mom can’t know.” 

Heart leaps up in his throat and he feels nauseous, hands forced to find the wooden rails of the boardwalk to grip onto to keep himself standing.  His little brother, the one he loved,  he couldn’t have.  The sound  that  leaves his lips is a pained breath,  something close to a sob  without  the  edge  and  he focuses on his breathing for  a  long time,  still  can’t even face the other.   “I  just  want  my  brother  back, Sam,  please– remember what we said?   If dad  left  we had to stick together,  we’ve got to stick together, Sam.  PLEASE.”   Grips  rail  a little tighter before turning his head. 

     “—Please, just… I don’t want to lose you, Sam. I can’t, please.”

The younger boy’s head shakes a little. He’s unsure himself. Not sure what to tell Michael. That his brother is still in there? Because he is, but there isn’t much left standing. Just an empty shell, an a face. His little brother is gone for the most parts. Whatever remains isn’t really him. But Sam just sighs. “I don’t... I can’t be Sam fully again. But we can talk, and hang out a little sometime. Just... I’m not coming home. Not after all of this happened. And mom can’t know. Grandpa can’t know. Nobody.” Just Michael. Because Michael’s the only one Sam trusts fully. “Okay?

His breath is naught but a shudder past lips, feeling distant from himself  for  a  brief  second,  as  if  watching from  afar,  from  some nondescript’s  point of view and for a  second  everything is  alright. Everything is not alright.  The words don’t come in part because he wouldn’t know what to say and because he just  can’t.   Just  stares at  his  brother  before  releasing his grip,  fingers moving  to  cover lips before he can finally compute a verbal reaction. 

“Who was it,  Sam?  I’ll  stake  the bastard and we can just get this over with. Sam, please, it’s okay now.  We can fix this.  It’ll be just like last time, you just have to tell me who the head vampire is…”

Oh dear Michael. He doesn’t know yet. Doesn’t know why it’s  just not that easy to get back his Sam. Because his Sam is dead. The one in front of him opens lips to speak, before letting them shut again. Unable to spit it out immediately. It takes a good few minutes for his lips to open again; finally speaking words Michael definitely doesn’t want to hear.

“It’s too late for that.”

It’s split second the way Michael closes the gap between them after he speaks, hands gripping the others shoulder and he gives a firm shake.  “What did you do, Sam?  What the hell did  you  do?”   The  anger  in  his tone is  eclipsed  by  FEAR, shadowed  over  by  some  form   of  unspoken  grief  and  he knows the answer to his own question–      had feared it from the beginning–       but just has to hear it for himself.

He’s almost frightened by the reaction his brother has, but  he’s not surprised at all. Just avoiding eye contact, “I needed something to do. When you left. And the Frog brothers and I kept working together. I thought I’d be okay... and I couldn’t.” His voice is just so soft, hesitating. Still avoiding eye contact, still almost scared by it. But he knew it’d probably come around.

The most he  can manage is to  blink, like maybe the image of his brother is a  mirage  he’s stumbled upon in some   form   of    STUPOR.    “Sammy?”     Takes  a  step forward, slowly,  like his little brother is an  animal  he’s trying  tenderly  not to scare  off.   “Where  the  hell  you been, we’ve been looking everywhere for you…”

This is gonna be bad. The first words out of his mouth almost an instant give away. But he has to set it down this very moment. “Don’t tell mom, Mike. You can’t tell her I’m okay. She needs to think I’m...” Dead. Because dead is better than undead. Because he can’t do that to his mom. Not after she promised they’d be okay. Because he fucked that up. “You can’t tell mom.”