j u n e | t w e n t y f o u r t h | 1 9 9 1

Pebbles shuffled under their bare feet, washed up and glinting under rays of light strung through the oaks. A peaceful silence held its breath over the water and blew gently across it’s glassy surface, inviting company. Sitting placidly on a jutting rock, the younger boy squinted his eyes and looked out over the lake.



Rolling fields in the distance. An abandoned farmhouse. Wild geese.



He edged forward and hung his legs in the calm, dark water until he could feel the smooth silt on the bottom. A heavy splash sounded, not but a yard away, as an apple-sized rock hurled into the water and disturbed it into ripples. The boy shaded his eyes with a hand and turned back to look at the pebbled shore to give a stern glance at the teenager, who was already rooting up another stone. This one plunged into the water, not quite as close to his head, but still within an unnerving distance. The teenager, already bored of throwing rocks, mulled around as the water lapped at his heels. He wished to be elsewhere.



Wading out further, Fledermaus attempted to place himself out of his brother’s range. The cool water crept up to his navel, even standing on his toes. The sun beat down. He cupped water in his hands and spilled it over his head to reverse the heat. It trickled through his hair and down his bare back. The other boy was climbing up a steep and jagged pile of rocks. Had their mother known, she never would have shooed them out so she could vacuum in peace.
Standing at the peak and arms outstretched, the fifteen-year-old stepped to the edge with a look of determination. He jumped the twenty feet and plunged into the deeper water. The wild geese abruptly flapped away. Masque resurfaced and brushed away the locks of hair plastered down over his forehead, while quiet words drifted to him.



“Dad told us not to climb up there.”
“Shut up. I don’t care.”




A summer wind pushed ripples toward them.
The younger shrugged.

“You’ll get into trouble-“
“I won’t get into trouble, as long as you don’t rat me out.” His words stung with a biting ferocity. Fledermaus knew his error. Timidly, he looked down without a word. His brother was suddenly closer, casting a shadow over him.

“You’re gonna keep your mouth shut. Aren’t you?” Too nervous to respond, the boy turned away. In music class, at school, his instructor once advised him to ignore a bully. "Don't give them the satisfaction."

Mr. Schwarzchild, perhaps, did not know that Masque got anything he wanted by force.

His hand grabbed a fist full of the boy's hair and yanked him back. The seven-year-old lost his balance and toppled backwards into the water. His brother's hands, like vices, gripped his shoulders.

"Aren't you, Maus?" He growled.

A silent nod yes.

His head was shoved under water without warning.

"You're such a lying sack of shit."

The young boy's small hands grabbed his brother's arms as they held him firmly against the soft silted bottom. That stinging rush hit his nasal passages as water flushed in. One hand moved from his shoulder and wrapped fingers around his throat instead.

Panic is a strange feeling.

A cold wind hit his face and he was suddenly out. Taking in a deep breath, his eyes hadn't even opened before he was back under again. He swallowed lake water upon return. Kicking madly was only wasting his energy. A burning ache settled in his lungs. The teenager held strong.

Desperate for air, he took in more water instead. Is this what death is like?

Would he?

A serene tranquility overcame him. His hands released their grip and he gave a final lazy kick. He no longer craned his neck forward, instead his head drifted back and touched the lake floor.
Masque lessened his weight against the hand around his young brother's throat. He let go of him completely, waiting for Fledermaus to scramble up and breath.

He didn't.

Eyes cast uneasily to the shore. What happens to boys who kill their siblings?

Masque found a hand beneath the dark water and pulled him up. He dragged him through the shallows. He had found a dead dog with his friends three years ago, and had dragged it by the tail. It felt almost the same.

A trail marked the rocky shore where the boy's body was hauled through it. Laying on his back, eyes lidded calmly despite the glaring sun. The teenager stared frantically down, frozen in his place. He only meant to scare him.

Panic is a strange feeling.

a p r i l | t h i r d | 1 9 8 5

Hands in his lap. His feet swung back and forth under the chair in time with the dull clicking antique clock on the wall. Back and forth.
“Sit still.”
The old man’s voice was cold and unfeeling. He didn’t look up from his newspaper. The child halted movement, but gave the man a deadly look from his place in the little wooden chair in the corner. He haughtily crossed his arms, twisting around uncomfortably in his charcoal gray uniform.
“I hate this school.” The young are so defiant.
The man lifted his lifeless, cataract-ridden gaze up and the boy with a frown tugging at his mouth.
“You’d better learn to like it while your parents continue to pay us to deal with you, Mister Rineheart.”
Only half an hour ago, the boy had to be pulled off the freckled O’Flatery kid at the playground while they threw punches. He ran his tongue over the split on his lip, bitter but proud. He found himself in this very office more than once a week.
Dusty books coated the shelved walls. They had had a horribly stale scent.
A loud metallic ringing broke the uncomfortable silence, and the blond boy jolted in surprise. The man didn’t flinch a muscle.
Children’s voices began to seep into the halls as the day had marked its end. The boy sourly thought of how he wouldn’t be leaving with them on the old, rattling yellow buses. His father would arrive to collect him instead, and silently drive him home before going back to work.
No punishment.
No harsh words.
They had given up, too.

f e b r u a r y | t w e n t y e i g h t h | 2 0 0 9

Quiet night in, delicate chords hung in the calm air.

Slow musical poetry.

Both minds fixed in serenity, both smiles reflected warmth. Words were unneeded, as the ivory keys spoke for them. She watched in a tranquil daze, thinking, dreaming, smiling. The inch between them shrank, and his fingers played another set of tones. He glanced at her, quickly, shyly, fondly.

She was loved.

Soft blue gaze and trace of a laugh. Her head leaned and rested on his shoulder- the tickle of her silky hair against his neck. The slow progression of chords halved in range as his hand drifted away from the instrument, fingertips brushing across her back in idle circles. A small contented sigh.

He was loved.

Ceasing to continue, his hand found her shoulder and rested there with a fragile squeeze. As if to hold on- to not let her slip away. The piano grew quiet. Curious, she tilted her head up at him. He paused, leaned, and pressed his smile to her lips- passed it to her like a candle shares its flicker of warmth.

One eternity of happiness is never long enough. But to live in that moment,

yes,

they knew happiness.

m a y | t w e l f t h | 1 9 9 5

“I’m calling the police-“
Frantic tears glistened in her eyes. Backed into a corner, between the stove and polished countertop, she held her eleven-year-old against her shaking knees. He could hear a sob escape her as she brushed her soft, now tousled, pale blond hair away from her face. Beautiful as a lily- that’s what her parents would say when she was a girl. She still was beautiful, in her younger son’s eyes, even now as she recoiled away in their pleasant daisy-yellow kitchen with tears streaking her cheeks. Silent and too frightened to move, the boy tried to remember if he had ever seen his mother cry like this before.
No, not like this.

“Call them.” The young man snapped, stepping closer. “I don’t fucking care.”
He grabbed a chair from around the table- where the whole family hadn’t dined together in years- and hurled it into the cabinets behind him. He was completely out of it. Trickles of sweat ran down from the shaved sides of his head, and his constricted pupils were glazed, frenzied and lost. Fledermaus knew he had changed in the past few weeks. It was a change that came in small clear bags and looked like rock candy....’something’phetamine. Probably not as sweet. It made him act strangely- and far more aggressive, as farfetched as that sounded.

His hands were at his sides, clenched and white-knuckled. He wanted to hurt someone. Did he? Felt like he had to. Mind cloudy, heart racing, and fists begging to destroy something. The hallway window and his bedroom door weren’t enough. His coward of a brother had to run and cling to the useless woman who dared call herself a mother.
As if she had ever cared about him.
As if she even considered him a son.

He stepped up to them, standing taller than the woman and eyes narrowed dangerously at her glistening blue ones. He fiercely took the boy by the shoulder, but she held on to him tightly. She refused to see him get hurt again.
“Rühr ihm ja nicht an, Masque!” She sobbed, warning him not to touch their "good son". The one that mattered. Her trembling free hand reached blindly behind her, pulling a ten-inch chef’s knife out of the wooden block on the counter and knocking it over in the process. She pointed it at him. He grabbed her delicate wrists and rendered her completely harmless, she might as well have defended herself with a spoon. The boy pressed himself against her legs, caught between their two bodies as Masque strongly held her back with a grimace. Lily finally dropped the knife on the counter, now fully crying. She refused to look at him.

He let go, with a bit of a shove. Turned his back wordlessly and briskly exited their kitchen. He kicked something over in their living room which clattered to the ground before throwing open the front door and slamming it shut behind him. It wouldn’t be so bad if he left for good.
Eyes reddened and sniffing, the woman was already by the other wall with the phone to her ear and murmuring things to herself in French, waiting for an answer.

Masque was picked up in a patrol car about an hour later, wandering around a few blocks over. That was his first night in jail- the first of many in the years to come. By morning he was more or less his normal self- however undesirable that was. She had to drive him back home, completely silent as if she was alone in the car. He didn’t waste any time in retreating to his room once they returned. He slammed the splintered door shut and started rolling up a banknote.

d e c e m b e r | t w e n t y t h i r d | 1 9 8 7

Flurries of dancing white flecks obscured the view from the parlor’s windows. A warm fire glowed in the flourished marble hearth, captivating with its smoldering embers and flames climbing the freshly chopped hickory logs. Evening was just beginning to settle into the quiet house. The blond boy was seated on the floor, close enough for the fire’s heat to warm him, and staring vacantly into it. The scent of food cooking drifted in from the kitchen, where the occasional noise reminded him that someone was in there. He wasn’t really hungry.
Picking tiredly at the sores around his fingernails, he heard someone quietly enter the room behind him, their footsteps muffled in the dusty rose colored carpet. They grew closer and stopped just behind him.
Giving an exasperated sigh, he turned his head to see a small hand holding something out to him. It was his brother, who barely stood taller than he was sitting down. Innocent brown eyes avoided all but the floor. He simply stood there, waiting for his offering to be accepted.
Narrowing his eyes at the thing he held, which looked to be something that was poorly wrapped in an old comic book page, Masque finally spoke in a fairly demanding tone.
“What’s that?”
A pause, followed by a hushed answer.
“It’s for you.”
For him? Was this kid actually giving him something?
He took it, skeptically. It was indeed a small parcel, which undoubtedly had been wrapped by the boy himself. Peeling off the copious amounts of tape, he slipped the object out of the thin colorful paper. It was a small disc-shaped toy, one of the cheap little games where you had to roll the silver balls around and land them in the divots. A timewaster, most basically. He stared down at it for a few quiet moments. The younger boy began to back away, as he had accomplished his task. His brother’s voice stopped him.
“Thanks.”
It was all he could think of. What else was there to say? He couldn’t wrap his mind around the reason Fledermaus had decided to willingly give him something, ever. It was a lousy gift, of course, but it was so much better when there was nothing to compare it with. He had woken up, alone, that morning, and barely a word had been spoken to him throughout the whole day. Their nanny, an old irritable German woman, had even refused to let him go play with his friends on the grounds that it was “too cold” to go outside. No gifts, no phone call from the parents, no acknowledgement it was his birthday at all. It was painfully obvious that nobody cared.
Nobody, strangely, except “the favorite”.

“What else did you get?” The boy asked him softly, watching him carefully turn the toy in his hands, the silver balls rolling across.
“Um. Just this.”
There was another pause. The brown-haired boy held a look of confusion, as if this wasn’t expected.
“Mom and Dad didn’t leave anything for you?”
Masque shook his head, still focusing on the game. How strange. In the previous month, when he had turned four, the festivities lasted practically all day.
“Did they even call?”
His brother shrugged. The fire let out a loud pop, and red glowing specks drifted upwards. His eyes wandered curiously to the kitchen.
“Maybe you should ask Frauline Sophia….”
“Yeah, except she’s dumber than a pile of rocks.” Masque stated bitterly, unable to resist the grin that followed. He looked up to see his brother grinning too. It may have been the only time in their lives that they shared a smile. And on such an awful, beautifully white evening, two days before another Christmas without their parents. Bittersweet was the only way to describe the feeling.

m a r c h | t h i r t i e t h | 2 0 0 2

Slow and painful, his eyes opened. It was deadly quiet. His heart was still hammering the way it was when he retreated to the corner of the hallway, against the mahogany banister, and pleaded. The fine chardonnay-colored carpet where his head lay was stained with patterns of deep red, the same which trickled down from his nose. The same which trailed down from the top of twenty three stairs, of which he lay at the bottom of. He tasted it briefly on his tongue. The terrible, ripping pain in his left shoulder was close to unbearable. Tears stung in his eyes, but he held them back, lest he was seen crying. As if he didn’t look weak enough already. Sudden noises from up the stairs tore his attention away from staring into the carpet fibers, daring not to move. Sounds of things hitting the walls and shelves being cleared. His father referred to these violent episodes as “raising hell”. Then again, he was rarely around to experience them. No, that was a privilege almost exclusively reserved for Fledermaus. In fact, it sounded much like he was fortunate enough to have his own room being trashed at the moment.
Second time in a month.

Long-strided footsteps marked the hallway and rapidly descended the curved regal staircase. His brother stepped over his tense form as he remained positively still. Dusty black Doc Martens moved into his limited view of the floor. He was positive that Masque wasn’t above delivering a kick to his face. The thought made him wince.

It felt like too long before anything happened. A metallic tick clipped the dark foyer’s silence. It sounded horrifically like the chambers rotating in his revolver. The thought that one is about to be murdered is difficult to register.
The teenager flinched and shut his eyes tightly as something fluttered to the floor, mere inches from his face. A short stack of papers, with a flickering orange flame eating away at the corner. They were pieces of music; various movements of Schubert’s work, swiped from the music stand in his room. It was a piece he had been diligently working on perfecting for a few months, now shrinking into charcoal black curls.

Masque took him by his injured arm and cruelly pulled him up, ignoring the sound of his bones grinding together. The intense pain made it difficult to stand up without cringing and choking back the tears. Bruised cheek and blood still dripping down over his mouth, he was forced against the wall. The familiar feeling of a hand at his throat- all too familiar.

But this was the last time.

“You sorry son of a bitch.”

This was it.

“I hope you rot in hell.” He threw him back down to the floor.


…See you there.

m a r c h | t h i r t y f i r s t | 2 0 0 2

A mix of soft pink and blue warmed the sky cast over the drab, clinical building as the day crept in. Tired, beaten, and alone, the young man waited on a solitary bench inside the bus terminal’s main hall. Only the scuffed floor held his miserable gaze.
A handful of people had given him curious glances as they passed, noting the tracks of dried blood down his button-up shirt and the red marks across his face. He held a ticket in his hand, turning it over between anxious fingers.
Departing Chicago, arriving nowhere.
Any place at all would have been better than that large, extravagant house, wrecked with the indignity of a broken family. He couldn’t watch his parents pack up and leave on another business trip. He couldn’t sit through another day at school, where the expectations were higher than the worth of any student. He couldn’t stand to watch his brother snort lines of coke and attack him while under the holds of another addiction.

His connections to them were over.

Beside him was a backpack stuffed with various things he had decided that he couldn’t part with. A old, battered violin case leaned against his legs.
Once Masque had finished with him, he had stumbled back up to his room and thrown things together in the bag, locked himself in the bathroom and rinsed the smears of blood off of his face with lukewarm water and trembling hands, and called a cab.
The following hours were spent mostly in the waiting room of the nearest hospital, except for the excruciating two-minute procedure of manipulating the joint of his shoulder back into place. Another cab, and 4 AM he was driven to the bus station. Bought a ticket to the furthest destination they could offer. Whether it would ever be far enough away was yet to be determined.

A tired, muffled drawl in broken English announced the boarding of his bus over the loudspeaker. Standing with a certain hesitation, he took his belongings and made way to the terminal gate. More puzzled expressions as he found a seat by the fogged window. A weathered but kindly gray-haired man even asked him if he was alright. He lied- said he was fine, and thanked him. The vehicle pulled off, and he took in the last few glances of his third hometown.

j u l y | s e v e n t h | 1 9 8 6

Long lines of scarlet red snaked down his pale arm, collecting at his elbow and dripping off onto his shoes as he held his bleeding hand up. He winced at the mere sight of it and glanced around as if to check for anyone who would help him, even though it had only been pleasantly silent outside on the dry summer day. His eyes narrowed in an angry warning glance at the rusty, nearly ancient, swing set, reprimanding it for slicing through his palm and spilling his blood on the thirsty brown grass. The pain was enough to initiate the biting of his lower lip- and he took pride in getting through a fist-fight smiling.
Shaking his hair away from his eyes, he gave in to the idea of going inside and letting his mother deal with it. She would have most likely yelled at him later if he hadn’t.
Little clumps of red dots marked the path from the kitchen’s back door to the study upstairs where he found her. Back turned to him, and talking into the telephone.
“Mom.” He said quietly- loud enough for her to hear over her discussion with a client. Her voice didn’t even pause. The ten-year-old tried again, a bit louder. She finally gave a small backward glance at him, elegant eyebrows furrowed with impatience.
“One moment-“ She remarked into the phone, followed quickly with a cold and harsh “What are you doing, Masque?”
He was nothing less than taken aback by her callous reaction. Standing there as she glared at him, he showed his liberally bleeding hand without a word. Typical mothers would rush their child to the nearest clinic and have the deep laceration stitched, paired with a vaccination. Had Mrs. Lily Rineheart cared an ounce for her oldest son, she may have as well.
But this wasn't the case.
She scolded him for staining the carpet where he stood, told him she was busy, and resumed her conversation.
Rarely did the boy feel like crying- he insisted on being tougher than that- but, god, he came close.

d e c e m b e r | n i n e t e e n t h | 1 9 9 8

Soft applause filled the auditorium with the cue of the conductor’s falling hands. He showed his ensemble a content smile before swiftly turning to the audience with a deep bow while the praise grew louder. The young musicians behind him stood apprehensively in recognition, wearing expressions that reflected the relief of a pleasing end to eighteen months of practice for that very moment. Their effort had placed them as one of the best performing groups of their age in the nation with numerous awards to show for it, and that night’s concert was of large significance, as it was their last of the year. Teeth-bearing smiles of proud parents flashed from the dark music hall, and they made their exit off the stage.
Two hours passed slowly. Loosely clutching a folder full of music sheets, a solitary adolescent leaned tiredly against the brick wall outside the entrance of the elegant school building. Every other student had been greeted cheerfully by their parents once the concert had ended, given flowers or showered with praise, and left into the chilled, blustery night. Giving his windswept hair a shake, he shuddered briefly in the cold and looked around apprehensively, as if expecting a pair of headlights to roll up into the parking lot and take him home.
His parents were in Ireland. They promised they would be back that day just in time for his concert- and all experience should have told him not to believe a word of it, for once again, they weren’t there.
At this point, there was no valid reason to still be waiting. He called the house and hour before and as a last resort left a message with a humble request to be picked up, as if there was any use. His brother was god-knows-where and wouldn’t come get him even in the rare event he was in any condition to be driving.
And so, finally giving up the wait for nothing, the teenage boy breathed out slowly with a cloud of vapor dissipating in front of him, pulled his black pressed blazer closer to his body and began the long walk home.

n o v e m b e r | t w e n t y e i g h t h | 1 9 9 6

For weeks, the blonde woman had anticipated the night. The year, as it came to a close, had been marked by a move from their home in Frankfurt. She called it “new opportunities” as if she and her husband weren’t doing well enough. It felt like escapism; at least to her son. He couldn’t help but think they were both ripping up their roots and planting that dying tree somewhere new. A pitiful attempt at starting over. Like the years leading up to it would magically vanish; erased from memory. Perhaps desperate decisions weren’t uncommon in a battered mind.


But nevertheless, here they found themselves in an extravagant new house; nicer than the last, maybe. And the prospect of this night of American tradition was nothing less than exciting for Lily. The French born woman adored the idea, and was happy to finally be able to share the holiday with her family once they had moved to America. To everyone’s surprise, things had been unusually calm around the household. Hoarse shouts resonating between the walls had become a regular occurrence before the move. But this stretch of peace did nothing other than instill that feeling in the parents that they had accomplished something. As if this would last forever. Naïve as it was, it felt good to see them happy. His father was lively, his mother smiled more. Their children behaved. Three months and this was the clean slate they so desperately needed.

And a mere week before now, it came to an end as all good things do.

Crash. And Burn.

They sat together, more or less, in the dining room paneled with English Oak, with an unsettling oppression of noise, like a family in a cage. Like an experiment being watched. The food she had spent all day cooking was mostly untouched and growing colder by the minute. His father, statuesque at the head of the table, had his fingers woven through his hair and he wore a tired grimace. Sniffling and the occasional tearful whimpers came from the other end, as his mother stared off vacantly with delicate cheeks flushed red and a glistening in her eyes. Her much anticipated Thanksgiving had amounted to the usual nothing. Silently, the boy pushed things around his plate with a fork and waited for the uneasy weight of tension to wear off. Across from him was an empty space. Vast windows lined the far wall, painted with the deep blue sky a heavy Chicago wind whistled against the glass. One night without bickering was obviously too much to ask for. The heavy silence that followed was nothing less than a noxious gas seeping into the room and pressing them to escape. But no one could make the first move, and no one could show the least amount of faith.

j a n u a r y | t e n t h | 2 0 1 0

To find atonement seeking him out at such a late hour was unexpected, but welcome given time. Three knocks drew him away from the melodic keys, glasses carefully placed on the stand as he stood to meet reformation eye to eye. A glance at the nearby dial confirmed it was a curious time for visits. Nevertheless, he pulled the brass handle and revealed what he least anticipated in the form of a man leaning nonchalantly in the doorframe. Every atom of his body tensed instinctually, like a hare in the presence of his hungry predator, the wolf.

And yet he was disinclined to pounce; his prey unwilling to flee.

The wave of rigidity must not have been subtle, for the unusually placid pair of eyes boring back into their own likeness swept briefly over him, brow furrowed. His visitor expressed a short greeting; a low “Hey” in a voice uncharacteristically clear with nothing scraping away at his words. The returned solitary syllable was just as short and twice as uneasy.

“Hi.”

Silence filled the gap between them, for a good moment. Then the taller man’s hand introduced a perfectly white envelope, tucked away in the leather jacket that always speckled his brother’s memories. He took it reluctantly, noting the name on the front in a smudged left-handed scrawl, but it wasn’t his.

“I figured you could get that to her quicker than I could.” He said plainly. “There’s a check in there too. Tell her she can just fill in the blank.”

Eyes met again, the younger’s reciprocating an expression of doubtfulness.

“She’s not going to take your money.”

“Mhm.” He grunted, seemingly unsure how to stubbornly remedy that. “Well, I bet you can convince her.”

Past experience told him to drop it; let Myst do what she will with his offering. He fell silent and nodded in understanding.

“Also,” The other man started again, clearing his throat, “wanted to say thanks. You know, for getting me help.”

A twinge of surprise flashed over his brother’s face before he asserted “I…I didn’t do anything.”
The blond man’s gaze drifted off down the empty hallway where he stood, a short exhale drawn through his nose to preface his answer. “Yeah you did. Don’t think I’d be here if you hadn’t done anything.”

Again his statements went unchallenged, but the younger man couldn’t stammer out a “you’re welcome” and take credit for anything, certain that he had done nothing that wasn’t out of necessity. He had to do something; all grudges, vendettas, and bad blood aside, they were still brothers.

“And- also…” The words were static, projected slowly one after the other. His fingers fidgeted uncomfortably while his eyes fixed on anything but him. “I figure it’s a good time to say sorry. For everything. And, yeah, I know saying that doesn’t compensate for all the shit over the years but...it’s all I’ve got. So, yeah. I’m sorry.”

That discomfited silence fell again, all while he avoided the other’s glance. He was ready to turn and leave before a string of mild words came through.


“…Well I uh- I forgive you.”

The silence, now, seemed so insignificant. With a glimpse back at him, he saw the look of honesty. The look of potential reconciliation, of whatever they could make of it. But it would take time for amends to heal the damage of decades and file away the deep scars running between them. And it started here.

Fledermaus extended his hand, unassuming, in a genuine effort to start the real healing and Masque shook it lightly, flashed a faint ghost of his signature grin, and left.