"JOSH, WHAT THE F U C K DID YOU DO?!
WHAT DID YOU F U C K I N G DO?!".
The way Brandon’s voice carried through his mind made it feel like he was standing in the apartment, hollering with panicked shock as he’d been the night in the motel room but as the twenty seven year old lit up a Marlboro and opened up his laptop, he reminded himself his mind was echoing the words of a twin brother that’d been six feet under the dirt for the last ten years. This was just another one of them mind-trips he’d become familiar with experiencing after something triggered his guilty-conscious and tonight, it’d been triggered through sticking Tav Bello in the upper arm with a decent enough shot of speedball, the anonymous blackmailing challenge had oddly enough replicated the very secret he was being threatened of exposed on - - with someone who almost played a part in himself or at the very least, been the inspiration and well aware of the truth all these years.
Inked appendages worked against the laptop, typing in his password then pulling up the pictures. A heavy exhale being made through his nostrils seconds before he’d clicked on the very last picture the Nash Twins ever took together, a picture that only existed because the twins were intentionally hoarding up the bathroom before school to piss off their little sisters. There was nothing more energizingly comical than two girls old enough to depend on a face-full of makeup being locked out of where the make-up was, before school. The smirk that formed on his features was short-lived, the visual reminiscing soon fading from the day in the bathroom with Brandon to the day at the motel, set two days after the house-fire that killed both parents and sisters: the having barely escaped brother successfully getting into contact with the wanted for questioning but couldn’t be found sibling he’d probably should’ve set up instead of agreeing to talk one on one before going to the station. That probably would’ve saved his life, got some justice served to the deserving, .. B u t t….
"Josh, what the f u c k did you do?!
WHAT DID YOU F U C K I N G DO?!".
"As the older of the twins continued to repeat the same eleven words, he buried his face into the palm of his hands, body now rocking back and forth ever so slightly from the edge of the rippled mattress in an overcome tick. “ I didn’t know you were in the house, B.. I swear.” The words flowed from Josh’s lips in a thick and almost mono-toned fashion, the lack of empathetic remorse was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl; here he was two days after his kid sisters and parents got smore’d in the fire he started, higher than the Colorado rockies and not shedding a single tear. Had Brandon not been blinded by the false sense of immunity his own loyalty reflected, he would’ve seen just how f u c c k i n g emotionally f u c k e d Josh really was; he wasn’t troubled or rebellious, he was goddamn detatched. The red flags had all been there, just nobody bothered to look. In the cold light of day, when Brandon began to rack his memory for any type of significant emotional moment of Josh’s, the only ones that came - -- were when it had to do with his heroin and sometimes, that girl Jackie he was dating. Not when he stomped on a kid’s face in a fight after school and hospitalized him, not when he got arrested any of the several times or even pushed their sister down the steps and broke her arm… When he was almost out of heroin,when he couldn’t find his heroin… When he did a shot of heroin, when he was high off heroin: the only rageful, saddened, cheerful or true content affecting ones. That almost made Brandon puke,
“….I can’t believe you f uckin’ did this, what is wrong with you, man?... Our sisters burned to death… Why? Cause you got kicked out, told your heroin couldn’t come in the f u ck ing… “ He stopped, needing to breathe from the pace his words were being delivered. Having fallen silent and half-uninterested in the little breakdown the older was having, Josh had been fiddling with the change in his pocket while leaning his shoulder against the bathroom door-frame, vision steadied on the bottle of dangling from the hold of his left hand. “B shut the f u c k up, had nothing to do with my dope, had to do with that whole family being nothin’ but silver-spoon suckin, bible thumping cunts. Had to do with me hating them all, always in my f u c k’in’ business, pretending to give a shi t, just to talk sh it later to their friends or siblings.. Listen, I needed help and instead of tryin’ themselves, they sent me to a motherf’uckin’ strange dude in a small room.. What parent does that s h I t ? Talk about droppin’ the ball there, love my ass.” He pushed off the wall with the bottom of his Osiris, now heading over to drop on the mattress to the right of his twin, shaking the bottle outward for him to take. “Here, have a few shots with me and just.. Chill a minute then we’ll figure sh it out… Here.”
;His self awareness finally ripped him free of the flashback just for a few seconds, enough for him to take a few drags off the bad habit smoldering to ash in between his finger and to wipe at a few tears formed. “F u c k me, man.” He muttered out loud, a harsh clearing of his throat disrupting the peace and quiet his loft apartment didn’t quiet have enough of. The one night he didn’t want to be alone - he was, wasn’t that some poetic karma served? There was nothing about reliving this night that did anything positive for him, all it did was smack the unhealing wound of bitter truth until it was bloddy and raw. Losing his brother definitely was the hardest thing he’d ever went through and to top that experience off, the responsibility he had on this, over the course of the last ten years almost thrown him off the deep end, finished the family tree. Mainly the reason he usually didn’t interact with many unless the atmosphere involved drugs, booze and music or the conversations were casual and full of pointless topics. These triggered trips down guilt-mountian were hard to climb back to the top from.
He had a few more episodes of tug-o-war between self-awareness with the present and his mentality on the past: he re-lived a few bouts of that night, mostly the highlighted parts of their heart-to-heart while Josh pretended to drink from the bottle Brandon’d become almost too eager to and then he reached the ending, one he couldn’t pull out from despite his efforts…
The ketamine and liquid morphine that the whiskey’d been spiked with kicked in pretty quickly, their conversations began becoming jumbled, Brandon’s words became less coherant and then he’d become unconscious, nearly falling off the edge of the bed as his upper half inclined forward. “Woah, I got you… “ Josh’s movements were quick and almost graceful as stood up and pushed the other backward against the mattress, now collecting the syringe of 50cc fentynal from his back pocket, “I’m really sorry for this B, man.. I don’t /wanna/ do this sh*t but I mean…” He paused as his fingers uncapped the tip and he searched for protruding enough vein, the one on his upper left arm sufficing. Upon the needle tearing through the sensitive flesh and filling from entering the vein, Josh took a moment to brace himself, “Least you’re gonna be with ‘em.”
And that was it, it was over with one quick push of the plunger, the older twin had officially been pushed into a fatal overdose: the first symptom being shown was the nose-bleed and then as the shallow breaths began with heavy rise and falls of his chest, Josh perched on the mattress and pulled his older twin into his lap for a tight embrace, his jaw tightened to suppress the sobs that came with the tears saturating his face and the hem of his shirt. “You’re okay, I got you… It’s okay..” Cheek rested against the now convulsing twin, Josh began small back and forth rocks – having fallen into a what’d be several hour daze. “ I love you, big brother.”
