here we go guys we are so backkkkk
Aldryx knew waking up today, specifically, was a bad idea. He could feel it in his spine, the creak in the wood and the rattling of the doorknob when he left his room. The house was silent. Suspiciously silent, the only kind of quiet Aldryx wished didn’t happen so often. The same silence he felt before Agoti possibly endangered everyone within the range of 50 metres.
He loved the quiet. Not this quiet.
In the kitchen stood Sol, watching the espresso machine work its magic with a small hum through the morning silence, a time of peace now feeling like an ambush being anticipated.
“We should go soon,” he mumbled, hoping to not alert Agoti to their current location and buying them time to flee.
The coffee was finally done, indicated the beeps of the machine where the last drops filtered out and dripped into the mug. Sol stared, and without missing a beat, sipped the burning coffee and licked his lips, “and where to? He’ll find us anyways, might as well be in our own home.”
“We have time, you can’t–”
“Do you?” Solazar pointed behind him, and just like a cat, Aldryx’s shoulders tensed and a visible shiver creeped up his spine and into the back of his head, where his tendrils twitched and the ends stood upright
He didn’t have to turn to look at what Sol was pointing at.
“Guys! Someone shipped a huge box of foam bricks to our place!” Agoti stood in the doorway, holding up one of said foam bricks like a weapon and waved it about.
“Put that down! It’s not ours!” Aldryx reached for the brick, but Agoti was faster.
“Well, yeah, but still, you think they pay the deliveryman enough for him to come back and claim the shipment? And I opened it anyway, so it’s ours.” He grinned like he just won a whole box full of weapons to terrify everyone– and he did.
“That’s not how this works–” He was then cut off with a flying brick. It barely dodged him, and while it wouldn’t have done any serious damage, he still did not want a brick to the face at 8 in the morning, foam or not.
He picked up the brick and flung it straight at his brother, hitting him square in the shoulder. Unfazed, Agoti dragged out the box and there seemed to be at least forty in there, and in a game-announcer-like voice, Agoti had basically declared war, “Brick fight!!”
Both scrambled for the box and grabbed however many they could fit within their arms and ran to the living room, using whatever cushions they could find as walls. Dozens of bricks were flying everywhere and Sol could only watch as he sipped on his coffee while the boys desperately tried to hit each other while attempting (the key word here is attempting) to not hit the trinkets on the shelves.
“Are you boys done?” Sol stared as he downed the last drop of his coffee, the mug finally empty with the faint coffee stains from using the mugs through the years.
“Last brick dad– take that!” Agoti grabbed the last one in the box and hurled it at Aldryx, who again, like all the other bricks, dodged it swiftly. The last brick however, went through the wall with a loud wham, and broke a hole into the thin walls of the house.
“... that wasn’t foam. Agoti, how the hell did you not realise that was a real brick?!” Aldryx whirled around and in the distance, the brick could be heard landing somewhere within the walls.
Aldryx loved the silence. Not this one. Not one where his brother wasn’t in. At some point a year ago, he thought he hated the silence that signalled the chaos his brother would reel in.
The silence that was truly his brother. Not… this.
Not the silence that the fan’s blades whirred and echoes of the dripping tap bounced off the thin walls, off the wall that Agoti broke with the brick. Not the house where Agoti would have been watching television, or playing on his computer in the dead of night and leaving his room with eyebags in the morning. Not the silence that now belonged to him and his father, and only them.
Only them. Sometimes, Aldryx wished the brick actually hit him. Maybe the pain would have made him remember better, maybe he would have felt more anger towards his brother for the brick. Maybe even Sol would lecture him for breaking the walls, instead of begging for his return. Or that Sol would be upset about him staying up too late or leaving a light on, instead of wondering what he’s doing or if he remembered them, or…
Silence. That was all they knew now. And a hole in the wall and in them, too.
