After getting off the port along with other people from Vailburg, I don’t bother searching for a motel. The first thing I want to do is look for my brother, Eros. With my bag over my shoulder, I start walking ahead in the unknown place.
The place is dark and gloomy that it almost reminds me of Mery Heights. Most of the buildings look rustic with the wall paints mostly peeling off or the windows and doors being half broken.
The locals mostly wear dark and shabby clothes, with some of them looking at me with a constant stare. Exiting the port area, I walk along the sidewalk as I take out the piece of paper with an address written on it.
Brinecliff Medical Center.
A man with unsteady steps was passing by my side when he suddenly bumps into me.
“Watch it,” he mutters with a slur, looking up at me with a glare filled look.
“I apologize. Do you know where the Brinecliff Medical Center is?” I ask him.
“Why? You want to get admitted there?” He jokes and chuckles like he is loving his own pathetic joke.
Shaking my head, I ignore him and continue walking when I ask another passerby the same question only for him to ignore and walk away.
But accidentally, I stumble into a little boy who hits his body against my waist so hard that he falls on his ass.
“Hey, you okay?” I ask him, kneeling down and helping him stand up.
He simply nods and looks down. Leaning his hand down he picks up my paper before passing it to me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” I mutter and stand up.
He remains silent and keeps looking at the paper in my hand.
I frown following his gaze and ask him. “Do you know where this place is?” I tap on the address.
He nods slowly and gestures to me to follow him. He titters away with his small feet while I am right behind him. He seems to be six or seven probably and already seems to know this place very well. But unlike others, he is in a somewhat decent dress, wearing a gray shirt with blue pants. We continue our journey for several miles before he stops before an old, three-story building.
I take in my surroundings, feeling my heart racing just from thinking about my brother living in this disastrous place for years. It only makes me want to kill Geryon all over again.
The kid runs ahead, getting inside and I follow him in. A pungent smell right away greets me making me scrunch my nose in disgust. As I step inside furthermore, I get the strong fragrance of medicines mixed with the disgusting smell of pee and vomit probably.
Fucking hell.
Water leaks from the ceiling and the walls look like they haven’t been fixed for centuries.
The kid runs to the reception desk and stands beside a woman who I’m guessing to be the receptionist. She looks down at him with a frown.
“What are you doing here? I told you to go back to-”
When the kid points at me she stops talking and stands straight. “Can I help you with something?”
I nod and stalk towards her. “I’m here to look for a patient. Eros. He was brought here from Vailburg a few years ago.”
She nods. “Let me check the register.”
She gets a thick, long register that is so dusty that when she places it on the table, I feel some of the dust coating my face. I give a quick rub and my eyes fall on the kid who is looking at me with innocent eyes, hiding behind the woman’s dress, feeling shy.
Only if I had such innocence left within me when I was his age. The only time I felt that purity back in life was when I was with Agatha.
It was the toughest decision for me to walk out of her life, but I’d rather be away from her and know she is happy and safe, rather than be with her and cloud her life with my darkness again.
“Yes. He is in room 215 but he must be on the balcony side as usual. But you are…?” she asks.
“His brother.”
She simply nods and gives me a paper. “This is a pass to meet the patients. The balcony is on the third floor, left corridor and goes straight.”
“Thank you.”
I walk ahead and the more steps I take, the more horrible the scenario of this place I witnessed. There is no doubt this place hasn’t been cleaned for ages and it’s a surprise the woman at the reception was not puking every second from the gut-wrenching smell. I hear a few faint screams coming from some rooms I pass by like it was screams of agony and sufferings.
But I won’t stop.
Few wards are standing at the hallways for protection and looking over the patients of this place and even they look quite miserable. Reaching the third floor, I feel my pulse racing all of a sudden as the distance between me and my brother is starting to become minimal.
I am finally going to see him…after such a long time that it feels like several eternities have passed. I try to take deep breaths to calm myself down, but the questions in my head make my throat feel clogged with nervousness and doubt.
Will he recognize me?
Does he remember me at all?
How will he react?
Confused? Angry? Broken?
I see a door open at the end of the hallway and continue my steps. There is a ward standing there and when he looks at me, he frowns with a questioning look.
“Who are you?” he asks, standing in front of the door.
“I’m here to see Eros.” I show him the pass. “Is he here?”
He nods, gesturing at the balcony. “He is sitting on the bench. You can go and see him.”
Gulping the lump in my throat I enter the balcony, greeted by the cold wind blowing and few worn out leaves falling from the nearby tree are scrunching underneath my steps.
When I look to my right, I find the bench and someone sitting there with his back facing me.
My heart beats so fast I can hear it drumming in my ears. The man was lost in his thoughts so much that he doesn’t notice my presence, even when I halt by his side. And when I recognize his face, a wave of relief washes over me that I feel beyond overwhelmed.
“Eros,” I whisper his name. But he keeps looking at the ground like I don’t exist for him.
I kneel beside him, touching his shoulder. “Eros…it’s me.”
He blinks a few times like he has returned to reality and turns to face me. He looks just like I remember him but slightly older and physically weak. His dark brown hair moving along with the wind. His raven black eyes are filled with emptiness and misery as the dark circles indicate the sleepless nights he has been through. His skin is pale and while along with his cheekbones looking thin from weakness.
He frowns as if his mind is processing with thoughts about who I am which only makes my heart and soul start to crack with agony like a fragile glass.
“It’s me, Eros. Eryx…your brother,” I mutter with a pleading tone.
His silence only wrecks me furthermore as I hold his face. “Eros…do you remember me?” I ask the question that has been dreading in my mind since I got here.
No words.
Please, God. Don’t punish me this way.
“Please, Eros, try to remember. We are brothers,” my tone turns frantic. “Remember when as kids we would fight over toy cars but then seeing you make that sad face, I would give it to you. And that time when you were flirting with a girl and his boyfriend came to beat you up, but instead of saving you we both got our asses kicked.”
I chuckle at the memory, silently begging him to remember those moments…the times when the shadow of the Magdalene and our parents were miles away from us.
He finally responds but instead of nodding he shakes his head, prying away from my hold.
“You can’t be my brother,” he mutters in a groggy, deep voice. The same voice I have been dying to hear for such a long time.
But his words are like daggers to my already shattering heart.
“What?” I frown.
“My brother has always sworn to protect me but you left…you left me,” his voice starts to tremble with tears forming in his eyes.
“You can’t be Eryx. Because the Eryx I remember, promised the day we both left the prison that he will be with me…be my only true family. But you never came back.”
I nodded, looking down in shame and guilt. “I did promise, Eros. But fate was cruel to both of us, it tested us and our bond day after day. It has ruined us since the day we were born.”
I hold his hand tightly, holding determination and promise in my voice. “But no more, Eros. It all ends now.”
“It can never end for us, Eryx. The Magdalene will always follow us.”
I shake my head curtly. “Not anymore. It has been burned down to hell. The shadow of the Magdalene will no longer be in our life.”
He frowns. “What do you mean? You were at the Magdalene?”
“Yes. All this time I was there, serving for the devil who tainted us. The sins…the darkness…the deaths,” I let out a shaky breath, “I have seen it all and done it too. And it was all so that I could protect you. But if I knew this is how your life was going to turn out, I wouldn’t have sacrificed myself.”
I sniffle, seeing my brother shedding tears while he tries to reason with my scenario.
“But it’s all over now. I give you my word that from now on, we will have a better life…a life where our pasts won’t be part of our future.”
“Do you think we can do that?” he whispers.
“As long as we both have each other, we can do anything.”
Suddenly, he lets go of my hands and engulfs me in his arms, hugging me tightly. I return the gesture, feeling that soothing calmness settle in my heart that I lost the day I left my brother.
“Always together?” he asks.
“Always, brother. Always together.”
A few days pass by at Brinecliff. After finding Eros, I do everything possible to get him the fuck out of that rotten place.
But I also find out, due to lack of food and proper care for such a long time, Eros is physically weak. He can barely walk on his own. But I know my brother, he is strong enough to regain himself and I will help him in that path.
I rented a small room in an apartment to help Eros get physically and mentally better.
But there is also someone who keeps crossing my mind every minute of my day. A person who is the missing piece of my heart that I have left at Vailburg.
Agatha.
By now she must be all healed up and ready to take over her father’s inheritance. Perhaps soon she will also find someone who will make her happy and get married to him, having her own little family.
The mere picture makes me wish to go back to her, as the thought of her being with another man is tempting me to kill the fucker. But after what I have put her through, I know I wasn’t the man for her with whom she will have her happily ever after. Before I know it a memory of us being together crosses my mind.
Agatha lets out a deep sigh with her head resting on my shoulder. Her naked body pressing against mine as her fingertips draw lazy circles on my chest. My one hand is wrapped around her waist, feeling the curves of her hips while my other hand touches her arm.
Our eyes never leave each other’s gaze as we relish in the closeness while it’s raining heavily outside.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispers.
I simply nod, feeling my heart somersaults just from witnessing how beautiful she looks.
“I just wonder, despite this darkness in your life, if you ever had a good memory?” she asks.
I’m silent for a moment because no matter how many memory lanes I cross by I can never find a single moment that has not been tainted by my sins. I let out a shaky breath, moving my hand upwards to cup her cheek.
“I wouldn’t have bothered about making memories before because deep down I knew it wasn’t written in my fate. But with you…I wish to have as many memories as possible. With you my moments are never tainted by darkness, they are bloomed by your presence.”
She gifts me with her soft smile, leaning closer and planting a kiss on my lips.
“I believe that because with you…I feel the same,” she whispers.
“I’m sure you will poke a hole in the glass the way you are staring at it,” Eros mutters with a grunt as he is doing his leg exercise on the floor.
I blink a few times as I return back to reality…a reality where Agatha is no longer present. I gulp down the rest of the bourbon, setting the glass on the table before walking towards him. I kneel down and hold his legs and nod at him.
Understanding my sign, he only raises his half top of his body before leaning back and repeating the same motions.
“You were thinking about her, weren’t you?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“Eryx, don’t bullshit with me. You have been in this same Romeo pose for days now. If you miss her so much then go back to her.”
I sigh. “I can’t. It’s not that easy. After the things she has been through…”
Eros breathes heavily but doesn’t stop exercising as perspiration coats his forehead. “The way you described her to me a few days ago, I can tell she is stronger than you are and has a heart of an innocent soul.”
He stops and sits up, meeting my gaze while he breathes heavily. “I know you want to protect her and I know you love her like nobody else.”
He shakes his head with a light chuckle. “Fuck, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so protective towards a girl ever before. Even when you dated back in college, it was just for sex. But with her I can see in your eyes that she is your forever.”
“But I am not her forever.”
“Is it just to protect her or are you punishing yourself for the sins you committed against her, Eryx?”
I frown from his question, unable to find an answer for it.
“Ask yourself if you are protecting her from you or are you protecting her from the Eryx who was tainted by the devil that our parents brought upon us? Because deep down I feel like no matter what you are, she will accept you the way you are and even accept your flaws.”
“I have already said goodbye to her and if I go back and see her, I know I won’t be able to leave her ever again.” I run a hand through my hair. “Every time I see her beautiful face…every time I think about her beauty, I swear it hurts so much it’s unbearable.”
“Go after her, Eryx. You deserve to be happy and she is your happiness.”
I shake my head slowly, looking away. “What’s done is done. Some things can’t be changed.”
