Twelve Years Ago
Marissa sat on my lap and laughed at something I was too damn drunk to remember saying. I took another long sip from my beer and looked down at my phone.
Goddamnit.
I’d missed four calls from Neil.
I left the party and walked down the street in the dark, stumbling and cursing as I called him back.
“Liam? Where the hell have you been? Are you fucking drunk again?”
I laughed and tossed my beer can into one of the neighbor’s trash bins left on the side of the street. “Sorry, Neil. Sorry. I’m walking now. Can you come—hic—pick me up?”
There was a long pause before Neil responded.
But he was a good brother.
He always came to pick me up.
I looked at the clock on the dashboard. “Fuck, it’s one a.m. already?”
Neil shot me a glare and told me to buckle in. Perry gave me a dirty look from the back seat. Jesus, it was just a party. They acted like I had shit in the street or something.
“Yeah, it’s fucking late and Mom is already worried. This isn’t helping, Liam. I just don’t understand…” He paused, thinking better of whatever it was he wanted to say. He was always considerate, unlike me.
My chest was hot with fury. I knew what he wanted to say. “You don’t understand what?” I pressed.
Neil gritted his teeth and looked at me like I was the root cause of all our family’s problems. Why Dad left. Why Mom’s mental state shattered. Why he had to take responsibility for Perry and me.
“I don’t understand why you’re so fucking selfish. You’re seventeen and I have to take care you like you’re a goddamn child. Perry is younger and he’s more of an adult than you!” Neil shouted at me, the vein in his forehead protruding.
I knew I was all those things. I knew I was a fuck up.
Perry tapped Neil’s shoulder and murmured quietly, “Please don’t yell. Liam’s just sad… He’ll try harder tomorrow, won’t you, Liam?”
My chest sank. “Yeah, I will. I’m sorry.”
Neil glanced over at me and then heaved a long, weary sigh. “It’s okay. I’m sorry for shouting.”
I didn’t know what I’d do without my brothers. They were all I had—all I needed.
Mom texted me. I read the message quickly.
Mom:
Your brother is coming to get you.
Be kind to him. He loves you.
Great, even Mom knew I was out getting drunk and Neil was coming to the rescue.
Neil raised a brow as he turned onto the mountain pass. The shortcut was steep and narrow in places.
I didn’t want him to know Mom had messaged me. We were all so worried about her mental state already. That’s why I just smiled, held up my phone, and showed him a photo I snapped at the party.
“It’s just a stupid picture of the party.”
Neil only looked for a second.
It was only a second.
Only…
When I woke up, I was in the hospital room alone.
No one was holding my hand. No one was waiting for my eyes to open.
Perry? Neil?
A nurse walked in and took my vitals. She said that my mother refused to see me, that my older brother was dead and my younger brother was in critical condition. And finally, that I would be discharged in a few days.
Neil was dead.
My soul died during those days. I wanted to see my mom and tell her I was sorry. That it was my fault. But she wouldn’t even visit me.
Something corrupted inside me during that time spent alone. My pain was so overwhelming, damning, like waves pushing and pushing until the floodgates opened.
And then it stopped, as if someone had clicked delete on the pain center in my head. It was gone. I felt nothing. Horrible, rotting nothingness.
Nothing except guilt.
On discharge day, they released me from the hospital and I stood at the entrance bay for six hours, waiting for my mom. She didn’t come to pick me up, and Neil wasn’t here anymore.
I walked to a gas station and bought a pocketknife. I thought about killing myself, but it didn’t seem right.
I didn’t want to die—I wanted to be punished.
I cut myself beneath a dirty bridge until my hands shook so badly that I couldn’t lift the blade anymore. And I cried. I cried until some passerby called the cops and an officer came to pick me up.
He looked at me for a long time. He had a twisted, astonished look on his face.
Then he took me home. When my mom answered the door, she wouldn’t look at me. I walked past her to my room. We didn’t talk until Perry came home weeks later.
I walked to school. Cooked for myself. Took care of myself. Punished myself.
Perry was different.
He didn’t remember the crash. Even though my mother told him Neil was dead, he acted like he didn’t hear it.
It only took a few hours for his first episode to happen. He became a devil. A demon in the flesh, sent to punish me. I welcomed it.
He called himself Crosby.
That was the first time we properly met. Crosby remembered the crash and why we were all on that road to begin with. It was because of me.
For weeks he tortured me. I thought it was right. I didn’t mind because it was my fault.
Mother watched and smiled when Crosby came to punish me. She’d say over and over in that cruel voice, “It’s your fault.” I’d nod and accept the pain. Then when Perry returned, she would go back to her room and lie in bed mindlessly again.
Perry was always confused about why I kept getting hurt. My ribs were cut, my head bashed, toes broken. He couldn’t understand. He’d wrap me up and cry for me. His heart was so tender and broken.
“Why do you keep hurting yourself?” he’d ask.
I never could respond to it. Never.
He looked for Neil often. And once the school noticed his shifts in behavior, they filed a report and had him sent away. He was gone for a year.
The second I turned eighteen, I left my home without saying goodbye.
He was gone for only a year.
Then the texts started again.
Mom:
Your brother is coming to get you.
Be kind to him. He loves you.
At first, I didn’t understand. I was only upset because this was the message that haunted me. But I soon understood.
Crosby came to find me. And find me he always did.
I didn’t know he went to a mental institution. I didn’t know I would end up at the same one years later.
It was nice for a few months, until I got the text again. And then my life became hell.
Crosby became my roommate. It was odd. At the sanctum, he never reverted back to Perry. He remained Crosby. Hateful and angry.
The old rumors about the missing people were suspicious to me. Lanston had that odd Clue game. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was… peculiar that they went missing at the same time Crosby was at this institution.
I collected articles about them, hoping they would turn up somewhere someday, but they never did. Jericho left his keys on the front desk one evening and I happened to notice during my nightly walk. The guard was doing his rounds and I was completely alone.
I opened the filing cabinet and searched for my brother’s name. It wasn’t until I came across it that I realized I’d forgotten his real one. Perry Waters. He was here. And in my heart, I knew he’d done something to them.
Maybe that’s why he decided to wrap things up with me that night.
“Deeper,” he hissed at me.
I shoved the knife deeper into my ribs and jerked the blade so it’d cut. My hands were trembling and the blood made the handle slick. Crosby pushed it further since I was incapable.
I thought it might be the last of my punishment. It hurt more than the rest ever had.
Then Lanston found us. Oh God, I felt my soul shatter when he did.
Crosby fled. I went to the hospital. I didn’t die. My punishment would continue.
But then I saw her.
And for some reason, I thought maybe I didn’t need to be punished anymore.
My cure.
