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Another Night
Another night. After another day. After another night. After another stumbling, desperate day. A chair dragged close yet turned to face away from the bed. Slashed-jeans covering legs spread to inversly straddle the seating device, moody sweatered frame resting weight against the backrest for support. A cleaver's blade, almost weightless from familiar use, hung loosely from shaking fingers. Ready. Ready for... Well, that was where the question lingered, wasn't it? As emerald eyes watched over the sleeping form of his sister through filtered moonlight, swaddled so carelessly in a motel sheet and resting as if ignorant to... Well, most things honestly, Andrew found himself alone with time to think. And then overthink. Both hobbies he had tried aggressively to avoid of late. He couldn't help the sinking feeling that this was simply what life had become, would always be. A series of attempts to deaden the whispers that rolled in at three in the morning. To ignore the gravity of all they had done. That she had made him do. Fingers tightened on the handle of the butcher's tool at this, lingering whispers dancing along half-formed thoughts. Justice, really... A fitting fate for all the lives she had destroyed, both literally and in a metaphorical sense. She slept like the dead. She trusted him more than any soul alive... And not a single person would know anything if he just removed the problem. But she wasn't the problem, was she? In dancing skeins of moonlight clawing in through gaps in blinds far beyond repair, sleeping so soundly on a mattress likely more bleach and broken spring than support, it was hard not to see her as he always had. As that same little girl whose hand he held because no one else would. Who he had all but raised alone due to parental neglect... Incompetance? Maybe a simple lack of the skills needed to raise anyone, let alone an isolated case like Ashley. A bit late to be thinking charitably of their folks now, he supposed. He found himself dwelling on this. How little his sister had been given as they grew up. The moments when their mother would flat ignore her existence. How often he needed to share his food to ensure she had enough to eat. He told himself growing up that the lack of birthday parties and Christmas gifts was due to the struggling financial state of the family as a whole. Though there may have been some truth to this, they never seemed to miss a single one of his birthdays. Only hers. A lingering sigh would shake his sleep-deprived form, his hand moving to lay the murder weapon as quietly as possible onto the bedside table. Not to disturb the young woman that slept before him. No... Not really a person anymore, was she? The withered husk of a thing. No respect for human life or common decency left in the cicada shell that could have been someone genuinely worth being proud of had life not just staunchly refused. Had any opportunity been afforded her at all. Had Andrew been more... More what...? What could he possibly have done? He was raised in the same house she was. He shared everything he could with his sister, gave as much of his time as he could. Made sure that she ate as well as they could manage, had the clothes she needed, wasn't as alone as he felt... As he felt each day... As trapped as he felt having to raise her as a child himself. As trapped as she likely felt growing up in a home where she was so openly unwanted. Desperate for attention, any attention, and recieving none from their parents. He was the only one that had ever truly cared for her. Gave the attention she needed. Only his. So much was stacked against them. Had always been, and yet... And yet at any point he could have stopped all of this. Weaned her off of her dependence of him. Helped her grow into a better person. Stood up and stopped her from any number of actions that left irreparable harm on herself, himself, anyone that got too near to them. He could have been the brother she had needed him to be. And what...? Watch her drift away, form a life without him. Form bonds that he wasn't a part of? Watch her grow up and move off, start a family with someone who couldn't appreciate how delicate she was like he did. Who wouldn't have the ability to fathom what her outbursts meant. Or how to calm them. Andrew couldn't trust anyone else to take care of his Ashley. She needed him to watch over her. He needed her to need him. Somewhere in the witching hour clarity, Andrew knew that Ashley wasn't the problem. Not in a vacuum. As gentle fingers lowered to play with unkempt raven tresses, as he felt the warmth of her head lean instinctively up into his touch... As he saw hints of sincerity that his sister didn't know how to show when awake, he knew she wasn't at fault for what she had become. The spiteful, vindictive, paranoid, desperate hellcat he had watched her grow into. That he had helped shape her into. He could have stopped her in that warehouse so long ago, not bowed to her life-altering malice and doomed a child who had committed no crime save for thinking of Andrew in a positive light. He didn't. He could have put his foot down and protected those she drove away through harassment campaigns and all but terroristic threats. He didn't. He could have done anything but turn to her on sleepless nights, could have avoided leaning on her embrace as his only escape from the night terrors the stress of not stopping her caused. He didn't... Want to. He didn't want live a life that wasn't focused on caring for her, as tiring as it could be, as choking as it could be. On the toxic comfort that came of having that purpose. It was unhealthy, the way she clung to him and strove to cast aside any who would take his attentions away, true, but it was no less unhealthy than how troublingly untroubled that obsession made him feel. How familiar it was. The security in knowing that he belonged somewhere. The death knell certainty that if their time together didn't secure a place inseparable by each other's side then the trail of bodies left in the wake of her madness did. A bond eternal. Signed in every drop of blood staining his hands. In every vitriolic word dripped from cloying lips. In every tooth sunk into yielding flesh. In every nail dug possessively into shoulder blades. In every oath spoken wordlessly in language that none other could understand. Rising from his seat, Andrew would climb over Ashley, joining her beneath the sheets as he always seemed to when life got complicated, when the warmth of her closeness felt the only cure for the disease such closeness spread. When the ache of the withdrawal grew too loud, too painful, yet he couldn't find the strength to take up the blade and excise the festering wound their continued existence left on the world around them. To solve the problem, one then the other. Too weak to resist the feeling of peace her warmth in his arms brought. Just one more addiction he couldn't find the strength to want to shake. Maybe another night.
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