Prologue

He was nearly there. Panting, burning, pulsing. But he was nearly there. He had to get to the house. Ethan was there. And so was he. He could see it emerging on the long street where neighbours were always looking at you in a paradoxical way, both as if you had something precious for them and that you were the cause of all their problems. As soon as he got close to the house, Cal outstretched his arms to shove open the loose door. It took a heavy swing at the wall and he wasted no time in crashing through the house and up the stairs.

"Ethan!" He shouted as he burst his way through to the bedroom he knew was his brother's but was only met with the stale silence that clung to the walls of this place.

He charged his way through each door upstairs, calling out for Ethan to answer him, and each time he remained alone. Sweat slipped its way down his forehead and clung to his wrists and arms, making his palms damp as he clenched and unclenched his fists. His head whirled with a throbbing panic. Suddenly, through the fog of his fury, the crash of glass shattering to the ground echoed its way to Cal, and he knew. He was here.

Cal bolted his way back down the steps and towards the kitchen, no longer calling for Ethan. He tried to calm himself down, to gather some inch of a plan. But as he stood beside the door he heard the faint whimpering that made the fears that he woke from in a cold sweat at night smash into reality. His knees buckled, face blanched with dread he leaned on the door and as if defeated, gladly swung open and Cal stumbled into the scene of his horror. Ethan was curled into the tiniest of balls in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by smeared handprints of blood, his skin a sickly grey and blotched with swelling and contusions. Cal felt his stomach churn with incredible force and smothered his mouth before he could vomit. His eyes were rolling from the nausea and it was then that he noticed him there. Drunk and clinging to the handle of the back door. His right arm had drooped to his side as if his to relieve his bloody knuckles from the exertion of being held up.

With eyes stinging and heart pounding in his reddened ears, Cal hit him. He hit him. Again and again. Until he stopped moving and his last noise was a squeal like that from a pig going to slaughter.

He walked through the streets, his little brother cradled in his arms. Cal wouldn't take his eyes off of him, not until he came to a crossroad and had to think where he was going. What he was going to do. Every so often Ethan would let out a harsh snort of breath which would make him stop but Ethan never seemed to move from the safety position he built around Cal; legs curled tightly around Cal's left arm while his back barely leaned into his right arm, as he managed to twist himself so that his forehead was pushing against Cal's chest as if it would somehow alleviate an ounce of the agony he was in. His eyes were clenched shut and he never stopped clutching his middle. Cal had tried to get a response from him but he wouldn't speak, couldn't speak, but the way the ends of his fingers eventually clung to Cal's t-shirt while still nursing his stomach with the rest of his hand told Cal that he was still there, he was still Ethan.

On Ethan's next groan and Cal's last stop, the adrenaline that had been his only strength vanished and he collapsed in the street still cradling Ethan. He thought at this moment that, right now, this would be the moment he would look back on years later and think he had done it, he'd finished it all. But instead, as he went to look once more on the shadowed figure of his brother, he noticed his own hands, shaking violently beneath his brother, the bloody fingertips that clung to the boy in his arms. He immediately lay Ethan down on the ground, and brought his own, damned hands to his face.

What had he done?

The knees of an old man came into Cal's view and without even looking up he whispered "Help me."

With that the old man scooped Ethan into his arms and Cal followed.

He wouldn't cross the old man's threshold. As they came to the door, Cal looked down once more at his own bloodied and bruised hands. The old man had placed Ethan gently on a sofa that Cal could see from the doorway and the old man was looking back at Cal with the kind of eyes that knew all that you could ever have tried to hide.

"Take care of him." And with that, Cal was gone.