The Beginning
Bobby had nightmares.
In shifting shadows and pounding feet, smoke pouring from the walls and an animal panic shaking his teeth, Bobby dreamed about the basement.
His blind feet still knew the paths, but the rising flames blocked his way, scorched his eyes with a skull-pounding white light.
Always in the dream he is running to reach the stairs-- step, step, turn, straight, turn-- but the fire is too fast for him every time. Sometimes he even hears Lucas call to him through the light and smoke, but Bobby never sees his face, no matter how hard he runs. He just isn’t quick enough.
On these nights, he’d wake up screaming, freezing cold. He would reach out shaking hands into the dark and Lucas would come and sit by his side, running fingers through his hair, saying nothing.
The dream wasn’t how it really happened-- Lucas had told him the story enough times for him to know.
Bobby was in the basement for a very long time. He couldn’t remember the inside of the house, but Lucas said he had seen it, before. He lived up there with them for four years, like a part of the family, like a picture.
But then one day, Bobby was bad. He screamed and broke dishes and peed on the rug. He tore up the mail and he wrote on the walls and he told everyone, Mom and Dad and Lucas and Muffin the dog, that he hated them.
Bobby does not remember this. He does not remember the pounding he got or the promise that he could come upstairs when he was a good boy. He doesn’t remember the angry force of his father’s hands or the way Lucas screamed, doesn’t remember his mother drinking quietly in the other room.
What he does remember is the dark. And the cold. And step-step-turn-straight-turn to the staircase, turn-step-step to the place where Lucas leaves his plate. Cold leftovers and a bag of chips, the quick touch of fingers in the brightness and a whispered promise, repeated like a prayer.
And time disappears in the basement, but Lucas said it was three years to the day from Bobby’s first night in the dark to the night Lucas burned the house down to break him free.
In nightmares, Bobby is trapped by fire. And Lucas is there, he can feel him, smell him, but never see him- the flames too much, too fast.
In real life, of course, it was different. Bobby knows this. He knows that Lucas came down to him first, opened the door and let the white in. He knows that he waited, alone in the night, while Lucas gave to his captors their final punishment, their walls and furniture and their big angry hands, all consumed.
And then it was Bobby and Lucas. Lucas and his wild bright grin, Bobby and his face pressed wondering against the grass, tears and soil and thickening smoke. And Lucas, with the flames behind him, lifted Bobby in the wide-open new night air and kissed his cheek and said, “We’re free.”
Then came the running.
When he didn’t have nightmares, Bobby mostly dreamed about the ocean. He could feel his own heartbeat in the lapping of the waves, and the sunny sky was always dotted with puffy white clouds. He would lie on his back and slide right off the land, cradled by the water’s gentle rhythm, and everything around him was blue.
Bobby was important; he helped Lucas with a lot of things. Bobby was good at finding the unopened packages in the dumpsters of the night, and stealing eggs from the henhouses. Sometimes, he would even help Lucas catch a hen. They would bring it back to the Big House and Bobby would pluck its feathers, one by one, and pick out all the bad organs to leave in a big steaming heap by the red-stained stump.
Bobby never killed the hens. Lucas liked to do that part himself.
The Big House was their very best find; Lucas always said so. It put an end to the running, the hiding, nights on the street or in the woods, stolen vans and hidden shelters, run-down old train cars in pummeling rain. After running for years and miles and states whose names Lucas didn’t bother teaching him, they pulled the boards off the back door and crept inside, quiet as the mice that came before them. Home.
The Big House was wide and empty. Their voices echoed down the hallways and bounced between the cobwebbed walls. But they couldn’t be too loud, because no one could know they were there. So even when Lucas was gone, Bobby stayed very quiet and hardly ever talked, even to himself. If anyone heard him, they might take Lucas away.
Sometimes, when Lucas was out for the day, Bobby would imagine he was gone forever. It gave him a feeling, sick and dizzy, like his stomach was falling far away from him at a furious speed, straight through the ground, through the planet and out into space. Bobby hated to think about space. It was so big and empty he could choke.
And he remembered, blackly, the years in the basement, his memories carved in touch and smell and tooth-chattering fear. So Bobby was quiet in the Big House. And Lucas went out and did what he did, and Bobby sat by the streak of dusty sunlight coming in through the cracked shutter and practiced his reading.
After Lucas taught him numbers and letters and all those things, Bobby loved to read. The first book that he read all by himself, not too long after they found the Big House, was called “Grandfather Twilight.” Lucas stole it from a street vendor one day, and brought it home to him. The old man in the story had an endless strand of pearls. Every night he threw one up into the sky, and every night, hovering over the soft blue-green sea, the pearl became the moon.
From his spot under the window, Bobby could see the moon. Sometimes it did look like a pearl. Mostly it looked like a chewed-up piece of cheese.
Bobby was reading by the very last bit of eye-squinting yellow twilight when Lucas brought home the cat.
He came in through the unboarded back door and went straight for Bobby’s window. Bobby liked to close his eyes and let the creaking floorboards announce each movement. Every single splintered plank on the floor of the Big House had its very own sound, and the creaksqueak groan told him every step that brought Lucas closer to him.
His skin tingled. He opened his eyes and saw Lucas, red hair framed by the dying light, strong arms cradling a fat grey cat with white paws.
“Saw this guy in a window, looking out,” he said. “Knew he wanted me to take him, bring him home. For you.”
He held the cat out like a present. It blinked placidly.
“He’ll keep you company. You know. In the day.”
Bobby swallowed down a quavering lump in his throat.
“Are you gonna name him?”
Lucas put the cat down on the floor, and it ran in a grey streak to join the shadows. Bobby watched it go.
“No,” he said.
He knew the cat was a present from Lucas, but he hated it anyway. Why would he need a fat stupid cat to keep him company? Like any dumb animal could come and replace his brother?
“That cat is stupid,” he said, staring at the floor. “He doesn’t like me. I hate him. I wish you’d take him back.”
“Shit, Bobby,” Lucas spat out, his voice cold and dull. “Only broke open a window and lugged the goddamn animal two miles in my fuckin’ hands.”
Bobby was frozen. He hated that voice. It was for other people, Lucas never used that voice on Bobby. His eyes stayed glued to the floor, where a tiny set of paw prints now joined the tracks their boots left in the dust. He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them tight. He waited- one, two, three.
The air shifted slightly as Lucas sat down beside him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just thought maybe you needed a friend.”
Bobby looked up. In the dark, he couldn’t see the green in Lucas’ eyes at all, just shadowy spaces in the white plane of his face. He shivered.
“I don’t,” he said firmly. “I’ve got you.” And when Lucas hugged him tight, he closed his eyes and breathed in as deep as he could, driving the scent of him down into the very bottom of his lungs. To keep, he thought. To save.
“You always will,” Lucas whispered. “I’ll show you.”
Then, suddenly, he was gone. Bobby’s eyes flew open and his arms reached out, but the creak of the floorboards told him Lucas was already heading for the door. After that there came a new sound, shrill and terrible- the yowling scream of the cat.
The door screeched open and Bobby ran to the window. Peering through the crack, he watched Lucas marching his powerful stride over the dead lawn, through the tall grass and the buzzing flies to the red-stained stump, the cat in his hands.
When it saw the knife, the cat started screaming and would not stay still. It squirmed and scratched, squealing terror with no words. Like a baby, Bobby thought, and he couldn’t help but laugh. He wondered if he would have to pluck the cat’s hairs out one by one. It would take a very long time.
Lucas’ arm came up above his head and hovered there, waiting. Bobby felt something in his stomach that he couldn’t define. He covered his ears.
Dully, through his tight-pressed fingers, he heard the wriggling animal’s last plaintive squall.
thunk.
He didn’t have to pluck the cat, it turned out. Lucas showed him how to make one single cut with the knife and peel the whole skin off in one move, like a jacket. Bobby wasn’t very good at it, but he promised he’d get better, and Lucas hugged him close to his chest and said that he knew.
The cat was tough and kind of stringy, but it wasn’t bad. Lucas kept laughing and saying, “tastes like chicken!” but it didn’t, not really. It was much better.
The second cat was already dead. That was okay- Lucas was very private, and Bobby knew the cat was for him anyway. It meant something that they couldn’t tell out loud, and so they had to find different ways. He understood.
This time, the skin came off in one smooth and careful piece, right down to the end of the tail. Bobby was very proud. He messed up on the legs a little bit, but Lucas chopped the paws right off and said it didn’t matter. He kept one for himself, and put one on top of Bobby’s window shutter. In time it was joined by another, and another, and then another. He liked looking at them up there- they were like a secret coded message from Lucas, just for him.
When they ran out of space on top of the shutter, the little paws spread to the floor, slowly lining the wall, turning the corner, circling the room. They smelled bad, but Bobby didn’t care. He liked them. He even read to them sometimes, by the dusty sunstreak under the window:
“Grandfather Twilight lives among the trees. “
It was foggy on the June night Bobby turned thirteen, and Lucas took him through the town a different way than the route they usually took between the dumpsters. He showed Bobby a big building with a wide flat lawn and a flag in the front, and he said that it was all full of books. Bobby tried to imagine enough books to fill a big building like that. He couldn’t believe there were so many books in the whole world, and all at once he felt a wave of choking sadness, that he could never read them all.
“Can we go inside?” He wanted to, more than anything.
“Soon,” Lucas promised. “Tomorrow.”
“In the day?” Lucas never let Bobby come out with him in the day. He said it was because he didn’t want Bobby to see how he made money, how he got things- which was stupid, because Bobby knew he stole them anyway.
But Lucas was nodding. And out the corner of his eye, Bobby saw a shadowshift, a sleek little body running deftly in and out of the inkwells of dark along the street.
He slitted his eyes, bending his body to be a shadow too, and light on his feet he darted after the stray.
It kept to the corners, slithering in and out of his vision until it suddenly turned to face him with its big glowing eyes, and sat patiently on the pavement as if to say, “What are you waiting for?”
His hands landed right around its middle and he could feel the array of its tiny bones, a small version of his own ribcage wriggling in his palms. It was purring- a low, smooth sound that didn’t stop until he carried it all the way back down the street and came to stand again in front of Lucas.
“Well, well,” said Lucas, shaking his head. “Well, well.”
“I can feel its heartbeat,” said Bobby. He could. It was shallow and very quick.
“Not like yours, is it?”
“It’s faster.” Bobby’s mouth was dry.
“You know what that means?”
Lucas was right behind him, fitting his chin against the top of Bobby’s head, spreading arms around to fold callused hands over his own. The stray wriggled and his grip clamped down, harsh. Bobby felt the force in his fingers and couldn’t help but press down, just a little, on all those tiny bones.
“Means it would take less time for all the blood to pump right out of its body, so not even a drop is left. Compared to a person, no time at all. Even just from a single cut, I bet it would only take ten minutes.” Lucas was breathing deep now, hot air that hovered against Bobby’s skin. “Maybe less.”
“Really?” It wasn’t what he wanted to say. It wasn’t what he was thinking of saying.
“Yeah.” The word more an exhale, a rushing of air, like some tiny thing was escaping from inside Lucas’ lips to shake the hairs at the nape of Bobby’s neck.
He shivered, once, violently, and if Lucas hadn’t been holding him up he would have fallen. In his hands, the tiny heartbeat pumped faster.
Fear, he thought. He’d know it anywhere. He could feel the little muscles tensing as it fought to escape, but of course their grip was too tight. He wondered if Lucas could feel his own muscles in the same way. He flexed his fingers, just to see.
The cat shrieked and freed one paw to scratch Bobby’s hand in a wild swipe. The cut was jagged and stung with the wind. Lucas caught the paw with his first finger and held it down, hard. The cat hissed like a snake, and Bobby felt something almost electric in the way their knuckles lined up perfectly along its fragile torso.
Together, Lucas and Bobby closed their hands into one slow fist, crunching those tiny little bones in with deliberate fingers until the frantic heartbeat slowed, ceased. Its legs twitched once, and that was all.
Then Lucas pulled away, and Bobby just stood there, holding it. Its mangled shape was still warm in his hands, furry and soft. He put it on the ground.
Something was missing-- he felt it. Something wrong. Nothing at all had marked the life that left the animal, and now there was only this empty little thing. It made him think about space. He felt he might come loose from gravity at any minute and go freewheeling into the open blackness of the universe unseen by anybody. His knees shook.
Lucas was cutting off the paws. The blood on his fingers was wet and thick under the streetlight, and his knife grated on the bone with a noise that made Bobby want to scream and scream.
“We should go,” was what he said. “Someone could have heard us.”
That night, as he lay next to Lucas on the mattress they shared, his skin crawled with goosebumps. The paws of the stray sat on a napkin on the floor by Lucas’ head to drip slowly dry. Bobby could only see them if he closed his left eye. It was dark, but the rusted iron smell in the air told him the spreading stains on the napkin had gone brown. Lucas was snoring lightly.
Bobby couldn’t stop thinking about the stray. He hadn’t skinned it, hadn’t even wanted to touch the thing, after. Lucas, eyes bright with the kill, didn’t understand. But Bobby felt… something. Not Right.
He wondered what Lucas was dreaming about. With his right eye, he watched the napkin. It didn’t move.
Each paw that edged the corners of the room, each tiny souvenir of Lucas’ love, stared down at Bobby with a heavy and accusing weight. Even in the feel of his brother’s skin giving heat into the night, even in the familiar rhythm of his sleeping breaths, Bobby found no comfort. His own hands were numb and foreign, rubber gloves that belonged to somebody else.
The paws stared sightlessly and the room closed in a little more with every passing second. Bobby opened his left eye, and in the dusty moonlight saw nothing but Lucas. He stood.
Lucas breathed in sharply, one quick gasp, and was awake.
“What’s wrong?” His voice was hoarse. Even with his back turned, Bobby felt those green eyes on him. A shiver shook his spine.
“What is it? You hear something?” Lucas was sitting upright in an instant, ready to run, to protect him. No matter what. No matter what.
“No,” said Bobby. “Nothing.” He had never kept secrets from Lucas before. It felt awful. He was a liar, betrayer. He didn’t deserve Lucas at all. Guilt scratched catlike at the inside of his stomach, and he held his breath to stop the words exploding out.
“C’mere.”
Bobby did, stepping delicately over the brown-blood napkin on the floor and kneeling at the edge of the mattress. Lucas watched him, unblinking.
“What we did tonight,” Lucas began, and Bobby froze. Lucas knew, somehow, what he was thinking. He choked down a traitorous sob and nodded, slightly.
“Bobby,” Lucas ran fingers softly up Bobby’s cheek. “It was amazing. You… you were amazing.”
Bobby couldn’t hold his gaze. Lucas had never been wrong before. A night of firsts, he thought, and he bit his lip until it bled tiny copper drops onto his tongue, but couldn’t stop himself from crying.
“You and me, Bobby.” Lucas smiled slowly and his white teeth glinted in the moonlight.
“They’ll never catch us. We can do anything, you and me.”
And Bobby cried, clutching at Lucas with hands that felt nothing, until he fell into the beckoning black pillow of sleep.
That was the beginning.