Post by paintedmusic on Dec 8, 2008 19:33:08 GMT -5
A/N: Basically, this is a sequence of dreams of a twelve-year-old boy. That is all I will tell you; the rest you can probably figure out. (P.S. knee-deep in archetypes since this was originally written as an archetype assignment.)
Through the fog, Jasper saw a figure move discreetly toward him on the bridge. Squinting, he tried to make out the person’s form. In the darkness, he managed only a glimpse of dark hair, muted in the grayness of the misty air. Even that, though, was enough to identify the form as his brother.
When he tried to call out, “Bobby?” no sound emitted. Opening his mouth wide, he tried again: “Bobby!”
At once, the figure stopped moving. After a brief silence, a voice called back across the fog, “Jasper? Where are you? What time is it?”
Frowning, Jasper glanced down at his wrist. For a moment his eyes strayed to the back of his hand, where a thick scar marred his skin. Shaking his head to clear it, he forced his attention back to the digital watch wrapped around his wrist. Nearly pitch-black, he could only just read the bright red numbers blinking at him. “Little before twelve!” he yelled back to Bobby.
Hearing this, the figure began to slink away again. Though Jasper tried to follow, within a couple of moments, he had lost himself in the blindness of the foggy night. Alone, he stood in the middle of the bridge, unsure of which direction would take him home.
In an icy wind, the two boys stood atop a wooden bridge, soaked nearly to the bone. Staring up at the sky, they squinted as fat raindrops cascaded down upon them. Shivering, the shorter of the two tugged a thick jacket tighter around his shoulders and buried his face in it. Speaking into his coat, his words came out somewhat muffled.
“What?” the older boy asked, teeth chattering as rainwater seeped through his own jacket.
“I said,” the younger replied, raising his head only marginally, “I wish it would snow.” Quickly, he hunched his shoulders and again breathed deeply into his coat for warmth.
With a laugh his brother reminded him, “Bobby, you hate the snow.”
“Still,” Bobby admitted, “it’s better than rain.”
Jasper couldn’t argue with that. In one quick motion, he pulled a hand from his pocket to push back his bangs. As he moved to stuff it back into the dryness of his coat, Bobby stopped him.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“What? Oh, that?” He shrugged off the question, not sparing the question a second thought. By now his scar had become old news. “Aw, it was nothing… I got mad at Dad—you know how much Dad and I fight nowadays—and accidentally punched my hand through the window.”
Snorting, Bobby retorted, “Oh, sure you did. I’ll bet.” Shoes squelching in the mud that covered the bridge with a slimy blanket, the boy said, “C’mon, we should get back home. It’s raining—Mom’s prob’ly pretty worried by now.”
“Nah,” Jasper countered as they started back the way they had come. “It’s not even midnight yet.” Slinging an arm over Bobby’s shoulder, they hurried home together.
“Hey, Jasper, where’d you get that cool scar?”
Through the black surrounding them, Jasper squinted over at Bobby. Snuggled in his sleeping bag, the ten-year-old stared at his brother’s hand in fascination. Glancing down, Jasper delicately fingered the raised skin on the back of his left hand. Shrugging, he tucked it into the relative warmth his own sleeping bag offered, using the other to trace the cracks in the wooden bridge beneath them.
Casually, he said, “I got it when a lion mauled me at the circus,” and then grinned.
Rolling his eyes, Bobby muttered, “Yeah, yeah, sure you did. I’m tired, what time is it?”
“Almost midnight,” Jasper answered. “If we don’t go to sleep soon, Mom and Dad will never let us camp out again.”
Nodding in agreement, Bobby flipped over on his side and closed his eyes. “G’night,” he yawned to his brother before peacefully drifting into his dreams.
From beneath his head, resting on top of four thin fingers, a dark stain began to grow, oozing steadily outward. With his scarred hand, Jasper reached out two tentative fingers to touch the sticky substance and bring it closer to his eyes. Even in the darkness, he could make out the crimson that stained his skin.
“Would you guys quit arguing?” Squashed between a twelve-year-old brother and an eight-year-old sister, Bobby groaned aloud. Without fail, the moment the three piled into a car together, bickering would ensue. Frequently, the instigator turned out to be either Jasper or their little sister Cady. Most often, Bobby became the middleman, the sibling attempting to bring peace to either side.
When Jasper and Cady chose to ignore their sibling in favor of continuing their shouting match, Bobby cried, “Fine! If you guys can’t be quiet, I’ll just drown you out myself.” Dramatically, the boy threw off his seatbelt and leaned over the back seats. Reaching forward, he turned on the radio. The time 11:58 melted into 105.2 FM as the baritone voice of a sports announcer surged through the rickety, old Ford.
When Bobby sat back, he let out a content sigh. Nobody could bother him now. Crossing his arms, he closed his eyes to listen to the voice bark out scores, statistics, and players’ numbers.
Eyebrows raised, Jasper stared at his brother for a moment. “Uh, Bobby?” he said at length, receiving only a half-hearted grunt in response. “You should probably put your seatbelt back on.”
With a shrug Bobby opened deep blue eyes to stare at his older brother. “Those things are too constricting,” he protested. “If I wear one, how can I go flying?”
Jasper nearly laughed at the ludicrousness of the statement. “Your wings don’t work anymore anyway, stupid,” he pointed out, snickering, “not for almost four months already.”
Glowering, the ten-year-old grumbled, “Yeah, well, I can try, can’t I?”
Without deigning the question with a response, Jasper merely turned to stare out the window, watching his breath fog up the glass. At length, he muttered, “No point in trying if you know you’ll fail. Then it’s just stupid.” He knew that this time, however, he and Bobby would have to agree to disagree.
Silence.
Blinking, Jasper squinting up at the front of the car. Where only a couple of minutes ago had been darkness, now he blinked against the sharp light that flooded his vision. It took his eyes a moment to adjust; once they did, he glanced around. Smoking lightly, the vehicle had been flipped onto its side so that he lay jammed up against the door to his left. Or was it right? He couldn’t be sure anymore. Across from him, Cady hung limply against her seatbelt, head dangling, blood trickling from a shallow cut just above her brow. In front of both of them, their father’s face had been crushed against the airbag where he lay frighteningly still.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jasper registered a muted sensation—not pain exactly but more of an insatiable itch that radiated up his palm. Curiously, he glanced down at his left hand; the skin there had burst open in a jagged, angry gash. Mesmerized, the preteen watched blood gush from the wound, thinking blankly, Oh. So that’s how I got my scar. I should tell Bobby; he wanted to know.
When he looked to his right to tell Bobby exactly what had happened, however, his brother was gone. Vaguely in the background, the radio hissed in static.
Frowning, he murmured, “Bobby?” Knowing somehow not to make noise in the stillness, he barely brought his voice above a dry whisper. Instead, he looked around in search of his brother.
In the front of the car, the airbag had exploded. Beside that, the middle of the windshield had shattered, spilling shards of glass all over the passenger’s seat and into Dad’s lap. Past that, the hood of the car was smeared with blood.
Fumbling to unclasp his seatbelt, Jasper slid across the overturned seat. Heart catching painfully in his throat, the preteen wriggled toward the front seats of the car. When he peered out the broken window, he felt his stomach lurch with nausea. There, prostrate on the bridge, lay Bobby; his fingers were slack, neck twisted at an awkward angle. Blood oozed into a pool beneath the side of his head.
Weakly, Jasper croaked, “B-Bobby?” As his muscles protested, he lifted himself through the glass and crawled over to his brother on the ground.
Amazingly, after agonizingly frozen heartbeats, Bobby’s eyelids fluttered open. Raising his head only slightly, the ten-year-old replied, “Yeah?” When Jasper could not respond past the tightness in his throat, Bobby’s eyes roved over him. They fell upon his hand, as they always did. “Jasper,” he asked in a strong, inquisitive voice, “where’d you get that cool scar?”
Looking down at his once bloody hand, he traced the bright white of his scar. Shrugging, he answered, “I tripped down the stairs, split my hand open.”
Pushing himself into a sitting position, Bobby only rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sure you did,” he chuckled. Calmly, the younger boy’s gaze slid past his brother to land on the wreck. “Man, our car is totaled. Mom will be so freaked when we don’t come home on time.” Brow furrowing in thought, he added, “Speaking of… What time is it anyway?”
Shrugging, Jasper shot a quick, disinterested glance at his watch. “It will be midnight in about… fourteen—thirteen—twelve seconds.”
As he stumbled to his feet, Bobby rolled his eyes. “I don’t need it down to the second, you know,” he retorted. Turning, he limped toward their vehicle. Slowly, without Jasper realizing at first what had happened, Bobby began to fade into the murky fog that swept over the darkness. Jasper watched until there was nothing left to see, until both the car and his brother had vanished from his sight completely.
Despite the darkness, Jasper saw Bobby’s form distinctly past wisps of fog that floated between them. Digging his hands into the pockets of his thick, maroon winter coat, he shuffled forward. Squinting, he made out the grave expression on his brother’s face—staring blankly into the distance.
“Bobby,” he murmured softly, hesitantly.
Brooding, Bobby shot a sidelong glance in his brother’s direction. “Yeah?” he replied. Pensively, his gaze drifted from Jasper’s face to the ground a few feet away. When Jasper followed the ten-year-old’s stare, he caught himself looking at a stain of blood, dry against the wooden panels of the bridge.
Eyes riveted to the image, Jasper shivered. Finally, miraculously, he tore away his gaze and looked instead over at Bobby’s face. Intently, the boy analyzed the darkness of his own old blood. For the first time, as Jasper looked on, Bobby’s eyes began to glisten with bitter tears. Though misting his eyes with a glossy sheen, they became no more than the mere threat to fall.
From one fleece-lined pocket, Jasper extracted his hand and reached out to grasp Bobby’s shoulder. Roughly, Bobby jerked himself away. Voice thick and shoulders hunched, the boy rasped, “It sucks being dead, you know.”
Breath catching in his throat, Jasper closed his eyes. Regardless, his brother’s silhouette had already been branded into the inside of his eyelids. A boy standing utterly alone… all because of him, because of Jasper. Pictures flashed through his mind, darting fleetingly across his thoughts and remaining only long enough to prove his guilt: annoying his sister enough to get Bobby riled up, too; ignoring his brother’s plea for quiet; not stopping his brother from leaning towards the front seat so recklessly; not seeing the headlights careening towards them…
“Bobby,” Jasper swallowed, “I’m sorry.”
The hard expression twisting Bobby’s face melted into the cheerful boy Jasper recognized. Slowly, Bobby turned to face his brother. He grinned, leaving not even the slightest trace of anger in his eyes. Brightly, he exclaimed, “That’s all right, Jasper. It’s not your fault.” As his eyes crinkled into a smile, they fell upon the hands folded across his brother’s chest to fend off the cold. “Hey, Jasper, what did you do to get that funky scar?”
For a long time, Jasper stared at the angry red etched into the back of his hand. When he looked back up, his eyes glistened. “There was…”—his voice caught in his throat—“…an accident.”
When he squinted, Jasper could make out the end of the bridge. To him it looked faraway, like a vague memory of a long-forgotten dream. He could not recall ever having crossed to the other side since before winter.
Winter, he thought to himself. Recalling the chill of the previous season only made him feel all the warmer now in the springtime heat. Unzipping his winter coat, he shrugged it off and let it fall into a shapeless heap on the ground. Beneath it he wore a thinner jacket decorated with patches of forest green. Now feeling much cooler, he continued his trek up the road. Only a few feet away, he saw the bridge meet up with the street on the other side.
At the end of it stood Bobby, frenetically waving both hands in the air to greet him. Excitement drowning his features, the boy motioned repeatedly for Jasper to join him. And after all, Bobby could not exactly walk home alone if he didn’t know the way; Jasper would have to go with him. Heaving a sigh, the older boy headed towards his brother. Subconsciously as he walked, he rubbed the back of his left hand. His fingers felt the barely raised, knotted skin only because he knew where to look. The scar there had long since faded into a pale white; by now he barely ever noticed it anymore.
He raised his gaze to stare at his brother. Just behind the ten-year-old, pinkish rays of morning light had begun to creep up from the horizon. By the time Jasper had reached his brother, the pink had turned to purple, which faded quickly into a bluish hue. Without stopping his stride, Jasper walked straight past Bobby and continued down the road.
“Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s already morning; we’re going to be late!” In an instant, he took off down the street towards his home.
Survivor’s Guilt
Through the fog, Jasper saw a figure move discreetly toward him on the bridge. Squinting, he tried to make out the person’s form. In the darkness, he managed only a glimpse of dark hair, muted in the grayness of the misty air. Even that, though, was enough to identify the form as his brother.
When he tried to call out, “Bobby?” no sound emitted. Opening his mouth wide, he tried again: “Bobby!”
At once, the figure stopped moving. After a brief silence, a voice called back across the fog, “Jasper? Where are you? What time is it?”
Frowning, Jasper glanced down at his wrist. For a moment his eyes strayed to the back of his hand, where a thick scar marred his skin. Shaking his head to clear it, he forced his attention back to the digital watch wrapped around his wrist. Nearly pitch-black, he could only just read the bright red numbers blinking at him. “Little before twelve!” he yelled back to Bobby.
Hearing this, the figure began to slink away again. Though Jasper tried to follow, within a couple of moments, he had lost himself in the blindness of the foggy night. Alone, he stood in the middle of the bridge, unsure of which direction would take him home.
In an icy wind, the two boys stood atop a wooden bridge, soaked nearly to the bone. Staring up at the sky, they squinted as fat raindrops cascaded down upon them. Shivering, the shorter of the two tugged a thick jacket tighter around his shoulders and buried his face in it. Speaking into his coat, his words came out somewhat muffled.
“What?” the older boy asked, teeth chattering as rainwater seeped through his own jacket.
“I said,” the younger replied, raising his head only marginally, “I wish it would snow.” Quickly, he hunched his shoulders and again breathed deeply into his coat for warmth.
With a laugh his brother reminded him, “Bobby, you hate the snow.”
“Still,” Bobby admitted, “it’s better than rain.”
Jasper couldn’t argue with that. In one quick motion, he pulled a hand from his pocket to push back his bangs. As he moved to stuff it back into the dryness of his coat, Bobby stopped him.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“What? Oh, that?” He shrugged off the question, not sparing the question a second thought. By now his scar had become old news. “Aw, it was nothing… I got mad at Dad—you know how much Dad and I fight nowadays—and accidentally punched my hand through the window.”
Snorting, Bobby retorted, “Oh, sure you did. I’ll bet.” Shoes squelching in the mud that covered the bridge with a slimy blanket, the boy said, “C’mon, we should get back home. It’s raining—Mom’s prob’ly pretty worried by now.”
“Nah,” Jasper countered as they started back the way they had come. “It’s not even midnight yet.” Slinging an arm over Bobby’s shoulder, they hurried home together.
“Hey, Jasper, where’d you get that cool scar?”
Through the black surrounding them, Jasper squinted over at Bobby. Snuggled in his sleeping bag, the ten-year-old stared at his brother’s hand in fascination. Glancing down, Jasper delicately fingered the raised skin on the back of his left hand. Shrugging, he tucked it into the relative warmth his own sleeping bag offered, using the other to trace the cracks in the wooden bridge beneath them.
Casually, he said, “I got it when a lion mauled me at the circus,” and then grinned.
Rolling his eyes, Bobby muttered, “Yeah, yeah, sure you did. I’m tired, what time is it?”
“Almost midnight,” Jasper answered. “If we don’t go to sleep soon, Mom and Dad will never let us camp out again.”
Nodding in agreement, Bobby flipped over on his side and closed his eyes. “G’night,” he yawned to his brother before peacefully drifting into his dreams.
From beneath his head, resting on top of four thin fingers, a dark stain began to grow, oozing steadily outward. With his scarred hand, Jasper reached out two tentative fingers to touch the sticky substance and bring it closer to his eyes. Even in the darkness, he could make out the crimson that stained his skin.
“Would you guys quit arguing?” Squashed between a twelve-year-old brother and an eight-year-old sister, Bobby groaned aloud. Without fail, the moment the three piled into a car together, bickering would ensue. Frequently, the instigator turned out to be either Jasper or their little sister Cady. Most often, Bobby became the middleman, the sibling attempting to bring peace to either side.
When Jasper and Cady chose to ignore their sibling in favor of continuing their shouting match, Bobby cried, “Fine! If you guys can’t be quiet, I’ll just drown you out myself.” Dramatically, the boy threw off his seatbelt and leaned over the back seats. Reaching forward, he turned on the radio. The time 11:58 melted into 105.2 FM as the baritone voice of a sports announcer surged through the rickety, old Ford.
When Bobby sat back, he let out a content sigh. Nobody could bother him now. Crossing his arms, he closed his eyes to listen to the voice bark out scores, statistics, and players’ numbers.
Eyebrows raised, Jasper stared at his brother for a moment. “Uh, Bobby?” he said at length, receiving only a half-hearted grunt in response. “You should probably put your seatbelt back on.”
With a shrug Bobby opened deep blue eyes to stare at his older brother. “Those things are too constricting,” he protested. “If I wear one, how can I go flying?”
Jasper nearly laughed at the ludicrousness of the statement. “Your wings don’t work anymore anyway, stupid,” he pointed out, snickering, “not for almost four months already.”
Glowering, the ten-year-old grumbled, “Yeah, well, I can try, can’t I?”
Without deigning the question with a response, Jasper merely turned to stare out the window, watching his breath fog up the glass. At length, he muttered, “No point in trying if you know you’ll fail. Then it’s just stupid.” He knew that this time, however, he and Bobby would have to agree to disagree.
Silence.
Blinking, Jasper squinting up at the front of the car. Where only a couple of minutes ago had been darkness, now he blinked against the sharp light that flooded his vision. It took his eyes a moment to adjust; once they did, he glanced around. Smoking lightly, the vehicle had been flipped onto its side so that he lay jammed up against the door to his left. Or was it right? He couldn’t be sure anymore. Across from him, Cady hung limply against her seatbelt, head dangling, blood trickling from a shallow cut just above her brow. In front of both of them, their father’s face had been crushed against the airbag where he lay frighteningly still.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jasper registered a muted sensation—not pain exactly but more of an insatiable itch that radiated up his palm. Curiously, he glanced down at his left hand; the skin there had burst open in a jagged, angry gash. Mesmerized, the preteen watched blood gush from the wound, thinking blankly, Oh. So that’s how I got my scar. I should tell Bobby; he wanted to know.
When he looked to his right to tell Bobby exactly what had happened, however, his brother was gone. Vaguely in the background, the radio hissed in static.
Frowning, he murmured, “Bobby?” Knowing somehow not to make noise in the stillness, he barely brought his voice above a dry whisper. Instead, he looked around in search of his brother.
In the front of the car, the airbag had exploded. Beside that, the middle of the windshield had shattered, spilling shards of glass all over the passenger’s seat and into Dad’s lap. Past that, the hood of the car was smeared with blood.
Fumbling to unclasp his seatbelt, Jasper slid across the overturned seat. Heart catching painfully in his throat, the preteen wriggled toward the front seats of the car. When he peered out the broken window, he felt his stomach lurch with nausea. There, prostrate on the bridge, lay Bobby; his fingers were slack, neck twisted at an awkward angle. Blood oozed into a pool beneath the side of his head.
Weakly, Jasper croaked, “B-Bobby?” As his muscles protested, he lifted himself through the glass and crawled over to his brother on the ground.
Amazingly, after agonizingly frozen heartbeats, Bobby’s eyelids fluttered open. Raising his head only slightly, the ten-year-old replied, “Yeah?” When Jasper could not respond past the tightness in his throat, Bobby’s eyes roved over him. They fell upon his hand, as they always did. “Jasper,” he asked in a strong, inquisitive voice, “where’d you get that cool scar?”
Looking down at his once bloody hand, he traced the bright white of his scar. Shrugging, he answered, “I tripped down the stairs, split my hand open.”
Pushing himself into a sitting position, Bobby only rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sure you did,” he chuckled. Calmly, the younger boy’s gaze slid past his brother to land on the wreck. “Man, our car is totaled. Mom will be so freaked when we don’t come home on time.” Brow furrowing in thought, he added, “Speaking of… What time is it anyway?”
Shrugging, Jasper shot a quick, disinterested glance at his watch. “It will be midnight in about… fourteen—thirteen—twelve seconds.”
As he stumbled to his feet, Bobby rolled his eyes. “I don’t need it down to the second, you know,” he retorted. Turning, he limped toward their vehicle. Slowly, without Jasper realizing at first what had happened, Bobby began to fade into the murky fog that swept over the darkness. Jasper watched until there was nothing left to see, until both the car and his brother had vanished from his sight completely.
Despite the darkness, Jasper saw Bobby’s form distinctly past wisps of fog that floated between them. Digging his hands into the pockets of his thick, maroon winter coat, he shuffled forward. Squinting, he made out the grave expression on his brother’s face—staring blankly into the distance.
“Bobby,” he murmured softly, hesitantly.
Brooding, Bobby shot a sidelong glance in his brother’s direction. “Yeah?” he replied. Pensively, his gaze drifted from Jasper’s face to the ground a few feet away. When Jasper followed the ten-year-old’s stare, he caught himself looking at a stain of blood, dry against the wooden panels of the bridge.
Eyes riveted to the image, Jasper shivered. Finally, miraculously, he tore away his gaze and looked instead over at Bobby’s face. Intently, the boy analyzed the darkness of his own old blood. For the first time, as Jasper looked on, Bobby’s eyes began to glisten with bitter tears. Though misting his eyes with a glossy sheen, they became no more than the mere threat to fall.
From one fleece-lined pocket, Jasper extracted his hand and reached out to grasp Bobby’s shoulder. Roughly, Bobby jerked himself away. Voice thick and shoulders hunched, the boy rasped, “It sucks being dead, you know.”
Breath catching in his throat, Jasper closed his eyes. Regardless, his brother’s silhouette had already been branded into the inside of his eyelids. A boy standing utterly alone… all because of him, because of Jasper. Pictures flashed through his mind, darting fleetingly across his thoughts and remaining only long enough to prove his guilt: annoying his sister enough to get Bobby riled up, too; ignoring his brother’s plea for quiet; not stopping his brother from leaning towards the front seat so recklessly; not seeing the headlights careening towards them…
“Bobby,” Jasper swallowed, “I’m sorry.”
The hard expression twisting Bobby’s face melted into the cheerful boy Jasper recognized. Slowly, Bobby turned to face his brother. He grinned, leaving not even the slightest trace of anger in his eyes. Brightly, he exclaimed, “That’s all right, Jasper. It’s not your fault.” As his eyes crinkled into a smile, they fell upon the hands folded across his brother’s chest to fend off the cold. “Hey, Jasper, what did you do to get that funky scar?”
For a long time, Jasper stared at the angry red etched into the back of his hand. When he looked back up, his eyes glistened. “There was…”—his voice caught in his throat—“…an accident.”
When he squinted, Jasper could make out the end of the bridge. To him it looked faraway, like a vague memory of a long-forgotten dream. He could not recall ever having crossed to the other side since before winter.
Winter, he thought to himself. Recalling the chill of the previous season only made him feel all the warmer now in the springtime heat. Unzipping his winter coat, he shrugged it off and let it fall into a shapeless heap on the ground. Beneath it he wore a thinner jacket decorated with patches of forest green. Now feeling much cooler, he continued his trek up the road. Only a few feet away, he saw the bridge meet up with the street on the other side.
At the end of it stood Bobby, frenetically waving both hands in the air to greet him. Excitement drowning his features, the boy motioned repeatedly for Jasper to join him. And after all, Bobby could not exactly walk home alone if he didn’t know the way; Jasper would have to go with him. Heaving a sigh, the older boy headed towards his brother. Subconsciously as he walked, he rubbed the back of his left hand. His fingers felt the barely raised, knotted skin only because he knew where to look. The scar there had long since faded into a pale white; by now he barely ever noticed it anymore.
He raised his gaze to stare at his brother. Just behind the ten-year-old, pinkish rays of morning light had begun to creep up from the horizon. By the time Jasper had reached his brother, the pink had turned to purple, which faded quickly into a bluish hue. Without stopping his stride, Jasper walked straight past Bobby and continued down the road.
“Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s already morning; we’re going to be late!” In an instant, he took off down the street towards his home.
