My Brother's Lover

A brother wrestles with his conscience and finds something much worse lurking beneath...

     It can�t be happening.
     I sit clutching the sweat damp sheets to my body and stare dully into space; my mind churns and re-churns that sentiment over and over.
     It can�t be happening.
     My Mum sits on the corner of the bed; her eyes tortured and glazed with tears. My Dad, the unyielding pillar beside her, his thin lipped mouth a savage line and his eyes distant. My brother�s photo is perched on the dresser before us, his smiling eyes now seeming pointed and accusing. They bore into me like cold needles, piercing my fevered flesh and raping my deepest thoughts. I shut my eyes, I cannot return his glassy stare; I don�t have the strength.

     We buried Martin on the Wednesday. It was a chill, damp day compounded by a creeping, cloying mist that enshrouded everything and seeped into our skin and minds. Time and nature beyond us had halted, the Earth Mother pausing to bestow her condolences upon our tilted crowns as we returned one of her own into her cold embrace. I stepped forward clutching my offering to him. Our football shirts, knotted tightly together. Opposing teams, one red, one blue, the crests pressed together, our hearts. I wanted to fling myself upon his resting coffin, to scrape through the wood with my bare fingernails hoping beyond hope to find him still warm beneath. To shake some life into him. Instead, I released the shirts and watched them drop listless and shapeless onto the casket below.
I retreated to the ranks of the maudlin throng and felt a hot hand creep into mine. Dewy, tawny eyes regarded me and I mapped the descent of a solitary meandering tear that glistened like a diamond on her pretty cheek. Carefully I thumbed it away, it was the first time I had seen her cry.
     My brother�s lover offered me a fragile smile but I found it beyond me to return it.

     At the ensuing wake, I drifted from one moribund conversation to another. Heedless of me, only his brother, they would debate the events in hushed tones.
     �Why did he do it?�
     �He had everything to live for.�
     I could almost feel the duplicity in their words, Martin had everything going for him, his brother did not, why did he not open his veins instead? A model son and the f**k up, that was us. Even Mum and Dad viewed it that way although they never said.
     Conversations stuttered, turned of trailed off as either gaunt-faced Mum or Dad came within earshot. Banality and small talk rippled through the mourners, their shallow faces displaying a mockery of compassion as my haunted parents received them. There was much clasping of hands and officious advice in their mundane babble. The contemptuous spectacle of those black garbed gloaters offering their saccharine promises turned my stomach and fuelled my discourse further.

     Then I spied her, my brother�s lover, alone on a bench, framed by the grey watery light of the bay window behind her. Her hands were clasped between her knees as she huddled and stared dolefully out over the rock and shingle beach below.
     I sat and took her hand only to find a static that I had previously chosen to ignore crackle and spark between us. She turned her gaze upon me. Had I noticed the golden flecks in her irises before or the coppery turn of the seashell curl of her tresses?
     In that moment, I was lost.

     She came to me in the midnight hours the following night. I heard the faintest whisperings as her silken gown slipped down over her slim thighs and dropped to the carpet. A flood of moonlight sculpted her alabaster beauty and transformed her gold spun hair into snowy swirls. She appeared wraith-like and diaphanous then with the light capturing the cool translucency of her naked flesh. Then sylph-like, she eased herself between the sheets to lay her slender, teasing fingers upon me.
Her fragrance was intoxicating and left me invigorated and heady with delight as we united. I tasted the salty pearls of sweat at the hollow of her throat and heard her voice husky and urgent at my ear as we rocked and writhed towards blissful release.
     In that time, I had completely forgotten my pain. It was as if, through her, it had been somehow earthed. In the darkness, bathed in the silkworm glow of our slaked lust, I could not see the steadfast gaze of my dead, betrayed brother�s smiling eyes.

     As the edge of the world sucked down the purplish hue from the cloudless sky, I awoke to find myself abandoned. The bed was cool, the sheets damp and scented with our seepage; the only marker for the passage of the prior nights deeds. From my fitful doze I sought to gain some form of redemption in my brother�s eyes but saw something instead that filled me with a dread so cold and hollowing that I feared that I may never recover from it.

     Scrawled across his open face in childish etch was a message that enclosed my heart in a fist of solid ice and dragged an unbidden choke from my parched throat.
     All became clear in that tiny fragment of time. A single, numbing moment both pivotal and everlasting. Voices rang in my mind.

     Why did he do it?
     He had everything to live for.

     For across his face, in cherry lipstick, read the departing words of two brother�s last lover.
     Welcome to the world of AIDS.

     A fitting epitaph.
     I was still screaming when my parents found me.

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Music courtesy of Godhead / The Beatles.

Author's Note

Hey guys, in response to Moray's review - she's exactly right, the link below displays a 5 in 10,000 chance of contracting HIV from an infected female (assuming no condom is used). I've written this story partly as one of those 'urban legends' Angelheaded Hispter has referred to, but also as a reflection of a similar incident that happened to me about 16 years ago. Although I didn't receive the chilling message in the mirror, I did get a comment from a friend of mine who said 'Hey that girl who just left your place, you know she is HIV positive don't you?'
Shitting my pants didn't even come close... as it was, it was just a malicious rumour - she wasn't, I got myself tested (just to be sure) and I was fine too. Regardless of whether you have or have not contracted the virus, you don't know at the time and bloody hell was I scared! Cheers!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS

Reviews

[Spiritscript]

Wow, Howie. Very intense!

[Susan M]

Howie, you are a master story teller. I expected a surprise but I did not see the ending coming at all. I gravel at your feet. *gravel gravel gravel*

[Emily B]

I guess I should have put a little more thought into why he did it--before I got to the end. You are a master of that moment of surprise.

[Donald Meikle]

You are the livin' end. Even after reading your other stuff I still was surprised.

[Jennifer Ryan]

This was awesome. I didn't see that coming at all! Great job!