Empty Throne

He stared up at the night sky intently, his silver eyes reflecting the vast expanse of stars stretching above him. His brother's voice echoed in his head.

"When I die, I'll be up with the moon and the stars, and I'll be beautiful too." Seth’s words seemed stained into his heart now. His response had always been that his brother was beautiful, but it never worked.

"So where are you?" He whispered, searching hungrily across the sparkling canopy for anything that would make him feel connected to his twin once more. But there was nothing. Just the cold, harsh moonlight and the gaze of a million stars, apathetic in the face of his pain.

Sighing, he stubbed out his cigarette and climbed back through the window, leaving the hard shingles of the roof behind and once again surrounding himself with the empty silence of the dark apartment.

He collapsed onto his bed, the soft mattress barely giving way beneath his weight. These nights always made him feel less somehow. Why shouldn’t he, though? He was less. So much of him had bled out with his brother. His soul still lay in the cracks of his grandmother’s floor, dried out and flaking away.

A breath he had not realized he was holding slipped from his lungs, and the knot of sorrow he clenched in his throat fell away, replaced with a nothing so complete that he could not even bear to blink. The shadowed stucco ceiling of his bedroom loomed overhead, bearing down, crushing him until his ribs splintered and his brain leaked from his ears.

Snowflakes danced from the thick charcoal clouds that slept overhead, blanketing the abandoned landscape’s horizon with apathy. A mountain brushed the sky in the distance, its blasted peak host to rivers of molten rock hugging its body like veins. The plateau that stretched to the skyline was populated only by scrub grass long since dead, unable to survive in an environment more rock than soil.

Stephan stood at the base of a colossal cherry tree, its shocking pink blossoms in violent contrast to the monotone world. Petals fell from the tree in an unending flow, though they dissolved before they touched the ground. As he watched the remnants of a flower land on his arm, he realized that it and the flakes from the sky were the same: ashes. The tree’s black roots, each the width of a man, pierced the solid rock with the ease of a needle through thread. They bound the tree so completely, even the yawning abyss that opened wide beneath the trunk couldn’t weaken it.

A piano’s mournful notes reached him, carried on the cusp of a breeze that had not existed moments ago. The music washed over him, and with it the scent of lavender and the memory of secret, stolen nights. His heart skipped as he turned to face the musician.

Seth’s fingers skated effortlessly over the ivory keys of their father’s grand piano, weaving a tapestry that pulled the longing from Stephan’s heart and gave it form: two black wolves, one slight smaller than the other, running in endless circles around the twins.

"I’ve missed you.” Stephan couldn’t remain silent, but even so, he balked as Seth turned an icy gunmetal gaze to him.

"Have you?” Seth’s words were not softened by the notes he played as he spoke. Each one bit deeper than any fang. Anger flared in Stephan’s heart at this questioning of his grief. Seth might have seen the flicker of it in his eyes, for he sneered. “If you truly missed me, you would follow.”

"I did.” Stephan held out his left arm, where a heavily scarred hand matched an equally mangled wrist. “I followed--”

"You failed.” Seth’s judgment was impossible to mistake. “You were too weak. Too afraid to slip away.”

The smaller wolf snapped at the heels of its brethren as they ran. The larger of the two snarled and wheeled around to retaliate, but its antagonist had already fled in the opposite direction. The infinite chase resumed.

"Everything I’ve done for you, and you would call me weak?” Stephan’s hurt gave way to indignation.

"I never asked you to do those things.” Seth stood, though the piano continued to play. Walking around to face Stephan, he wrapped his arms around his older twin’s waist.

"But I did.” Stephan brushed his brother’s pale cheek with his hand. “I love you.”

"Then don’t fail this time.”

A pulse of pain blasted Stephan off his feet. The figures of his brother and the wolves exploded into smoke, leaving a shadow of where they had been for a moment, before dissolving completely. Stephan curled on the rocky ground, cradling his head as he watched the world bleed into another, this one with faded white walls and a bright light streaming in from somewhere he could not see.

Blinking away the tears that struggled to fall, Stephan staggered to his feet from the floor of his bedroom. The throbbing headache he was quickly developing told him that the slightly askew bedside table was to blame. Furious, he roughly shoved it back into place and went to inspect the damage in the bathroom mirror.

“Foolish.” whispered the voice as Stephan pulled away from the glass, having found no extraneous damage.

“F**k you,” he growled. His reflection in the mirror stared accusingly back at him, lip curled in disgust.

“So aggressive. You loved me once, you know.”

“Never. Not you.”

“Do you miss it?”

“There’s nothing of you to miss.”

“Not after you were done with me, Stephan.”

A woman, pale as lilies with long hair the color of red sunsets stood behind him, her delicate hand on his shoulder. His breath hitched in his throat as he stared at her through the mirror. She smiled, and as her lips stretched to show sparkling teeth, her neck opened. The bloodless split became wider and deeper, as though an invisible blade was slowly finding its way across.

His fist met the mirror in a kiss of violence that smashed the profane image to pieces, embedding its remains into his hand and scattering glinting mockery all over the counter and across the tiled floor. An agonized whimper grew into a scream of rage as it wrenched itself from his throat, and he held his wretched arm to his chest as he fumbled for the phone in his pocket. She picked up after the first ring.

"Help me, Malice.”

Author's Note

I wanted the first chapter to be less rambling than the original. Did I succeed? No idea.