Weight of the World {Kousei}

[Deleted]

I A N M A T H E S O N

DISTRICT 7 / EIGHTEEN

The half drank bottle of hard liquor that’s sitting in the middle of the room undoubtedly belongs to Russell. However, his bed is empty, and therefore, the small room we shared seemed more than deserted. The morning sun is not a welcome sight, not now, not ever. And so I roll back to the left, my face meeting the cold side of the worn pillow. I would be content to lay here for the rest of the day, but I knew that eventually someone would come pounding in, yelling about how I never did anything to help in this household. I would then proceed to roll myself out of bed and drag myself to my feet, the words they spoke only going in one ear and out the other. I didn’t care anymore; I never did. Of course, there were things I cared about: Russell, how many hidden bottles were left under the bed, and the matters of keeping the rest of the family alive. It didn’t matter how they were doing, just that they were still breathing. The responsibilities mainly fell to Russell and me, and to be honest with you, I’m not handling it well. Russell seems to be doing just fine, rolling with the punches like he always does, but I’m—I’m crumbling, each blow threatening to cause a rock slide that only ends with the destruction of myself or someone I love.

I don’t ever mean to hurt anyone, not when I punch Danny lightly in the shoulder in an attempt to get him to toughen up a bit, or Jason, when I tell him he’ll never get anywhere if he doesn’t start paying attention. I’m just looking out for them; I’m preparing them for what lays outside the worn, wooden door we all hide behind. But how can I reprimand them when I’m at just as much fault?

I see no reason to change out of the grey, cotton shirt that I slept in, so I smooth it out to the best of my ability and make my way slowly out of the room. The hallway is empty and dull, the only thing to be heard the rustling of restless kids behind shut doors. There’s the room that Charlie and Nora share, which is surprisingly quiet for once. Often Russell and I would put our ears to the wall and listen to their fights, most of them verbal and childish, but a few got out of hand, and we would proceed to storm into their room, pulling them apart and telling them to cool it. However, they never really listened, and more often than not our shouts would be masked over by protests of “she started it” and “it wasn’t my fault.” Russell and I would simply turn to each other and think the unspoken words of how the responsibilities fell on our shoulders.

Then there was the room that Maggie and Rachel shared, which was never loud and noisy. Both girls were quieter than was to be expected, their fights more of cold shoulders than bitter words. We never really bothered them, for they always took care of themselves, and for that, I was thankful (I’m sure Russell was too). At the very end of the hallway, there was a room that Jason and Danny shared, the door still standing with its rusty hinges and splintered frame. I would always go in there to check on them while Russell would finish up with Charlie and Nora, as he was much better at lecturing than I was. My reprimands consisted only of “don’t let me catch you fighting again,” which they ignored the second I left the room. However, Russell was convincing, telling of future punishments and guilt trips that were beyond even me. They always made me chuckle, however, because at one point Russell and I had used those very same guilt-ridden replies on each other. Eventually, both of us would feel so guilty that we’d drop all of our charges against the other and move on.

So I drown our Russell’s consequences and knock quietly on the boys’ door. There’s no reply, which doesn’t strike me as strange, so I gently turn the knob and cringe at the unflattering noise the door makes as it rocks back on its rusty hinges. My first glance around the room causes me to notice that Danny is nowhere to be found, which would set off an alarm in any of our heads. Danny was fragile, weak and scrawny with bones brittle enough to snap if you hugged him the wrong way. Jason seems to be preoccupied in something that isn’t me, so I clear my throat and lean against the frame of the door, hoping that his explanation for where our little brother has run off to is better than the tragic scenarios that are racing through my mind.

template by Chelsey

[kousei ♚]

J a s o n + M a t h e s o n

I couldn't help but eventually drift off out of reality once again - I was tired. It was as if my brain was fighting to stay on but it was useless, my brain slowly -but surely- shut itself down as I felt myself dozing off, not in another weak day dream but a full-blown sleep. I know I shouldn't have fallen asleep but sometimes you just can't help it, sometimes people have stayed up awake too long the night before so it's to be completely expected when I eventually have to let myself crash. I'm was tired and I looking at my brother wasn't exactly a priority.

I don't know when exactly my mind flickers on and I come crashing back down into reality but it's quick and sudden. All I remember was my head burying itself in my arms and then seeing nothing but darkness and hearing nothing but my slow breathing. I don't know how long I was out for but when I lift my head everything is quite blurry. Am I even in my room any more. It's not uncommon for someone in the family to think it's funny to move me when I'm asleep in the garden or something so when I wake up I have an achy neck or an achy back. I hate it when they do that; but that can't be the case. I can still feel my bum on my seat and my arms on the splintery piece of wood that is my 'desk'.

I let out a light groan and stretch. How long was I even sleeping for? "Hold on? Where's my brother gone?" I ask myself out loud as I take a few glances around me now that my vision has stopped swimming -it seems to always happen when I sleep- and I can see that there is no one there. The room has a certain empty, deserted feeling to it. Sort of like being stranded on a desert except I know I won't die of dehydration. Shit. Where could he possibly have gone? Oh please say I didn't lose him, if I'd lose him I'd never hear the end of it! My heart begins racing and I begin frantically looking around, spinning around and and scanning the empty room in a wild panic. "Oh, please no."

Hold on, hold on, I'm probably stressing over nothing, he probably just went downstairs you idiots. Yea, that's such a more reasonable explanation, people don't just disappear, unless you live in my imaginary world they don't disappear at least. After all, I wouldn't just want to sit there and watch me sleep all day.

I'm such a drama queen. I rub the back of my head and let out a little fake chuckle at my momentary panic. Anyway it's not as if I'm responsible for looking after him, he can take care of himself. So even if I can't find him I technically didn't 'lose' him. You can't lose a person after all! I chuckle again and lean back on my chair, relieved. People can lose keys, tokens, drinks, pencils, their minds but no one loses another person. After all people are big, bigger than all those things I mention; except maybe your mind of course, your mind is limitless.

Finding a red pen and a small pencil at the 'desk' I pick them up and begin fiddling with them. If I use my imagination these can be whatever I want them to be. Screw reality, I should go back to sleep where I can play with my pencils and turn them into swords or axes, or maybe they can be magic with invisible ink and I can write all sorts of slander about the Capitol on the walls! Much better than the boring real world. With a small giggle I begin to twirl the pens and pencils in my thumbs and just twirl and twirl. These can be whatever I want them to be. My eyes begin to widen and my hands begin to shake ever-so slightly.

Hah!

If Russel or Ian could read my mind right now they'd probably started making their stupid little jokes again and start calling my names like simpleton or idiot. But they don't understand, they're the real simpletons because they laugh at me for thinking outside the box, for seeing that my mind can break the bends and barriers of reality and reach new heights and beyond. They don't see things through my eyes. All the other Mathesons are so locked into their stupid little power-struggle that means nothing; honestly, is anyone going to look at someone and call them great because they made the rest of their family their bitch?

I continue twirling the pencil and pen in my hand when I hear the floorboards creaking and footsteps getting closer and closer. I turn my head around to see none other than Ian. Speak of the devil. He clears his throat as he leans in the door, looking at me. He wants to know where he went. I raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. "I have no idea where he is, I kinda fell asleep." I explain before throwing my stationary back on the desk.

[Deleted]

 

{i a n m a t h e s o n}

Neither Russell or I had ever asked much of our seemingly incompetent siblings: only that they refrain from setting the house ablaze (which had almost happened a time or two) and that they told us before leaving (not that we would ever stop them, of course). However, it came to my attention at Jason’s words that indeed even the little bit of responsibility I had placed upon his shoulders had been too much for the boy to bear.

“I have no idea where he is, I kinda fell asleep.”

If this was a scenario in which time was a close friend I would pause for a moment and question how he “kinda” drifted off, asking if it was possible to be only partially asleep when our younger brother’s life was most certainly on the line. But now was not a time in which I had seconds to spare, so I pause for only a moment to think of where he could’ve scampered off to. He wasn’t brave enough to break our second rule or even to cross the perimeter of the property without having a mental breakdown, so it was almost impossible to believe he was anywhere but inside the confines of our home.

“So, Jason, let’s go over the possibilities:”

This was how every conversation with the boy tended to go, for I’d ask him in an attempt to draw his mind out of whatever reclusion it was hid within, but nothing would succeed for in the end I only had one-sided conversation with myself, my thoughts and words pinging and reverberating off the hollow space he dared to call his mind.

“One: he’s somewhere in the house, yeah?”

And I was hoping with this he’d spring from his chair and take off, darting about the house in hopes of finding any lost treasure, but instead he stays glued to the spot, refusing to move even as I make my way towards him, sitting down on the bed opposite him and watching him intently. Russell always stressed the fact that we were to handle our siblings carefully, as if they were made of porcelain and glass, but truth be told they were all made of dynamite, apt to explode if you cut the wrong wire.

But at this moment in time, looking directly into the eyes of my younger brother rather than selfishly avoiding them, I realize that every joke made—every taunting word and misconception tossed about on a notion or whim—they were never what my brother actually was. Just as I saw a living being with thoughts, emotions, and a mind of their own behind Russell’s eyes, the same existed in Jason.

But this feeling passes quickly, for any epiphanies on the state of the mind of the disoriented would not lead me to the weak.

And so thoughts flicker again and the realization that I had failed to see Danny altogether within the span of the last twenty-four hours causes the most alarm to course through my mind, and without reasonable deduction scenes flash before my mind: those of chaos, of a wandering child lost in the woods that never spat out what it seemed to swallow whole; a boy snatched by strangers who had no better business than to take what was not theirs; of a boy with life fleeting from shallow lungs that were no longer capable to fulfill even the simplest of tasks.

These were the fears which surged through the heart and mind of an anxious soul, and at the allusion of them I fall short of a loss for words, hoping that the level-headed, composed older brother that took my place a moment of ago would return and grant a favor. For Russell was not here, and in turn could not take the task from my shaky hands and steady them in the progress. No, this was a conflict I’d have to deal with on my own, and as much as I dreaded the task I turned back to face Jason and ran a quivering hand through hair that still showed the unwelcome signs of morning.

“So, if you don’t know where he is now, where was he when you last saw him?”

Time stands still between my question and his lack of answer, and I pass the time by tapping my toe against the wooden floors and wringing my hands in a desperate attempt to calm the nerves that were so viably on edge. Yet none of these things soothe the constant ache that’s pulled my muscles tight, and though I’d deny it to the grave only one thing could give me the closure I’d like on the trivial whereabouts of my youngest brother.

(And there’s a million possible answers he could verbally give, but I’m only looking for one, and if he doesn’t give the exact wording of what I’d like it’s bound to take a figure of Russell’s caliber to calm my heavy heart.)

[kousei ♚]

J a s o n + M a t h e s o n

He begins going through possibilities with me and I feel a strange but very familiar sense of deja vu when he begins going through the possibilities of where he's been. Like a reply of my life, over and over again. It would always be something, it would always be something that I've done, it would always be something that I apparently did but can't remember. It would always be something I'd missed or something I hadn't cared about in the first place.

Yep, I've definitely seen this before.

Even as he begins speaking to me, half annoyed, half patronising I can just feel his voice drifting off and then drifting back into focus, drifting off then back into focus. His voice is like a broken tape recorder; one minute I can hear it, the next I can't. I'm so tired. Even now I'm resisting the urge to doze off and call it a day but I know that if I do that Ian will lose his mind and when anyone gets pissed off at me it always , always turns out bad for me without exception.

I stay seated on the chair, staring at him blankly like he's some sort of fuzzy television monitor (let's be honest, he may as well be).

“So, if you don’t know where he is now, where was he when you last saw him?”

His voice snaps me back into focus, back into a permanent state of awareness and I'm fully seeing him, I'm seeing him completely and I think he's worried, or he could be angry - maybe he could be both. I'm terrible at sensing these things, I know nothing after all. But I do know that a little kid being lost usually doesn't equal good things. Was it even my responsibility to watch him? Must've been if Ian's acting like this due to him being lost.

"Erm, er," I begin rubbing my temples on the side of my head, trying to jog my memory so that I can at least have a vague memory of where the hell he could be. "Well he was definitely in this room, then the living room, and then I went back up stairs and sat at this desk and before I know it I was asleep. "I don't know, I was sleeping and stuff," I answer, shrugging my shoulders. Before he can begin yelling at me I add something else, "was I supposed to be watching him?" I ask, slightly confused. I mean maybe I was but maybe I wasn't.

I don't think I was. Was I? It could've been either way knowing me, maybe someone told me watch him but I just wasn't really listening or paying attention. I spend more time in my head than reality after all. It's a well-known fact that everyone who knows me knows.

To be completely honest I never really expected to have to watch him, anyone and everyone knows that the last person anyone wants watching over something valuable is me. Not that I'm proud of it or anything but my attention span isn't exactly the longest fuse in the box so really me guarding something isn't the best option. Anyway doesn't he have a mind of his own? Shouldn't he know not to get lost. But then again when I was his age I got lost a lot ... the amount of times someone would have to come and collect me from some absurd places is uncountable.

"I honestly don't know, he was in the living room last I remember, and then I fell asleep." I explain, knowing full well I'm in for a skull splitting earful yet again.