alexis kang {district seven}

L E X

It's not easy to forget. Especially not tonight. The bartender is pretty I think, but there are about three of her right now and each more out of focus than the other, so there's no way that I can be sure. She places another bottle in front of me with a warm smile and I think she might be hitting on me because of the way her fingers linger against mine when she passes me the beer and the smile that has not left her lips since her eyes turned to me. I don't spare her a glance, pressing cold glass against my lips and burning my tongue with bitter poison once more. It's not easy to forget and so I drink until I can do nothing but. 

Anthony wouldn't want to see me like this, half slumped over a bar, dazed and confused and miserable as a pretty girl tries to coax an address from my lips but they are too heavy to move let alone form around the words I'd need to speak. I don't want to give her my address anyway, I don't live there anymore. That's where my dad stays because they let him out of the Detention Center two days ago and I haven't been able to sleep since. 

The mere thought of him is enough to send my heart into desperate spasms, fear bristling off my skin as gnarled fists and sharp teeth are suddenly all I can feel once more. 

He hated Anthony because he killed mom. Twelve years ago he stole her life the minute he took his first breaths. He hated me because I looked like her. I cannot count the times I screamed, begged for him to understand that it was out of our control. That Anthony was no more a murderer than I my mother but his rage was hot and red and it bruised me and broke Anthony's bones. Whenever I tried to stop him, my bones were broken too. 

Seven months he spent in the Detention Center. Seven months for twelve years of torture. It's not fair. That's what I want to scream. Instead I knock back a shot and enjoy the way my head spins, dispersing all unpleasantness the drunker I am. More. More. More. I need that feeling. Freeing nothing. So that I will not remember anything about this night. Not that I saw Father kissing a young woman on his porch and that there were flowers on Anthony's grave that I didn't leave there. 

(How dare he visit him. How dare he.) 

And I'm so angry.

But telling father that will only end in the pain I was sure I had escaped.

I'm not his child anymore. That's what my moms said the last time I brought it up. They had signed the papers and it was final, I was theirs and they were mine and we were so happy. Even in a house that creaked at night with bitter wind, that bit into my skin with numbing cold I was so happy that nothing hurt and that when they told me they loved me I knew they meant it and-

I tell the pretty waitress goodbye, giving her a half smile as I stumble out of the bar. It's night time. I think. There are thousands of suns in the sky but the night is the same navy hue that I'm so used to that I think I'm sure it's night. I can't go home. I don't want to see the disappointment on Mommy's face and the tears that well in Mom's eye every time I come home wasted or high or both. So my feet take me to the only other home I have. A slab of stone sat pretty among thousands of others. Anthony Kang, beloved brother and son, you will be missed. 

There are more of the purple flowers there. I know I didn't leave them because Anthony hated purple and that fact burns bright into my fingers as I clench the bouquet between them. "Fuck you." I shout at my father's flowers because I will never say it to his face. I hurl them as hard as I can into another slab, sending purple confetti into the breeze as my knees lose all strength and melt into the ground where Anthony decays. 

I saw him kill him. He had him against the wall and he was screaming and I wanted to help but I was too scared he would hurt me again. I couldn't move my fingers and the sharpness radiating across my chest was enough to sew my lips together and so I just watched as he didn't let go. As my twelve year old brother squirmed and gasped and begged until he didn't. And father dropped him on the floor and there he lay until father went to bed three hours later and I gathered the strength to move four more. 

He was dead but I begged them to save him. He was cold within my arms but I insisted they could. Instead they strapped me to a bed and wrapped a hand I couldn't feel and stuck me with a needle until the world went black. 

I was supposed to protect him. He was my baby brother and I was supposed to protect him but I just sat and watched as he died. 

That is why I drink.

Anthony's grave is littered with the bottles I've brought here. Drank myself into oblivion in front of my brother because I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to apologize to a dead boy for just sitting there. The guilt eats through my stomach like the acid I put there. 

I've said it a thousand times here. (I'm sorry, Anthony, I'm sorry I didn't save you.) It changed nothing. My brother did not rise from his grave and my father did not go back to jail. 

The numbness settled in two months after he'd died. The tears I had cried for countless hours were suddenly nothing but a memory and I couldn't feel anything I was supposed to. My hand had healed and my chest was bandaged but I didn't care. I was not afraid nor was I much of anything else. I walked barefoot on shards of glass and felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I think that's how I befriended them. The men who used to jeer at me in the halls as I walked with shoulders slumped and eyes glued to my toes. I remember that one asked about my brother and I remember that I hit him so hard across the face that I knocked a tooth loose and the others thought it was so funny that they told me to eat lunch with them. 

They're like my father, really. Hungry for power and eager to make others feel like they're nothing. They're like animals, tearing through the district. They drink and fuck and smoke and no one tells them to stop because they're too scared. And I whistle at girls who pass, drink the poison they give to me, I hide myself within them because if I was with them no one would dare hurt me. Not again. 

But I don't hurt others like they do. 

I just watch. I suppose I'm really good at that. 

I rarely feel anything while they do it. I sit in the back with my arms crossed and my eyes anywhere but the kid who probably looks so much like Anthony did while father's fists tore into him. I don't think about it because I am safe. I am safe and I have survived everything the world has thrown at me and sometimes I don't care about anyone else.

But it's not really sometimes anymore. 

I'm something worse than my father, now. I'm the same drunk asshole as him but I'm different. I sit and I watch and I know. But I do nothing. I can't find it in me to give more than one shit about anyone but me. 

Because I lost Anthony and I won't lose him again.

And tonight I fall asleep with my head upon his grave and his screams in my heart.