truces; aceline's partings

It's fading; my love for him, my brother, my Esrooke. Just like his own being.

In the hush hush tones of memories, I can still hear him in the foreground, whispering in mine and Spades's ears that it will be okay, that each and every day we are given will be absolutely okay. I didn't understand; I was always a stupid child. Back when my innocent whims were nothing more than silence zipped behind a smile, that's all I had, and for so long I believe that that was all there was to have. Just the three of us: Aceline and Spades, and Esrooke. Our three brunette heads, I never understood the look on my mother's white face on that last day. All I understood were the words around me, the sopranos in the air of Spades and Esrooke and-

"Does this always happen, Esrooke?"

"Just to those who have nothing more to give, that's all Spades."

Then why must it always happen?

Every night after Spades left, Esrooke made me swear to pray, and I always did. I always prayed that some where in the constellations was my mother, and with her piercing eyes that never got to fully see me that she watch him. To make sure my idiot brother lived to see every okay day until he mustered through them and into the land of the decent days. That he is able to pocket each and every one of them.

If only I prayed to her to watch over me, because I think I'm out of decent days.

For so long it was just me in this cold house; just that metallic touch in the air with a solemn piano chord. It never brought the same light to my heart, that beating that came along to Esrooke and I's control of them, but alone it's no longer anything but grey. Black and white -- monochrome. The gears of his clockworks didn't tick as they used to, not with that same chime at 12:00. Everything was dismal, a slight drizzle holding me by the throat every second I spent in this sullen house. This forsaken damn house. (I hate it, I hate it so so so so much.) 

Esrooke entwined so many of my heartstrings into the threads of his death bed, every waking hour he was always there in my beating blood, always scratching the surface of my background at least. An introspective love, I couldn't handle it. For so long it was Aceline and Esrooke, and during those winter nights I didn't have Brady. I no longer had Spades. I no longer had myself or Esrooke, all there was was sickness.

Blood stained the mattress, the smell of death sinking its tainted fangs anywhere Esrooke touched. Each breath of his was forced, the straining of his lungs noticeable in the sound alone. His dark room and closed windows; I hated it. He was the very last string of innocence, and yet fate's switchblade found the weak spot once again. The same illness that took my mother, maybe one day it'll grasp the wind from my lungs and lift my heels off this plain as well. 

It's hard to control anything in this world. Three months he fought, three months I begged with the gods to take anybody else, to save any cell of him they could, but never have I been good with words. February 27th, my brother broke the one promise he ever swore to me: for the rest of our days, we will be okay.

Night took my joints by the bitter cold, shaking my very existance by the spine as his cold body rested in bed a floor lower than mine. This was no home of mine, each memory I have every crafted has been erased by nothing more than illness. A runaway father, a sick mother, a runaway brother, a sick brother; what will I be? They are all constellations, somewhere, and on that night, that bitter winter night I was nothing more than the emotions riddling my soul. The demon's spells they were yelling in my ears, my eyes stretched through the sockets, I was, just like the stars always choice for me to be, truly alone.

It breaks my lips, the cracks and groves of my skin, for a singular day -- February 28th -- the Carnals cease to exist. There is no warmth or metal, no life or death, no Aceline and Brady and Spades and Esrooke, only this house. These brick walls and patched ceiling and tick tick ticking clocks that follow me every where; hauting me. I can't break this consciousness, it's drowning. For a singular day, I am nothing but the emotions I let take over my body; for a singular day, my heart feels as cold as my brother.

In the confines of my own room it's all bleeding. The walls are oozing poison, and the keyboard in the corner looks only like a tombstone, a marker for the deceased. I can no longer hear the music; the pitch perfect match of Esrooke and my keys. There's nothing more than the silence and tick tick ticking and sniffling of my muffled tears. I cannot hear the humming of chorales throughout our estate, the ode to sleep of our tenor, there is nothing more than this silence suffocating me. That tick tick ticking, this silence will kill me.

I can no longer hear the whispers in my ear of him praying, of him swearing that each day will be okay, that each hour of our life will be survivable and for a moment I believed him. I believed when Brady came in my life, and I believed harder when Esrooke began his descent because in that moment that's all there was to believe in. That gentle voice eleven years ago telling me I would survive. But there's no Esrooke to hold that voice to my skull anymore, there is no more chant or whisper or music or Brady or Carnal. For now, there is only the fading image that in the corners of my eyes I swear I still see; that every thing I've been missing for seventeen years has just been living in my peripherals. 

But it's fading, those corners, and for now there is only Aceline. And hopefully one more decent day.