Shadows Of Madness (Slowly Being Edited)

chapter 2

Chapter 2

This is the second chapter of this book, I hope you like it.

Enjoy!!

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Chapter 2

  Hunter's P.O.V

I had made a birthday present - a painting - for my brother, Hayden, because it was our birthday. It had been twelve years since the day we were born. I painted the finishing touches, and then I went over to my brother's door and tapped it lightly.

"Come in," he said with a weakened voice. He was sounding worse with every day that passed. Hayden was sick with a strange and rare degenerative illness that made his body weaker every week.  It had been a month since the doctors informed my family of his condition, and the death sentence that came along with it. He had maybe five years left, if we were lucky, and the thought of it sent an ache through my chest.  The worst of it, though, was that he didn't know - and I couldn't tell him.

"Earth to Hunter," he said, smiling at me like he knew I was lost in my own thoughts. Smiling was one of the few small tasks his body could manage. It was those smiles that made me thankful he didn't know. 

"Sorry," 

"Are you hiding something from me?" He freaked me out when he did that...like he could read my mind. I knew he felt what I felt but he had read me like a book.

I couldn't tell him a bare-faced lie. I was hiding the painting I was planning on giving him. 

"I have something for you," I stepped up to the bed and my eyes ran over his pale, scrawny form underneath the mounds of bed sheets that my mother had laid over him. As though he was already gone, I thought to myself bitterly.

"What.? Something for me?" he asked, confused.

"It's your birthday," I said. I hugged him, careful not to crush his fragile bones before I gave him the painting. As he opened it, his face lit up.  I mean, as much as it could beneath the graying-violet pallor of his skin.

"Thanks, bro," he said with another hug, his puny arms crushing my much bigger body to his own. I could feel the sharp and angular bones that protruded from beneath his skin digging into my torso.

The painting was one of his favorite places. It was a vast lake that we used to play in when we were young. I decided he would love it, and it would be a great present to give to him on his birthday. After five minutes of staring at the painting, he spoke in a gruff and husky voice to break the unbearable silence that had lain itself over us like a blanket that smothers a flame.

"Happy birthday, bro." He struggled from the bed to his chest of drawers, pulling himself along using the edges of random pieces of old, solid oak furniture. He took a small, black leather box from the chest and handed it to me like one might present a sword to a new Knight of service: with an air of regal dominance, a streak of courage, and an unquestionable right to reign supreme.

"Don't stare at me like that! Open it now," he said impatiently, his breath wheezing against his teeth as he slowly slid back down beneath the cotton tomb. I saw his chest rising and falling quickly from the effort.

"Ok, be patient!" I said opening the box to find a sliver ring. Our two initials spelled a central design around which the words "Brothers Forever" ran the entire length of the silver, intertwined with each other. It was beautiful, but somehow nothing deterred from its masculinity; it was such a weight of silver that it would dominate my entire hand when I wore it. I knew my own present paled in comparison.