Three Things

#2 - Never Again

Charles hated this old house, really, he hated it. It was nothing more than a prison to him, and he would watch it burn. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. Whether it be weeks, months, or years from now, Charles would see this house burn to the ground. He'd been eight when they had moved here, this quaint but deceitful home. Four bedrooms, three and a half baths, and a standard kitchen. 

One of the bedrooms had been turned into a home office for his father, and no one else had been allowed inside. A rule that Charles hadn't always followed. A rule that got him in trouble. But it wasn't that rule that broke the family's metaphorical back when it came to him. It had been an accident really, he had just been so angry. Charles didn't want to punch James; his twin, so he'd punched the wall next to him. 

His fist had gotten stuck in the wall, nothing his brother, or parents did could get it out. And they'd tried everything. Pulling - his screams of pain rang in his ears -, oil,  they'd even tried to make the hole bigger. Eventually, they called in the fire department, and after some work, they got him out. Charles's hand was broken, a few knuckles were fractured, but one bone in his hand was sticking out of his skin.

Charles would always remember the horror on his parent's and brothers' faces as they saw the damage to his hand. They originally planned for him to spend only a few hours in the hospital. Getting a cast, getting some shots for the pain, and then getting a prescription or two for the pain and to keep away any infection. Things did go as planned, but two weeks later, both he and James got sick. 

Just days after what the family had thought was initially a cold, the hallucinations started. James clawed at his own skin, feeling and seeing bugs under his skin. He'd scratched his arms open, trying to get the bugs out. Charles had a similar hallucination, though he had been less afraid, and more fascinated. Things went downhill quickly, but there was hope, just a little bit. 

Three days after being admitted into the hospital they found the cause of the sickness. That house, that hallway was a poison, quite literally. The insulation in the walls had been tainted with some toxic spore that Charles still didn't know how to pronounce to this day. Treatment began immediately and the twins started getting better. 

However, that soon changed. Soon it became clear that while Charles continuously got better, James was getting weaker. The doctors were stumped, and his parents feared for their youngest. While it didn't take more than a few days for the doctors to find out what was wrong, by then it was too late. James was dying. 

The worst thing about the whole incident is that the doctors made it clear that if James hadn't already been sick because of the spore, they would have caught his cancer sooner and James would have lived. 

Three weeks after James' funeral, things had drastically changed. The house was quiet. His father was drinking heavily, and his mother wouldn't even look at him. They blamed him, they didn't need to say it, he already knew they did. Not that they would ever say it, not out loud at least. It was spoken with every refused to speak to him, ever glare, and every time they stopped talking every time he walked into the room. 

It was this way until the day he left, at the age of nineteen. Now ten years later, three days after his parent's funeral, due to his father driving drunk, Charles stood in that hallway and glared at the place where he had punched the wall. He hadn't spoken a word to either of his parents since he'd left this house ten years ago, and he hadn't heard from them either. Not one, email, letter, voice mail, or text. Not even a message through word of mouth, like a weird game of tellaphone.

With one last look at the place where the hole once was, Charles turned and walked down the stairs. He didn't look back as he left the house, only getting into his car and driving away.