Depths of the Game

"He's my brother, Jenny. Take what you need and go, that's all you need to do."

There are a lot of things I was feeling at that moment. Anger. Misplaced anger that should have targeted my unrelenting naiveté and blissful ignorance that everyone around me tried time and time again to uproot --- but instead, my brother held that burden. He didn't understand what laid outside of his tunnel vision; deeply seeded creeds placed trust in only what was orthodox. It wasn't his fault, being brought up the way he was. Then again, I was reared by the same community. Fostered within the same traditions.

If I hadn't done what I did, we would all still be one big happy family, woven into the life of a one-sided brotherhood with a bone to pick. Living amongst insurrectionists thinking in black or white.

Maybe my brother was right. Leaving will cause just as much pain as staying.

And maybe I would have been okay with that; in another life, I'd have grown into the body they carved, filled the shoes they had tailored.

"He's a defector, Grant. All of the sacrifices we have made, the people we've killed and the people we've lost, has to be for a reason. You believe that, or else you wouldn't be here." If Grant wanted to say something, he gave no indication, but he knew as well as I did that she was right. We wouldn't be here if he had any sort of doubt." If everyone just up and left like him, our whole lives would be spent in vain. We can't just let this go."

Grant stayed silent but I knew her words weren't falling on deaf ears. He was listening.

"What are you saying, Jenny?"

I felt nauseous as I began to follow every diverging path that led me to this stalemate. A lie here and a lie there, a protest to spite every single person who expected me to follow them in darkness, a blindfold wrapped tightly around my head with a single hole poked into it. So small that I would become tunnel visioned, having no other option but to stumble close behind, or else I would lose myself to the night.

All this time, I have been racking up my karmic debt without dwelling on the score I would later find myself knee-deep in. I was so angry and afraid that I lashed out at the slightest provocation.

I don't regret anything now that my bill has come due.

But I never wanted Grant to pay as well. He was just a pawn.

"What I am saying is we have to make an example, as convincing as possible without leaking any... 'sensitive information'." Jenny said, with venomous sympathy seeping through every syllable.

I felt his stomach churn, his heart stop, waiting for what inevitably came out of her mouth next. The tension was cutting deep, releasing that rotten tightness in your chest when the anticipation becomes too much to handle. When your brain runs its 10k, anxiously kicking up all the worst-case-scenarios it can come up with, and you think - stops being so pessimistic, it'll never happen.

And every single one of them happens.

"You're a loose end, Grant. I don't like loose ends."

The sound of metal sliding on metal bore goosebumps across my body and sent a cold shiver down my spine. There was a shift in the air, a change in atmosphere, as my brother's fear became heat spilling from a radiator, digging itself into every inch of my body.

The steel snapped sliding back into place, producing a final click as I imagined the small little ball of metal alloy shift into place. Ready to extinguish the only spark left in my life. The only family I have left.

My buried screams, submerged underneath a thick layer of cloth wrapped tightly around my mouth, kept distracting the running time bomb in my head--- it's all my fault, it's all my fault, it's all my fault.