Being Small (14 page)
Authors: Chaz Brenchley
What came in brown paper from uncertain SingKong origins was not hot Asian teens or exotic bondage videos in dodgy formats. Shame on her, shame on you for ever thinking that it might be.
And if these hands trembled as they reached to the back of the cupboard, as they spilled bottles and boxes out onto the carpet until they found the little ones they wanted, no blame to them for that. Anyone might tremble, such a time and such a purpose. Anyone might fight himself, pull back and press ahead. It might be war, where only the strong survive.
～
He is not strong, but I am. We are. When we do not fight between ourselves.
～
When we fight between ourselves, victory is to the strong.
～
Out of the strong comes forth sweetness.
～
If these fingers tremble as they slip a hypodermic from its wrapping, as they uncap the bottles that have come so far, invert them one by one, thrust the needle through their seals and draw the clear liquids down, tap the syringe to mix the cocktail lightly, still no blame, even to the strong. If the hypodermic drags at them, momentous – well, they ought to feel the weight of what they do. This is not weak. Nothing here is weak now.
～
This is us, watch us now, the man on the bed and the boy approaching. His eyes may flicker and his skin may sweat, he may breathe short and shallow from a dry mouth, but if he hesitates it isn’t doubt, it’s only indecision.
Through the port with the saline, an easy injection into the feed and let it drip down through the valve like a slow tide rising? Or else direct into a vein and swift away?
Youth has its urgencies, and the man on the bed has veins like flaccid cords beneath his inelastic skin. No pressure, it’s habit as much as heart that keeps his bad blood trudging with its boots on, undischarged. No matter. A thumb pressed down into the forearm can raise a vein, with patience.
Can raise his eyelids too, painful and unlikely; and his voice like querulous corn in the wind, “What is it, is that Michael?”
He can’t see. We can’t say. Small wonder.
Easy, now. Go with it. Go away...
～
And he does, he does go, far and fast.
～
And when he’s gone, then nothing more can happen, nothing must.
And so they find us, later: Quin gone and I am in a corner in the dark, afloat in my body with bottles all around me, and nothing new in that.
I know he didn’t want it, but I wanted, oh, I wanted him to want it. Too bad for one of us, or else for both.
I don’t know what I want; it isn’t this. This is what Small wanted, he’s a laughing gnome, Small always gets what he wants. Why can’t I?
Because I don’t know what I want, except it isn’t Small. Unlucky, then. Unlucky again. We’re mirror-twins, reversed. He knows how much he wants me. Ever and ever, amen.
X
BEING SMALL
I
am not myself.
In fact, I realise now, I’m Small.
Always we’d assumed – which means of course that my mother had told us, and she started doing that way back when I believed her, when I could still take her on trust – that there were two twins and the strong one came out on top, on the outside, and that was me and Small could only leech off me, my little leech, my brother. And so he died and that was sad but right, as it should be. That was the great certainty of my life, that we’d got us the right way round.
Not so. She was wrong, she raised us wrong, we had lived all our lives on a lie. On an inverted world, believing north to be south and vice versa.
Small it was who was the strong one, who lived inside me, off me, on me, through me. I was his vessel, his weaker vessel, nothing more: his shell, his transport, his eyes on the world, his pasture. Dying made no difference, not to him. Except that I grew fitter, I made a better host. He was embedded already, what reason did he have to let go?
All these years I’ve carried him and never realised. Body and mind he had me; no wonder he didn’t want to share. Except with our mother, of course. We made such a lovely family, a perfect trinity, mother and son and the wholly ghost. Wholeghost, with added grit and fibre.
He was the tough one, and he took me when he wanted to. He squats inside me somewhere like a genie in a bottle, and you only have to rub my scarred belly to make him speak. Don’t do it. That way madness lies, for one of us at least.
We always were identical, but now I look a lot like him: hairless and shrunken and gazing out through glass. I stay in my room mostly, when I’m allowed. He has me to himself, the way he always wanted. We play on the ChessLord to kill time, and he wins every game.
These days, these nights I dream his dreams.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C
haz Brenchley
has been making a living as a writer since the age of eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently
Shelter,
and two fantasy series,
The Books of Outremer
and
Selling Water by the River
. As Daniel Fox, he has published a Chinese-based fantasy series, beginning with
Dragon in Chains
; as Ben Macallan, an urban fantasy series beginning with
Desdaemona
. A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children and more than 500 short stories. Chaz has recently married and moved from Newcastle to California, with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.