My Castles Are Falling

Escape into the music. Just turn it up, louder and louder, until you can barely feel anything. That is—and will always be—my goal. My stomach groans and flops around; it feels like it might just rip itself open if I succumb to its unacceptably thunderous grunts and gurgles. This is very discomforting, to say the least, because I am a walking immunity at best and a garbage disposal at worst; my stomach never ails me.

As if the unexplainable pain in my stomach is not enough, malcontented hands extend their claws, all too suddenly digging them into my brain. It is a migraine so strong that it parallels a hurricane beating down on the waters, tearing them out of a peaceful slumber, forming a riot with each passing wave.

With this war of organs vying for the title of “in the most pain”, I become very nervous that this is not merely my own pain. I fear that this pain is so strong in me because somewhere my twin brother is feeling this same pain, if not much worse. I have not seen him all day and this makes me very anxious.

I open the back door to my house, just as I would any other summer day; only now my eyes are ablaze with a sickened fear. I need to get out, need to find him, need to go to him and be there at his side like he always is for me. I close my eyes, try and lock all the—hopefully irrational—fear from my mind, try and see if I can hone in on my Tom’s surroundings.

There is still trepidation clouding my connection, but I can tell that his pain is what I am feeling. I see him enshrouded in a bed of flowers, his body looking like stiff marble. Opening my eyes, I immediately know where he lies and I begin running there as fast as my skinny legs will propel me.

I look around, finally stopping to breathe, and the bright lights of the over-commercialized church call out to me, speaking in hushed ghostly whispers, a secret only I can uncover. Suddenly it feels like the church is screaming, “Bill, he is here!” but it is only an overwhelming feeling in my head.

I close my eyes and once again see Tom asleep in the garden behind the sanctuary, but now the pain slowly subsides and the uprising waves quiet once more. He looks like a darling cherub lying there among the lilacs, daisies, roses, and bleeding hearts: the perfect addition to the Garden of Eden.

My feet begin to rhythmically pound against the blacktop until my shoes are met by the soft give of the dirt and grass beneath them. When I open my eyes to the light of the summer sun, I see not the angel Tom from before in my head, not the peaceful slumber of Simone’s own David, but the remains of a crumbled marble beauty within the flowers. Tom’s face—though crushed from pain—still has that light smile on it that I love more than anything, the smile my older brother wears when he thinks no one else is looking. Our mother catches it sometimes, but I can always sense it coming, can almost always catch him in the act.

My eyes graze lower on his body, tearing away from my favorite smile for something far more gruesome. His shirt is two different shades of red, one of which reawakens that sickness in my stomach. I kneel, crushing the flowers underneath my bony legs. Tom’s face retains that angel smile, despite several small cuts all over his face, and I can only cry because I don’t know what else to do. I lean to clutch his small frame hidden under that huge, blood-soaked t-shirt. “Please wake up,” I whisper through my tears, “it’s so dark and cold.”

“Nein, Billa, it’s nice and warm here. I’m floating on the waves in the Maldives, you remember, where the water is so blue and you can see everything. Come in the water, Billa,” Tom chokes out, blood pooling near the corner of his mouth. His eyes flutter open with some difficulty, but when they find mine, a tiny glimpse of hope explodes into celebratory fireworks.

“Please wake up, Tomi,” I say, pressing my face against his bruised cheek, holding him as tightly as my frail frame will allow. “I feel so alone and I feel so scared that you're going away,” I reluctantly pull away, seeing his eyes flicker in and out of consciousness. I sob, clutching my free hand to my mouth, barely even speaking. “And I feel so scared…”

Tom reaches up, using most of the strength left in his body, and holds his hand to my tear-stained cheek. “Billa, stop crying. I’m fine, and I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.” The blood from his stomach wound—which I still cannot bear to look at—is soaking through onto my t-shirt now, but though I hold my other half slowly dying in my arms, I am in such a state of shock that I cannot run for help. “I’m just going to sleep now, but when I wake up we can go out and get some Skittles, ja?”

As I feel his hand drop limply to the side, with his head following suit, I wail, my sorrow ripping out of me in the only way it can. “NEIN, TOMI, DON’T LEAVE ME ALL ALONE. Now I’ll never tell you of all the different ways you make me so…” So what? So complete? So alive? Afraid? Protected? Loved? I cannot even complete my own thoughts; for the passing moment, I have left the world just like Tom. My head collapses on his chest, my sobs taking over my weak body.

I awaken hours later, feeling a sharp pain in my head and a dry crustiness on my torso. Immediately, I cannot wait to climb into Tom’s bed and tell him of the terrible dream I just had, and have him humor me by nodding in all the right places and give me one of those brotherly hugs he’s so good at. But, finding myself still in the flowers, surrounded by my sobbing mother and father and the wailing sounds of an ambulance, I realize shortly after rousing that it was not a dream, and that I will never hear his laugh or see his smile again. I feel an unparalleled sickness, and my stomach empties itself onto Tom’s floral resting place.

“I need to get out of here,” I say, to no one in particular. So, without a word, I stand up…and I run.

---

It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t have my laptop, my iPod, or any other clothes but the ones on my back, because all that mattered to me was running farther and farther and farther away from everything that had just happened. I kept seeing crushed flowers molded to the silhouette of Tom’s body every time I closed my eyes—even just to blink. I ran, even though the cold air made my lungs contract. When I finally stopped to breathe, I looked around and saw the city like I had never seen it.

Berlin at night: the street lights breathed life into the city. They made me feel protected or, at the very least, less alone. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt this feeling so strongly—as if me post Tom was just a new infant born into those flowers—and the lights were my only logical explanation for my feelings.

I had read so many stories about the reality of living on the streets, stories that promised heroin addiction, mugging, gang rape, starvation, the cold barrel of a gun on my temple. Stories that made my heart slow and speed up at the same time, erratically beating with adrenaline and fear. So why was it that I felt so safe and comforted out here in the cold, dark night?

An icy breath crept silently across my shoulders, and I turned around only to find that I was as alone as I felt running away from my home, my problems, my grief. But all the things that I ran away from could not even come close to the one thing I tried so unsuccessfully to run towards: my everything, my twin brother.

As sick as I felt, as much as I wanted to give up and run home and collapse into my mother’s loving arms, as doubtful as I was about being able to last one night without my laptop, I knew that this was my course. I knew I had to be here, out on the streets, welcoming death though it would refuse to welcome me.

The dirty street water glimmered with character, guiding me home. Home, wherever home was going to be tonight. Probably the alley next to Cascina’s, where the fat man—who was certainly not getting any younger—would let me slide on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Sobs raked through my chest, putting so much pressure on my ribcage that I felt like I was suffocating, if only I could be so lucky. I underestimated how quickly German nights froze, making statues of everything. My tears felt like snowflakes caked on my face, and two thick trails of black eyeliner blemished my pale cheeks.

I slinked into the alleyway I held in my memory, cursing myself for not having showered this past morning, with no warm bed to fall into after changing into dry, clingy pajamas, no mother to sing me sweet lullabies and promise that I was going to be alright, that Tom was going to be alright even though we both knew otherwise, no roof over my head, and what scared me the most, the fear of some homeless bum stealing the one set of clothes I had.

A pile of garbage bags stopped me dead in my tracks, giving me something soft to fall over into. I shivered something fierce, about cracking like an ice cube, when I felt a warm body on top of me. My initial reaction was pure terror; who in the world would chance upon this alley, this mound of discarded crap, and feel the need to lie on top of me?

Clenching my teeth as hard as I could, I forced open one eye. All the oxygen I had been holding in up until that point finally left my body in one glorious sigh; it was only Tom, coming to make sure I didn’t get too cold without my comforter. I let go of all my worries as I closed my eye once more, pulling Tom’s hoodie over me as I was taken over by sleep.

---

I awoke to the sudden thud of two more bags of garbage landing on top of me. I almost wondered why I felt the blow of the rubbish harder than Tom, since I remembered him sleeping on top of me last night to keep me warm, just like a good older brother ought to. When I rubbed my eyes to make the crust of the dried eye makeup come off on my hands, I could finally see the light, but it looked like Tom had gone away. I was left lying in a trash bag sandwich with not even the hoodie to prove to me that last night had been real. Had it?

I tried to push myself up to a sitting position, but my hands sank into my makeshift bed like a memory foam pillow. My head drooped to my left, eyes dancing back and forth, gauging the level of pain I would experience if I were to roll off of the bags and onto the gritty concrete. In the time it took me to blink, however, being on the concrete was a thing of the past involving very little pain, and I now had the proper leverage to stand up.

The stench radiating off my tired body was unbearably putrid; it leaked out of just about every orifice my flesh had to offer, poisoning the already dank city air. It felt like bacteria was staging a territorial war, and my skin was the battleground. Stretching all of my limbs, I slithered out of the alleyway, silently begging for rain to come down and wash away this odor.

I scanned the whole area near to me once I was completely out in the open, and across the street, there was a massive fountain brimming with foliage and surrounded by little laughing children. Crossing the street without looking was probably dangerous, but I opted for a quick fountain bath in lieu of waiting for a downpour. In my full clothes, jeans included, I jumped into the waters of the fountain as if I were a penny for someone to make a wish on. Splashing around in the waters as I was earned me several looks from parents and grandparents, as well as random adult onlookers, but a few of the children followed my lead and dove in; I was their Pied Piper.

I rubbed my lower arms, and the exposed part of my stomach, thinking ‘my kingdom for a loofah…’ trying to erase the disgusting smell and feeling from my body. When I felt a slight pressure on my shoulders I turned around, seeing Tom pushing down on them as if he were about to start playing leapfrog with me.

“Hallo, Tomi!” My eyes were the city of New York at nighttime; they were the eighth night of Hanukkah: a festival of light, if you will. “Why did you leave this morning? They threw more garbage on top of me, and it hurt, Tomi. And you didn’t even leave me your hoodie as a blanket! Some big brother you are!”

With just the right amount of pressure, he was airborne, jumping over my head and landing right in front of me with a big splash. We were six years old again, reckless and fun loving, playing in the park with…I choked up, refusing to let myself think their names, lest I break down and go back and be miserable in the face of what I was too childish, too shocked to stop.

I would have liked to believe that this was all real, and somewhere in my subconscious it really was, but I knew that I hadn’t run from my mother or my memories. I had simply opted out of a life with Tom, run to a harder life, a life alone on the streets of Berlin, but at least out here I could pretend that the tragic end of “us” had been a falsehood, a terrible dream, and not the other way around.

“Bill, you reek of piss and spaghetti,” he said, laughing when I nodded in agreement. “Here, let me help you…you know, to make up for being a ‘horrible big brother’.” I felt the mellifluous graze of his fingers brushing just under the hemline of my shirt like a venerable stuffed animal: velvety, but rough skinned from too much playing. The shirt slid up my torso until I was freed of it, and like a mother to her child he took water into his hands and began to wash me off.

Hands glided deliberately over my shoulders and down my arms and I drifted into a sort of paradise. I couldn’t help but let my head roll back and let my eyes close as I dove further into my dreamland. Tom had this ability to just take all the stress away from me, probably a gift to me from some higher power, considering the amount of anxiety he caused. “Tom...”

At first, it started to merely drizzle, and then smash, it became torrential. However, instead of running and ducking away in a rush for shelter, I basked in the glory of the monsoon washing over me. I let the flow of water from the sky surround me; I let it fall in love with me, giving me courage for what I sensed was to come later. All the families melted away into the canvas of the streets, running for homes and warm home-cooked meals, and brothers and sisters and love, but I just stayed in the fountain, splashing Tom and getting splashed back.

My hair molded to my face like glue, shedding some of its revolting scent and oily texture. The fountain overflowed with streams of rain water, cascading over the edge as if the archangels had choreographed it, and suddenly we were dancing, Tom and I. It came as second nature to me, this prancing about and loving life because my twin was at my side and nothing else mattered except me and him and the cleansing liquid falling heavy on us, swallowing me whole.

Lightening flashed, and we had one of those twin moments where we both just knew what the other wanted. Onetwothreefourfive and we were underwater, playing tea party just like we used to, only it does not sting when I open my eyes, or when I open my mouth and say, “Would like some cream or sugar, Tomi?” and fluid is racing downdowndown into my esophagus and filling up my lungs and I am not screaming, I am just stirring my tea, and I am laughing and smiling and my heart is in a ballroom dancing the quickstep and Tom is holding my hands and my eyes are wide open. I feel this floatingfloating up into the sky and into the clouds and the fountain looks like an ant below me and I am just drinking and laughing and smiling because nothing can ever be wrong with Tomi at my side, smiling that smile that only I can catch, without any chagrin, and he is whispering in my ear, “Welcome home, little Billa.”