Shut Your Eyes

Max and I wandered into the condo around one.

Moving softly into my room, I quickly changed into a t-shirt and a pair of sleep shorts and fell into bed. My ribs were aching – a sign that I hadn’t taken it as easy as Max had instructed me to. I wrapped myself up in a cocoon of blankets and pillows and fell asleep to the sound of Max’s feet padding around upstairs.

That’s when the nightmare started.

I was back in Philadelphia, back in my apartment. Nothing had changed – the same pictures still hung on the walls, the bed remained unmade, it was as if my leaving had stopped time. The same empty bottle of Jack Daniels lay abandon beside the couch, its owner mysteriously absent from the room.

I moved silently through the empty apartment. My bare feet made no sound against the cold hardwood floors as I made my way to the hallway. Just as my body moved into the doorway, Gavin appeared. Shoving his body into my path, he watched me with wild eyes. They were bloodshot from drinking and held a heavy, unblinking gaze.

My whole body was instantly aware of his presence. My breathing became staggered, erratic. Goosebumps broke out on my skin as a chill came over my entire body. The inside of my mouth suddenly became dry and my heart was racing as my body’s natural fight or flight instinct took over. I’d never taken either of those options before, however, and the evidence was all over my body. It read like a morbid scrapbook of my memories.

Gavin took a staggered step forward, reaching a long arm to the wall to steady himself. The hard glass of the whiskey bottle clinked against his belt buckle with each stride of his legs. He continued moving towards me at an agonizingly slow pace until he’d managed to back me against a wall. Dropping the whiskey bottle onto the floor, he reached a few cold fingers out to grasp my face in his hand.

His bright green eyes were clouded over with alcohol and anger, but his demeanor was eerily calm – like the eye of a hurricane. His gaze bore into mine for a few seconds before I dropped my glassy eyes to the floor. He forced my face up with a quick jerk of his large hand. After long moments of silence his lips parted and he uttered the five words that never failed to make my blood run cold.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

*Max POV*

I’m a heavy sleeper.

It’s usually the first thing someone learns about me if they spend more than a couple of hours in my presence. I’ve slept through pretty much everything, from storms to bus rides full of loud hockey players, once I even slept through a breakup. So when I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange feeling, I knew something wasn’t right.

I laid in bed for a moment, trying to figure out what the problem was. Vomiting was out of the question, I’d had far too much to drink on many occasions, but this wasn’t one of them. The alarm wasn’t going off; neither was the smoke detector. I didn’t smell fire, or gas, or anything else they scare you about while you’re sitting on the uncomfortable chairs in the insurance office. My eyebrows furrowed involuntarily. What was wrong?

That’s when I heard it – a soft whimpering noise, almost like an injured animal, was coming from downstairs.

“Maggie.” Her name came out of my mouth in a breath, almost a whisper. I threw the layers of blankets off of my body and ran towards my door, grabbing the baseball bat I kept in the closet before I left the room.

As I made my way closer to her room, her whimpers turned into shrieks and screams. Bursting through her door, I found her on her bed tossing around like a fish out of water. Her arms and legs thrashed about, her head turned side to side like she was trying to say ‘no’. Tears streamed down her face, and the moonlight reflected off the light sheen of sweat that coated her skin and caused her hair to stick to her forehead.

It scared me, I’d never seen her do this before. I moved to her bedside, reaching out an arm to stop her before she hurt herself. Gently shaking her shoulder, I tried to wake her up.

“Maggie. Maggie, wake up.”

Her tiny hand closed itself around my wrist as her eyes shot open wide, pupils dilated and a glazed look in her gaze. Tears still poured down her cheeks, and what happened next made a shiver run down my spine.

“Gavin, please stop.”

She released my arm as quickly as she had grabbed it, and continued to thrash around. Her eyes were still open, wild and crazed as they shot around the dark room, never focusing on anything. It was then I realized that she was still asleep.

I reached forward again and grabbed her by the shoulders. Immediately she began kicking and clawing at me, begging me to stop, telling me I was hurting her. I shook her a bit, calling her by name, but it didn’t help.

Quickly I put her down and jogged into her bathroom, shoving aside the shower curtain and turning the shower on full blast. Moving back to the bed, I apologized to her even though I knew she couldn’t hear me and grabbed her arms in my hands, folding them against her chest and holding her tight against my own. She fought and kicked and screamed but I dragged her towards the running water anyway, speaking softly to her and mentally making myself a note to beat the living shit out of Gavin one day.

Once we were inside the bathroom, I carried her into the shower and under the hot stream of water. At first she still kicked and whimpered but after a few seconds she stopped short and became very quiet, very fast. She shook her head to the side a few times before she went limp in my arms, no longer fighting me for control.

I knew she was finally awake once I heard her soft, confused voice echo through the shower stall.

“Max? Qu'est-ce qui se passe?” (Max, what’s happening?)

“Tu étais faire un cauchemar.” (You were having a nightmare) I answered softly, trying not to spook her.

“Oh.” Was all she whispered, glancing down at the tile floor as the water beat down on her head. We were both soaked to the bone and beads of water dripped off of my hair and onto hers. The two of us stood there for a moment in silence, the only noise was the splashing of the water against the shower floor.

Realizing I was still gripping her tight, I set her down on her feet and let her stand on her own. She turned around to face me and I saw the Margaux that she tried so hard to hide from everyone during the day. Covered in bruises from head to toe that were finally starting to heal, she looked fragile – like a priceless piece of pottery that had been broken and then glued back together. There were chips missing, and the cracks still showed, but it was fixed. Healing. Getting better.

She shyly tucked a piece of dripping hair behind her ear and shuffled her bare feet a bit. “Je suis désolé que je t'ai réveillé.” (I’m sorry I woke you.)

Gently taking her chin in my hand, I tilted her face up so she was looking at me. “Il n'y a rien à regretter.” (There’s nothing to be sorry for.)

She nodded and looked away from me. I could tell she was embarrassed from the way she was chewing on her bottom lip and avoiding my eyes.

“Eh, tu bien?” (Hey, you ok?) I asked quickly, scanning her over for any new injuries.

“Je suis bien.” (I’m fine.) She muttered under her breath and I sighed, but reached around her to turn the water off.

“Viens, nous allons tu remettre au lit.” (Come on, let’s get you back to bed.) I suggested and gently nudged her towards the edge of the tub. She climbed out and grabbed on to the towels that hung on the wall rack, handing one to me before wrapping the other around herself securely.

She shuffled out of the bathroom and into her closet, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. I brought a hand up to my face and rubbed two fingers into my temple. After a moment or two, I ran the towel through my hair a couple of times and hung it up on the rack before returning to my room with a trail of water droplets following after me.

I changed my clothes in a daze, still wondering what exactly had just happened downstairs. Whatever it was, it had scared the hell out of me. The monsters in Maggie’s closet were the only things I’d ever had to worry about with her, and even they went away when she turned six. She’d never thrashed around in bed as if she was possessed, and that wasn’t even the scariest part.

Maggie had never lost me before.

Some of the people in Le Moyne used to call her petite ombre or, little shadow. She followed me around everywhere, from school to the park, and of course the hockey rink. Anywhere I went I had a small bundle of coats and wild curly hair following just a few steps behind me.

I received my fair share of ribbing from my friends, but I secretly enjoyed it. There was something about knowing that mine was the first face Maggie would look for in a crowd, always searching for my messy hair and blue eyes over everyone else’s.

Franck and Will loved her to pieces of course, but they were older and had other things on their mind than a little sister. As the youngest boy I was often teased and pushed into walls by my older brothers, always on the receiving end of a noogie or an indian burn and always chosen to be at the bottom of the dogpile. In Maggie though, I finally found myself as an ‘older brother.’ She brought out the side of me that often lay underneath a thick layer of jokes, sarcasm, and hockey pads. Maggie made me more than just the court jester, and I took a special pride in making sure she was safe and well taken care of.

My mother used to tell me that when Maggie was a baby, she’d become upset when I’d leave the room. Her bright blue eyes dart frantically from side to side until my mother propped her up or called me over so Maggie could see me. When Maggie got a little older, mine was the bed she’d crawl into after a bad dream or when storms blew tree branches against her window, casting sinister shadows onto her walls. I taught her how to play hockey, she taught me how to color inside the lines.

We were in sync, Maggie and I, but in the moment that I’d tried to wake her up and her eyes flew open, she didn’t see me. My presence hadn’t comforted her in the slightest; I just became a touchable character in her nightmare. That’s what had chilled me to the core – the wild, untamed looked in her eyes. Glassy confusion, not recognizing me as her brother, but as her enemy.

It was that thought that kept me lying in my bed until morning, my eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling as I listened to Maggie shuffle quietly around downstairs, too scared to fall back asleep.

*Margaux POV*

I didn’t expect to wake up in the shower. I almost didn’t expect to wake up at all. It all felt so real, from the smell of his cologne to the feel of bone crashing against bone. Looking at myself in the mirror, I half expected to see new bruises forming on my face and body – but none were there. Only the fading, discolored reminders of the last time I’d seen Gavin remained.

After hearing Max walk out of the bathroom and back upstairs, I slowly creaked the closet door open to peer into the steam filled bathroom. Guilt flooded my mind. I’d woken Max up and he had practice the next morning. Mentally, I made myself a note to make him blueberry pancakes in the morning before he left.

Opening the door up the rest of the way, I re-entered the bathroom and made my way into my bedroom slowly. My bed was a mess, with blankets and pillows thrown everywhere. I picked them up quietly, and arranged them neatly on my bed after making it up like I did every morning. Making my way over to the door, I grabbed my camera off the hook that hung on the back of the door and slung it around my neck before picking my laptop up off of the dresser and my glasses off of my nightstand.

I wandered through the house like a thief, and tried as hard as I could not to make any more noise than was absolutely necessary. Deciding to set up camp in the living room, I put my things down on the fluffy leather ottoman and pulled it closer to the couch. I walked over to the hall closet and pulled an old quilt off of one of the shelves before wrapping it around myself and shuffling back to the couch and settling down on it.

Since I didn’t see myself getting any more sleep, I decided to begin sorting through the pictures that had been taken at the party earlier that night. I turned my laptop on and waited for it to load while I busied myself with plugging my camera in and trying to find the switch to the lamp on the table that sat beside the couch.

There were hundreds of photos that needed to be loaded onto my computer, and I decided to sift through them first to weed out any that were blurry, unimportant, or simply bad photos. The mundane activity was calming, and the familiar click of the computer keys as I picked through the contents of my camera’s memory card gave me a sense of normalcy.

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as I scrolled across a picture of all the boys standing together. It was an unplanned photo, evident by Vero’s arm in the corner as she tried to take Marc’s drink from his hand. Marc and Max were laughing about something; Max’s eyes squeezed shut in the moment as he belted out what was surely one of his heartier laughs. Jordan and Sidney weren’t paying attention to the camera at all; instead Jordan was busy pointing off to something, or someone, outside of the photo as Sid rolled his eyes and shook his head. Pensively standing off to the side, Geno stood with a thoughtful expression on his face as he took a sip of his beer. And the only ones to be paying any attention, Kris and Tyler stood in the center of the photo, smiling like fools for the camera.

I quickly checked that one for uploading, and made sure to save it in a folder marked ‘To Print.’ Other photos made their way into that folder as well, including a photo of Marc and Vero nestled together on the couch, a photo of Max and I by the fire-pit in the back, and the photo I had taken of Geno and Max on the patio – cheesy grins and all.

I stayed that way until morning, going through mountains of photos that I wanted to put on my computer, and deciding which ones to print. After they were all uploaded, I went through and edited them – got rid of any red-eyes and made minor adjustments that only a photographer would think to make. All in all I’d saved 382 photos from the game and the party, and out of all those photos I’d chosen only five to frame and put on the tree in my room.

The first was a picture of Max and I, taken by a very excited Jordan Staal. Max and I were huddled together by the fire-pit, trying to stay warm amidst the cold December air. He had a large arm slung around my shoulders, and his signature Max Talbot smirk etched onto his face. Jordan had been standing pretty close, so the picture only showed from a little under my chest and up. Max’s hair was messy and stuck up in certain places after I’d stolen his beanie from him and placed it over my own hair, causing it to flow out under the beanie in curly streams of brown.

The next photo was one of all the boys together, this time all of them were paying attention and they all wore matching winner’s smiles and bright eyes. An added bonus was watching as Vero tried to arrange seven large hockey players in front of her fireplace so that they all fit in the picture.

Third was a very candid photo of Vero and I sneakily taken by Kris. We were huddled beside each other in the kitchen sharing a piece of chocolate cake that she’d made for the party. I was staring at Vero with wide eyes as I held my fork lazily in my mouth and she relayed the recipe to me. It wasn’t a bad picture of either of us, quite good for a candid in fact, and the memory of Vero fussing at Kris after we saw the flash go off made it even better.

Next was the photo I’d taken of Max and Geno out on the patio, both hamming it up for the camera. Max was trapped in a headlock from Geno, tongue dramatically hanging out and everything. Evgeni wore a bright smile even with his thick arm wrapped tight around Max’s neck. The photo had sparked a mini wrestling match out in the snow, which only ended after Geno managed to shove snow down Max’s sweatshirt and Max called foul play.

The last photo was one that I surprised myself by even putting in the print folder, much less one of the five that would make it onto my wall. It was a photo of Sidney that I’d taken as we sat around Marc and Vero’s dining room table after most of the other party-goers had ventured out into the cold Pittsburgh evening. A poker game had broken out amongst the boys, and I was content to sit next to Max and be his ‘lucky charm’ as he called it. While I sat there, I scanned the area like I always did – keeping a visual tab on everything. As my eyes raked over Sidney’s face, something made me stop. Something about the way he was focused on his cards intrigued me. It was becoming quite obvious to me that Sidney Crosby never did anything half-assed. When he played he played to win, whether it was hockey in an arena filled with screaming fans, or a card game witnessed only by some of his friends. The fierce look of determination in his amber eyes impressed me, and I quickly found myself staring. He glanced over to me as my fingers toyed with the idea of taking a picture, running in familiar ways over the buttons and lines of my camera. Seeing my indecision, he quickly sent a heart-stopping smirk my way, and I quickly snapped the photo.

Looking at it now, I was glad I took it. His hair peeked out in dark tufts from underneath his beanie, contrasting beautifully with his sun-kissed skin and honey colored eyes. He wasn’t looking at me straight on; instead his smile was paired with eyes that glanced slightly to his left. He hadn’t smiled with his teeth showing, only wearing a friendly grin on his swollen pout, but it was the perfect picture. And in the strangest way, I couldn’t wait to hang it on my wall.