Hypnophobic. 》Ziam AU

1 ➳ Hypnophobic

We'd been in the car for hours it seemed.

I looked over towards my brother who had his ear buds in and his head pressed up against the glass.

His blonde hair was resting on his forehead as he watched the scenery pass us by.

He'd always been a very happy since he was a young lad, smiling at nothing and laughing during dead silence. Since we were about two years apart, we were quite close. We went everywhere together until I was 5 and I had to start going to school.

Our dad was often away in buisness and our mom took care of us until he was about 10.

With all of the sports I was in, my mom was distracted from him and I knew this, but he didn't seem to mind because most of my attention was on him anyways.

He was held back in year 6 and when my parents told him he cried for hours and wouldn't come out from under his covers.

I was in year 9 and we'd been learning about metal disabilities that year, and so I asked him to read me some letters I scribbled down on a peice of paper.

After he struggled for a few minutes I took his hand and led him down to my parents who sat in the living room, talking quietly.

"Not now, Liam," they'd told me.

But I just stood there until they decided to listen.

I told them I thought that he was dyslexic and they looked at me like I was crazy, so I showed them the test and told them what I'd learned in school.

They took him to get check out and it turns out I was right.

Since I was no longer in the same school as him, I wasn't there to defend him when people called him stupid.

I went to pick him up from school one day, and as we walked home, a kid from his class named Brady shouted "retard" at him.

I broke Brady's nose.

After that, I wasn't allowed to pick my brother up from school anymore.

And no one saw how badly he was being treated because he stopped telling me the names they called him.

When I was on my last year, I found him laying on the ground outside of the school, black eye and a swollen lip, blood coming from his nose. I screamed at him for hours to tell me the name of the kid that did it, but he never told me.

But word got around that Brady did it.

I almost beat Brady into a coma.

My brother watched me beat a kid til my knuckled bled and he cried for me to stop, which made me hit Brady harder.

My own brother screamed at me when we got home, and said that he hated me, that he could've handled it.

He ignored me for two months.

Him and I aren't as close as we used to be because I tried to protect him.

I sighed, turning back towards the seat in front of me resting my head on the seats headrest, and let my eyes close.

I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my head until I fell asleep.

➳ ➳ ➳

When I woke up, it was because we'd hit a pothole that was on the road, shaking me around quite a bit.

I stretched my arms dramatically, twisting in my chair to face the back windsheild to check on the moving trucks that had all our stuff in them.

My dad didn't want to make more than one trip, and that was getting there. So we packed all of our stuff into a bunch of moving trucks and whenever we ran out of room, we just ordered another.