Wattys 2024 Shortlist || When former lovers and current enemies, Adelaide and Fletcher are held hostage in a bank robbery, they realise they need to put their past hatred for each other behind them to help them move forward from past hurts, and find...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶
The problem with throwing punches is that it almost puts me on the same level as the other guy. I've done some shit in my time; some serious, awful shit: cheating, lying, exaggerating, some of them in the name of mental illnesses and some not so much, but never have I done something to lower myself to someone else's level. I'm a class-A idiot, and I know that, but I've always trained myself to be the better man against others who antagonise me – or those I care about. But this time, I just can't. Not against my waste of space of a brother.
Over the years, Sam and I have had our difficulties – and that's before he fucked Adelaide for the first time—
The first time.
That was before they apparently had a casual sexual relationship that she says she didn't have feelings for him over, but he did. A casual relationship – was it even a relationship if she was just after sex? I don't know – that she got pregnant from and lost the baby. A baby he thought she had, and he wanted – and robbed a bank over.
What the fuck?
Sam's always been delusional. When he was younger – when we were both younger – he always thought someone was out to get him if he got in so much as a small argument with him. There was once when someone punched him for being an arse – a frequent attitude from Sam – and he spent the next two months thoroughly believing the guy was going to cross the school playground and stab him to death.
Delusional might be a strong word, but he was always dramatic with a flair. So much so that Mum's always told me to keep an eye out for him, despite him being the older brother. She's always wondered if he became this way after Dad's death and the pressure of basically being the man of the house.
I think he's always been this way. He's just a dramatic kid who never really grew up; Mum's too busy spoiling him after Dad died that he's learnt to get his way all the time.
Now it's confirmed for me, at least, that he's got delusions of grandeur, and decided he wanted Adelaide, so he went out and basically got her. When he found out she was pregnant, well, that inflated his ego even more. He had the one thing I didn't have anymore – the woman I've always been in love with. So he took it upon himself to try and make sure he had her even more.
I've no doubt Sam got it in his head that he had a child and yeah, maybe it would've made him a better human being. Would it have worked in reality? Fuck no. He's too self-destructive. Adelaide would never want him properly, and he would've destroyed anything good to have come out of that – had there been a child.
But fucking robbing a bank to get money to try and make himself better? He's genuinely in need of help. He also needs taking down a few pegs, and I don't care how bad it makes me to punch the shit out of him, he fucking deserves it. It's been years in the making.
