The Book of Limbo

Chapter 5

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me your's first."

"Tell you my what?" Sable asked as she sipped tentatively from her drink.

I had ordered us a beer each. The way I saw it was, if we were going to be drinking all night, we may as well enjoy it rather than suffer through shot after shot of whiskey. Besides the longer it took her to finish, the longer we might be able to talk. Or at least so I hoped. If misery loved company, than we were a story book romance in the making.

"Your story." I said, "you know, the sorrowful tale of how lost everything, ran away from home and ended up here slinging back shot after shot of cheap bourbon with me. We all have one, so what's yours?"

She gave me a look that instantly communicated that I was treading on forbidden ground, and that the punishment for trespassing was severe at best. Taking the hint, I gingerly backed off.

"Okay, how about we start with mine, if you're interested in listening." I said with a reissuing smile, "Who knows, it might even make you feel a little better about your own situation."

Sable answered with another look that read as simply as if the words were in bright red on her forehead. I sincerely doubt that, they said, but go ahead, lets hear it. It was amazing what this girl could communicate in a look with eyes like those, but I also saw the cost that it came with. It wasn't easy to wear your thoughts and emotions on your sleeve for the world to constantly see, especially if you didn't fully understand what they meant yourself. No wonder this girl was guarded.

"First time I walked through those doors, it was after I had finally run away from home." I began.

"You had a home?" She asked, taking another sip, "must have been nice."

"It was, as a matter of fact," I cut back, smirking at the challenge, "until my dad died and my mother married Step-Dick; a tyrannical douche bag with a god complex in more ways than one."

"A mother and step-dad too?" She said with a mocking smile, "Sounds like a real tough life you got there."

"Hey, the more you have, the more you can lose." I retorted, "It's simpler having nothing. At least once you're at the bottom you don't have anything else that can be taken from you."

"That's not true." She said. "There is no bottom and there will always one more thing the world can take from you; someway it can push you a little further down. Even when you think you've already lost it all, life will just wait for you to find something else so it can take that away too."

"Sweet talk won't impress me you know." I said coyly, "Besides, that's nothing. Losing something can be a lot easier than having something you don't want and can't lose."

"Oh really? Like what?" She asked me.

"Like regret. An abusive parent. A terminal illness..." I answered.

She looked at me with wide eyes, "Don't tell me-"

"Not me. My little brother." I said, then with a deep breath I said, "He died yesterday. He was only fifteen years old."

Sable nodded solemnly, not bothering with the hollow I'm sorry's or false comforts. She knew there was nothing that needed to be said, nothing that could be done now to change anything. She knew because, like me, she must have learned this lesson the hard way. Sometimes saying nothing could be far more telling than words ever could be.

"Before he died, I made him a promise." I continued, taking a long sip to soften the sting, "I promised him that I would take him away from that broken home, away from the clutches of mom and Dick and we'd escape together, just us two, together against the world until the bitter end..." I finished my beer and wiped my trembling lips.