Formidable Occupation

Chapter Four

this chapter is impulsive and unedited, tell me if it's terrible by comment down on that box under. Thank you!

5

By the time the kids in my neighborhood normally woke up, my brother and I would be two hours awoke already. We would have wake up so early because Bryan had to walk uptown to his work that is an hour walk from our house, and I had to walk people’s dog for an hour and a half before I had to get ready for school and take a few bucks from the jar of money where I usually put my money in after I walk dogs.

My brother, Bryan, was not the guy I grew up with. He used to use big gestures as we stare at the ceilings before bed time, talking about what we wanted to be after we could move away from out small town nowhere. How we were going to be wild, and free men out in the streets of Capitol strutting in style to some nightclub and whatnot.

By the night after he got home from work, he would accuse me of stealing his damn liquor, though I’ve never touched a drop of them. They tasted like crap and they’re a waste of money. He would have shouted drunken shits from the kitchen, slamming cabinets as I tried to keep my eyes on the computer doing my homework. This was probably why his ex-fiance left him.

“You wouldn’t know what working hard means if keep letting you thief around my house.” It was his famous last words before I had had enough of his bullshit and threw my laptop towards him. The throw didn’t hurt him because I wasn’t aiming for his head, it was just the shits in my head blew up at the same time as his did. We were different people at that moment.

One thing lead after another, he ended up grabbing the biggest gun we got in our the house, pointed it right at the tip of my nose, he pushed me to a wall outside the house and he stared at me directly.

“Fuck off my property” he growled as he lowered his gun away from my face. So I packed up my shits. And when he was already passed out on the couch, I had no second thought of staying. I hitched a ride to Capitol from a man whose name I forgot. He asked me what my name was.

At that moment my brain was loaded with the extraordinary names I could have had, and me being a wild and free man I wanted to be. I couldn’t think of anything but my own name, Elijah Dickinson. But that would mean I’m still symbolically related to Bryan. So, I turned to him, my eyes were no longer threatened to spill out tears.

“Elijah Stilwell.”

I was no longer that kid whose parents got murdered by some robbers in the grocery store. I was no longer that kid who put on my headset everytime my brother had his alcoholic tantrum every night he had a bad day at work. I was no longer weak. I was no longer a kid. I was alone. I was Elijah Stilwell. But I was lost. It was all because of Bryan.

But If I’m about to die at any moment now I have to let this go. I have to forgive that guy, one way or another he caused me to have a formidable occupation of being a liquidator for N.I.A. A dead man should be a liberated man, so I have to let go, I just have to forgive him.

I don’t think this moment will last too long. I can’t feel anything or see anything. Maybe death will be eternal silence and darkness. Or as god promised, a burning hell under the crusts of the earth for murderers such as myself, setting fire to my flesh, making me pay for what I’ve done. Or refreshing eternal joy of heaven thanks to the savior’s sacrifice for mankind. If it’s true that forgiveness to others is something of a penance to my sins, I’ll try. I'll forgive everyone.

I start to wonder, am I dead or not? As the spot where the bullet pierced through me starts to feel like it’s stabbing my insides painfully. Making me gasp for air that never seems to be enough to breathe in. I open my eyes that feel like they’ve been taped together to my eyelids and I faintly see unfamiliar faces. Oh, I’m not dead yet. Screw this life.

“He’s waking up!” The man with chubby cheeks yells to whoever is out of my peripheral vision. And then I can hear a somewhat familiar female voice saying. ‘good, he's the one paying'