Across Acheron

Session 2

Something was evidently wrong.

Keenan knew it. It lined over his pretty face in the form of flashing lights and neon signs. He looked down at his feet awkwardly, twiddling his long thumbs like a toddler in trouble. He scratched his copper hair, looked over at me, then back to his shoes again.

I knew it. Although I didn’t remember who I was or where I came from, I could feel that something was erroneous; the sore feeling settled in the pit of my stomach, as corny as that sounds. It wrapped around me like a prickly wool blanket. You know, it seemed all warm but it hurt like a slap to the face.

That’s how it felt when Cillian called me his brother. A slap to the face. I wanted to believe that it was true and fate had brought me back to family, but something felt wrong. I didn’t want it to be wrong, but it was.

I looked over at Keenan, wondering if it would be safe to say anything. Ask some questions, maybe. But the look in his eyes told me not to. The look in his eyes told me, shut the hell up and play along.

So I did. I smiled at Cillian and rubbed his back in a brotherly way. I somewhat liked it too; pretending that I remembered him. I filled my mind with false memories of us joking and fighting by the fireplace. I feel kind of embarrassed about it now, actually.

“Why don’t we go downstairs?” Cillian offered, already pulling me out of the room. “We can catch up over beer and sandwiches.”

I didn’t like beer, but I never told him that.

Keenan was able to save himself by going into the kitchen to make the sandwiches. I was forced to sit at the wooden dinner table on the opposite side of Cillian, who had his arms crossed over his chest and watched me as if I was the food channel.

“I really missed you, Jack,” Cillian told me after a long while of tight silence. I opened my mouth to say something corny like ‘missed you too’, but Keenan came out with the sandwiches and beer. 

“Keenan won’t eat?” I asked, watching as he retreated wordlessly back into the kitchen.

Cillian shook his head, his shoulders growing stiff as he grabbed one bottle of beer. He snapped it open with his teeth. “Keenan is...foreign. He doesn’t like our food much.”

I didn’t ask about it again. I took one of the sandwiches and bit into it, an explosion of ham, cheese, and lettuce filling my mouth. I hadn’t noticed how hungry I was until then. It felt like I hadn’t eaten for ages as I shoved more sandwiches into my mouth.

Cillian laughed out loud, causing me to bite my tongue when I jumped. It was one of those loud laughs that shook the bottles on the table and vibrated in my butt cheeks. For as long as I can remember, I’ve hated those kinds of laughs. They seemed highly obnoxious.

Anyway, Cillian was laughing at me like a madman and I sort of got pissed from being embarrassed. Once he finished making a fool out of me, he wiped a tear from his brown eyes.

“I remember you used to be like that before, always eating everything as if it was the end of the world,” he said, still chuckling. “Ma used to yell at you because you would get indigestion after. You never stopped doing it, though. Clearly.”

I swallowed the mushy food in my mouth and forced myself to smile. “Really, now?”

“Yeah,” Cillian chirped. “You and Ma were really close. You were always glued to her and at times Dad beat you up for it.”

My head snapped up from my half eaten sandwich. “I was beaten?”

“Both of us were. He beat us when he was angry, tired, or bored. It got to a point where his fists felt like second nature.” Cillian sighed, taking a long swing from his bottle. “I believe you ran away because of that. You weren’t a strong person. You cried a lot, and it made him hit you even more. You were gone for two years—you left on your twenty-second birthday. Ma and I thought you were dead, until now. Too bad she’s gone now, though. She would have loved to see you.”