CHOICES WITHOUT CONSCIENCE

Chapter 1: Broken Blood

Have you ever wondered why people change and often, they become the person they said they will never be? I do. But it's not uncommon to know this, knowing the fact that this world is filled with people dying to change into someone they're not, just for the sake of getting what they want.

'Change' is something that can be both good and bad. But to me, it is always the latter. Most changes I had in my life are always bad. Don't get me wrong, there are good ones too but the bad ones seemed to outweigh the opposite. A lot of things can be input to cause a change, but one of those is death.

"You have my condolences", "I'm so sorry for your loss", "I know it must have been tough to lose a brother". These things, these sympathetic things that were spoken to me just kept me thinking, how on earth would these people understand what I feel. Losing a brother is tough? Are you sorry? No one knows how hurt I am to lose him. He was my half, my soul, my hero.

He was my friend.

"Victor, I got myself two milk from school, which one do you want, strawberry or chocolate?" I once remembered him offering me the drinks while pushing himself towards me with his bottom, ignoring the pain he has on his paralytic legs when I was just playing video games. "I want the strawberry". He then went to put the drink beside me and went to my mom in the same manner. "Mama, I actually wanted the strawberry milk" He wailed and cried emotionally and I knew that he favorited that flavor.

Foolish big brother. I never understood his actions. Of course, I drank the strawberry milk and he never talked to me the entire night. But when my maid was showering him, I went to the shop downstairs and got him another one. It was laughable. The look in his eyes when he got to see that drink. A part of me just wanted to get him another flavored drink to tease him up but I decided not to. Came into the house afterward, watching my maid dry his hair for him. I stared at him, wondering why of all people do my big brother has to suffer, why must he go through all this. "What is that in your hand, you bought that?" "Is it for me?"


"Yes silly, here you go", I handed him the drink that he wanted. "Thank you, Victor what would I do without you" Those words screamed to my heart. It made me think about how stupid I was to do those foolish things towards him. He was funny, adorable, bossy at times but bearable. He always tells me about how tall he is when he's just the same height as me. Nothing would stop me from not having to give him the happiness that he wants. Because I understood him, I loved him, I admire him, he was just my great big brother.

But then that night happened, the night where I lose part of myself, my soul. My mom was crying relentlessly with glasses broken into pieces on the floor, possibly due to my mom's shock towards the situation, all the neighbors started looking at our apartment curiously, and that's when I saw the paramedics carrying my brother over to the stretcher.


"Mama will everything be okay, tell me will big brother be okay?" She cried and she didn't answer me. My maid consistently called my dad but he wasn't picking up. We arrived at the hospital. It was devastating, my mom shouted at the nurses to call for my brother's specialists, but all of them said that the specialists were off duty due to certain reasons. Doctors of young age went into the emergency room, the three of them went to inspect my brother's condition, without asking for any sort of past bodily modifications, all of them agreed upon an electric shock to resuscitate my brother. My mom wasn't aware of this only until when we went into the room to watch my brother's skin ruptured, with metallic implants dangling out of his chest. "You monsters!" "What have you done to my son!" "How could you do this to him!"


My mom shouted at them, causing the nurses outside to look through the window divider. "We're deeply sorry but there is nothing we can do, we hope that you can cooperate with us and let your son rest peacefully, honestly he is just way over his limit" Without hesitation, my mom slapped the doctor's face. "I don't need you, I need you to get out of here before I murder you", the doctor left along with another after the sudden outburst by my mom, leaving only a female doctor by my side. But it was already too late. He was not in the condition to be saved anymore, he had surpassed his limits and all he can do is wait for his life to end. "Madam, if only I can change the fate of the world and grant you and your sick son happiness, I would gladly do so, but now it's time to help him. He's suffering right now, and I need you to be strong for him, there's nothing much left for me to say but I need you to be strong for him, at least till his final moments".

My brother woke up, however not fully conscious.

He looked at me and my mom as if staring at blank space. My mom kept holding on to his hand praying to the Almighty to grant a miracle. "Where's Papa?" My mom cried and just told him that my dad was busy at the moment and he will be there soon. "Victor, promise me you won't be naughty okay". His pulses were faint and the female doctor told us that it's about time that he will go. I stood there looking at him. I looked at his black radiant hair and his weak body as the time was counted down till the very last second. My mom wailed at the sound of the flatline from the heart rate monitor. It took me five minutes to realize that my brother was gone. I dropped down to my knees, covering my face and kept on crying and crying.

I miss him. I miss all of the things we had done together. I miss our late night snacks when mom and dad were sleeping. I miss all the times when I disturbed him and we would laughed it off together, I miss my brother. And of course, my parents do miss him too.

As time passed by, a lot of things started to change. Silence became a norm in the family, no one would say a word to each other or acknowledge anyone's presence in the house. My dad became an alcoholic, a terrible alcoholic. He tortured himself with the fact that he didn't get to see his eldest son's final moments and started drinking to forget about all of it. My mom would just ignore him. I was ignored too but by both of them. Yeah, my family broke apart, not sure how to fully describe it but an accurate description would be similar to drowning – I kept grasping for attention from both my parents and tried to make them happy by all means but it all just seemed to make me fall even deeper into loneliness, it made me realize that no matter what I tried, I would never find a life vest that would make me survive this drowning sensation I had with my family.


During normal days, out of the blue, my dad would just beat me out of a sudden without me doing anything wrong. Sometimes he would try to throw the bottle of liquor towards me. My mom got hit by it once and she was sent to the hospital to get an urgent treatment. He was starting to get violent and aggressive towards me and my mom, to the point where he would threaten my mom with a knife just by saying no to him for drinking.

My dad soon lost interest towards my mom and started going to the red district area to find pleasure. Well, my mom soon found out about it and she filed a divorce against him. It all happened so quickly and both of them never seemed to think about me. Those countless times of me going to court with my mom to fight over custody to take care of me. I did not really care actually. I just wanted all of this to end and want us all to be a normal family again. At least that's what my brother would want us to do. But instead, all of this happened. It's unfair. Life's unfair.