Hyena

Euphoria

"You know if you'd have told me what...three years ago that moderating a roleplay group online would lead to where we are now, I'd have said all of you were crazy," I said and then took a bite of my pizza. "Me, in Russia with a bunch of really awesome guys, yeah that is nothing I could have ever dreamed of." 

"Me either, especially not Demyan," Nikolay said and then laughed softly. 

"Demyan was such an asshole when I first met him," I said. 

"That was on purpose!" He defended himself. 

"I know it was and now I know why it was. You're just lucky that I was such a stubborn bitch I wouldn't get off your case about it." I replied. I felt my phone vibrate in my back pocket and took it out to look at the alert. It was Alex. It just said 'things okay now' and that was it. I quickly shut it off and put it away before anyone could look over my shoulder and read it. 

"What was that?" Nikolay asked. 

"I think you mean who but, nothing important, just a friend checking in on me." I lied. From what I could gather just from the few words of Russian I could translate, they had lost track of Alex and were trying to find them. It seemed like they were putting Zakhar in charge of this because he'd always been the best equipped to handle people like Sasha. In all honesty, Demyan was probably the actual best, but it had been agreed upon long ago that he was going to have nothing to do with Alex anymore. Even if that was his brother. 

Their story was a very long and tragic one. Alex had been angry, forever. Born with some sort of rage inside of him that no one seemed to understand. As Demyan told it, he was part of a pair of twins and the other had died in the womb. Strangled with an umbilical cord. Alex was the one to survive. Demyan wasn't that much older than Alex but he had been old enough to remember when his brother was brought home. What he was like. That he would just scream all the time and be completely red in the face. Nothing would soothe him. They took him to doctors, thinking he was in pain, but there was no actual evidence that anything was wrong with him. It was as if he was born with a fire inside that would only continue to get more and more intense as he grew into an adult. 

Their parents could barely handle this situation, didn't know how. The older Alex got, the worse he behaved. He'd attack them. He'd be locked in a room with no way out. Screaming, crying, literally crawling at the walls and begging to be let out. He was neglected. Treated like he was insane and in a lot of ways he was. Mental health support in Russia wasn't exactly top of the line. From what I understood, their country still relied heavily on lobotomies and electroshock therapy to cure people from being gay. Mentally ill people were shunned, even Alex's problems were explained by demons and possessions instead of a more logical explanation of mental illness. A genetic issue. My best guess when it came to what he had would have been a combination of psychopathy and schizophrenia. Even if he'd had the best treatment in the world and his parents had known exactly what to do, there would still have been a huge chance that he'd never have been normal or non-violent. There was no way of knowing and it was far too late to turn back the clock. He was an adult and what was done was done. It was best for Demyan to try to move on. He couldn't fix Alex, neither could I, and there was no sense in him continuously trying to put his life in danger for his brother. Even he knew that, as sad as it was to part ways with him. 

"You know," I continued, "I may not completely understand Russian but from the few words I do understand, I have figured out that you guys have lost track of Alex." 

"What?" Nikolay asked. 

"Did we not agree that honesty was going to be the best policy in this relationship?" I asked him, "Is this the case?" Nikolay looked at Demyan as if he was asking for consent to answer the question truthfully, which was an answer in of itself.