“No!” Brenik roared as he lifted Rana’s dead shoulders like some kind of doll. Setting her softly back down, he spat out the taste of blood that remained in his mouth.
“How could I have done this?” he whispered. “Not her. Not her.” Gripping the dresser, he slammed it to the floor—the painting hit the wood and landed in pristine condition.
Brenik searched around the room, not knowing what he was looking for, but he didn’t want the blood. He didn’t want her blood inside him anymore. Sticking his finger down his throat, Brenik made himself heave. Most of it splattered out, not black, but fresh and crimson—still warm from being inside of him.
The portrait on the wooden floor stared back at him. Brenik refused to put Rana’s blood on it—he would rather wither away that second.
Plastering his palms on the sides of his head, he couldn’t think—he couldn’t think about anything except for what he had just done. He sobbed desolately, all hope lost, and dropped to his knees, hands pressed against the floor, slapping it and yelling as spittle plummeted from his mouth to the wood. Eventually, he couldn’t take the pain anymore, and he cried himself to sleep.
Help, the first word he thought when he woke. Brenik needed Bray. She was the only one who would understand.
Brenik hurried and threw his clothing back on, struggling with his emotions as he put Rana’s skirt and top back on as well. He didn’t want to leave her naked, like she was some piece of trash. She wasn’t like the others.
It didn’t take him long to reach the tree—his real home. Brenik scurried up the thick branches like his life depended on it—and it did.
“Bray,” he hollered, not caring who heard him. “Bray, please.” She wasn’t there. He stuck his hand inside the hole and slapped the bottom, destroying their things in the process. He didn’t care. Brenik hated to admit it to himself, but he did need her—he always had.
Tears flowed down his cheeks as he climbed back down, falling to the ground in a pathetic ball. A door creaked open. When he looked up, sunlight highlighted his sister, and he cried harder, unsure if it was from relief or anger.
Without shutting the door, Bray ran toward him. “Brenik? What’s wrong?” Bray asked frantically as she helped him to sit on the ground. He threw his arms around her, crying even harder.
“I screwed up, Bray. I’ve screwed up so badly. I need help, please,” he begged.
Unwrapping her arms from around Brenik, Bray pulled back and scanned him over, her jaw dropping down all the way. “How? How are you like this?”
Brenik told her. He told her every detail: about his envy, about not wanting to wither and die in the tree hole, going to the Stone of Desire, the curse he accepted without knowing the consequences. Then the deaths he had caused—Jeremy, the homeless people, and Rana. How he hadn’t wanted to do these things yet struggled to resist. How it was all a never-ending necessity that was beyond his control.
Bray barely looked at him, her face hard and furious. She kept glancing back at the house.
Brenik stared at the open door. “Where are they? I met the kid yesterday at school. He told me most of it.”
Her lips parted, and her eyebrows shot up. “Luca?”
He nodded.
“Wes took Luca with him to do a job for work.” Bray lifted Brenik’s chin. “Take me to her.”
“Okay,” Brenik whispered. Slowly, he stood from the ground, wiping away the last of his tears.
Something changed in Bray’s expression, like she had discovered something. “You know, I think the bodies are coming back to life because of this. But they are dangerous. One attacked me at the park and another… Another bit off the ear of a man down the street,” she seethed.
Cringing, Brenik nodded because he knew what was happening. “I didn’t know that would happen when I first started. But when I found out, I still couldn’t bring myself to stop.”
“So, you decided to choose homeless people, Brenik?” Bray grimaced. He opened his mouth to respond, but she stopped him. “Let me guess, you thought by killing people in the park that don’t really have a life, you were some sort of savior? Is that it? How do you know those people wouldn’t have had a turnaround? Kyle’s dad could have died because of the crazy attacker. I could have died. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Of course it does, Bray! You don’t understand. You aren’t in my head. You never have been. I couldn’t—can’t—control what goes on in this messed up place of mine,” he spat. He sure didn’t think he was anyone’s savior.
“You shouldn’t have struck a deal with the Stone, and you should have come to me right away.” There was nothing Bray could have done. He still would have been in the same miserable position, but now he would give anything to go back into the past.
“You’re one to talk, you chose to have a gift without knowing what it was,” he pointed out.
“Brenik, I was ten. I would have trusted any Disney villain offering me something.” She sighed. “But if I was in your position, who knows what I would have accepted.” Bray changed the subject. “Has she woken yet?”
“What? She’s dead.” Bitterness laced his words.
Bray frowned at him. “I know, but eventually she will awaken like the others did, right?”
“I’m not sure.” He didn’t know if she would, but after what Bray told him had happened to his victims, he was afraid of what might occur if Rana did.
“We’ll take her to the Stone and see if we can fix all this together, all right?” Bray insisted.
Brenik nodded, even though he didn’t want to see that fucker again.
Their walk to the forest was accompanied by silence, until they got there. “You have actually been staying here?” Bray asked, staring at his cabin.
“Yes.” He was already sick of her questions.
“What did you plan to do when the owner came back?” That was actually a good question that he had no answer to.
“I didn’t think that far ahead, Bray.”
“You never do.” And she was right, but he didn’t say anything as they approached the front porch. Brenik held the door open for Bray and led her to his room.
His jaw tightened when he saw Rana sprawled across the bed—for a second he thought she would have been gone, or maybe even awakened into one of those things. But she lay there just the same, except her skin was more pale than brown. He shut his eyes and held them as tight as he could to not let any tears slip out, before opening them back up.
Bray covered her mouth with her hand, but he knew she tried to stay strong as she was faced with Rana’s dead body. They had seen dead things all the time when they were younger in Laith, so they had to grow a thicker skin.
“You didn’t say the painting was a portrait of yourself,” Bray said as she lowered her hand from her mouth and toed the edge of the canvas.
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It’s very Dorian Grayish—don’t you think?” She rubbed her lower lip with her index and middle finger, staring back and forth between him and the portrait.
His eyebrows furrowed as he studied the painting. “I don’t know what that is.”
“That’s because you never read books.”
“That’s because I can’t read books,” he growled with frustration. She already knew that.
Bray held her hands up in front of herself. “I know you can’t. I’m only stating the fact, little brother.”
Slumping his shoulders, Brenik murmured, “Let’s just hurry and see if the Stone will awaken to help us.”
Carefully, he gathered Rana’s stiff body in his arms and held her like a piece of fragile glass. Brenik was worried she would wake up like the others, yet happy if she woke up at all.
Carrying a dead body couldn’t be labeled as anything other than suspicious, so Brenik and Bray hurried through the forest as far away from sight as they could.
His head filled with images he wanted to hammer away. Maybe he could ask the Stone to reverse time, and he would never leave the tree hole again—then Rana and the others would still be alive.
They were close, the Stone almost in sight, when Brenik felt a small twitch against his chest. Thrill and nervousness rebounded through him. When Rana’s eyes flicked open with murder, he was ready for her.
Snarling, she slashed his face with her fingernails. And Brenik let her as he ran the rest of the way, passing Bray who was yelling for him to stop. She called out that she would help him. But help him how? She wasn’t strong enough to keep Rana still.
A white outline angled into his line of sight, and Brenik dashed straight for it, ignoring the pain from the scratches across his cheek.
When Brenik reached the Stone, he tried to set Rana down gently on the ground, but she was already starting to run away.
“Flip her over for now,” Bray panted, out of breath from trying to catch up with Brenik.
Rana hadn’t gained all her strength back, but she grew stronger by the second. Turning her over, Brenik looked at Bray and said, “Now what?”
“Bind her hands with your shirt.” Bray sat on top of Rana, attempting to hold her down.
Ripping his shirt over his head, Brenik motioned Bray away, and pulled Rana’s hands behind her back to tie them together. He hated everything about it. Bray seemed to hate it even more as she watched on.
Bray took off her over shirt, leaving on her tank top, and handed the fabric to Brenik to bind Rana’s ankles together.
Rana was furiously grunting, and Brenik felt something inside him crack. He was going to fix this—he owed it to her. Brenik ran toward the Stone and slapped his hand on top of it. Bray placed hers calmly next to his, and they waited.
Nothing happened. He should have known. “Please,” he pleaded.
In answer, the ground began to shake beneath their feet. Relieved, Brenik’s chin fell to his chest, and he stepped away from the Stone, next to where Bray had moved.
With his heart pounding with anxiety, he watched the same routine of the Stone’s arms and legs sprouting from the rock. Lastly, the alabaster head with the unreadable black eyes protruded forward. Brenik wished he could know what went on inside the head of the creature who answered desires but would cost one dearly.
“What do you desire?” the Stone boomed inside his head. “I have already granted your wishes.”
“It isn’t for me—it’s for her.” Brenik pointed desperately to Rana. She was no longer moving, but watching the Stone with a sharpness so deep, he wasn’t sure if she was going to try and attack it.
“Ah. What do you think she desires?” the Stone asked.
“To live—to not be like this... Make her like she was—take back what you gave me, but please, help her.” He would do anything—anything.
“I cannot reverse what I gave to you, but I can change her current state.”
Bray watched on blankly, and Brenik dropped to his knees in mercy.
“Bring her to me,” the Stone demanded.
He nodded and shakily lifted Rana in his arms. She started to wriggle desperately, but he ignored her struggles, setting her down onto the Stone’s open palm and backing away.
The large white fingers closed around Rana until the hand was set into a closed fist. Slowly, the fingers unraveled like a flower in spring, opening for the world to see its beauty.
Rana was still there when Brenik stepped closer. He scooped her still body out of the Stone’s palm and held his hand under her nose. No breaths.
“She isn’t breathing!” he cried, his shoulders drooping, but he held Rana tightly.
“It was the only way to save her,” the Stone answered, its head lowering to Brenik’s.
“You didn’t save her. You killed her,” Brenik accused. He wanted to break the stone into a thousand pieces and throw them all into the deepest depths of the ocean.
“Her soul was already gone. You waited too long.” The Stone’s eyes seemed to accuse Brenik of his own wrongdoing. It was Brenik’s fault.
“You mean, I could have come here right after it happened?”
“Yes.” The short answer burned a slow and gaping hole into Brenik’s chest as he realized he could have saved Rana’s life.
The Stone started to pull himself back into its rock form, when Brenik took a step forward and begged, “Fix me.”
“I told you, you chose what you chose.” Then the Stone folded back into the shape of a rose.
Brenik roared as his whole world came crashing down around him. Setting down Rana’s body, he ran toward the Stone and pounded his fists against the hardness, trying to crack it in half. Something pulled him back, and he turned around to unleash his anger on it—on Bray.
“Go away, Bray,” he warned.
Without the tiniest flinch, Bray stood her ground. “No.”
“I said, Go. The fuck. Away!” Brenik didn’t want anyone around him, and he didn’t want Bray to see him like this.
She took a step toward him, her arms crossed over her chest. “I’m not leaving.”
Brenik bent down to Rana’s body and untied her wrists and ankles. He tossed the shirts aside and reached down to lightly touch Rana’s back. Her body turned to a sand-like substance and dissolved into the ground, becoming part of the earth. Brenik stared at the dirt in horror. The Stone didn’t only kill what was inside her, but it had taken her body, too.
Bray moved next to him, looking equally afraid, but Brenik knew she tried to hide her terror. “It’s—it’s better this way,” she said. “No one can cut up her body trying to find answers, like they have with the other victims. It will be okay, Brenik.”
He couldn’t lift his eyes from the ground as he whispered, “How will it ever be okay, Bray? I kill people. I kill people to stay young. Even when I don’t try to kill people, I still do.”
“Then don’t do it anymore. Grow old with me.” She didn’t understand. There were times when the hunger was uncontrollable, and he had to give into it—he had wanted to give into it.
“Just leave me alone for a little while, and I will come by tomorrow. I have to think about things.” Brenik ran his hands through his hair, squeezing it fiercely.
Bray’s eyes narrowed at Brenik like she could read everything in his head. “Right, but I’ll come with you.”
He didn’t want her to come—he wanted to be alone. “I need to be alone.”
“Are you sure, Brenik? If you don’t stop by, I will have to come and find you.” He could tell she was worried and maybe a little frightened.
“Bray, go home. I will come by tomorrow. I promise.”
“You are going to need help, and I’m going to help you stop this.” Brenik knew she would try, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted anyone’s help. He would rather do it himself.
“I love you, Bray. I will be okay.” He had never told her that, no matter how many times she had spoken the words to him. There were times he had felt he should never say the words aloud because sometimes he hated her, too, but this time the love won out.
“I love you, too, little brother,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, her eyes filling with tears. He wanted to cry and scream like a little child for her to stop, but he slung his arms around her, holding her tight.
After she left the forest, Brenik fell to the ground where Rana had once lain and curled into himself. He had lied to Bray. He wasn’t going to be okay—he would never be okay.