Jack Drinks Jack

Jack Mercer → beginning to end.

“Don’t you die on me you little fairy. Come on, Jack. Please! You gotta fucking breath. Come on.”

He smiles again, more blood is coming from his mouth and all I can see is the little eight year old boy that was dropped on our doorstep all those years ago with that black sweatshirt that was five times too big for him and had face that was more black and blue than his abnormally pale skin tone. I can’t lose my brother, but I can tell, the light is slowly leaving his eyes, and that bullet had to have hit a lung or something. Jack is gasping for air and there is nothing I can do to help him.

The only thing that I can do is watch him die a slow and painful death…

I have seen plenty of blood in my lifetime, more times than not I had been the one who had shed the blood. But this was different, against Jack’s pale skin, the blood was brighter, it was staining everything. The white shirt that Jack had decided to wear that morning, the snow under him, the skin on his face as the blood goes from his mouth onto his cheek and then flows into the snow. I can’t do this, I can’t watch my baby brother die. But, I have too, I have to be the last thing that he sees before he dies.

I’m still crying, but I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care about being strong anymore, I only care about letting my baby brother know that I love him. The really fucked up thing is that I can’t say the words out loud. I can’t tell my baby brother that he changed me for the better, I had been so much worse before he had shown up, it still surprises me that Ma put up with me for so long before he showed up. But after the timid little kid that I caught smoking in our room when he was eight showed up, I couldn’t be as violent. He followed me around everywhere after playing with a bunch of fucking tissue boxes for Christ sakes. Jack got scared when someone raised their voice, I couldn’t do that shit when he was around.

I push the too long blond hair out of my baby brother’s face as the light finally leaves his eyes and he stops convulsing as he attempts to breathe. I can hear Jerry and Angel crying behind me. I can’t do this.

“Jack! Jack. Jack, come on, Jack, please! Please.” I shake him a little, hoping that it will rattle him awake and that he will wake up laughing at us for some fucked up prank he’d just pulled on us. But I know this is real. I know that my baby brother isn’t coming back.

Jackie’s with Ma now.