#efrem

From Venom War: Zombiotes #002

Art by Juan José Ryp and Ceci de la Cruz

When I think back, the summers - or, at least, I think it was summer, for in Heaven, the seasons are hard to distinguish - when we were teenagers, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, were my favorite times. Things were simpler, or perhaps I didn’t see how complicated they really were.

Efrem was too skinny by far, shooting up in height. His clothes hung loosely on him, and he walked around barefoot, having outgrown his fourth pair of shoes. This seemed to displease Father, but Father was seldom pleased with Efrem.

My brother would wait for me in the hall after his lessons. Every day when I returned from my apprenticeship, he would stand in the same spot by the doorway, his eyes that voraciously looked out onto the street brightening when he caught sight of me. I could pinpoint the exact moment when his blank expression turned into a smile. I prided myself on that.

“Look what I brought,” I remember saying, the first time I brought home peaches. Efrem took one gingerly, like he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t explode. He fumbled with it, ultimately dropping it before picking it back up sheepishly.

“It’s... hairy.”

“It’s a peach. Do you like it?” And he would look at me with those eyes that always seemed to have dark circles underneath.

“I like everything you bring me, ‘Zekiel,” he used to say. I don’t know why, either, he would always mumble my name, dropping the first letter like he did. Efrem’s voice suited him: quiet and unconfident and a little bit clumsy, like the words just tumbled out, pushed down by someone else.

We sat on the steps in the front of Father’s manor and peeled the fuzz off the peaches and ate peach after peach, the juice staining our wrists, our cheeks sticky with sweetness, the floor beneath us littered with pits, until one of Father’s underlings shooed us away for making a mess of the hall.

That night, after prayers, he asked me what the garden was like. Whether there really was an angel with a flaming sword guarding the gate. Whether there was a snake like in the stories.

Beautiful, I answered. Yes. No. I tried to tell him about all the trees and flowers, the vibrant colors that moved me to tears, how everything was so alive and natural and present. He nodded, quiet, and I could tell I failed in conveying the beauty of the garden. Storytelling was a gift of Father’s I did not inherit.

“I’d like to have a garden someday,” he whispered, yawning.

“Maybe you can come with me next time.” We both knew the other angels would never allow it.

“Maybe.” He turned in his pallet. “Mama had a garden once.”

I had not thought about our mother’s garden in many years. I could hardly remember her voice, but I remembered the raspberries that we would pull straight off the bramble. I remembered her crying when she thought Efrem and I were asleep, clutching a single white feather I knew she had plucked from my blankets.

“Do you remember Mother?” I asked. She was warm, I knew that.

“‘Course I do,” he replied. “D’you think she still has a garden? With the raspberries?”

We hadn’t seen our mother in centuries. I could barely remember what she looked like. Why should I care about her garden on a tiny plot of land in front of a tiny house in the woods?

“Maybe,” I said, but Efrem nodded, as if he understood. There were a lot of maybes. Maybe we could see the garden together, maybe we’d see Mother again, maybe Efrem could become an angel one day, if he was good.

Character and Art by me @cidsin​

Another brother of one of the Mermaids, this time it is Efrem, the minutes older brother from Aella :,))

You think I’m unreasonable. I can see it in your eyes, when you look at our old bedroom and you stare at the journal I left on the table so you would find it. Do you recognize that handwriting? Did you learn a new hand, too, along with your new clothes, your new hair, your new name? When you opened the journal and tentatively flipped through a few pages, did you squint at the words that you wrote once, and did you remember when you wrote them every night before bed, every wish you’ve ever made upon the stars we watched together, or did you look at them and shake your head, pitying the poor, stupid boy who wrote those pages upon pages, wondering who he was?

New clothes, new hair, a new name, a new life. No room for an old brother.

The letter was penned shakily, but it was legible. I reread it, again, and again, and a fourth time, and a fifth.

I remember thinking, perhaps I misread because the penmanship was so poor.

“Oh,” came his voice from the doorway.

“This is a joke, right?” I asked. No, I scoffed. How could I believe he could write such a thing? “Because if Father knew -”

“I didn’t want Father to know,” Efrem said sheepishly. “I thought... I mean, he wouldn’t mind, I don’t think.”

“You don’t think he would notice if his son went missing one day?” The letter in my hand was shaking. Efrem looked away. “You didn’t think he would mind?”

My brother shrank. “He doesn’t like me that much,” he whispered. “And no one really likes... me...” his voice began to fade as he looked back up.

“How can you say that?” Thinking back, I still doubt it was my voice that came out of me. It was too deep. Too loud. Too raw and desperate and angry.

“I like you, Brother. We promised, didn’t we? Us against everyone else. You promised,” I reminded him.

“I’m sorry, ‘Zekiel,” he mumbled. Always mumbled, so quiet that I could barely hear him over the pounding in my ears. “I just don’t want to stay in Heaven anym-”

“And where would you go?”

He was silent. My ears were still pounding, blood rushing. I had always admired my brother’s patience, thought his simplicity a virtue, but in that moment, I wished he would say something to defend himself, tell me a complex plan that meant he wasn’t thinking of leaving me without even the courtesy of having a plan.

“Where would you go?” We had talked, once, of returning to our mother’s home, but God only knew where she was. My brother and I were precarious beings, too far removed from humanity to exist among humans, and neither one perfectly suited to Heaven or Hell due to our parentage.

I was lucky, and Father’s angelic nature won out. Efrem was not.

I watched my brother’s face as realization dawned. My heart quieted, slowed down. The pounding in my head lessened.

“’Zekiel, you’re hurting me,” he said quietly.

I was gripping him, I realized, my hands clasped so tightly around his thin arms that the letter I held had crumpled, the ink cracked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, letting go.

“’S’alright,” he replied. He was staring off into the distance, his brow furrowed. 

Father once took us to the cliff side where he grew up. My brother and I were young, maybe around ten years old. He told us to look over the sea, to the edge of the horizon, told us that was where the sun arose every morning and how, a long, long time ago, the sun had been his domain. He had sighed wistfully as Efrem and I exchanged glances, wondering what Father must have been like so long ago, before the time of angels, in the era of the old gods. My brother and I sat with our legs dangling off the precipice, Efrem clinging to me for fear he might fall.

“I trust you, ‘Zekiel,” he said to me with a smile, when I told him that his clinging might cause us both to fall. “You always know what to do.”

To be honest, that day was the last time I remember Efrem’s smiling.

But there was no smile on Efrem’s face after I let him go, the crumpled letter falling unceremoniously to the floor. The circles under his eyes seemed darker than usual, his face paler, as he reconsidered leaving. It struck me how much he looked like Father when he was thinking. They had the same haunted expression, the same exact violet eyes.

“Please. Stay.”

“Look what I brought,” I remember saying, the first time I brought home peaches. Efrem took one gingerly, like he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t explode. He fumbled with it, ultimately dropping it before picking it back up sheepishly.

“It’s… hairy.”

“It’s a peach. Do you like it?” And he would look at me with those eyes that always seemed to have dark circles underneath.

“I like everything you bring me, ‘Zekiel,” he used to say. I don’t know why, either, he would always mumble my name, dropping the first letter like he did. Efrem’s voice suited him: quiet and unconfident and a little bit clumsy, like the words just tumbled out, pushed down by someone else.

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