"Charlie?" A gasp escaped Paul's lips as he held on to his chest, as if he had been the one impaled by the rhinoceros horn. A gaping hole was forming in him, undoing all him from the inside.
"Paul," a deep gravelly voice came out of what used to be his brother. He could still feel his own brother still in there somewhere. That he could somehow make out his pitchy voice through all that beastly growling.
Paul felt the tears breaking through his eyelids as he saw the monster before him began to fade. The fangs and appendages that protruded from his brother's cheeks receded and all that was left behind was his smooth cheek. His eyes were no longer black like onyx or wild like a starving beast, instead he could see his brother's dark brown eyes glinting in the red light of the circus. His talons returned to human finger nails. He was covered head to toe in the blood of his victims. I should have been scared. Terrified. Screaming and panicking. Yet all I saw then was my twin brother.
He fell to his side and Paul rushed forward to catch him. He released a pained cry in a high pitched voice that he recognized too well as the boy who protected his twin from the bullies that roamed the streets. The voice that spoke kindly to him when their father had nothing to say but his own hate and desire to get rid of the boys. The voice that had somehow made him feel an impossible warmth in the cold winters, sleeping under the bridge or in an alleyway.
"Charlie you're back!" Paul hugged his brother tightly, fearing that if he would let go, he'd lose his brother to the beast once more.
"Someone get an ambulance!" Paul yelled yet no one responded. "Please my brother isâ"
"I don't care about the venom, Charlie." Paul wiped away the tears running down his cheeks, staining his face with his brother's blood. In his arms he could feel the slow beating of his brother's heart, but he refused to believe it. "I'll get you help. Just. Let me save you for once, Charlie."
Paul had tried to lay Charlie down on the ground but his hand snapped and grabbed at Paul's arm, his grip impossibly strong.
"My brother," Charlie cried, his voice straining with every breath.
"Don't leave me," Paul whispered, willing all the strength he had into those words.
"I know." Paul felt the tears stinging his eyes. "I won't leave you."
"You are the best brother anyone could ever have," Charlie whispered as tears started to pool glisten under the red spotlight.
"But I had done nothing but be scared my entire life. Hiding. Crying. You saved meâ"
"You saved the people outside of this tent, Paul." Charlie forced his voice to be louder, the pain growing even more excruciating. "There would be more people dead because of me if you hadn't intervened. You did what was right.
"I would give up the whole world if it means being by your side always, Charlie."
"Then you've yet to see more of the world, Paul." His voice faded slowly before finally whispering in a way that almost sounded like pleading, "I love you."
Paul could not make out how long he'd been sitting there cradling the body of his brother who he'd impaled with a rhinoceros horn. All the processing of traumas and work he'd done with his brother's help was slowly unraveling within him. His brother's body was getting colder as he felt the warmth left inside him, leaving and fading into his brother's cold body.
Then he saw the tarantula climbing up his brother's body and all he could do was stare at his own hand, imagining the pain of having his DNA altered, the monster forcing its way out of his human skin. The anger, and dread, and despair, gone from his mindâonly occupied with the desire to satisfy an impossible starvation.
He held out his arm to the tarantula as it dug its fangs into his skin. He could feel the venom coursing through his veins turning him into a monster.
Paul waited yet nothing came. His voice was not gravelly and deep. His nails stayed the same, and he could still feel the smooth skin of his cheeks. Nothing. Not a single thing changed. He didn't turn into a beast that feasted on the flesh of men. He was still Paul. And he hated it. He'd seen it for himself how instantaneous his brother turned yet there he was, anger flowing through him as the venom of the tarantula would not even allow him to join his brother.
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