IF: Life and Death

Chapter 15: The Life of a Brother

The Life of a BrotherWhatever it is he's thinking, Leo decides to shrug it off. "Let's go home?" he suggests, waiting for Eyrin to turn her back towards him. She nods but before he can make a step, black ribbons strip their way out of thin air and wrap around him.

He had no time to protest. The garments lace around his mouth, purposefully muffling the words he's screaming. He sees Eyrin desperately running towards him, arms extending and eyes full of worry. By that time, he's all covered in. His movements are restricted but he tries his hardest to reach for her. Their fingertips touch but as she is almost about to grab him, he disappears.

He wakes up in a white room.

It is a room, he supposed, but he's not sure how far the walls go. All he knows is that no matter how hard he looks, all he sees is white.

"Hello?"

His voice comes back to him, ten folds. He gets up on his feet and gazed up the ceiling but it's the same thing. His eyes extend as far as they could still he can't see nothing but white.

He tries to inhale the air to at least get a common idea what place he is right now but even the air is not stale or fragrant. In fact, there's nothing in it to the point that he gets tired of sniffing for just getting nothing.

"Am I in heaven?" he asks himself though he thinks that's impossible. He's not even a forty-day old soul.

Someone snorts and it echoes until the sound becomes a mere disturbance that is eventually lost in space.

"My,my," the voice speaks again but this time it sounds nearer. "You really are entertaining," the voice says. The small strands of hair at the back of his head raise and cold shivers run through his spine. He still cannot see the owner of the voice but he feels its presence behind him, as if whispering on his ears.

"Who are you?" Leo asks. Beads of sweat form on his temples. His body is so stiff he can barely move. He can't even crack his finger. A lump in his throat starts to cause him a hard time breathing.

"Who? Me?" The voice speaks again. This time, it's more than just a lump his throat. This time he feels like someone or something is strangling him. The veins in his neck are starting to become visible. Beads after beads of sweat are racing down his face. He can't open his mouth to scream as his movements are focused on the muscles in his neck.

The feeling gives him the thought of familiarity.

He's dying.

Again.

The grip loosens and he falls on his knees, an arm pinned on the ground for support while his other hand is holding his neck,as if checking if it's still there.

"When you're choking, what are you losing?" the voice speaks again. That time, Leo knows its in front of him, maybe kneeling or just looking down at him.

"A-air," he answers though hesitant at first. The voice groans, obviously not satisfied.

"And when you lose air, what happens?" The voice puts emphasis on every word.

"I die." Leo answers nonchalantly but the voice is not happy. The air around them starts to tighten and his entire body feels like its being compressed to a smaller vacuum. He can't move a muscle again. The place reverberate the sound of the air pressure and it's not pleasant to the ears. The sound is as if shooting air bullets and is magnified by earphones plugged in his ears.

"When you die what did you lose?" The voice changed. It's as if the wind did that to it or the voices of thousands of people speak the same words at the exact same time. Leo can not speak. He's literally caught up in the middle of a hurricane and he can't do a thing except to cower in fear.

"WHAT DID YOU LOSE?" The voice screams and the chaos is gone. Silence creeps its way in and nothing is heard except Leo's desperate panting and the sound of his sweat dripping on the floor.

"L-" he tries to speak but the lack of air keeps him from doing so. "Life," he finally says.

The ground trembles. The white of the place slowly strips off like an old wallpaper. As the color is torn down, it exposed variants of different colors. The white walls soon become the trees, mountains and the ocean. The ceiling becomes the azure sky. The ground cracks open and green grass takes over.

Silence is gone.

The wind blows so gentle it rustles the canopy of green leaves the loom above him. The ray of the sun almost cannot penetrate through the shade but it managed to shine a glint on Leo's eyes.

The soft current teems, the wild froth scraping and lashing the shore and then eventually releases. It sizzles, chafes and dashes the sand, before it retreats offshore. The air smells of an extravaganza of citrus and coconut and just the plain salty fragrance from the sea.

The tide switches and as it retreats, it leaves utter satisfaction.

This is paradise. Leo thinks as he wanders his gaze around** calm after the storm.

"Such beauty, right?" Leo snaps his head to where the voice is coming from. It's from a small figure, a kid he assumes, leaning on a tree, eyes darting through the horizon. The kid looks at him, smiles so innocently it almost breaks his heart. "I am Life."

Leo is shocked but that's an understatement. When Life looks away and averts his gaze to the sea, Leo runs his eyes on the kids physique with so much subtlety*** fraudulent as a burglar to the unwary.

Life is wearing an oversized baseball shirt too loose it exposes his skinny chest. Life's hair is messed up, its curls too long it falls on his face. Life has freckles. Life is not a kid but his height tells otherwise. But most importantly, the glint on his eyes speaks such mellow. Life looks broken. Life is sad.

"Are you okay?" Leo asks out of nowhere. People tend to speak foolish when they don't think about what they say. That time, Leo knows for a fact that he's a fool.

He walks to the tree where Life is. The shade it provides gives him comfort but that doesn't compare to when he sits beside Life.

Life's presence give off such importance. Leo instantly remembers how it feels like to be alive. Flowers bloom around him and Life chuckles.

"You're thinking of happy thoughts," Life confirms.

"Why are you here? I mean, why did you take me?" Leo asks, not bothering to wait for the perfect timing.

"Leonardo Hernandez," Life speaks. "I just want to meet you," he explains.

"No it's more than that." Leo shakes his head, not believing what Life has just said.

Life laughs again. "You really are amusing, Leonardo Hernandez."

"Can you stop calling me by my full name?" Leo protests but Life doesn't seem to listen.

"I want to give him a hand." Life reasons.

"Him? Who?"

"That blonde conceited entity you just met?" Life says, waiting for it to ring a bell. "That guy taller and a little bit buffer than I am?"

Leo shakes his head. Life groans. "He always has his mask tilted to the side of his face."

"Oh, Death!"

Life scoffs. "Why do you seem so excited when you talk about Death?"

"Death seems to be a good friend," Leo says nonchalantly.

"He's arrogant.He would never ask for my help,"

"Help for what? He's on a vacation!" Leo explains, a little bit amused.

Life just shakes his head, extends his arms and with a few gesture of his fingers, bubbles float from the flowers around them. "He's too arrogant to admit he's got a lot of going on."

From a clear view, mist grows inside the bubbles and eventually shows series of images. "This was me in your eyes. This was your life."

The breeze blows the bubbles afloat. They dance with the singing of the wind, circle around the tree, around them, like a hurricane but more calm and bring along an unusual melody.

A whirl-bubble, Leo thinks and smiles a bit.

"I'll take the pleasure to make you wary about this," Life says moving his fingers to control the movements of the twirling bubbles, "Leonardo Hernandez, this is your final task."

In a snap of his fingers, Leo is surrounded by darkness. A light shows up behind him and when he turns around, he finds a bubble, one of the many others. But that's not an ordinary bubble. It is a glowing one and it's showing him a clip***** a projector in a movie theatre.

It shows him a day when they were two. Leo and Adrian's faces show up, cute and innocent.

They were smiling, too wide they could feel their jaw hurt. But they didn't seem to care. They were chasing bees. Adrian was running ahead while Leo stayed behind him. He shouldn't. They should run at the same time, side by side, hands holding each other. Adrian noticed that so while still on his track, he looked back. He saw Leo running slow, as if trying to leave and letting him move on. He didn't want that. The smile on Adrian's face slowly turned into a downward curve and because he wasn't looking ahead, he tripped and fell on his butt.

He cried but Leo ran to his brother's aid and provided comfort. Leo was there.

The bubble popped and there is darkness yet again. But not for long. Darkness is soon devoured by the light as bubbles set aglow appear one after another. Unlike the whirl-bubble earlier, the series of images are limited to the moments Leo and Adrian shared together.

Back in time when they were building castles out of Legos only to knock it down and cause their parents to walk on the mess. They laughed on how mad their mom and dad would be.

They used to watch Teletubbies, grinning wide while sucking milk bottles at 5 years old. They liked to pretend to be Lion-O and Panthro right after watching ThunderCats.

The bubbles that contain the good times pop up at once and another wave comes, overwhelming him.

Nights weren't always good usually when they had so much fun during the day. Adrian always cried because he couldn't sleep but Leo's warmth as he hugged always lulled his little brother to sleep. If Teddy Bears protect children from monsters underneath the bed, Leo was Adrian's own version of a Teddy Bear.

They weren't always together. When time came and they had to go to school, Leo couldn't be by his brother's side at all times. That was when he became unwary. That was when he didn't know. As days went on and they grew up, they also learned to grow apart. The gap became wider and wider and Leo wasn't fully aware of it. They thought nothing changed, but a lot did.

A bubble stops right in front of his eyes. It was from different days Adrian had been called out different names because of his fondness to oversized hoodies. He liked to hide his face and by that he was called weird.

The bubble pops and the last one comes to view. Leo cannot utter a word. His jaw is slightly dropped, eyes wide and without knowing it, hot tears are already falling from his eyes.

At 15 Adrian wrote a letter. He told that innocence was gone and the cruelty of the already cruel world had tainted him. He wrote that he would miss his mom and he would miss Jeff and Leo. He asked if someone was going to cry for him. He asked if he really had to be gone for someone to realize his worth. He asked when he would ever be enough. After writing the letter, he folded it and hid under his pillow. A knife was then exposed. It was their mother's favorite bread knife. It wasn't sharp, dull apparently so he wondered it would hurt more if it pierced his skin. He pointed the tip to his torso, where he assumed his heart was. He breathed in heavily, his heart beat harder and harder. Every second that passed he drew a sharp exhale. His chest pounded erratically and short whimpers came out his mouth. He screamed then threw the knife away from him.

Leo doesn't even realize he's desperately trying to grab Adrian literally out of the picture. In the attempt, the bubble bursts into his palm, the scene vanishing before his eyes.

"That wasn't the last time he would try it." Life breaks the silence, as if it's not unbearable enough. "But you would always be there to stop him."

All the days he could think of when Adrian seemed to be hiding something behind his back every time Leo barged inside his room unannounced started making sense. Adrian would always look flustered but every time Leo would ask what he was hiding, he would get mad and ask him to go away.

Now he finally understood and for the first time he's glad to have bothered him.

"But now I couldn't." Leo admits defeat but Life shakes his head.

"I don't like when someone take me away from them. Death doesn't like the idea of it either." Life touches the dying flower nearby and in a wisp of light, it bloomed back to a beautiful one.

"So this will be your last task." The leaves above them rustle, feeling the power of the incoming gust. "You already lost the chances to save him over and over again but I'm giving you this one time." A bubble suddenly materializes beside him. It's no ordinary one. It isn't as vulnerable as the other ones. In fact, it looks crystallized and in that time, it no longer has the past.

It holds the future**** next time Adrian will try to kill himself.

Like the ebb of the waves, the curtains of the wind wrap around him like a mother would.

"You already lost me, Leonardo Hernandez," Life says as he waves his goodbye. "Save him."

Leo smiles. Life seems so kind but he can't help but think of one thing.

Before the hurricane completely takes him away, Leo screams, "Why did you have to be so cruel this first time we met?" he asks remembering how he strangled him just for not answering Life's question.

Life smiles, as wide as a little kid's smile when given cotton candy. "Was I?"

As Leo disappears back to the world he just left 22 days ago, he realized he'd be living another life. Not a life as a living person but a life of unconditional love, responsibility, and content.

"Oh, Adrian." Leo sighs as he thinks how he's still looking out for his little buddy even after he's gone.

That's the life of a brother.