Deceptive Cadence
After the death of their parents, Kein had to take on adult responsibilities, including care of his younger brother, Ethan, as they both pursue their studies at the prestigious Institute of Music. Kein can’t help but resent Ethan for having the chance to be a normal teenager, while he himself has to be an unwilling caregiver. As he tries to juggle his responsibilities with his own needs, the last thing on his mind is love, yet he finds it unexpectedly in his new piano instructor, Adonai. Further burdened by coming face to face with his own sexuality and drowning in his unresolved trauma, Kein is not prepared to find out that his brother is in love with Adonai, too. As Ethan pursues his interest in a way Kein simply cannot, the brotherly relationship comes under extreme strain.
There were signs: a certain dampness to the air, the unmistakable smell of ozone, the distinct sound of tires on wet asphalt somewhere beyond the walls. The still dreaming mind connected them slowly, almost lazily, but the final conclusion awoke him completely. It was raining.
Kein lay in his bed unmoving. The window was open and he felt the cold watery breeze hacking at his exposed body. He lay naked as when he went to sleep in the evening it was too hot for a blanket. He regretted that decision now but didn’t want to break with motion the eerie magic of the near-dreaming state.
He listened to the random sounds the house made when everything else fell silent – the weird electrical noise of the computer periphery that lived even when the machine itself was off, the soft creaking of the table as if an invisible cat jumped on it, the sudden cracking of the red-wood chair as if it was stretching its spine before starting a long working day. Kein opened his eyes and watched the chair intently, its legs and back visible in the green light of the digital clock. He expected to catch it off-guard actually stretching, but it didn’t move.
6:29 glowed proudly on the display. Precisely one minute before the alarm would trigger. There was satisfaction in waking up just so. Bonus points for doing it on a rainy day when the air itself sang lullabies to his body. He finally moved, reaching for his phone and disabling the alarm before it would go off and spoil the morning. In a few seconds, though, he heard the terrible bipping from the next room. Bip-bip-bip.
He moaned and rolled over, covering his head with the pillow. Bip-bip-bip. He never was in synch with his brother, as if his brother was created to be his antithesis. Bip-bip-bip. It was indeed amazing when he thought about all of it together, past unfolding to form one huge, momentarily clear picture. Bip-bip-bip. If one of them was in a good mood or got lucky then a terrible day ensued for the other. It was akin to a curse. Bip-bip-bip.
Kein wondered briefly whether it could have really been some kind of a voodoo spell but then discarded the silly thought and sat up on the bed. Bip-bip-bip. There was no point in trying to regain the fragile peaceful balance of a good mood on a rainy morning. The bipping went on. Kein concentrated hard on ignoring it and keeping his calm, but he lasted exactly thirty bips. Then he stood up and stomped through the still dark living room into the room of his brother. Bip-bip-bip.
Ethan’s territory was cluttered and dominated by CDs. Of all colors, they stood and lay, open and closed, empty and with disks inside, some of them broken, some of them whole. They sprawled over every surface – the computer table, the floor, the shelves, the bed. They piled along the walls, dusty, and surrounded the altar of the audio system in a snug ring. Kein stepped on one of the covers and hissed with irritation.
Bip-bip-bip. Oblivious to the alarm’s effort beside him Ethan was sleeping like an angel, his blond curls spread across the white linens forming a halo. Halo. Some trash song that involved the heavy repetition of this word jumped into his head out of the depth of memory and began bouncing as if in league with the alarm, pissing him off even more. Bip-bip-bip. Halo, halo, halo.
“WAKE THE FUCK UP!” Kein yelled right into his brother’s ear at the top of his lungs, somehow afraid that if he took his voice down so much as a tiny little bit he would burst, blow up and destroy everything in sight.
Ethan awoke with a start, nearly rolling off his bed. “…What?… What the hell is going on? Kein?”
The alarm kept bipping. “Halo, halo, halo…” sang a female voice in Kein’s head. Kein squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the chaos to stay inside, forcing his hands to merely make fists and not move on any of the other urges.