No More Happy Birthdays

Part Two

Bo Sinclair awoke the following morning in a heap on the couch, his head pounding and his stomach threatening to force its way out of his mouth. For a moment he imagined it doing just that and flopping around on the floor like a big pink bullfrog. The mental image nearly made him puke. Wandering to the refrigerator, he removed two eggs and cracked them over a glass of milk left over from days ago. Awkwardly gulping down the concoction, the man tried his hardest to remember what happened last night. All that he could find as a clue was a near empty gin bottle, two swallows worth left over at the bottom. For the life of him, he could not remember anything…
Wondering where Vincent had gone off to – most likely working all night on another one of his sculptures – Bo made a long shuffling journey back to the living room, where he could try to sleep away his damn hangover. Along the way, his scuffles were interrupted. Cursing, Bo looked down to see what he had tripped over. His foot slid over the faded red paper beneath it…
Oh, fuck, of course. Yesterday… their birthdays. Damn that boy, he had given his brother a present. Or rather made it… the best present to give, Mom had said once. His brow knitted in a frown, Bo leant down, though his headache intensified in response, and he picked up the mess of paper and wax pieces.
Christ, Vincent had made him a wax sculpture. This one must have been beautiful, based on the detail in the cracked remains. The largest chunk of the figurine resembled a fish. Might have been another one of his Fiji mermaids… thinking about how much work and time must have been put into it made Bo feel guilty. He hated to be reminded of the past and of their childhood, but he knew that Vincent was only trying to show how much he loved him. Love… what a waste of…
“Oh, fuck…”
Though his head pounded like a hammer on his skull, Bo hastened towards the cellar door. It was all coming back to him now, what had happened last night. He could remember everything, whether he liked it or not… everything. Vincent’s new statue, his goddamn hard-on, Bo ripping off his mask and… the memory was so clear, so strong now in the hung over man’s mind that he felt as though he were now being the one that was…
Fuck, had he really done that to his own brother?
Surely, his brother was a god-honest freak, and he was now a damn fairy… he should not have been surprised, really. God had already done enough to fuck with the both of them, why should He not do worse to amuse Himself with? And yet Bo knew he had gone too far. He was so drunk he hardly knew what he had been doing.
How the fuck was he going to explain that to Vincent?
Finally, he reached the end of the stairs in what seemed like the longest journey down to the cellar and he swung the door open.
“Christ, Vincent…”
He found his brother just as he had left him. Laying in a shivering fetal position on the floor, the disfigured man hovered between awareness and sleep. A snuffle arose from him, full of mucus and possibly blood.
Instantly, Bo was hanging over him, as though shielding him from rain. He wanted to scoop him up in his arms, lift him like a hurt dog and tell him it was alright. But it was not alright. Vincent was not alright. How could Bo apologize for what he had done to him? Sorry, it was just the drink? He’ll never do it again?
Freak or not… faggot or not, Lord forbid… he was his brother.
Carefully, he placed an arm under the quaking, broken body, sighing when he felt a harsh shudder ripple through Vincent. All that his twin was wearing was a long sleeved undershirt, and the rest of him was only covered with blood and… spunk. God damn it all.
Vincent awoke and gave a shuddering moan, uncertain of his surroundings. He realized very soon, however, that he was being lifted and when he looked up at the face of the person doing the deed, he panicked. Bo was not at all surprised, but he still did not welcome the reaction.
“Stay still, I gotcha,” he said, more as a warning than a means to soothe the other man. “Let’s take a look at you.”
Still squirming, Vincent could not calm under his twin brother’s touch, even as he was placed in a small cot. The bedding had been set up there years ago, due to all the time the young artist spent in the cellar, and it certainly came in handy now. Vincent proceeded to curl into a tight protective ball again once his aching body was securely on the ratty mattress, but Bo would have none of it.
“No… no, Vincent…” he quietly reprimanded as he made an effort to unwind the tense form of his twin without causing more injuries. “I’ve got to take care of you now. I know you hurt, and I’m gonna try to make things right.”
Vincent’s face was not visible under his stringy black hair, but Bo had a feeling the man was crying from the way his shoulders shook and his breath hitched in his throat. Screams resonated inside Bo’s head from hours before and he shut his eyes and tried to ignore the memory.
“I’ve got to make it better, alright?”
Slowly, the body under Bo’s touch went slack, but continued to quietly weep. He was still like a child in so many ways, and that notion made Bo feel even worse. Carefully he peeled off the undershirt from his twin’s bloodied form and cringed at how it stuck to him. So many times in the past, he had done the same to those who would become part of Vincent’s wax menagerie, people he cared nothing for or hated. But this was his brother. He promised his mother a long time ago that he would take care of Vincent, and now he had done this.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispered. “We need to get you cleaned up, don’t we?”
Cleansing the bloodstained skin was easy enough if Bo pretended he was washing off a new corpse. Coming across his own dried up ejaculate made the process difficult. As he cleaned his broken and humiliated brother, Bo inspected the destruction he had caused. Prodding at the ugly bruises on Vincent’s sides, he was slightly relieved that no ribs seemed to be broken. He had remembered kicking the area brutally hard. The back was a worse mess, where it had collided with the chair, for when Bo scrubbed at it, the blood refused to come away. A crooked gash slowly welled up with the dark red fluid and would have to be bound and cleaned regularly. Bo knew Vincent would not tend to it himself.
The white wash basin which lay on the floor next to the cot was now a dusky pink, the same color as the water. Wringing out his washcloth, Bo ignored the amount of liquid red which spilled from it and looked with regret at the chaos that lay between Vincent’s legs. Dried blood and semen caked itself over the span of the rump and had dripped in tiny two-toned rivers down the thighs. Sighing with remorse, Bo wet the cloth again and edged onto the cot, preparing to clean the horrid mess.
Vincent had remained motionless until he felt fingers against his bottom. The intrusion of the torn channel relit the flames of agony and the recollection of what his brother had done to that place yesterday caused Vincent to scream. Though Bo tried to carefully hold him down, he refused to cooperate. He refused to let that punishment happen again and he never ever wanted his brother to touch him there again.
“Vincent!” Bo snapped. “If you don’t sit still right now, you’re gonna regret being born.”
Still writhing under his twin’s physical contact, the injured young man sobbed in pain and fear.
“Vincent…” Bo said, trying his best to keep a firm grip on his temper, which was threatening to break free again. “I gotta clean you up, all of you… and that includes yer ass here. If I don’t, then it’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot more real soon. I gotta make it better. I know it’s gonna hurt, but you’ve gotta trust me. I’m gonna make it better…” Bo looked away for a moment. “Somehow I’m gonna make this all better.”
Fingers tightly wrapped in a fistful of sheets, Vincent breathed slowly, readying himself for what was to come. He did trust his brother. Bo was all he had, after all.
“Okay…” he heard his twin speak softly. “Okay, here we go…”
Bo could feel amongst the sticky dried fluids that this was going to be torture for Vincent. The prostrate man’s ripped, swollen hole tightened at the very touch of fingertips on the cheeks of the rump. And so when he finally applied the wet rag to the damaged orifice, he was surprised that the howl which echoed inside the basement was not louder and harder than it really was. He continued, trying a second time to imagine those wails coming from one of the countless bastards they had snatched in the past.
The blood and semen were coming off now, but the snug passage still looked as though someone had taken a knife to it. Poor Vincent… he whimpered at the treatment of his most horrible wound and he pressed the empty half of his visage into the cot, which was now wet with his tears and spittle.
“It’s okay…” Bo was inspired to say, though he felt like total shit for saying it. He had caused all this and now he was tending to Vincent like their mother would have. He wrung out the bloody water from his washcloth into the basin, which had to be refilled during the cleaning of his brother’s rectum, and did one more dab over Vincent’s back, letting the water run over the bruised skin.
“It’s okay. We’re done now. We’re all done.” Bo tenderly patted the strings of long greasy hair on his twin’s head as though comforting a dog. “You did a real good job.”
Vincent was eerily silent, and his brother had to push aside the long strands of raven hair and see the continually falling tears to know that he was still crying. The battered twin avoided looking at Bo and had the wax mask not been torn away from that despaired, misshapen face, his expression would have gone unnoticed. As such, Bo Sinclair shuddered at the sight and found himself pulling his hand away as though he had been burnt, and he walked with slow steps toward the steps like one sent to the gallows.
*
In the week following the “incident” as Bo had come to know the tragic event, he barely spoke to his brother. Vincent remained in his blood splattered cot for two days before the sounds of his machinery and carving tools finally arose through the staircase. Otherwise, he did not make himself visible too often in his twin’s presence, and was never even noticed getting his food or using the toilet. Bo partly welcomed the absence, as the two brothers were not given many chances at confrontation. It was too painful for either of them. But Bo still wondered how long he could steer clear of Vincent, and if it was the right action to take. What if the boy needed help for something? Clever as he was, he was still so alike a child. And in that clever, childish mind, Bo feared to think that perhaps something had been touched, or possibly altered. Altered for good? Was Vincent ever even going to trust his brother again?
Lost in his thoughts, Bo sat on the front steps of the Sinclair house one afternoon when he was startled by a loud crash. Judging from the reverberating noise, he guessed the commotion to be from the basement. He did not even ask himself what the crash really was, because he was inside the house and down the stairs without a moment’s hesitation.
“Vincent!” he cried out, almost losing his footing along the way. “Vincent!”
The first thing Bo saw when he entered the room was a pile of junk. Rather, a pile of junk which had once been one of Vincent’s tool shelves. Stainless steel and rusted metal lay scattered upon the cold floor and the iron framework itself had contorted to the impact upon the ground. Repairing the shelf would most likely be impossible.
“Vincent?”
Only the slightest of movement caught in the corner of Bo’s eye alerted him to where his brother was. Coiled up in a ball like a frightened puppy, Vincent hid himself as best as he possibly could under a small space where he would often crawl into in order to use the trap doors to upstairs. In the shadows, Bo could see his twin’s hands were shaking in front of his face.
Bo stepped toward his brother, but the quaking hands only went up in self defense, and Vincent turned away, sniffling. One had to be an idiot not to determine that the deformed man had been crying again. Taking another step, he could see the figure in the darkness tensing like a sidewinder ready to strike.
Vincent was expecting another punishment. He was afraid of his brother.
“I’m not mad… come on…” Bo said, his voice soft and his hand outstretched to help him out of the crawlspace. “Come on. It was an accident. I ain’t mad.”
I can’t afford to be mad this time, he thought to himself.
Finally, Vincent took the offered hand and stepped out of his hiding place. He had not made a replacement for his mask and Bo could see the valley of missing flesh and bone behind strands of oily hair. The other half of the face was twisted in a miserable grimace.
“You okay?” Bo asked the slouched figure. “Get hurt anywhere?”
Vincent’s head never rose, and he merely shook it no as a reply.
“Alright…” Bo looked around at the unplanned mess and scratched the back of his head where his brother had once been physically connected to him. “Let’s clean up, shall we? Get things looking good again… can’t have you doing your art in a messy workroom, huh?”
But just as Bo finished his question, he looked around the area and he blinked, thinking perhaps he was imagining the empty space. But no, it was just as he feared. No sculptures… the man Vincent had taken so much devotion and care to creating now lay in a heap, the pieces Bo had not destroyed himself having been smashed by his twin. Otherwise, the place held no signs of someone hard at work, no clues that Vincent was even doing anything down in the cellar but sitting in misery and avoiding his brother altogether.
Bo’s hand still gripped that of his twin, and he lightly pulled Vincent toward him, hoping he could avoid frightening the scarred young man at this close a space between one another.
“Why ain’t you working?” he asked, trying to force the deformed upward so that he could look into the remaining eye for any sort of clue. But he did not need clues, and he knew it. Sighing, he stared quietly at the left eye, red and hazy from shed tears.
“I sure did fuck things up, didn’t I?”
Vincent looked down again and finally pulled himself away to lie down on his cot. Shaking his head, Bo gave up for the day and returned upstairs, disregarding the fallen shelf.

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To be continued...