“Are you getting out? Or can I take you back home?” the driver asked. We’d been idling here for the last ten minutes, and I was grateful that tonight, of all nights, this driver was kind.
“Yeah, sorry,” I pushed out, twisting my hair into a bun at the top of my head. “I just needed a second.”
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, looking at the house and then back to me. “No offense, but this looks like some horror movie shit.”
My hand went to the door handle, popping the door open. “You have no idea.”
She twisted, turning around in her seat. “I’ll be here with the window down,” she declared. “You need help, you yell. I don’t like this.”
Yeah, she was getting a fat tip.
“Thanks. This shouldn’t take too long.”
I just had to kick my brother’s ass first.
When the associate at the bank had told me there was a glitch in the system and that my little brother had withdrawn all the money in my account, my stomach had landed on the floor of my apartment with a deafening splat. After the initial shock wore off, the betrayal took its place. All of this was partially my fault for having too much faith in him, holding on to the hope that he would break free from the bullshit of our bloodline. That hope was the entire reason why, when I opened this account when I was eighteen, I added him to it. Even though he’d never taken me up on the offer, I kept him on just in case he ever needed anything, any help to get him on his feet. Because, after everything, I still cared.
However, stealing nearly twenty grand out of my account was not the way to thank me.
As I crossed the street, the pit in my stomach grew and my fingers began to twitch at my sides. A small growl of frustration formed in my throat as I stepped onto the curb and balled my hands into fists. I tipped my head back to the look at the peak of the house, taking in the roof damage illuminated by the blinking streetlight.
“You got this, Margo,” I chanted to myself.
Our parents were long dead, our mother having passed away when Marcus was only five years old. I’d been nine at the time and had spent the rest of my childhood shielding him from our father’s anger, his drunken nights, and his drug use. Then, when Marcus turned twelve, everything started to shift. Suddenly, in our father’s eyes, his son wasn’t the little shit he’d always been, but a companion he could take under his corrupt wing. I tried to stop it, the influence, but Marcus craved our father’s approval more than survival most days. When I turned eighteen, I opened the bank account and left Marcus a note with all the information on it before leaving—heading off into the sunset with another mistake—thinking my life was finally starting to turn around.
Inhaling deeply, I climbed the rotting porch steps. I tuned out the questionable creaks and cracks under my weight as I went. I lifted my trembling fist to the door and knocked three times, using the same sequence we had from childhood for our secret meetings. That time together, those precious moments we shared under the protection of our pillow fort upstairs when Dad was passed out on the couch, was something else my father ripped from me.
I counted to fifteen before knocking again—harder, this time.
In the middle of the second knock, the rotting door was ripped open, revealing a stranger to me.
My eyes widened, my lips parting as the breath in my lungs left me, my heart damn near shattering at the sight before me. This wasn’t a stranger—this was my little Marcus.
“What the fuck do you want?” he snarled, baring his yellow stained teeth. His putrid breath hit me, the utter stench of it forcing me to take a step back.
It smelled like he was decomposing from the inside out.
Ever since his growth spurt in seventh grade, Marcus had been taller than me. He was the same height as our father, just under 6’4. The only difference between the two of them was that Dad had meat on his bones. He was built like an offensive lineman and used the power of his body to hurt the ones he was supposed to love. Marcus had been skinny the last time I saw him, but now he was nothing but skin and bones. His hair was thin on the top of his head, his scalp gleaming under the orange porch light. His clothes hung like giant sacks off his shoulders and hips. He leaned forward, the stained blue shirt shifting with him, giving me an alarming view of his pointed collarbone.
“Marcus,” I rasped, shaking my head. “What the hell happened to you?”
He looked like death warmed over.
I knew it was bad. I mean, I could only assume, since he never answered my calls, returned all my Christmas cards, and blocked me on every social media platform he was present on. But I never thought it would be this bad, that he would reach this point.
“What the fuck do you want?” he clipped, stumbling forward a bit, bracing himself on the doorframe, a half-empty bottle of whiskey hanging from his hand.
“Do you know who I am?” I found myself asking, tilting my head to the side, wondering how much damage the years of constant drug use had done to his brain.
An unsettling laugh bellowed out from him then, the sound making my skin crawl as his yellow eyes looked me up and down as if I were beneath him. “Margo, get the fuck off my porch,” he slurred. “I don’t have time for your shit tonight.”
Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood for a reunion.
All the love vanished from my voice, my question ice cold. “Where’s my money?”
A sliver of panic flashed across his brown eyes, an expression he didn’t want me to see. He brushed it off, straightening and pursing his lips. “Why in the hell would I know where your money is, Margo?”
“I—”