Crushed From The Shoulder
Who: Alexander Wolfgang, OPEN.
What: Someone returns home after a death in the family. Everything is fine. Alexander keeps telling himself that, because nothing’s okay. Nothing has ever been okay. It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong.
Where: The Western District.
When: Monday morning.
Warnings: Memories of violence, language, and teel deer.
Notes: Soundtrack Start.
Death was part of life. He should know that by now. People die all the time. He’d just learned to disconnect from it all when he’d found himself soaked in blood and surrounded by mountains of corpses. Sometimes it’s different, however. It’s different when it happens to someone you care about. It’s different when it had involved someone you wanted to patch things up with, try to make things right with after so many years of dysfunctional disconnection.
It’s different when it’s family. And it’s so much different when a.) there are so very few still alive, and b.) they’re all you have left. In a place where most were dictated by the Ophelian philosophy, family had come to be just about the only thing Alexander could rely on. Which was great and all. If family could only rely on him in return.
They couldn’t do that. Not when it came to their little brother, Alexander Wolfgang. And how he’d fucked up. Fucked up real bad. More so than he could ever have done...
Christ. For once he woke up to a world of pain. Alexander couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt it, but it was there, and he wanted it. He asked for it. So much that it was the most clarifying thing that told him he was still even alive at all. Realizing that he was limping while he walked, though, he slowed down his furious pace. He’d almost forgotten his poor shape, but after an accident like that, he should have dealt worse: A brace secured his shattered wrist, while remains of stitches stretched across his forehead.
At the moment, his hair was a single color-a hint of dull, reddish brown. Alexander had dyed it a week ago, he believed (if only he could keep a mental clock on all of these things). All he knew was that it occurred back before the shit had hit the fan.
It’s cold. For once it’s a cold day out in the Ophelian skies. He’s fucking cold and he realizes it’s not at all because of the weather. It’s the dread that overcomes him when he feels the car flipping over the side of the road. And damned if he could remember what the hell they were talking about seconds before the accident. He just remembers being thrown out several yards from where the car had met the telephone pole, and being told much later how “lucky” he was to be alive.
If you could consider this luck in any way. Because after that, he also remembers the blue and red colors of ambulance and sirens, and the hospital corridors. Being run down white walls. Being told that he could leave, but telling them that he can’t. Because there is a man in the other room and fuck, he can’t even tell them that it’s his brother. Nichole asks for her father; she asks for her uncle. He is there for her. Fat lot of good that will do, though. He is there for his brother when they operate on his brains that’d been split open like a fucking watermelon when his skull impacted the shattered glass. He hears the lines going flat, flatter, the flattest of the flat. He is there when he breaks down the door to the operating room, just before they start laying the cloth over his dead brother’s face, questions swarming his mind.
- Oh god, why does this always happen?
- Oh god, why do I have to be the one?
- Why do I always survive?
- Why does everyone die except me?
- Why. Can’t. I. Just. Die?
(dom dom please youve gotta stay with me dominick cmon cmon you cant do this you cant what will nichole do what will i do stop this you cant fuckin afford to do this youre more important than me)
(It’s... okay, Alex. Remember? Nothin’... of va... val... ue... is... lost...)
SLAM!
(flatline)
(Time of death?)
A fist forced a heavy impact against a building wall, almost enough to shatter the knuckles against the hard brick. Alexander felt his teeth grinding with an indefinable anger, seething so deeply he couldn’t even focus enough to breathe. He tried.
“Fuckfuckfuck FUCK YOU, you FUCKER. How could you say that...? How could you say that, you fuckin’ goddamn piece of shit you ASSHOLE you cock-suckin’ sack of cunts!” The man could have screamed between his teeth. He wanted to. Scream and seethe and rage and sob if only he could muster the tears and strength and energy to be able to express much of anything that he’d forgotten how to express.
Pain ruptured in his arm, as he pressed it to his chest, cradling it in his brace as he kept the blood from flowing everywhere. Or at least, he tried. The real agony didn’t register until seconds later. Then he realized how it didn’t do him much good, looking back on it, because it was starting to get all over his shirt, his jacket, some droplets on his jeans. Shit, it was all over him. Blood that was his own, blood that belonged to his brother-
Oh.
Oh no.
And there was a piece of pink, bloodied tissue on the collar of his jacket. His heart sank when he realized who it all belonged to.
When he couldn’t cry, when there were no tears, all that came out was a muffled, hysterical laugh. People are supposed to cry. Normal people do cry. His brother died on the fucking operating table as they tried putting his brains back together like pieces of some fucking puzzle. He watched his brother’s head get split open against the windshield. And there was nothing he could do. So it was hysterical, ironic, that after being told that he was dying, everything else around him was perishing first.
The joyless laughter cracked down the echoing street as he stumbled and lost balance, gracelessly collapsing and knocking over a trash can. It crashed over, as did Alexander, and still he laughed hysterically, a man covered in the blood of his brother. And he’s laughing now because who wouldn’t laugh? It’s funny! It’s pretty fucking funny. Hell, maybe one day some asshole will write a book about this!
(WELL IS THIS SOMEONES IDEA OF A FUCKIN JOKE)
Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Nothing’s okay.
Everything’s fine.
What: Someone returns home after a death in the family. Everything is fine. Alexander keeps telling himself that, because nothing’s okay. Nothing has ever been okay. It’s all wrong, it’s all wrong.
Where: The Western District.
When: Monday morning.
Warnings: Memories of violence, language, and teel deer.
Notes: Soundtrack Start.
Death was part of life. He should know that by now. People die all the time. He’d just learned to disconnect from it all when he’d found himself soaked in blood and surrounded by mountains of corpses. Sometimes it’s different, however. It’s different when it happens to someone you care about. It’s different when it had involved someone you wanted to patch things up with, try to make things right with after so many years of dysfunctional disconnection.
It’s different when it’s family. And it’s so much different when a.) there are so very few still alive, and b.) they’re all you have left. In a place where most were dictated by the Ophelian philosophy, family had come to be just about the only thing Alexander could rely on. Which was great and all. If family could only rely on him in return.
They couldn’t do that. Not when it came to their little brother, Alexander Wolfgang. And how he’d fucked up. Fucked up real bad. More so than he could ever have done...
Christ. For once he woke up to a world of pain. Alexander couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt it, but it was there, and he wanted it. He asked for it. So much that it was the most clarifying thing that told him he was still even alive at all. Realizing that he was limping while he walked, though, he slowed down his furious pace. He’d almost forgotten his poor shape, but after an accident like that, he should have dealt worse: A brace secured his shattered wrist, while remains of stitches stretched across his forehead.
At the moment, his hair was a single color-a hint of dull, reddish brown. Alexander had dyed it a week ago, he believed (if only he could keep a mental clock on all of these things). All he knew was that it occurred back before the shit had hit the fan.
It’s cold. For once it’s a cold day out in the Ophelian skies. He’s fucking cold and he realizes it’s not at all because of the weather. It’s the dread that overcomes him when he feels the car flipping over the side of the road. And damned if he could remember what the hell they were talking about seconds before the accident. He just remembers being thrown out several yards from where the car had met the telephone pole, and being told much later how “lucky” he was to be alive.
If you could consider this luck in any way. Because after that, he also remembers the blue and red colors of ambulance and sirens, and the hospital corridors. Being run down white walls. Being told that he could leave, but telling them that he can’t. Because there is a man in the other room and fuck, he can’t even tell them that it’s his brother. Nichole asks for her father; she asks for her uncle. He is there for her. Fat lot of good that will do, though. He is there for his brother when they operate on his brains that’d been split open like a fucking watermelon when his skull impacted the shattered glass. He hears the lines going flat, flatter, the flattest of the flat. He is there when he breaks down the door to the operating room, just before they start laying the cloth over his dead brother’s face, questions swarming his mind.
- Oh god, why does this always happen?
- Oh god, why do I have to be the one?
- Why do I always survive?
- Why does everyone die except me?
- Why. Can’t. I. Just. Die?
(dom dom please youve gotta stay with me dominick cmon cmon you cant do this you cant what will nichole do what will i do stop this you cant fuckin afford to do this youre more important than me)
(It’s... okay, Alex. Remember? Nothin’... of va... val... ue... is... lost...)
SLAM!
(flatline)
(Time of death?)
A fist forced a heavy impact against a building wall, almost enough to shatter the knuckles against the hard brick. Alexander felt his teeth grinding with an indefinable anger, seething so deeply he couldn’t even focus enough to breathe. He tried.
“Fuckfuckfuck FUCK YOU, you FUCKER. How could you say that...? How could you say that, you fuckin’ goddamn piece of shit you ASSHOLE you cock-suckin’ sack of cunts!” The man could have screamed between his teeth. He wanted to. Scream and seethe and rage and sob if only he could muster the tears and strength and energy to be able to express much of anything that he’d forgotten how to express.
Pain ruptured in his arm, as he pressed it to his chest, cradling it in his brace as he kept the blood from flowing everywhere. Or at least, he tried. The real agony didn’t register until seconds later. Then he realized how it didn’t do him much good, looking back on it, because it was starting to get all over his shirt, his jacket, some droplets on his jeans. Shit, it was all over him. Blood that was his own, blood that belonged to his brother-
Oh.
Oh no.
And there was a piece of pink, bloodied tissue on the collar of his jacket. His heart sank when he realized who it all belonged to.
When he couldn’t cry, when there were no tears, all that came out was a muffled, hysterical laugh. People are supposed to cry. Normal people do cry. His brother died on the fucking operating table as they tried putting his brains back together like pieces of some fucking puzzle. He watched his brother’s head get split open against the windshield. And there was nothing he could do. So it was hysterical, ironic, that after being told that he was dying, everything else around him was perishing first.
The joyless laughter cracked down the echoing street as he stumbled and lost balance, gracelessly collapsing and knocking over a trash can. It crashed over, as did Alexander, and still he laughed hysterically, a man covered in the blood of his brother. And he’s laughing now because who wouldn’t laugh? It’s funny! It’s pretty fucking funny. Hell, maybe one day some asshole will write a book about this!
(WELL IS THIS SOMEONES IDEA OF A FUCKIN JOKE)
Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Nothing’s okay.
Everything’s fine.