Page 53 - HEF Pen & Ink 2020

Giueseppe’s death was the beginning of the end. We had lost our older brother, the man we looked
up to. On the train ride home for the funeral, Giacomo never uttered a word. He stayed seated in the same position the whole time, his eyes tilted out the window, looking but not seeing as the world passed him by as I tried my best to console him.
After a week of not talking to me or Elvira, he finally called to me one evening.
“Battista,” he said, “I need you to promise me something.” His eyes were ablaze with recklessness and hunger, and for the first time in my life I was afraid of my own brother.
“Anything,” I replied, although it made me somewhat uneasy and I had a feeling this promise would not be something simple but something that would make me squeamish, the feeling of having swallowed something rotten.
He turned to me. “Marry her,” he said.
“What?”
“If I die. I need you to promise me that you’ll marry her and look after her.”
There was no debating this: we both knew who he meant. I didn’t bother saying that he wouldn’t
die either, for we both knew, deep down in the depths of our souls where we never cared to wander that he would, that this would be a promise to him I had to keep, the one promise that would ever truly matter.
And now here I am, a few days later. Sobbing, lying next to his dead body, a gun in his hand and a shattered mirror nearby scattering broken pieces all about, the sun reflecting off them creating some sort of halo of light around his head. A piece of paper in his hand.
I’m sorry. It was never supposed to be this way. Let Elvira know that my love for her will always burn a flame in my heart for the rest of her life even though I’m gone. And tell Battista that he was right about the mirror.
This would break them. This would break everyone. The shame, the pain, it would all be too much. And so, I got up. I moved Giacomo’s lifeless body to a chair, positioned the gun just right. It had to be be- lievable. I turned toward the fire, it’s flames licking at the air around it. I took a clumsy step towards it, then looked back at Giacomo. I moved towards the fire quicker, this time with purpose. I stood in front of the fire, staring it down as though it were Giacomo, staring it down as if to say that maybe I was wrong, maybe he had been right about the mirror after all. I take one last look at the letter before crumpling it up and dropping it in, the flames devouring it in mere seconds. I walk out of the shed and into the light, burdened by promises, burdened by death, burdened by secrets.
Nobody needs to know.
DECONSTRUCTED POLAROID
by Shiloh Corcoran
DERANGED
by Danielle Prouty
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