FicWad

~He was a rockstar, of course! A regular model for the only the latest rockstar fasions consisting of poofy coats made of some endangered animal (the Bandersnatch, was it? He couldn't quite remember) and a floppy, purple, out-of-place sunhat. The only problem was, he didn't know how to play the guitar! Everytime he strummed, it made a weird sound not unlike the squeal of tires stopping far too quickly.

Soon, fed up with the bad guitar playing, the crowd began to scream and jeer in Portuguese.

"I'm sorry!" He cried out, "I stole the cookie from the cookie jar!"

"NO!" The crowd screamed back in unison, "RYAN STOLE THE COOKIE FROM THE COOKIE JAR!"

His eyes grew wide under the rim of his floppy, purple, out-of-place sunhat. "But... he said he'd never do that again...!"

Suddenly, a loud, booming voice echoed over the stage. "IT'S 12 O'CLOCK! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?!"

He crumpled forward on the stage, hands to his head as the audiance joined the booming voice in an unbearably loud chorous.

"IT'S 12 O'CLOCK! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?! IT'S 12 O'CLOCK! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?! IT'S 12 O'CLOCK! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?! IT'S 12 O'CLOCK! DO YOU KNOW--"~

"-where your children are?"

Ryan jerked awake, brow glistening with sweat droplets and eyes wide to meed a friendly-but-stern black man, pointing at him through a fuzzy TV screen.

"Take this commercial break to check into your childs room. What could it hurt to be safe?" The friendly-but-stern looking man gave a friendly-but-stern smile before continuing. "It's a labor of love."

Ryan made a face as the friendly-but-stern man's face flicked into the 'why-the-hell-are-you-still-awake' screen. He sighed, sat up in his arm chair, and rubbed the heel of his palms into his eye sockets, halfway glancing at his wristwatch as he did so.

IT'S 12:03 AM! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?!" The obnoxious green letters seemed to scream through the darkness of the room. Something hard and heavy sank in his gut as he hobbled to his feet, stiffling a yawn as he stumbled across the living room to his and his brother's own bedroom.

He stoped, staring into the open, gaping doorway that reminded him too much of a mouth, waiting to eat him up, in the darkness.

This isn't my job... he thought with a mental groan.

"Jake? Hey, you in there bro?"

Of course, there was no answer. He had hoped for, but by all means hadn't expected one. As his eyes adjusted to the room's greater darkness, he could see the tossed up sheets and shere lack of Jake in his brother's bed.

Then he noticed the razor on the bedstand. He stiffened, hands clenching into fists at his side.

His brother wasn't an emo, not a cutter, not suicidal.

He was

(Jake stole the cookie from the cookie jar!)

a coke addict.

Ryan swore under his breath and half power-walked, half jogged to the garage door, flinging it open with such tremendous force that the doorknob made a perminant dent in the wall behind it. The brother's shared truck was gone, garage door left wide open.

"Shit..." He kicked the door shut, resting his back against the cooled surface, sliding down it until his bum plopped hard against the foor.

(But Jake said he'd never do that again...!)

Ryan bumped his forehead against his knees, biting his lower lip to keep back his frustrated tears. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. Parents were supposed to take care of their deliquent kids, not the brother. It's not fair that Ryan had to drop out of his senior year of high school just to get a job to support his deliquent brother because his parents were dead (or at least dead to him) and Jake just "couldn't keep a job down".

And then Jake started doing weed, as if their budget wasn't tight enough already.

"Jus' gimme twently bucks a week, bro! I'll wean offa' it, I promise!" He had assured Ryan with a lopsided grin.

But he hadn't. He had taken up a new found addiction to snorting coke instead! It's not like he had expected Jake to actually stop deep down, but he had hoped...

A harsh knock at the door behind him caused Ryan to jump, dragging himself out of his self-pittious thoughts and back to the real world as he stood back up onto wobbly feet to answer.

"Hello...?" He asked, opening the door and hoping to God Alimighty that it was Jake, smiling his stupid lopsided grin as if to say "I can't believe you were worried 'bout me, bro!"

"Are you Ryan Hedrich?"

But it wasn't Jake. It was a police officer that reminded him of the friendly-but-stern black guy on the TV. A shiny badge on his chest screamed in big letters Officer Johnson.

(do you know)

"Yes..." Ryan's gut sank even further.

(where your brother is?)

The officer's eyes gleamed in a pittying way as he nodded and started back off down the walk. "Come with me son..." He muttered gently, "There isn't much time."

~~~

Ryan didn't shake out of his fog of delusion until Officer Friendly-but-Stern Johnson slowed the police cruiser to a stop next to a familiar green and white 1993 Ford truck, flipped upside-down on it's roof in a ditch. Paramedics swarmed around the driver's side door, each eager enough to help, though each seemed to have a look of dismay on their faces.

He was out of the cruiser and racing down the ditch slope faster than Officer Friendly But Stern Johnson could say "wait up", pushing medical personalel and other police officers numbly out of his path. He heard faint, distant (far too distant) mumbles of "Is that the brother?" and "He better hurry up...", but ignored them all together as he skidded to a halt by the truck.

"We've... kept him alive for as long as we could..." A paramedic said gravely, head bent down to examine the glass littered grass and nodding towards the broken diver's window, "He wanted to talk to you." After a small pause, he added a mumbled "I'm so sorry" and scurried off into the crowd that had gathered around him, made up of paramedics and firefighters and friendly-but-stern officers, all sillhouetted against the blinding headlights and flashing but silent sirens that lit up the darkness.

"Y-Ya' there, bro...?" A hoarse, soft nothing of a voice rasped through the cracked window.

Ryan swallowed hard to try to moisten his throat as he squated down among the shattered glass and bloody dirt. "Y-Yeah. I am." His windpipe seemed to close up all together upon sight of his brother, dangling upsidedown in his seat. Blood dripped down in steady ploops from somewhere within his dark, greasy hair. His face, which would have been hansome if not for the distictive drug-addict under eye bags and converged face, was lined and puffed with bruises and cuts.

Jake gave a half-laugh, flashing his signature lopsided grin. "My legs're stuck, said the meds. Car smushed over 'em. Air bag didn' go off, either. We have--" he broke into a fit of coughing, crimson bursting between his lips, "--have one shitty c-car, bro."

Ryan tried and mostly failed in a smile. "I-I know." Again, he swallowed thickly. "How do you feel?"

The lopsided grin grew wider. "High as a bird, bro!"

(Jake stole the cookie from the cookie jar)

A forced facade of a smile finally found it's way to the corners of Ryan's mouth. "I can tell."

More coughing. Blood specks began to drip their way down what little was left of the windshield. "I'll get offa coke soon, bro. Dunchya worry..."

His brother trailed off, dialated pupils going milky and pallid and mouth slacking open. His lips were still tugged up in a frozen lopsided grin.

"J-Jake?"

There was no repsonce. He had hope for, but by all means hadn't expected one at all. It seemed like, in the past year or so (Hell, in the past half hour or so) he'd become pretty good at that.

He heard a medic's footsteps from behind, though they stopped abruptly when Officer Friendly But Stern Johnson muttered "Give him some time, son". Somewhere else, universes away, another paramedic muttered into some sort of recorder, "Jakob Hendrick, time of death... 12:32 A.M."

(IT'S 12:32 AM! DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BROTHER IS?! IT'S 12:32 AM! DO YOU KNOW WHERE--?!)

"Y-Yeah..." He cut off the screaming, Portugese crowd in the back of his mind, wiping a tear from his wet eyes with his left palm. "Yeah, I do."

He dropped from a squat to his knees, ignoring the burning cuts of glass through his jeans and into his skin, put his head in his hands, and began to weep.

-End-

~~~

I've got to say, this was mostly inspired while reading "The Drawing Of Three" (The second book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King), where one of the main characters, Eddie Dean, has a major drug addict brother, Henry. Sure, Eddie's addicted to the stuff, too, but reading about it got me thinking about how much it must suck for someone so close to you to be withering away to nothing because of the dumbness of drugs (in Eddie's case, heroine).

Don't do 'em, people. For your father's sake, don't.