golden hour hill roll
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word count: 1395
The police paid them a visit the next day. Tyler took Sam to the basement and showed him all his whimsical little musical instruments; he had a very old guitar and a shaky keyboard standing on three thin legs; had a set of drums with differently colored drumsticks. Sam despised all of that; the instruments were the opposite of what the boy craved, which was peace and quiet. Instruments produced music. Music was noise.
Kai spoke to the policemen who weren’t much concerned with their parents’ month-long absence. Kai held on to the door and listened to the two officers, both of them with protruding teeth, like they were brothers. They said the little boy’s body has been discovered in the sewage tunnel under the road, three houses away from where he lived. It took them two weeks to locate the body, and in the water, and in the company of rats, little Teddy became barely recognizable.
“Uh-huh”, Kai nodded, “awful. Who would’ve done anything like that to a child?”
“We’re only disclosing the circumstances of his discovery for you guys to be cautious. It’s the third body in the last two months in your neighborhood. You’ve seen anything concerning?”
“Officer, my two brothers are very special, I see concerning every day. They are… both… challenged”, Kai said and immediately started chewing his lip. He caught the smile at the very last second and instead pretended to be fully distressed.
“Be careful. If you see anything, call us immediately”.
“You think there’s a serial killer?”
Kai could see a neighbor, the bitch from the fourth house to the left, pacing the street behind their backs in the distance. She kept an eye on them all the time. Pretended to be looking out for the boys while the parents were away. Constantly judging them, the religious fucking fanatic. Her daughter though. Ruby Summers was, as they say, a real piece of ass. Aaand she liked Tyler.
He failed to hear the response to his own question and now stared at the cops with the same worried expression on his face.
“Is there any way we could chat with your brothers, mister Parker?”
“Samson is very ill…” he said slowly, “and Tyler is at work, so…”
They nodded with understanding. Sheer angels, these guys.
As they were leaving, Kai caught Mrs Summers’ eye. She turned away and started walking again as if she hadn���t been sniffing for the details. Will they grab him? Maybe she hoped they’d shoot him where he stood. Evil or not, Kai had to admit Summers suspected something. She couldn’t really put her finger to what. But, like an animal, she sensed something was off. Maybe she would be the first to finally figure out that he is trying to spell his name with bodies under the ground. But it would be too early. The five bodies he put in the sewer only made the bar in the first letter, K.
He shut the door with an energetic swing. Sam raced up the stairs back into the living.
“It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing Tyler took me down, because when I heard your guys’ voices, I started talking about Teddy out loud”, he nodded several times. “I heard the question, where have you been on the fourth, and started answering, because I knew you would lie to them. It’s a good thing Tyler took me away”.
Kai ruffled the youngest’s hair knowing full well Sam hated it.
“Keep low today, I also lied that you’re terribly ill”.
“Why?”
“So that they don’t want to question you”.
Sam went pale as if he immediately took to making himself ill.
Kai went down to Tyler’s room, also known as basement, and found the brother sitting on his little thrashed sofa prepped against the wall. His neck was all black. Tyler slowly tilted his head left and right. Kai could tell he was in pain even from just looking at him.
“Worse?”
Tyler was silent. They made peace yesterday with sandwiches and boardgames. Kai won by cheating which sent Sam into a crazy fit that lasted for thirty minutes. Tyler had such a strong headache he threw up in the living room. By all means the night went great.
He fell on the sofa next to Tyler confidently.
“Are they gone?” the middle one asked in hollow voice. When he was like that, he looked just a little dangerous which Kai liked.
“Yeah. Start getting concerned”.
“So maybe that means you should stop”.
“You know what else we should stop doing?”
Tyler had put up old towels, thrifted rugs and carpets on the walls of his so-called music studio. But nothing helped quieten his screams when he started recording. The shrieking was so blood-chilling that sometimes it seemed like he was being eaten alive.
Tyler was only able to turn his head a little. Kai could see the dry tear lines on his brother’s cheeks and didn’t like that. As opposed to earlier.
“What?”
“Stop lying to Sam about parents. Sooner or later his anxiety will take over and he’ll run to the neighbors or start shouting from the rooftops. Or just figure out himself”.
Tyler stood up and started walking towards the only holy place in the basement: industrial size refrigerator, always full of ice-cold soda. He would take out a can and press it hard against his aching head, and it would help a little. He wasn’t responding yet.
Pink, orange, neon blue, acid green, he had it all. Sprite, Pepsi, Fanta, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Zima, A&W, it was Kai who stocked and restocked the wonder fridge of salvation.
“Which one do you want?” he asked.
“Dr Pepper”.
He took two cans: red and blue, and brought them back to the sofa.
Kai’s sly eyes were watching him. It was enough just to see that Tyler has registered what he said. That he started fidgeting around.
They drank sweet, gum collapsing soda in silence for some time. The fridge hummed its monotonous melody, Tyler’s black fingers were tightly wrapped around the cold thin metal of the can. The migraine subdued a little, and he could see colors again. He watched his black-and-white brother, so black-and-white that he was almost bloody. Kai’s face was so pale, you could take a tiny pin and prick him a little, and this skin would burst like a tightly strained balloon; and he would explode in blood. And the blood would be sugary sweet.
Wednesdays were the hill days. Samson needed to get out of the house at the golden hour once in a while. It was a little ritual of theirs; perhaps the only wholesome one. Three streets away, fifteen minutes far from home, the road suddenly dropped down off the majestic hill. The road was always empty on Wednesday evenings when they came rolling down, they didn’t know why; maybe it was luck. Empty cars parked neatly on the sides of the road, clenching on the asphalt at the steep angle with their tires. No people peeking out, it was like the street would become desolated for an hour that they spent there until the twilight came. They usually stood on the top of the hill; Tyler and Kai with their boards, and Sam, with his bicycle, and looked at the orange world getting ready for the night. The road went on and on, and beyond, an ugly world continued again. But here, on the tilted surface of the hill, their world was just the clean asphalt.
They would roll down in complete silence. Tyler sometimes undertook attempts at teaching Kai to lose speed in order not to let his board wiggle; but they were never fruitful. Sam always rode clenching the handlebars of his bike like his life depended on it. And still, he was always the impulse behind going there; he loved this golden hour hill roll. Shirts flapped around their waists, and Tyler’s migraine ceased just for an hour. They never fell on that hill, not a single time, and were perfectly happy there. The ride, and the wind, and the silence kept them satisfied. They would roll down in line, Kai always speeding up eventually, and then make their way back up the hill, and go down again, and repeated the process until the sun went down. And then the ugly world would overtake once again.
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