If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would’ve happened!

It all started roughly a week ago... An ordinary day, one might say... But for me and my brother, it was FAR from ordinary... At around 11pm at night last Friday, I recieved a text message from my bro. It read:

“Hey, Greg, I want to to show u something. If ur still awake, come over!”

I was curious, so I decided to head over to his house (we live in the same neighbourhood, as we wanted to stay close after our parents passed away).

When I opened my front door, I was engulfed by the expanding darkness. I couldn’t see any of the other houses in the neighbourhood, despite the fact that most people in the area were young, single lads like us. It was at the moment that I started to get a little bit apprehensive about going over to his house.

“Maybe I should just leave it to the morning?” I thought to myself as I nervously walked over to his house, feeling my way through the darkness.

I considered leaving it, but decided against it at the last second before I found the door to my bro’s house.

“What are you getting so freaked out about, Gregory, there’s nothing to be scared of!” I tried to settle my thoughts as I hesitantly knocked on his front door. After a moment of uncomfortable anxiety, I was finally greeted with the warm, friendly face of my big brother, Eugene. He welcomed me into his dark house with open arms. He walked me upstairs to his bedroom. Did he find something ‘interesting’ on his computer again?

I was nearly blinded by the harsh, bright light in his bedroom... His computer was nowhere to be seen...

“Hey, check this out, Greg! I found this sweet datin’ app on my phone. It’s called ‘MatchBox’ and what’s special about it is that it gives you one FREE date with someone who you match with!” He excited hurried to show me, turning his phone on and opening the ‘MatchBox’ app (which had an icon with two purple hearts on it... How original...).

From that moment, I could already see that he had matched with a young brunette called ‘Charlotte Green’. She was average-looking... Even quite bland, to honest...

“Um... Eugene, she looks a little-“ “Hey, I don’t judge your taste in romantic partners, Gregory! I personally find her cute!” He cut me off before I could finish what I was about to say. (Eugene knows about my big secret...)

He showed me the texts from Charlotte that he got, including the date arrangement text from MatchBox.

The date was arranged for Wednesday night.

Well... I wish I could say that things went well... But they didn’t... It turned out that ‘Charlotte’ was a man... Furthermore, a very creepy man... He used MatchBox to lure my brother out to a far-away place... And I never saw him again...

If my brother had not been stubborn, none of this would have happened. If he had just handed over that chicken we would be out tending to our failing crops and braving the cold in clothes as thin as my hairline. Instead, here we are, locked up with no windows to let in a breeze and one square meal of gruel to keep us nourished.

Maybe prison isn’t so bad.

If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened. I told him to give back the cap but he was adamant that it had always been him. I had never seen him wear a cap before, he had never shown any inclination of supporting the Metz in his life. I didn’t even know if they were Baseball or Basketball.

Never have I ever seen a split so severe in my family. It was shaking the very foundations of what we believed was real and unreal. And to cap it all off, I hadn’t seen my little brother Ryan in six years.

If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened.

I love him very much. He is always looking for his “perfect woman”. She is always just around the corner which is possible in a place like London. Calling him picky would be an insult to picky people. He should just have a painting done from his imagination because no woman who looks like his dream woman would even give him the time of day.

My brother is cute. Not actor or model cute. Everyday guy cute or maybe I am biased. He is never going to reel one in by his love of Xbox.

I owe my own art gallery. By brother tries to use it as his personal pick up spot. Problem is he has no interest or feeling for art so he cannot speak in a way that would interest one of my female patrons but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

Tonight it finally happened. He shared his “right to the perfect woman” which landed him with a drink thrown in his face. He is now banned from my gallery until he is married.

We were stood in front of our mother wearing our Sunday best, not that you would have known, mind, since droplets of mud were slowly drip-dripping on the marble in the foyer. With each splatter came a small twitch in our mother’s left eyelid just below her brow, appearing only at my brother’s tomfoolery and my being dragged into it. She was staring at us angrily and yet utterly speechless with her hands on her hips and her lips the thinnest that I had seen in a long time. “Up. Up the stairs the pair of you and stay there.”, she finally announced before turning on her heel and hastily making her way down the corridor towards our father’s office. George looked at me with eyebrows raised and a small smirk playing on his mouth, “Well at least we didn’t get a hiding?”, he said and we both left towards the stairs. “Not yet, anyway.”, I said gloomily as I took off my once-white hat that adorned a beautiful once-white ribbon; unrecognisable now covered in mulch and mud and sticky green stuff that I had no idea came from where. “It’s only mud, it can be cleaned off. She’d be very theatrical if she thought it warranted a beating off father.”, George said. “It’s not the mud, George, it’s the principle that we’re filthy, we have cousin Mary’s wedding midday and this is all your fault.”, I replied. I hated being in trouble.

We had been in the garden, fully dressed and waiting for our parents when a very big and very blue kite billowed through our yard. George being George followed it almost instantly like a herding sheepdog, with me following in haste knowing that if he left the grounds, that it would be I who would be in trouble as “George is a wanderer and you know this.”. So I jumped over fallen trees and ran through bushes calling angrily to George whose eyes were on the kite above us. He was not paying attention to me whatsoever. Despite his attention on the kite, he did not miss a beat in his footwork. That was until we had reached the edge of a deep ditch that had a large puddle of murky water swilling at the bottom of it. He ran on thin air before falling, me following as I’d had no time to stop. We both landed in squelching mud, temporarily blinded by the dirty water before George got up quickly and darted after the kite again. “George! Stop!”, I called, but he was quick out of my sight like a fox hunting a chicken.

By the time I’d caught up to him, he had managed to catch the kite and was looking at it with love. “Isn’t it beautiful!”, George cooed when he saw me. Out of breath, muddy and extremely annoyed, I ignored George and headed back home. He could explain it to mother himself. Perhaps he should be called Collie?

If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened.

We’re opposites, me and him. I’m easygoing and not altogether much concerned about particulars. His steadfast sense of fairness is matched only by his asinine obstinance.

I should have known he’d make a scene about the room.

Weddings are enough to make the most even-keeled people froth at the mouth. Alex is not even-keeled even when there are no weddings in sight. But fact that this happened to be his own wedding made him more unreasonable than was strictly necessary.

Of course he booked the honeymoon suite for himself, but insisted on booking my room as well. Barbados is a nice place for nuptials by anyone’s standards, and I found his gripe about my placement in an oceanfront versus a mountain-view suite frankly ridiculous.

To make a long story short, a quarter hour of tense negotiation escalated to a full-on tirade directed at the wan, panicky, clearly inexperienced receptionist behind the counter, and my brother got his (read: my) mountain suite. Alex could not understand how such an expensive hotel had managed to mishandle the simple request of honouring his original room selection.

The wedding itself was lovely. There were no hiccups there. Nothing noteworthy anyway. Nothing besides me, by my own volition, becoming extraordinarily drunk.

I stumbled back to my hard-won room around 2:30am. Early for a tropical wedding, and early for me in general, but I was in no condition to stay.

The windows to the mountains were thrown wide open, gossamer curtains fluttering and snapping in the warm, heavy air. The smell of rich, wet soil and water-fat foliage filled the room, and the night was bright with the trill and hum of insects playing their artless music.

I began to undress myself, shrugging out of the stifling constraint of my coat and throwing it over the back of a chair. The crisp shoulder pads and lapels creased in a way that would have made my brother spit blood. I whipped off my tie and threw it on top.

After popping off the first two shirt buttons in my clumsy, intoxicated frustration I gave up on undressing. I flung myself onto the bed, landing on my back with my feet dangling off the edge. Not bothering to undo my belt, I put a toe behind the heel of one shoe and swiftly kicked it off. Taking sock-encased toes of my right foot, I hooked them above the protrusion of the sole of my left shoe and sent it flying into the wall.

I expected the hollow thump of rubber bouncing off dry wall. Instead I was met with the —slightly sad— modulated beeps of an electronic keypad. I looked up.

In my careless haste, my shoe had bounced into the open closet door and hit the safe, smashing the keypad as it went...

“If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened,” he says as tears well in his eyes. He takes a breath to steady himself and continues: “And I’ve never been more grateful for his bullheadedness in my life!” He, and everyone else in the church, laughs.

Dean will never forget that epic night when his brother, Danny, had forced him to go to Chrissy Carlisle’s party. He’d just wanted to stay home and finally finish reading East of Eden, but his twin had failed to get his driver’s licence twice already and needed a driver. Then he’d thought he’d just sit in the car and read until Danny passed out and had to be taken home. But he’d needed the bathroom and wandered inside. Danny immediately thrusted a drink into his demanded that he stay a while and actually have a little fun.

Dean had to relent. He’d stayed on the edges of the crowd, swaying to the music. Is There a Ghost began to play and that’s when he saw Kendrick. Wearing a Band of Horses shirt. The way he moved was mesmerising: his dark skin the perfect canvas for the multicoloured lights above, his muscles stretching and contracting in a liquid way. Dean thought he was drugged or dreaming when this gorgeous stranger grabbed him and started dancing.

They were inseparable for the rest of the night- and into the morning. Even though they’d only known each other for a couple hours it felt like they’d been together for centuries. They talked. About books, about music, about the future. Their future.

Down the aisle there are snapdragons and anemones; their favourite flowers. The room is filled with love. Dean’s parents refused to come (or even acknowledge his relationship with Kendrick to begin with) but Danny is right there beside him as his best man.

Kendrick says “I do” and then so does Dean, as if there was a chance in Hell, Heaven, or any universe that the answer would be different.

“Come on, let’s party!” shouts Danny, and once the cheering and confetti-throwing are done that’s exactly what they do. Kendrick and Dean share their first dance as husband and husband to Is There a Ghost.

They don’t need me to tell you that they’ll live happily ever after, just that Dean managed to finish that damn book.

It happened last Friday night at Franks. We were having a couple beers. I told him, “Don’t be an idiot, use a condom.” He took a deep breath. It reeked of alcohol. He reached for something in his back pocket, “Here is $20. Don’t wait up.” Next thing I remember after that is waking up to a familiar voice, “You know how long you’ve gone last night?” Before I could answer, “Oh wait don’t tell me. You don’t remember now get up and get dressed.” My mother was there standing before realizing the knock on the door. Then said, “Hurry up. It might be important.” Next thing I knew I got up. I almost got my jeans buttoned when I heard a knock, “Hey Jeff we need to talk to you.” My heart racing a million miles an hour. “Sure just a second.” I opened the door. It was two cops standing there with little note pads in their hands. “Where were you last night?” They were quick. “I was at Frank’s bar drinking with my brother. Why?” They are had that sad look in their eyes. “I have some bad news. “Your brother, Jack was killed early this morning. Where were you at that time?” “I’m not for sure to be honest but I do know last thing I remember is him giving me $20 and said, ”Don’t wait up.”” They gave me a concerned look. “Don’t leave town.” As they left, my stomach flip-flopped inside.

If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened. But here I sat, on the eldest’s throne, where I had always wanted to be - but for not much longer. Here I was, but Marius was dead and it was his own fault. But I was getting the blame for it.

In my youth, I concocted a plan to get rid of my brother for good, so the throne would be mine. I knew I was willing to go to any extremes to do it; I just needed the perfect way for it to happen.

Marius was infamous for not wearing his diadem. One day, I snuck into his bedchamber and found it, slipping my own off and putting his on. To my great surprise, my form in the mirror shimmered, and I looked down in shock as I began to change forms. When I returned my gaze to the mirror, Marius was staring back at me.

No way. He had enchanted his diadem.

I wished to appear as a human, and before I knew it, I was staring back at one, shorter and wider than my elven form, with their silly rounded ears.

Slowly, it began to dawn on me what I could do with this newfound power. I could disguise myself as Marius, and fake my own death. That way, there was no chance of our other brothers getting the throne.

My plan ended up working, and I took the throne. I didn’t even need to kill Marius, because he ran away on his own. And he took the diadem with him, disguising himself as some pixie so he could marry a peasant girl. It was foolish, but I didn’t care because I was deemed most fit to rule Silver Hills.

I had been king for thirty years before the great Cataclysm struck the realm, and I commanded my elven army to seal us behind the Crystal Barrier to keep the magic-binding tidal wave - the Blitz - from wiping us out.

Marius was the only elf outside of Silver Hills that refused to come home. He had fathered a new race, being an elf and Ashya, his wife, being a pixie. Now there were Druids, worthless half-breeds, if you’d ask me. Their magicks had been diluted; no way would their bloodline ever keep up with the elves’ power.

I could honestly care less what my brother wanted to do. If he wanted to stay out there, lose his magic, and possibly die, when the Blitz hit, that was fine with me. But I extended gracious invitation back into our kingdom in front of my subjects. When he refused, I accepted his choice.

But now, sealed behind this wall of ice and crystal, my subjects want to overthrow me for it. With nowhere to go, an overthrown king can’t go into exile. He can only be punished by death.

My stupid brother wasn’t coming back. I suppose the universe rights every wrong in time.

If my brother had not been so stubborn, none of this would have happened. On Sunday, my brother and I went to the market. Kids aren’t really allowed there so we were sneaking around. That’s when the Mayor walked in. My brother was looking at something, staring really, and I told him that we needed to go. That’s when he got stubborn. He wanted whatever it was he was looking at, and I couldn’t get him away from it. The mayor ended up seeing us right as we were leaving, and he caught us. I explained that my mother was very sick and she needed medicine, but he wouldn’t listen. He told us that we were dirty thieves, and we had to face punishment. We didn’t steal anything! I paid for everything I bought. Today we go to the town square to face punishment. It’s not going to be too crazy because we are kids. My brother really messed up this time.