Broken Toys: Part 3.
Michael’s demon is back. Just what lengths will the brothers go to in order to stop him once and for all?
Elliot:
I cannot shake how nervous I am. A normal kid would be worried about the fact that he is scheduled for surgery in the evening (thanks to a struggle with a certain demon, my left tibia needs to be moved back into its proper alignment). Strangely, I am looking forward to the anesthesia. I am exhausted from my fever and yet I cannot stop thinking about Michael. He swore to me that he would keep on fighting his demon while I am in the hospital. I don’t doubt his resolve, but I also worry about his mental stamina. My real brother is stronger than he suspects and has a heart of gold, but he has also been traumatised to the point that he has no self confidence. He confessed before I left that he pretends that he is me in order to be courageous. All that I can do is hope that I have been a good role model. Tonight, Michael is alone for the first time in five years. I cannot shake how nervous I am.
My surgery passes me by like a dream. Before I know it, tomorrow has arrived, there is a cast on my leg, and my Mother is allowed to sign me out of the hospital. During the car ride home all that I can think about is Michael.
“He’s in his room,” Father explained, as he carries me upstairs to my bedroom. One of the advantages of being small for my age is door to door service.
“He’s barely left it since yesterday. I hope that the two of you get to talk today. Michael still blames himself for your accident, and he isn’t speaking to me at all. He has become so mopey that it is like he is carrying around a raincloud everywhere that he goes.”
“Please check in on him again,” I beg. “Tell him that I am home and that I want to see him.”
Michael was carrying around misery, but it wasn’t in the shape of a raincloud. His demon was torturing him, waiting impatiently while his favourite toy was being repaired. Father helps me to get comfortable and then disappears down the hall. The longer he is gone, the more anxious I get. At last, I hear a knocking upon my door frame. He looks wretched, but the relieved smile is all Michael. His wearied eyes are still vibrant and green.
They brighten as he runs into the room. He looks excited, like he is a puppy and I am his long lost master, entering through the front gate.
“You’re home. You’re home!” Michael darts for the chair under my desk and drags it over to my bedside. He eagerly hands me a glass of water.
“It’s for your fever,” he explains sweetly, before reaching for my forehead. I know that I am still burning up, so I am extremely grateful to sip something cool. I drink the water, gladly and smile at him. At first, he smiles back. All of a sudden, he blanches and starts to rock back and forth.
“Michael. Michael, look at me now. Tell me what is happening.”
“I broke you,” he replies darkly. “You had to have surgery because I broke you. It would never have happened if I had kept quiet in my sleep and stopped you from getting involved. It is all my fault for being so weak. I could have stopped every evil deed from happening if only I had stood up to him sooner.”
“That’s not true,” I reassure him, wishing that I had been more firm about this matter yesterday.
“None of this is your fault. You are the victim here, Michael.”
He looks up and gives me a shaky smile.
“I want to believe you. It’s hard when the demon won’t shut up. He’s figured out that I am drawing strength from your voice, so he is trying to replace it with his own. Those are the types of things he is whispering to me, over and over again. I didn’t sleep at all last night, not that it made much difference. The whole evening was a nightmare.”
He holds up his arms. I see that they are bloody and bruised. Michael explains that every so often, the demon would rage and take his anger out on him.
“There were more, but he keeps using his healing magic whenever there was a chance Father would get suspicious. I don’t like pain, and he knows it. I’m tired and sore, and I can feel my control over him slipping. I am barely holding myself together, Elliot.
Michael sheds a couple of exhausted tears. I want to comfort him, but he is standing up.
“I can’t risk being here with you anymore. I am so scared that the demon is going to lash out at any second. He is right. I am pathetic and weak.”
I grab his hand before he can go.
“You’ve been amazing, Michael. You are not on your own anymore. Sleep now. It is my turn to face the demon.”
On the word, sleep, Michael is out like a light. My hands start to tremble, for it was happening again. A voice had come from me that was and yet wasn’t my own. This time it had spoken aloud. I am terrified as I hear the following words come out of my mouth:
“Come out, come out. It’s time for you to stop hiding, coward. Face me if you dare.”
Slowly Michael lifts his head and stares back at me with bloody red eyes. His smile is all demon.
He inspects my cast and laughs.
“Poor, helpless Elliot,” he crows in mock sympathy. “It’s so tragic that you are stuck in bed. You won’t be able to come outside and play.”
He holds out a hand and locks my door with his magic. His voice drops into a register that I had never heard before.
“I’ll have to bring the fun to you. What would you like to play, little brother? Think carefully, now. Whatever you choose, you won’t be able to run away.”
Without hesitation, I reply.
“We’re going to fight. You are going to show me your true face, and we are going to fight.”
Had I just challenged the demon? Here I was, small, broken, feverish Elliot and I had just threatened the monster that was responsible for my hospitalisation.
‘No! I take it back. I don’t want to fight’, I fret, but the words don’t come out.
“Very well, then,” the demon agrees. His eyes ignite into a hellish firey glow, and Michael starts to transform.
My bravery fails me completely. Weak and defenceless, I cannot hold back my screams.
“Look at me, Elliot. You mustn’t look away.”
I cannot look away, no matter how badly I want to curl up in a ball and hide. Michael’s fingernails are sharpening into claws, and his skin is turning crimson. Wings the colour of tar are sprouting out of his back and two, twisted horns are growing out of his raven hair.
“Go away,” I whimper, completely overcome with terror. Not even my long history of torture could prepare me for facing a demon in the flesh. Just his hellish presence was enough to reduce me to a terrified toddler.
“Go away, go away, go away!”
“Enough!”
I assumed that the demon was yelling at me. I am amazed when his appearance slips. I recognise Michael. I am so proud to see the fury with his meadow green eyes.
“Elliot is off limits,” he yells. “ If you hurt him one more time, there will be consequences. If you make him scream one more time, I swear that I will…”
Michael hesitates as he considers what he can do. Then he grabs the empty glass of water on my bedside table and smashes it.
“Michael!”
With his innocent, bleeding hands trembling, Michael held the sharpest sliver of glass up to his throat, threatening to cut.
“You swear that you’ll do what exactly?” the demon laughs. “Are you going to kill yourself, little Michael? I would love to see you try. Go on, then. Do it.”
Michael’s hands have reverted to ghostly white. He means so well, but he is too petrified to follow through on his threat. The demon starts to taunt him.
“You don’t have the courage, Michael. You’ve never had any courage of your own. You’re weak and pathetic. Ever since the day we became one, you have been too cowardly to put up a real fight.”
“I’m not cowardly,” Michael argues, though his quivering voice suggested otherwise. He then gave me an intense gaze that gives me the shivers.
“Elliot is courageous enough for the both of us,” he declares. It’s because of Elliot’s bravery that I have managed to keep you at bay for the first time in my whole life. I know that he is going to defeat you. As soon as he wakes up to his potential, he will turn you into dust. I believe in my brother, and that is all of the courage that I need. Prepare yourself, demon. All that Elliot needs now is a little push.”
Michael starts to press down upon the shard. He only manages to make the tiniest of cuts into his neck when the demon steals back control and flings the shard across the room. My brother only hesitates for a moment and then starts holding his breath. I can see the angry smoke pour out of the demon’s ears as he struggles to wrestle back control over Michael’s breathing.
This is your chance, Elliot. Kill him while he is distracted. Kill Michael to save him.
My voice of clarity was back, calmly guiding me inside of my head. I feel my muscles relaxing, even as my brain is protesting.
No! I must have misheard. I promised Michael that I would find another way to defeat the demon. I won’t kill my brother. I won’t!
Do it, Elliot.
With steady hands, I reach towards the table of broken glass. I feel around but only brush against useless crystals. Suddenly, the fingers of my other hand curl around a piece of glass that is sharp like a knife. Michael has used his telekinetic powers to float the discarded shard from the floor into my hand. I look at him, pleading with my eyes for him to get rid of it. For a boy who doesn’t claim to have any courage, Michael is doing an incredible job of remaining calm.
“Do it, Elliot,” he calls, risking his distraction with the demon to encourage me. “I am not afraid. Do it now.”
Michael is afraid. He looks as terrified as I feel. Even so, he places a hand with claws on top of mine. Even so, we drive the shard forward together.
I smile as the glass pierces Michael’s heart. I should have been screaming. Instead, as the life drains out of his eyes, I hug him close and remain calm. As the demon flaps his wings and started to ascend above Michael’s limp body, I silently watch him go. I feel nothing except serenity. I am serenity. At last, I understand what Michael had always suspected, and what the demon had secretly feared. I have awakened. While I am still Elliot, and still an eleven year old human boy, I was part Celestial too, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt that all will be well.
My fingers tingle with light. I draw upon the magic within my left hand to mend my broken leg and split my cast open. With my right, I use summoning magic to will a celestial sword down from the heavens. My heart rate accelerates with anticipation as my fingers clasp around its hilt. I lock onto the invisible coward as my eyes focus and turn from chestnut brown to glittering gold. All that I was waiting on now were my angelic wings to finishing growing. At last, it was time to fight Michael’s demon.
The monster should have laid low. He may have started out as a baby demon, sent to develop inside of a human by its mother, but he still should have known better. The mother would have wanted him to grow up big and strong by feeding off the fear of Michael and his helpless little brother. By choosing to torture me with his magic so relentlessly, his magic never had a chance to replenish and become more powerful. By the time that he suspected what I was and that I was more than his match in power, he started to become angry and afraid. Torturing me became his only option and outlet, especially after the two of us starved him half to death by withholding our fear. He knew deep down that I was going to face him in battle one day.
I launch myself into to the air and catch up to the demon in a heartbeat. His eyes flash red as he tries to throw me against the ceiling. His power barely causes me to flinch.
“You shouldn’t have been so careless,” I remark. The demon had used his magic every day of his life, primarily to make my life a misery, but also to protect and amuse himself. If he had used even a tiny bit of restraint, perhaps he could have turned into something magnificent.
“Freeze.”
I possessed glinting magic too. Hypnotised by my golden gaze, he is powerless to move a muscle.
While Michael’s magic started out two years stronger than mine, I had allowed my powers to grow quietly. Selfishly, I could have used it to keep away sickness and pain, or to fly away from home all of those years ago. I could have used it to stand up for myself. Instead, in eleven years, I had only tapped into my magic a handful of times. I couldn’t risk wasting any of it, even when the demon was hurtling me towards death and breaking my bones. I had whispered to my human conscienceness when I was in dire need of guidance, and to set this plan into motion. By getting the demon to show his true face and torment me, I had anticipated that Michael would show his courage to stop him and help me to force the demon out of his body, even if it meant sacrificing himself. Whenever Michael had been inconsolable within his dreams, my calming magic had helped him to find peace. I hadn’t tapped into that power for years now. Michael really was stronger than he suspected. Lastly, I had commanded him to sleep, just a few minutes earlier. I was about to do it again.
“Sleep.”
The demon’s eyes close.
“Fall.”
He falls like a stone towards my bedroom floor.
“Awaken.”
His eyes open, just as I thrust the celestial sword through his chest.
“Die.”
He explodes, leaving behind a cloud of dust.
I swoop down onto my bed and cradle Michael within my arms. Closing my eyes, I am praying that my instincts were correct. Deep down, I know that I am capable of resurrecting him, but I am starting to doubt myself.
“You never doubted me,” I tell him, trying to pretend that I am Michael so that I can draw upon his faith. He had predicted that I would reduce the demon to dust. For him to understand the power of the celestial sword meant that he must pieced together what I was and what I was capable of from the demon’s noise. He had called the demon a coward for keeping me alive, knowing very well that my angelic soul would have still ascended and pursued the monster, even if my human body were to die. He had even faced death, going as far as trying to slit his own throat, because he trusted that I could bring him back to life again. What if I wasn’t up to the task? I was scaring myself now. My confidence starts slipping away.
“You can do this, Elliot,” I tell myself, though it doesn’t really help. Having faith in an angel was easy. It was far more difficult being an angel and trying to live up to your brother’s unwavering faith.
Everything that I know about courage I learned from watching you. I believe in you, Elliot. This time, let me help you to be brave.
The voice is too real to exist within my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of green. As I attune my eyes in order to see my brother’s ghost, I can see that he is smiling back at me confidently. Michael still believes in me, even now. He places a hand on top of mine. With his support, I will his heart to repair itself and start beating again.
At long last, Michael gasps for breath and opened his eyes. The invisible weight, the one he had carried around his entire life, has vanished. Michael runs his fingers through my iridescent wings and then grins.
“I always knew that you would save me,” he declares.
“I certainly didn’t,” I exclaim, giving him a playful shove. Though I understood that he hadn’t been in a position to explain, I am about to tease him about being so annoyingly secretive. The conversation doesn’t happen. Wearied from transformation, battle, healing and fever, I collapse upon my pillow and fall asleep.
Michael
My brother, Elliot, is part angel. You wouldn’t know it to look at him. Elliot is small for his age and has dark circles underneath his eyes. I know without a doubt that I am the reason why they are there. He doesn’t look like much, but he has the heart of a lion. Before, when I was floating above my body, he was the most beautiful, fearsome being that I have ever seen. He was born to save me, and he is the best little-big brother and guardian angel that anybody could ask for.
I am making him sound indestructible again, aren’t I? You tend to do that after somebody saves your life more than once. He isn’t. Elliot’s wings have disappeared now, and he has reverted back into his human form. As I listen to my brother falls further into his feverish sleep I became aware of him whimpering. Was this the first time? Was this the countless time that he had suffered nightmares? Had he always faced his demons on his own? It that was the case then it wasn’t fair. Along with his dark circles, I am responsible for the lifetime of nightmares he has to fight.
I touch Elliot’s forehead again. The selfless idiot had healed his leg out of necessity, but forgotten to spare any extra magic to clear up his fever. I search the bathroom for a washer, and I soak it in cold water. As I return to mop his brow, it dawns upon me that there was more to Elliot that I had ever expected. He faced everything with such fearlessness that it was easy to forget that he was eleven years old. If the world had been fair, he should have been a carefree boy in his last year of primary school. Instead, he has been burdened with the demon. I know that Elliot would argue that I was a victim, another helpless puppet in that monster’s twisted, demonic play, but I cannot accept that I am innocent. The demon’s doubting words are still with me, still a part of me. What if I had been stronger? If only I had found my bravery sooner, perhaps I could have spared my brother years of suffering? Perhaps I am just a victim with a long road of recovery ahead of me.I suspect that it will take a lifetime of Elliot’s forgiveness before I can let go of my guilt.
He whimpers again. How else could I respond except to pretend that I was Elliot? While I know that I need to break myself out of the habit of pretending I am still figuring out what it is to be brave as just Michael. I wasn’t accustomed to being the protective, older brother. I hope that it is something that I will get better at in time. Elliot deserves somebody wonderful; somebody who will love and protect him for the rest of his life. Maybe that person is me. I am certainly willing to give it a try.
What would Elliot say right now?
I hadn’t helped him battle a nightmare before, not even once. Suddenly, I work out what to say.
“You’re safe. Everything is going to be okay,” I promised, just like Elliot had with me, all of those years ago. I take his hand, and Elliot squeezes back, hard. Then, I notice that he is trembling. I sit him up and hold him close.
“It’s over,” I promised. Goodness knows they were the words that I most wanted to hear.
“The demon is dust. Your will is your own, and nobody is going to hurt you again. It’s my turn to look after you now, little brother. I’m not going anywhere.”
The transformation from demon to older brother is complete. Steady as a rock, I hold my little, half human, half Celestial brother, Elliot, as he cries tears of relief. I’m not going anywhere.
The End.
