• He sat in a pool of scarlet, gazing downwards at the frail thing in his arms. The blood had slowed to a mere trickle. Her delicate features were no longer in sync with her now mangled frame. The ivory skin had turned a sickly agate gray. The lavender eyes framed by long, full lashes were nearly overwhelmed by black. The boy brushed a few strands of blood plastered flaxen out of her face, speaking to her as if she was still animate.
    “Dummy. It’s all your fault. Now Mommy will be mad at me.” His auburn eyes scanned the dilapidated factory, studying each layer of graffiti like it was a work of art, and then once again rested on the girl he was holding. He ran his fingers along the nicks that went from her wrists straight to her elbows, crisscrossing here and there to form the intricate patterns so familiar to him.
    “Matteo,” he heard a small voice call. For the first time since the unspeakable happened, he looked up at the surveyor’s deck high above them. Leaning over the rail was the same girl, just several years younger.
    “Matteo, come up here with me.”
    “No.” The response came from a very small boy on the opposite end of the room.
    “I wasn’t asking you,” the girl replied, clearly aggravated.
    “Nuh-uh, Del.” He shook his tow colored hair as a sign of his resolve.
    “Come here now or I’ll tell Mom. She said to always listen to me when she’s not around, and you know how much easier it is to upset her after she’s had her morning scotch.” Her threat got through to him, and he ran straight to the ladder that led up to where she stood.
    “That’s my Teo Bear.” In a blink, the children were gone. Matteo once again stared at his sister, and began moving her mouth.
    “Go on, push me. You always have to listen to what I say. What, you don’t have the guts to do it?” he said in a falsetto. He changed his voice back to normal and sighed. “Turns out I did, huh?” After a short time, he felt hot tears slide down his face. Matteo sobbed bitterly, and his quivering caused Dellarise’s body to tremble slightly. He stopped crying, but not shaking. His eyes widened, even brightened a little, as he noticed this change. However, it did not take very long for him to realize that nothing had actually changed: his sister was still, and forever would be, dead.
    The wailing sirens came closer and closer, until they were right outside. Matteo did not resist the police officers, and only flinched slightly when they took Dellarise out of his arms. For the first, the only, and the last time in thirteen years, the Brady siblings were forced to go their separate ways.

    Marissa Brady was bubbling over with excitement as she pulled her red Honda Civic into the driveway. She couldn’t wait to tell her children about why she had been gone all afternoon straight into the evening. Her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting had been a success. In fact, she was so thrilled that she didn’t even notice the police car parked on the grass. All Marissa could think about was how ten years of alcohol abuse and the awful things it made her do would slowly but surely be reversed, and how happy her seventeen year old daughter and thirteen year old son would be that they could finally be a normal, happy family.