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  “Isaac, stop it.” I allow my eyes to glare, though my voice is as soft and thoughtful as it normally portrays itself. “Such language is not becoming of you.”

  “Not becoming? Oh? Not becoming? What would you have me say? Bloody? He’s a bloody twat? Huh? Does that sound better?”

  “Stand down.” My voice is hard, now, and I am examining his wild expression, animated and angered, lined in red eyes and a shaking, shivering body, a mouth forming every single syllable only to spit it out, distastefully, directly at me.

  “No, really. Please, Ives. We’re all just hanging off your every bloody word! He definitely is.”

  Something in me feels defensive, but I merely stare. Watch how this fever shakes his face, how I’d look if I let myself lose control.

  “Tell me. Go on, tell me what sounds better. Arsehole? Prat? Do you want me to say he’s a complete and utter shite? Because he is! Is this what you’ve decided I’m supposed to be? What I have to be? Do you know better than what I see in my head? You can’t even remember the staircase! The fucking stairs! But please, tell me what you know. Big sister knows best, right?”

  I can feel the anger in my throat, in my cheeks, burning red, and I’m containing myself. My emotions are not my mind. My emotions are not my mind. I will not become what he is.

  “You’re picking a fight with the air, Isaac.”

  “Yeah! Yeah, I am. Because he won’t show his fucking face. He’s an arsehole, he is. No – you know who is? I am. For listening to him – for believing the shit he tells us. And you are, too. Just blindly following, like a lamb to the slaughter.”

  “Stop.” My voice is darker than it’s ever been – it surprises myself. Criticism is obviously not taken lightly.

  “Stop? Stop? You want me to stop? Why? Does the truth scare you? Do I scare you? No – no, probably not. Nothing scares a simple-minded fool, eh?”

  “Best not to anger her, Isaac,” is Thomas’ voice, distant not just by area from our fight, but by tone. He sounds like a sigh of an angel – we sound like blazing guns.

  “Why not? Are you gonna protect her? Revolve down from the ceiling on a bloody string and come in your shining armor? Is she that weak, that childish, that naïve to believe you’re waiting for her – almost as naïve as you – that she’d be – ”

  But I will never know what he’s going to say, because I’ve moved, not entirely with my permission. My body is relaxed even in the movement, gentle, careful, until he becomes one with my fist, in which I tighten. My upturned fist lands, hits the bottom of his jaw – he goes stumbling backwards into the barrier, of which he bounces off, before rolling, limply, on the staircase.

  “I protect myself,” I state over the sound of my thumping adrenaline, shaking slightly from – something. The the action I just committed? The fear of what I’d done? The wild, sudden rush of epinephrine? Perhaps all?

  He’s completely dead to the world, yet still, as I read from a quick pulse check, alive in the true manner of the word. He doesn’t awaken for anything.

  Not even for the reaction of the two girls as they woke to find a being standing over them, staring at them steadily, unblinkingly.

  Really, it’s unfortunate he missed it. It was purely priceless.

  ten

  Isaac doesn’t remember the argument.

  At least, he claims not to.

  With a hand to his jaw, readjusting it over and over meticulously, he listens to my accounts in somewhat of a stunted awe.

  “Me? I did that?”

  “Yes,” I repeat, for the umpteenth time. There might be a note of discord lurking within my words. Perhaps because I am so “fed up”, so to speak, with him and his likely lies. He must remember the situation. He must. He instigated it – he was there – how could a person know one moment and not the next?

  I did not hit him hard enough to cause brain damage. I issued an uppercut, and he only passed out because of a nerve that I hit that rests beneath the jaw. His brain didn’t shake from its positioning. He should not be experiencing memory blackouts of this nature.

  Still, though... I’m inclined to believe him. What true reason would he have to lie?

  Perhaps he’s embarrassed about his past actions.

  “All I am searching for is recognition and an apology,” I tell him, hoping to ease him into admittance.

  Sitting up, still rubbing a sore jaw, he stares at me with a mixture of fear and regret in iced blues. “I know. I’m sorry, I just – I don’t remember it, Ives.”

  I suppress a sigh. He is a difficult child, indeed.

  Perhaps I am too, for not taking his words at face value.

  “What did I call you, again?” He near whispers it, every word laced in remorse.

  The past conversation is gray in my mind – a memory, and thus, seems and feels distant, though it could not have taken place too long ago.

  “A lamb to the slaughter. An arsehole, before that. Simple-minded, after that.”

  “Well, geez,” he begins, a smile touching his battered jaw that I don’t understand. “You didn’t need to answer so quickly.”

  “If you didn’t want an answer, why did you deign as to – ”

  “He’s just being silly, Ives.” Thomas’ voice is a welcome distraction from the brother who confuses me so.

  “Yes. Right. Of course.” As I stare at him and his fading smile, his jaw touched with traces of purple and black, I think of how I used to be able to accurately pick out every single one of his jests, while Thomas sulked silently, not understanding.

  Now, it’s as if we’re two totally different people than we were before.

  We live different lives.

  “Apologize to Thomas,” I command.

  And he does so earnestly, and slightly begrudgingly, Thomas accepts.

  I suppose that’s the sort of world we inhabit.

  One where we do not have the luxury of fighting or hating. Fighting or hating could get us killed. We’re a pack, no matter how mismatched and confusing we are – me, the logical one, Thomas, the one who knows, and Isaac, the brother who is so much more and yet, hasn’t figured out for himself what that is yet. We live and breathe and see the world – if this even is a world – together.

  And we have no choice in the manner.

  Just as dimensions through a portal though which we’ve been staring, Isaac’s charge is caught up with her own pack. The shaking person with the thick glasses and accent, who sometimes explodes things in parts of her native tongue as well as the one that she and the charge speaks, but mostly merely cries. The younger one with red hair and black eyes that does not do much beyond frightening the pair – sometimes there, sometimes not. Isaac does not even remember the red haired person at all, and Thomas is forced to, carefully, reexplain what and who lost souls are.

  This time, Isaac is not personally offended by his definition, just nods and takes his words at a face value. Finally, padding along side of his ascending charge and her group, he questions, “So... do you think I should get involved?”

  “No. Lost souls don’t usually hurt other people on the staircase. Some of them see the charges as equals. Others see them as gods. Others believe they are their gods, and it’s their job to protect the others they find and see. They’re all so different, so strange, it’s... hard to tell.”

  “Hm,” I murmur, finally breaking the first conversation solely between Thomas and Isaac that I’d ever witnessed in this lifetime.

  It’s fascinating to condemn them for being gods – which it feels, oft, like Thomas believes he is, like we believe we are.

  It’s even odder to condemn them for being strange – which we certainly all are.

  All of us willingly throwing ourselves into a battle.

  Me, with a ticking time bomb disguised as a brother. Me, with a voice from the sky disguised as the source of knowledge.

  Isaac’s charge, with a woman who only barely communicates with her, who instead only screams and thrashes at the world around her. S
he, with a person who does nothing but frighten them and then disappear, only deepening her fear.

  I say willingly, but I don’t feel it.

  None of this is done or felt willingly.

  This is what it feels like to have a knife behind your back and a grenade pressed against your chest.

  Either move – and you die.

  I suppose, though, in this sort of life, you choose what kind of death you want.

  Leave them, and suffer a slow and painful one, alone.

  Stay with them, and die horrifically, in thousands of pieces, splayed across the world – but quickly.

  And taking them all with you in the process.

  So far, I believe I’ve decided – as well as Isaac’s charge – that the only logical solution, right now, is to stay with them, awaiting an eventual explosion. Only one of the three of us on this side knows what this world has in store for us, and he seems to fancy me.

  Perhaps he’ll give me a peek.

  The longer I travel with Isaac, the more I realize that I’m paying far more attention to the life on this side of the glass. Thomas always has pushed the idea that they are as equal to us as we are to them, but I suppose, even innately, I’ve rejected such a theory. We know much more about this world than they do. How could we be equal?

  But really, do we? We only know what we are told, what we can perceive. Is experience an accurate determination in the equalism of beings? If so, I’ve not been alive much longer than she has. What is to say that my experiences invalidates hers?

  Nothing.

  I know there are things that she probably knows that I do not. And vice versa.

  And so I begin to study her.

  The look in her eyes. The stance of her walk. The personality, that seems dulled beneath her ever so slightly sun-touched skin. She seems to have this knowledge that no one else has... knowledge that’s slipping through her fingers like her hands are numb and the water moves quickly.

  She looks at things and stares at them, for moments, as if she understands something no one else does.

  Every now and again, she will whisper or speak words to her companions that are only returned in blank shock.

  Like she knows the secrets to the universe.

  But she can’t. She doesn’t.

  This is all we know.

  This staircase, this world, this... dimension.

  This is the only place we have ever been – and probably will ever be – exposed to.

  What about that other world, the one I suppose I lived before here? That one where I learned all these phrases and thoughts and facts? What is that world like?

  Does it have stairs, or a single stair that extends in each direction, flat and never moving upwards or downwards? How many people live in it?

  Is that world all they know? Do they have any inkling of this world? Do they live on, without knowing for certain that we exist?

  I am not even completely sure we exist.

  How are we to be a part of something of which we have no knowledge?

  How are we supposed to... progress?

  These questions are too confusing, too endless, too deep to voice. I have a feeling in my bones if I were to ever speak of them, Isaac would stare at me in non-understanding, and Thomas’ voice would die. So I stare at the charge that moves like a movie – what is a movie? – and pretend that she understands.

  Because she seems to understand.

  She seems like a creature that floats seamlessly between the world I must believe exist and this world that I must hope exists. She returns with a light in her eyes and a thought behind her mind that seems to fade all too quickly, despite her scrambling to keep it.

  It is something I’ve not found in either of the others that walk with her, and I wonder if it’s because she is our charge, or if it's because, inherently... she is different.

  “Is there anything different about her?” I voice to Thomas one day, after laborious hours of walking. I assume it to be laborious, as we walked a long time, but I do not feel tired or fatigued.

  As he once said – I would be provided for.

  “Different? No – just younger.”

  Wrapped up in my musings and silence, I had not accurately identified the new face among the group. A young child – a toddler who sways as she walks and always seems to wander just far enough to the edge to cause concern but not topple over – has joined the group. Again, I notice no other Moderator here, on our side, to watch over this child.

  It’s fallen upon the duty of Isaac’s charge to contain her.

  That’s really part of her silent job, so far that I’ve noticed.

  Damage control.

  “Not her.” I blink at the child as I fall in step behind Isaac, watching the people move in the way that they move and attempting to ignore all of the instincts that wish to assault me at once. “The freckled one.”

  “Isaac’s charge?” His voice raises, in pitch, slightly.

  “Yes.” Obviously.

  “Why do you think something’s different with her?”

  “Why do you think something’s different with me?” It’s another question that’s been festering at the back of my mind since the two of us met and I realized his somewhat infatuation with me. Being with me when I had first woken... not leaving my side when Isaac left, though his duty most likely required him to be there... in addition, of course, to Isaac’s comment to such during our argument... Thomas has been hanging off my every word as much as he’s been rebuking every one of Isaac’s.

  “I don’t think there’s something different with you, Ives.” His voice is that same reverence of gentleness that I somehow can and can’t place. “I know. I know you very well. Better than anyone.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. The master of all the knowledge who never shows his hand.”

  I can feel him smiling before I can hear it. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?” I reply, in somewhat of a mock innocence.

  “All bitter.”

  “I’m always bitter.”

  “You’re never bitter.”

  I think he just likes disagreeing with me, or giving me no information. Either way is just as thoroughly frustrating, I decide, and I huff and swallow my question in anger.

  He’s not going to answer it. An instinctive part of me almost knew he wouldn’t when I asked it. It’s all a game to him. A... puzzle. That he has total faith I will figure out.

  I’m frightened of losing, and for some reason, letting him down.

  Perhaps it’s because I know if I truly let him down, I will never truly know anything.

  So the trio walks, and the girl I had rebuked in my beginning days becomes my own sort of muse – the only one I seem to ever let my eyes hang on.

  One day, I stupidly decide to approach Isaac about the subject.

  “Is there anything different about your charge, Isaac?”

  “Different? Of course there’s something different about her.”

  “Well, alright,” I consent. “Everyone is different. But do you think there’s something... I don’t know... extra-ordinary about her?”

  “Extra-ordinary?” He stares back at me, stunned, as if I had asked whether or not we are related. “Of course!”

  The subtle reminder of his infatuation for her strikes me, and I nod, quietly. It feels like if I were to question him further, he would obviously overstep some flimsy boundaries that had been erected not long ago.

  I let go of the subject I’ve been pursuing as I let myself down to one of the steps. I almost don’t realize what I’m doing as I’m doing it, this procedure of lying down for sleep to match the charges is so natural to me. I lie on my back, with my hair twisted and turned all around my body on the staircase.

  I close my eyes.

  I don’t remember ever falling asleep. I don’t remember allowing my mind to drift to the eternal, dreamless night of my mind. I only remember waking up – and the reason for that.

  There’s something warm, an
d slightly damp, pressing into my head.

  There’s a sound, then, at my ear, hissing and breaking, sort like the sound of consonants being formed through lips that are too far away to understand.

  I jolt up.

  It’s light – the same amount of light that is afforded at all times, and I’m gasping, attempting to breathe through a too-tight ribcage. I turn around wildly, and to my left is my twin brother, leaned at my side.

  I feel as if I cannot breathe at the mere sight of him. There is something – some part of my mind – that knows exactly what happened and exactly how.

  But I cannot take only my thoughts’ words for it. I need his admission, dragged out of the depths of his soul.

  “What... the... bloody... hell... are... you... doing?” Spoken between gasps that labor my speech, and even as I stare at him with wide, wild eyes, the disconnect in his face startles me.

  There’s emptiness there. Nothingness. It screams on each crack of his face, each corner of his eyes.

  He’s void.

  He looks at me, and I think that if looks could kill, it would not be one borne of anger, but one borne of nullity.

  “What is wrong, Ivory?” Words that do not waver, do not break. No contractions, as normal to his speech pattern. Naming me as Ivory.

  I’m shivering, wildly, involuntarily. If the monsters on the Ashen Staircase are hissing screeches and desensitizing horror crammed into every turn, on this side, my monster must be my brother.

  ... My monster... must be... my brother...

  “What the fuck – did you do?”

  I’m staring at him, but he’s just staring near me. His eyes are, technically, on my figure, but he’s so, so far away. Another reality in him. Perhaps he’s always in that other reality, only ever slightly overlapping into this one, where we can talk and laugh and lose touch and get confused. I feel like I’ve had the eternity of our whole relationship as siblings within the past few days of knowing him.

  He raises a hand to me, and I cringe away, automatically, making fists behind my back, attempting to will my mind to fight when it is so ready to take flight and then I see words.

  Words, printed black, ink across his fingers, staining his paled skin.