On the Dampened Existence of Lincoln Dr.

The sky only seemed to grow darker as the night waned on. Though the horizon would soon be glowing with the sun’s awe-inspiring presence, and the robins and blue birds would soon be chirping their congenial melodies of morning, the night only appeared to be tumbling helplessly into an infinite abyss of darkness. The cars moving about the dampened city street grew sparse in their number, and those which still remained tossed from side to side, under the dreadful domination of what many referred to as their “weekend release.” A steady mist was beginning to fall from the soft overcast of clouds in the deep navy sky, and soon, one car would swerve from the roadway. One car would be hurled recklessly into a steep and jagged ditch. One man would lose his life, and one girl, her one and only. One friend would lose his best, one mother, her son, and one world an occupant ill appreciative of his life. One group would mourn and swear off the vice that killed their friend. And in but one week’s time, the catastrophe would flash again, quickly in the darkness of the night as one world’s ever-recurring nightmare of ignorance.
A sudden breeze erupted from the eastern side of the street. It caught hold of the final fallen leaf that remained from winter’s stead and tossed it delicately onto Robin’s tapping foot. It was an incessant rhythm that his foot was keeping. Its melody represented frustration, anger, and, above all, an inability to comprehend the lack of his brother’s presence. His feet were bare, and cold from the lawn’s light dusting of precipitation. His right hand was menacingly messaging a crumpled piece of paper whose darkened markings were beginning to bleed through the weakened existence of the nearly ancient parchment. The sound of his own chattering teeth disturbed him, for he wished to refuse the impact off all outside influences; believing that his mind only had the capacity to focus on his current anger and disappointment, two factors which he believed boiled hot enough to keep him warm even on the fresh ice of his grandfather’s winter fishing spot. A soft tear slowly trembled down his youthful face and the sadness of his profile was suddenly illuminated by the headlights of an oncoming car. Robin slowly stood as he recognized the color and general shape of the vehicle. His mind scrambled to find the right words to flood his brother’s consciousness with. He did not wish to be interpreted as some ill-advised child, and neither did he hope to appear as some nagging adult. He wished, instead, for his words to be taken as those from a perfectly wise person, who was sincerely concerned, and bitterly angry. A bright crimson glow dispersed from the back end of the vehicle, burning the soft white siding of the neighboring houses to a temporary shade of red, and the unsteady car slowed to a stop before Robin and his despair.
He slowly approached the vehicle and as the window was shakily lowered, music blasted from within; exploding like a hot geyser of broken melody. The young man whom Robin was addressing attempted to speak above the blaring noise, and, realizing his folly of perception, motioned to the driver to lower the volume. His eyes were glistening. Being void of apt vision, he closed the gray morsels tightly in an attempt to clear his sight. His body was slumped against the glass of the lowered window, in a fashion that best mirrored a paraplegic being pathetically held up by his wheel chair. Laughter consumed the air once the music was lowered; laughter built upon an amount of senselessness unknown even to the most remote creature of civilization. Another hard blink and swift wipe of the eyes, followed by a jaw-dropping realization which, in all actuality, should have possessed little significance.
“Little brother?” The young man said, tilting his head slightly to the right. Robin only gulped in another deep breath of frustration, and attempted again to think of the right words. His mind was being bombarded by all the events of the car in such a harsh fashion that he could not single out an individual wrong to cite. Four teenagers were scrambled within the confines of the car. “Scrambled,” being the proper word of description for the youths' individual spaces were being consistently invaded by one another. The driver’s seat had been tilted back to an angle nearing 180 degrees, and his left foot, bare in the cold, was dangling outside the lowered front window. The passenger in the front had his body completely turned around, with his legs stretched into the back seat. He was attempting to flick used tabs at the other adolescents using the sole power of his toes. They all passed drinks from hand to hand, completely oblivious to the outside world, to the outside concerns, to the outside consequences which lurked discretely in the shadows of the night.
“Awful rude o’ you not to say anything back to your favorite brother in the world.” There was something almost sad in his ignorance. A quiet desperation seemed to hover about his being, like the broken halo of an angel, wronged by the world and therefore resenting the opportunity for a prosperous life within it. Robin did not see this halo; this depressive aura that appeared to be stalking his brother so. He saw, instead, a past blistered with the burns of disappointment, and the persistent flash of an event which confirmed the worthlessness of his concerns.
“What-” he hesitated, taking a breath and shaking his head, “What do you think you’re doing Ross?”
“Oh, now little brother, don’t go getting’ like this now.” He replied, rolling his eyes slightly as he did so.
“Like what Ross?” He gripped the frame of the car tightly and his voice began to shake.
“Like, you know, like this. Like-”
“Like we did when Dad wouldn’t come home? Or like Mom did when Dad wouldn’t come home? Like what Ross? Tell me.”
Ross threw his body onto the back of the front seat. “Look guys, why don’t you just drop me here for a sec and let me talk with him. Guess it looks like someone wants to ruin all the fun. Come back in 5 or so minutes, eh?” His words were smothered into slowed syllables and slurred sounds. The mentioning of his father had sobered him slightly, but he pulled another drink from within the cooler in a desperate attempt to calm that worry.
He fell from the car as the back passenger door was opened. Robin reluctantly helped him with a strong tug of his right hand. Ross slipped from the dampened grip and fell back to the muddy ground in laughter as the car began to pull away. He made it clear that he wished to keep his pathetic bodily position by throwing his head back and stretching out his legs; an unspoken request that Robin obliged to for its sheer convenience.
“Is this who you are Ross?” Robin hovered above his brother, referencing the rain, the cold, and the utter stupidity of the situation. “Some low-life who can’t even stand on his own two feet?”
“I ain’t no low-life!” snapped Ross. The words had apparently upset him for their previous use in someone else’s description of another man. “And don’t, don’t lecture me. Mom.” He softly tossed back another drink from the amber brown bottle. “It’s just a little fun.”
“You know, I’ve heard all this before, and so have you! Did you believe a word He said? Huh? Maybe we did then, but, wow, look at all the fun he ended up havin’”
“Dammit little brother, I’m not Him! Do you hear me?!” He sat up and pointed his finger menacingly at his brother. “He abandoned us, he didn’t care about us, or Mom, and that’s not me!”
“But what about this?” Robin threw the drenched piece of paper that he held in his hand onto his brother’s lap. “Remember that Ross?”
“Oh God,” He smiled slightly and fell back again into the grass. “We were kids Robin, this doesn’t mean anything.” He crumpled the paper and tossed it back before his brother’s feet.
“We took an oath!” Robin yelled, picking the note up and unfolding its creases which had for so long stayed folded, for the words they withheld had, up to this point, gone without saying. “You remember that oath, dontcha’ Ross? Want me to refresh it all for you since you’re too much of a coward to fact it on your own?”
“A coward?”
“We took it the day after the crash,” Tears began to welt up in Robin’s eyes. There were indistinguishable due to the rain’s onslaught, a fact that he was glad for. “We had nothing, we were all but dead because He did abandon us! All we had was each-other, and we promised that that one little fact would always, always hold true!”
“You don’t havta’ remind me Robin, it was my idea.” Ross had sat up again and was now messaging his brow furiously.
“You promised. You signed your name, we even put it in blood. It was all we had. A pact between brothers to never be like Him, to never leave each other alone in the dark, to never die for no reason!”
“This ain’t the same thing,” His voice turned somber. “I’m not abandoning you, Robin. I’m here right now, right here with you.”
“But for how long will that hold true? How long until you’re just another name on the news. Some ill-advised student with so much promise, who washed it all down the drain, and for what? For nothing. They won’t mention your past, how Dad ‘s death was there, nothing, you’ll just be another name.”
The rain still fell steadily upon the two boys. Robin was pacing in frustration over his brother’s blindness. Ross lied upon the ground, motionless, searching through his memory and drowning the hurt with another swig from his vice.
“I mean honestly Ross, how can you even think of doing this?” Robin still existed somewhat surefooted in a distant state of disbelief, and was now facing into the cloud filled sky; searching for answers within the hidden beauty of the shadowed stars. “What about me? More importantly, what about Mom?”
“Oh, so I guess you’re gonna go ahead and tell her all about this?” said Ross, hoping that, perhaps, this insert would draw attention away from the real problem at hand.
“It wouldn’t matter if I did. You obviously don’t care about what she thinks. You don’t care about her at all. All you care about apparently is yourself.” Ross’ demeanor grew solemn with his brother’s accusations. Yet another description he had once heard of another man being placed within his character sketch. “You’re selfish Ross! Just selfish. Yeah, sure, maybe what you’re doing makes the hurt go away, you know, maybe, maybe your worries can be drowned. But, you know what Ross? At the same time you’re drownin’ the life from me; smotherin’ my hope in the world." The rain continued to fall. "Dad died without knowing all the pain he cause us, and sure, that doesn’t make it okay, but dammit, you know that pain. That empty feeling that still somehow manages to burn despite the apparent emptiness of everything inside. And you can’t just consciously throw that feeling back on me, Ross.” His voice was now faint, almost in a pleading manner, “You just can’t.”
The older brother was taken aback by Robin’s words. Back to a time when all the rays of the golden sun could not penetrate the deep dark blanket under which he and his brother were cloaked. To a time when the beauty of the stars failed to exist, when all forms of light held only darkness, when up appeared to be down, and when God failed to be praised. The thought of that time hurt him so that tears began to trickle down his face. He hated that pain; pain felt for a man who had not once thought of him. He resented his tears, his weakness in this moment; his inability to shrug off that memory as he felt his father shrugged off his existence. He gulped another drink from the bottle.
“It means nothing,” said Ross, standing as he spoke. “All the words, all the promises, they mean nothing. And you know why, little brother? Because when it comes down to it, we’re all just weak. Especially when we’re abandoned and left alone.” He picked up the oath he had once made, tore it in half, and tossed it into the saturated street. “They’re all nothing when you face that feeling.”
The two brothers stood face to face under the now drenching downpour; waiting for a move to be made, and, waiting for a greater wisdom to shine down upon them from a God they both now felt unfamiliar with. The same familiar car’s headlights rounded the corner and shined their brightness upon the two. Ross stepped back inside the vehicle, and as the passengers made their way off into the night, he tossed an empty bottle behind. The amber shards intertwined with the torn pages of the oath, reflecting the soft orange glow of the above dusk to dawn light. Robin looked at the scene void of feeling, void of life; abandoned yet again, and the weakness which his brother spoke of began to vibrate through his body.
And as the night waned on, and the dark grew darker, the dampened existence of hope and defeat laid in shreds together upon the rain-soaked roadway, desperately screaming into the night for the madness to be stopped…