Mr. Mellis sat at his breakfast table, a cup of warm coffee in his hands. His eyes stared vacantly out the window, his mind elsewhere. Many times he had drilled himself with the mantra that the past must be forgotten yet through the moments of solitude during the day memories would stream back.

Through the wear of time and Sebastian's efforts to suppress them, they had become something vague and nebulous, like a cloud of darkness before a storm rather than tangible photographic pieces. The people he remembered had indefinable faces, they were either diaphanous or demonic and doorways seemed to melt, the floors seemed to shake, he saw in fragments of the senses.

He drew himself out of them forcefully, knowing that to allow himself to slip back in such a way would eventually lead him to the white walls of the emergency ward.

He thought about the mental health unit and the regression into an artificial childhood that it seemed to foster. These memories he remembered clearly. There were board games and crafts and a room full of old video cassettes. It surprised him to see that the themes of these films were not restricted, some were horror movies depicting gruesome murders mixed among the sitcoms and romantic comedies. One of the patients there offered to watch a film about a serial killer with him he recalled, though the name of it escaped him. He found it predictable and unrealistic so he left, in a strange way he hoped to be reminded of the sociopathic persona of his brother in any form. He tried to justify it by telling himself it would help him face his fears and see past the emotional connection that led him on a dangerous path of idealization. Some had called it Stockholm Syndrome, Mr. Mellis could not see the past clearly enough to say yet.

The hospital gowns were comfortable and changed frequently. Nurses came to check on the patients in the middle of the night and asked if they had any thoughts of self-harming. The food, it was always very starchy and filling but tasted unnatural, the menu would finish its cycle each week. He remembered the people who he met there; a willowy man that wandered the halls silently following other patients and visitors like a ghost in slow dragging steps, a heavy-set African woman in a wheelchair who clung for companionship and attention but was often shunned for her too forward manner, a man who claimed to be Lucifer and a woman who claimed to be God. Lucifer was always a prankster, always laughing heartily, while God preached of doomsday to the other patients. It was easy to prefer Lucifer.

There was a treadmill in ward, Sebastian made a point of going there every morning, drowning out his lethargic melancholy thoughts with adrenalin. He also remembered trying to read a self-help book therapists kept offering him by the name of 'The Feel-Good Handbook' by Burns, though from the title it appeared rather mocking in its own way, Sebastian could not place why.

Perhaps it seemed banal. It would take a sociopath to feel good after what many of the patients in the ward had gone through. A nurse had also given him 'Gone with the Wind', it was one of her favourites when she was young but it was not to the tastes of Mr. Mellis. He had trouble empathizing with the trivialities of the day to day lives of the characters, he could not get past the first few chapters.

From time to time police officers had visited him for interrogation. In an odd way he had been both anxious and excited for these visits, a part of him felt that the investigators were his only connection to his brother. At the end of the interrogations he would ask them about him, for the smallest trinkets of information. He got very little but at least it was something. A part of him regretted telling them just about all that he knew, as though he had betrayed his loved one. At the same time he felt it was the right thing to do, the truth would be found sooner or later and he preferred it to be sooner. He needed some form of resolution to the chaos that he had been plunged into and a trial may offer that, his in experience with the justice system allowed him to give proceedings the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to believe that his brother would be helped in the end through proper medical care and therapy. Many had also told him that once his brother pled guilty he may be able to see him again. This was what he believed for a long time, setting aside his better judgement.

He took a sip of the coffee as his thoughts delved deeper into the past. They flitted over the horrid night where he lay in a hospital bed howling in tears, his howls among those of several in the room separated by thin curtains of blue plastic. He remembered taking a bus that day, it circled around the city before the driver asked him if he was alright, that it was the last stop. Sebastian had forced a smile and got off, he only vaguely knew where he was. After a few hours of walking he managed to find his way back home. He could not recall what he had been feeling at the time but he knew he had not been himself. Sebastian vaguely recalled his brother insulting him in some manner, causing him to leave the house again, this time with a plastic bag in which he threw a water bottle, his passport a hundred dollar bill and some small change. Inside was also a drawing torn from a birthday card he had made his brother many years ago, he remembered ripping it during the argument. It was a drawing of the two of them in watercolour and pen in an embrace, he remembered getting very upset when he discovered that it was not there after his stay in the hospital, much more so than for the missing money. He had planned to kill himself that day but he did not know how. He did not want to live as a cripple, as a burden, he did not want to see the reactions.

Mr. Mellis had not know where to go. He remembered laying in a field looking at the sky and the telephone wires above. The man remembered his brother telling him how he had known someone who had tried to electrocute himself to death that way but he only managed to burn his hands. He did not know if this was the truth but it did not matter, for a long time it would often disturb him how morbid his brother was but after a while he had grown used to it. He wondered if he himself had changed, if he had grown complacent on the inside to any perversion. It was a certain numbness that turned into hysteria in the end. He did not want to think about it further, that feeling of loss and helplessness, he had to stand on his own feet now.

Mr. Mellis had gotten rid of many photographs and keepsakes that reminded him of his brother yet he could not manage to let go of the letters they had written to each other.

Although they lived together the two men had established a system of writing long notes for each other in a journal they kept, it was particularly useful during times when one or the other was not bold enough to voice his views or needed to collect his thoughts in a presentable fashion. Sebastian decided that this was the day when he would finally get rid of them, but before he did so, he read them one last time.

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