Narcissus

I could start my story when my brother and I were children. I could tell you about the long years when we did all the normal things children do. The endless days of riding bikes, swimming in the salty water near our home, or hiking in the green hills. Our years on our grandparents farm riding horses.

But...no.

I will, I think begin my story when I entered my high school years. I should tell you as well, this story...isn't about me.

It's about my brother.

Tyler Raines.

And the year he fell in love.

Some people just seem to be born beautiful; others bloom into their looks as they age. Some have an awkward phase when they are all elbows and knees, like myself that first year.

My brother?

God kissed him in the cradle!

There has never been a more photographed baby, I think, in history. He had his picture on the cover of magazines, billboards, and newspapers. Even a thirty second commercial of him just giggling.

If Guinness had a category for the most beautiful baby his picture would have been there as well.

Me? Not even the cover a dog walkers magazine would have used my pictures as a baby.

Modeling agencies approached Mom. After that first year I think she had seen where she was taking her son though. She brought it all to an end. He became just another kid at school.

Right...

He was attracting girls to him when he didn't even like girls. They would flock to his side. Little giggling hoards all passing him notes.

Do you want to go steady... check yes or no?

Do you have a girlfriend? If so am I prettier?

Have you ever been kissed? If no... would you like to try?

The notes I got?

What's your brother really like?

"Fuck them all!"

Damn it...girls are supposed to be the pretty ones!

I cried myself to sleep at the injustice of it all on many a night.

High school? Right, it was there that things turned strange.

You see Tyler started to read and study art. I mean really study it.

Then it was poetry. Byron, Shelly, Whitman, and the writing of Edgar Allen Poe became his most favorite.

Then how he dressed started to change. No, not over night, it took most of his sophomore year, but if you look at the pictures you can see the difference.

When he walked into the school the first day of his junior year, he look like he was born in the eighteen hundreds.

He was wearing a waistcoat!

Knee high black boots, tight as sin pants, and a white shirt. With an embroidered silver and gray waistcoat.

A weirdo? A fruit maybe?

NO!

They just saw Tyler Raines.

The... Male... God... of the whole damn school!

He was and is my brother so I love him. Love him more than I am willing to say even in the shadowy parts of my mind.

But by the end of that junior year I goddamn hated him.

I shit you not the only dates I got that whole year were from guys that wanted to be seen hanging around Him!

And the girls? No to hell with that... the women! He had to drive them off!

Ever had to see over a hundred people come to your house for your brother's birthday and then a week later you have only about six people show up for yours?

Ever found yourself thinking about...

Tyler went on a hundred dates before I went on my first. He got away with stuff I would have been arrested for.

Mom? Oh he was God's fucking gift to her!

Dad? He strutted like the damn cock of the walk every time his son's name got mentioned.

Me? I would have had to steal Brad Pitt from Angelina, then have her come over for a threesome just to get them to notice I was alive.

It was horrible, and yet...to Tyler I was his brown haired baby sister. He would come to my room and we would talk for hours about everything under the sun. He took me to his junior prom and we danced the night away together.

I was the ugly duckling to his beautiful swan but I noticed my popularity increased after that night.

And then it happened.

Tyler fell in love.

He saw the most beautiful person and fell madly in love.

He found that person in the mirror.

I guess looking back on it I should have seen it a long time coming. There was in the whole school no one in his league. If he wanted to be in love...what teenager doesn't, it would have to be with himself.

The sounds of the tread mill going greet me as I make my way down the basement stairs. Stopping at the doorway I stand looking at Tyler. It's a view that the rest of the girls in my school would build monuments and shrines to get to see.

Tyler was in the smallest shorts you could put a person his size in. They were almost literately spray painted on him. If he had a pimple on his ass you would have seen it.

Not that he's ever had a pimple. On his ass or anywhere else for that matter. His skin is like alabaster marble. Flawless, in every bend and curve of his body. The muscles that move across his back do so with a lover's supple embrace. They seem to flow with a dancer's graceful moves. He runs at a pace that would kill most people after a few minutes. I know that he's been at it for an hour.

You see he has a set exercise routine. He got to worrying about how his body looked at some point and decided to fix the little flaws he saw in himself.

I think he was three at the time.

I don't know maybe two. I was too young to remember really. There is only a year between us after all.

Tyler runs.

I shake my head at the sensations I feel flowering in me. I know if he wasn't my brother I would be just like the rest of the girls in my school. I would have the bedroom shrine to him.

Really I've seen them. They do exist.

Our parents, I think, built the home gym purely for Tyler's use. I've been given dirty looks when they find me in here.

Like my brother, I love my parents...but they can go fuck themselves.

I chuckle.

I guess in Tyler's case that's more accurate than for them.

My brother turns his head at the sound.

The statue notices the dirt at his feet.

That's not the look on his face but just the way I feel.

"Hey Sabely want the tread mill?"

I shake my head.

My names not Sabely. It's Sable. Sable Raines. I guess our parents though if they hung a sexy name on me it would make up for me not being as beautiful as my brother.

It didn't work.

I walk over to the stationary bike. I know he started on this first so I won't be interrupting his workout routine with my choice. That was the source of the nasty looks I've received.

Not that Tyler would have ever said a thing if I went to the weights that he will go to next. He would have just skipped on to the yoga mat.

I try to keep my eyes on the digital screen in front of me as I peddle but I can't. My eyes are drawn to him again and again.

I hate the wet feeling between me and the bike seat that starts to build.

He's your brother you twisted bitch!

I look away from his glowing body.

Not that the statue would ever notice the likes of me.

Brown hair. Not brunette, not auburn, not dark and sexy, just brown. Like my eyes. How he got those gorgeous hazel eyes with their flakes of gold I really want to know. Probably the same place he got that raven black hair.

I watch the silky mane shift side to side across his shoulder blades as he runs. Worn a good six inches longer than school regs allow he had never been even asked to cut it. As I watch, Tyler runs a hand through his hair.

It like seeing a man caresses his lover's hair! So very sensually slow. An intimate caress your not suppose to be there to see.

I see my brother's eyes on himself in the huge mirror that takes up one wall of the gym. I can tell he's watching how he moves in the glass.

His eyes shift to me.

"Got a date for the senior prom yet?" he asks me. Damn, he's not even breathing hard!

My face quirks. I hate the way it looks in the mirror.

"Why would I? I'm a junior. Hell I don't even have a date for my own prom let alone yours." I look back down from his reflected face and peddle harder.

"How about I take you to both? We had a great time last year at my junior prom. You looked wonderful in that blue dress."

I look up at him.

"I wore green."

He smiles and shakes his head. Those pearl white teeth that escaped from a toothpaste commercial flash in his beautiful face.

"You wore blue. I remember." He says grinning.

Helen may have made a thousand ships sail with a smile. Tyler could have made them turn around with a grin.

"The flower I pinned to you was a blue orchid backed with baby's breath white. It would have clashed horribly with green."

He stops running and moves towards the weights. I know it was one hour running to the second. I could set a watch by him.

I look at my own reflection in the video screen in front of me.

He remembers the flower he pinned to me. I look up when he gives an effort grunt at lifting half again my weight.

All I can remember is his fingers brushing my breast when he pinned the flower to me. The way my nipple...

Clenching my teeth I look down and peddle twice as fast. I blank my mind to everything and just focus on the movement of my feet.

Two wet tears drop onto my sweat paints. I see them blur out into twin wet spots on my thigh.

I know from a certain view there might be another .....

I grab my mp3 player from off the little table and stick the buds in my ears. The masculine sounds Tyler's making are driving me crazy. I shouldn't have come down here when I knew he was down here.

I chuckle to myself.

I came down here because I knew he was going to be down here. I'm just as bad as all the other girls.

NO! I will not worship him!

Pissed I stop the bike and walk over to the treadmill. I hop up on it and hit the start button.

My face hits the belt as my feet are taken out from under me! I'm thrown off the back of the treadmill and into a weight rack.

"Sabely!"

Clutching my jaw and mouth I curl up around the pain in my gut from where I hit something.

"Sable? Sabely are you all right."

His hands on my side. His finger tips just at the edge of my... Then his other hand at the back of my neck turning me up towards him.

The light above him is hidden behind his head. A silver halo shines around his dark hair.

I chuckle.

Of course it does. Every angel has a halo. All the paintings show that!

Tyler moves my hand. I see the concern on his face as his fingers lightly brush my chin and lips.

The powerfully male scent of him fills me. I feel a drop of his sweat fall for his body and splash onto my skin. It carries his essence to me like a priest blessing with holy water.

Tyler pulls me to him as I start to cry. I clutch at him as the tears flow knowing that the other girls at my school would willingly endure much more pain than what I'm feeling to be held by him. He caresses my hair, my brown simple peasant girl hair. Cow brown, dirt brown. I clutched him to me all the harder.

The twin proms are wonderful memories for me. I wear a blue dress to both that matches the one I wore the year before in color if not style. He was right. The pictures showed the beautiful blue orchid against the azure sateen.

I could feel the waves of hate coming from the other girls as I danced with my brother. I would pull back and look into those hazel eyes. The very slight difference in our heights making his only a little above mine.

He would smile and spin me faster. We didn't bump into anyone as you might think at a dance.

The others at the prom all but cleared the floor around him when he danced.

On the night of the senior prom when we got back home he stopped us at the front door. With that grin he leaned in and kissed me, a soft brush of his lips against mine. Said it was tradition at proms to kiss your date goodnight.

He didn't know how much I wanted to live out another prom tradition with him.

And then he was gone. Off to college. Full scholarship. He went with a letter of recommendation from the principle, vice principle, school career councilor, hell the school janitor would have wrote him one if that old fucker could read and write.

Of course he was accepted. NASA did his S.A.Ts! Okay...I'm exaggerating, but they were at least given a more than passing glance at by NASA.

And Stephen Hawkings checked his physic homework!

Mom cried for weeks. The carpets through out the house were soggy from the salty rain. Then he would call and it would be like the sun had came out! All the dark shadows would be banished from the house and his presence would be felt again with a sound of angelic voices from on high.

Then the phone would hang up and purgatory would descend upon the house again till his next phone call.

My senior year was a constant stream of questions.

Has your brother called?

Is he coming home for fall break, Christmas, New Years, spring break? Presidents day!

I would just shake my head and go about my studies. I was in no way going to be given the easy walk into college that he had been. If anything the teachers resented me for somehow not making him stay here another year.

If anything the boys were even worse. They started asking me out in droves because to be seen with me might get the other girls noticing them! They had been out with someone associated with the great Tyler Raines.

Tyler called on the night before his birthday to say he wasn't going to be able to make it home after all.

Dad was heartbroken. He had to cancel the appearance of the Radio City Rocketts and the magic show with David Copperfield.

Mom took to bed for a week.

My eighteenth birthday pass unnoticed by them in their depression.

Tyler sent me a wonderful card with a poem he had written about his love for his sister. It carried his scent for days. I kept it under my pillow till tears made the paper too soggy and it broke apart.

I graduated Salutatorian. Marching bands? Parades? No.

We went out to eat because Tyler called to tell me congratulations.

I sent out tons of letters to colleges all across the country anywhere but where Tyler was.

The only school that sent me one back. The one I didn't send.

The scholarship my top grades had gotten me? Well it covered only the tuition. Room and board? Well I could live with Tyler of course. He was staying just off campus in a large loft apartment he had rented from the money he was getting from the paintings he was selling. He has managed to mix poetry and art in a form never before seen that was getting rave review all the way up and down the East Coast.

The cab driver warned me about the neighborhood when he dropped me off a block away from the address I gave him. He said there wasn't a big enough tip to get him to ride down those roads. I made him double check the address before he drove off. I walked, carrying my suitcase, down a place I wouldn't have normally walked without...hell I don't know maybe the Marines!

That I wasn't robbed, raped and my organs sold before I got to the door is a true surprise.

But not as much a surprise as my brother when he opened the door.

He was unkempt!

I know that sounds silly. Not such a big deal, but you got to understand I've never seen him dirty. He could ride a horse all day, curry it's coat till it shined, muck out it's stall, then feed it... and still look ready for a photo shoot for Flirt magazine.

"Tyler?" I had to ask to really be sure. I wanted to check the basement for pods by this point.

"Sabely?"

Tyler turned away from the open door and fled into the apartment!

After a minute of brain readjustment I followed.

At first I could see my brother's influence on the place. I saw his paints and canvases near the window on the easel he had used for years. I saw a canvas with one of the half-finished works he had been starting to tinker with just before he left. I saw a single leaf of a newspaper sitting on the table covering his pallet. The gobs of paint on it were dried and cracked.

I picked up the paper.

"A pretty face is all the talent this artist has."

I flinched at the reviews headline. A quick skim of the rest showed it to get worse if anything.

I follow my brother's path through the apartment. I'm appalled at the state of the place.

Some wouldn't have even seen anything wrong with it but I know my brother. To his sense of neatness this place looked like a tornado had landed here.

The bedroom was dark. The windows painted black. When I flick the light switch I see that the walls have been as well. The small bulb barely illuminates the room.

It does show me the pile of broken silver glass against one wall. The iron weight lying in the middle of the shattered glass. The dent in the wall.

"Tyler?"

"Here."

His voice is a whisper.

I turn to the corner and see him sitting in the dark shadows. By his feet are four empty wine bottles and...one of his beautiful custom made waistcoats!

Lying on the floor!

I walk slowly over to my brother and kneel down by his feet.

The peasant approaches the king and kneels...even when the kingdom seems to have fallen.

"I was laughed at."

I take his hand into mine.

"My first day here. Laughed at. I don't know why... Why would they laugh at me, Sabely?"

Reaching down I pick up the waistcoat. I dust off a bit of fuzz.

"Most people don't dress like this at college, Tyler."

"But I wore that style to school every day? For years!"

"Yes Tyler. Around people who already knew you." I look around the apartment. "Luxury loft apartment?"

"I had to move out. The cost of living there was too high. I couldn't pay all the bills."

I pick up one of the empty bottles of wine.

"I saw the review. I take it the art and poetry together is not working out so well? That part of the paying the bills problem?"

I see Tyler look down.

I raise my hand and cup his chin. Sitting up a bit I lean forward against his knees. His hazel eyes, red rimmed I see, met my brown.

"Tyler...brother...I love you. I'm here now. We will get through this together. Okay?"

"I don't know what's happened Sabely. I feel like the whole worlds fallen to shit."

I stretch out my hand and catch the back of his head. I pull him forward till our foreheads touch.

"No big brother nothing changed. You're just in the real world now. This is where the rest of us live."

I smile at the confusion in his face.

"Come on brother lets get this pig sty cleaned up. Tomorrow we will go see about a better place to live before we get our throats cut."

He nods. I see him hug his waistcoat to his chest as he stands up.

I realized as I was cleaning up broken shards of mirror just what I'm dealing with.

My brother's lover dumped him.

How the hell I'm going to fix that I don't know.

Or even if I should.

Step one. Money.

Well of course. Everything in this worlds about money.

The first thing I did was get him back to painting. Not the poetry in art stuff that he was working on. Don't get me wrong it's good. Real good. Just maybe a bit before it's time. Give it a few centuries and he will be famous for it.

The next day I took Tyler to the huge green field that the sits at the center of the college. I stretched out on a blanket and read my way through 'The Thing on the Doorstep' and 'The Shadow over Innsmouth'

Not really my normal cup of tea but I had grabbed up the first book I saw from his place.

Tyler painted me. I lay in such a way that I could see him out the corner of my eye. Tyler paints at a furious pace! He learned it from his first teachers. He can bring a blank canvas to a sellable portrait in under an hour. When he's focused.

Like he was today.

We attracted attention.

Because of what we were doing of course. It's not like I was dressed in a bikini or something shocking.

Tyler? Well Tyler was dress as Tyler. He had the look of the mid to late eighteen hundreds. I had though about trying to change him into something a bit more modern but he really doesn't have anything newer than nineteen hundred. Besides he's comfortable in it. That's important. His self-esteem has been shattered even more than the mirror was. He needed his confidence back.