Author's Note:
This is a slow-burn (we're talking novella length). I've written a brother/sister story before, but this time I wanted to craft a genuinely plausible narrative, with proper attention given to the developing relationship between Hamish and Liesel. It takes a good few Lit pages to get properly into the eroticism. All comments and ratings are appreciated. Enjoy! Xx
———
What would you do for $10,000?
When I woke, I registered two things. First, I felt the softness of my pillow and the blankets overtop of me—and second, at almost exactly the same time, I discerned the warmth of my sister's body on the bed sheets beside me. I rolled my head sideways on its pillow to look at Liesel. Her eyes were still closed. Most of her form was covered by blankets, but I could spot the arch of an exposed shoulder rising and falling as she breathed.
A gentle fire crackled in the corner of our cabin. Every wooden surface glinted in its glow. I sat up and parted the corner of a curtain to look out over a valley forest tipped by snow. Birds were like specks of dust in the air. The sky was pastel blue. If it weren't for the lingering memory of Liesel's kiss, this view would have absorbed my full attention.
If it weren't for the cameras, our little cabin would have been paradise.
But the cameras never left. They watched us. That was the rule.
The cameras watched us become sinners.
———
Four Days Earlier.
I didn't want to get up. It was one of those mornings. Though I knew I ought to get it over with, the thought of leaving my electric blanket and exposing my ankles to the bite of winter was appalling. I hooked my feet up beneath my body and shivered. Birds cawed somewhere outside, as though laughing at me.
The cold was unprecedented. It had been all year. It'd been snowing since mid-Autumn, and by the start of Winter all the lakes had frozen over. The duck population had migrated at once, in a single big flock along the road which led north. Main Street was oddly still without its ducks. I thought that every time I walked through town in my boots and ski jacket. The lakes were so still they could have been painted in place.
When at last I rose from bed that morning, donning my dressing gown and clutching a towel, I found the bathroom door locked. Someone had beaten me to the hot shower. There was a sliver of light beneath the bathroom door, and the sound of running water. I stood there for some minutes with my towel in my hands. The weight of my own cold body was immense.
"Liesel?" I called. I knocked. "Hey! How long will you be?"
She coughed, then responded: "Wait your turn."
"Are you smoking in there?"
"I'm showering."
"If you're gonna smoke, can't you save the hot water?" I called. I put my mouth right up against the keyhole. "
Liesel
. Turn the fucking shower off!"
The water stopped running. A moment later, my sister emerged with a cigarette between her teeth. She wore two towels: one around her hair, and the other around her middle. Her legs and shoulders were still damp. They caught the light like glitter. For a moment we stared at one another, then she stepped aside with a mock-courteous expression.
"Help yourself," she said. "I'm off to prepare for my interview."
"You could open a window when you smoke, you know."
"Uh-huh." She wiped several stray strands of hair from her face. "What time did you say to meet?"
"Six o'clock. Meet at the shop, and be
on time
. I don't like driving in the snow when it's dark."
At this, Liesel dropped the cold act. She smiled. "I'll be there," she said. "I promise."
"Good. I'll see you then."
"Mm-hm. Thanks for driving me."
And off she went, leaving the scent of mingled shampoo and tobacco in the air. I watched her go for a moment, then entered the bathroom and closed the door. There was mercifully enough hot water to last me the duration of my shower, though it was a close call. By the time I ran the tap to brush my teeth, the flow was cold as ice.
———
The world had a cruel sense of humour. I'd known this fact from the time I was very young, when we used to hang our clothes out to dry on flagpoles poked through open windows. Our apartment had no balcony, and no place for a washing line, so this was the best we could do. We had to broadcast our poverty to the rest of the town.
"There's the family who hangs their clothes out on flagpoles," whispered the town. Even as a child I was aware of these mutterings. "There are those kids who only wear hand-me-downs..."
Liesel and I never had many friends at school. It was not that our classmates looked down on us for having such little money, though this was no doubt a contributing factor; it was more that we found it difficult to relate to children who lived such different lives to our own. Our mother was dead, and our father was a mesothelioma patient who'd blown all his money on the ponies. These were not circumstances most children could relate to.
We were not orphans, but we were close to it. Each year my father lived was on borrowed time.
So Liesel and I spent those childhood years shoulder-to-shoulder in the schoolyard. Dad worked long hours despite his illness, so us kids would pack our own lunch boxes and iron our own clothes, and we'd set out every morning together with our chins held high. We sat under the beech trees on the school field and told one another stories. I graduated high school two years before she did, but I still snuck back onto campus during my lunch breaks to spend the time with her.
We were lonely, but we were lonely together.
———
What I didn't know when I banished Liesel from the bathroom that morning in mid-winter was that the world was about to get a whole lot crueller. Things had been looking up for some months now: my record shop was taking flight, Dad was still alive, and Liesel had finished her degree at last. I was driving her to her first job interview that evening. If there was ever a time to pay off our debts and stop hanging our clothes on flagpoles, it was now.
I parked in my usual spot beside a playground. It was a fifteen minute walk from there to my shop in town, but it was worth it for the free parking. As I got out of the car and looked at the children on the playground, I was again struck by just how still and lifeless the town felt without its duck population. They usually swathed about your feet when you ate lunch, in search of dropped morsels. In their absence, the frozen ponds were like empty skies.
I set off towards my record shop. The walk seemed to take much longer than usual. Snow settled in my hair like small, cold petals. It crunched under my boots and fell into my jacket hood. I kept my hands deep in my pockets. Something about the day had me on edge. There was an acidity in the air which left a bad aftertaste in my throat.
Snow turned to ash beneath my feet. My nostrils tingled.
When at last I reached my beloved record shop, I stopped in the middle of the road and stared. The bitter wind took my breath away. People were milling about, talking in excited voices. I found a nearby bus stop and sat down. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was back in bed beneath my warm covers.
My shop was recognisable only by the stray bits of vinyl which littered the street and gutters. It had been reduced to a smouldering wreck of blackened wood; twisted and contorted into terrible shapes like the bones of a skeleton. The wind came thick with ash. Several firemen were dousing the edges of the wreckage to protect neighbouring stores, but I didn't think it mattered much: the fire had already been and gone. It'd left the smell of a million cigarettes.
"Mr. Bauer?"
I didn't respond. The snow melted on the bench where I sat. Body heat.
"Mr. Bauer, I've been told this is your shop?" It was a policewoman. She knelt before me. "We need to have a chat. Sir?"
———
Whenever I closed my eyes that afternoon, I could still feel the heat on the front of my eyelids. It was as if a good friend had turned sinister: I'd always loved the warmth of fires, of heaters and showers, but here I was grieving its destructive power. I went home as soon as the police let me. The road signs were hazy in the falling snow, which now looked like ash to my puffy eyes. A whole winter of ash.
I found Liesel shovelling snow on our doorstep. She was wearing her favourite pink puffer jacket, thick ski trousers, and gloves which made her hands look oversized. She took the gloves off when I pulled the car into our spot across the road. Her dark hair was flecked white. A neck warmer hid her mouth.
I wound down a window as she crossed the street.
"What's happened?" she asked me. Her voice came muted through the fabric.
I met her gaze. The enormity of the situation was such that I could only articulate everything in one silly sentence: "There's still no ducks in town."
"Hamish?"
I looked into the sky. "I suppose they'll be back in summer..."
"
Hamish
." She pulled down her neck warmer to talk more freely. "You've been crying," she told me, as if I didn't know.
Her cheeks were flushed by cold. I looked into her familiar face, whose features I knew like my own cold hands, and told her about the fire which had taken my record shop.
The facts were easy enough to convey, but I found it difficult to capture the terrible gravity of the situation. How could I put into words the way in which my throat had closed, my mind blackened, and my stomach turned over?
"I've filed an insurance claim," I told her. "But God knows how long it'll take. Months, maybe. I was on hold for half an hour before I got a simple fucking hello."
Liesel did not immediately respond or even react to my story. She pulled her gloves off and hooked them to a belt loop on her trousers, fished into a jacket pocket, and withdrew a pack of Chesterfields. For a while we passed a cigarette back and forth in silence—me smoking out of the driver's window and her smoking on the snowy street.
"Is that better?" she asked me.
"That's fine. I'd rather a drink, though."
"We can't get drunk tonight." She lit a fresh cigarette and dragged deep. "You have to drive me to my interview. We'll get drunk tomorrow."
I smiled and took the cigarette. It'd been a long time since I'd last smoked. The tobacco smelt of raisins. Nicotine spread through my body to sedate my extremities. Liesel watched me with those amber eyes of hers. Her lashes had been crystalised in the snow.
"In the meantime," she said, stubbing the cigarette out on the car bonnet, "let's get warm. You shower. I'll get a pot of tea on."
She shooed me out of the car, wound up the window, and took the keys from the ignition. We made our way inside, and I took the shower she'd recommended. Soon the tears on my face were indistinguishable from water, and my flesh was pink from heat.
I thought of my record shop. This was just the sort of thing to happen on such a cold winter.
