Canvas Of Starvation

Genre: Horror -- About 1,300 words

Screaming pierces through the TV as some poor teen gets slashed and the special effects guys for whatever film this is earns themselves a raise. Frankie’s side-eyeing me, trying to tell if I like it or not and, yeah, I dig it. Slashers were never really my thing, but he always knows the ones that I’ll really like. Not that it should matter if I do like the film. Dad always told us: it’s not what you do, it’s who you do it with.

The movie ends and Frankie starts to roll another joint. I get up, stretch my legs, take my cup into the kitchen. I’m still wobbly from the last smoke, but there’s no way I’m slowing down just yet. It’s only ten. The night is young.

High school has got to be the last time we both had a full weekend off together. When we compared our schedules at the beginning of the week, it felt like God himself was telling us to make the most of it. We made plenty of plans for the weekend, but tonight started like any other, really. We got home tired and decided to smoke.

“I’m getting some water,” I say. “You want anything while I’m up?”

Frankie stops licking the paper, looks over his shoulder for a second. “I’ll take some chips.”

“You read my mind before I could,” I giggle. Chips sound heavenly right now.

I take the brita from the fridge and fill my glass. Light floods the cabinet when I open it, a cockroach scurrying behind a can of tuna back into the safety of the dark. I squint as hard as I can, but there’s no chips in there. No snacks at all, just some canned goods and flour.

“We’re out,” I tell Frankie.

Frankie sets the joint on his tray. I don’t need to see it to know he made it look like the print of Leatherface has the doobie in his mouth. He unlocks his phone and groans. “The wifi’s being stupid again. No door dash.”

“Don’t trip,” I say, taking my keys off the counter. “I’ll head across the street and get us something good.” Frankie hates heading out when he’s high, but I don’t mind walking to the gas station alone. It’ll be nice to get some fresh air. When I open the door to leave, I can't help but blink.

It’s nothing but a brick wall.

“What’s that?” Frankie asks.

“I don’t know,” I answer. I touch it and sure enough it feels just like every other brick wall on Earth. But who put it here? 

And why?

I open the blackout curtains behind the TV. It’s the same thing out the window. Frankie follows me to my bedroom and then his, but we see the same thing. We’re surrounded on all sides by an inescapable barrier. 

Frankie flattens his hair with his hands. I have to lean over, my hands locked on my face. I don’t know what to think, don’t know what to do. 

“Call 9-1-1,” I yell.

Frankie looks at his phone. “No signal.”

“What do we do?”

Frankie’s silence says it all. This is the first time he hasn’t had a solution, even so much as a suggestion. He’s the smart one, he’s always gotten us out of the tough spots, always knew what to say. My cheeks start to salivate as the walls spin.

“I’m gonna vomit,” I say. I book it to the restroom, and puke chunks right into the toilet. Frankie walks into the bathroom and holds my hair back. When I try to flush, nothing happens. My stomach sinks and I run into the kitchen. I turn on the tap and nothing comes out. My gut sinks. The only water we have is what’s left in the brita and my tiny glass.

***

The door is open, the curtains pulled back as we wait for the bricks to - I don’t know, magically disappear? We don’t know how they got there. Maybe we’ll look over eventually and the bricks will just be gone. Every five seconds, I glance over and my hope diminishes.

We told ourselves we would ration, but by the end of the next day all we have to eat is the flour, nothing to bake it with but some spoiled milk. I should have gone grocery shopping before the weekend started, but I guess that wouldn’t have changed anything. The torture would just last longer.

Frankie and I each choke down a spoonful of flour. I think that rolling it around in my mouth will help, but it's arid - just sand blowing in the desert.

The bathroom smells putrid. Urine, vomit, and feces combine. Any time we go, we have to use the face mask Frankie kept from the pandemic. The smell of that starts to get worse than the room itself. Either that or the odor of the bathroom has started to permeate the entire place and we’re just getting used to the rot.

Eventually the water runs out, and then the spoiled milk, and finally the last cockroach either of us could scavenge. It’s been a few days and we're both so thin. When I look at Frankie, I’m haunted by the horror comics we would read as kids. There’s this one panel showing a man whose skin rots away as he realizes that he’s become nothing more than the skeleton inside his skin. I hate myself for thinking it, but Frankie looks just like that. 

I crawl over to our shelf, the one where we keep the comics we can’t get rid of because of the memories on each page. I grab a random book and open it, just looking at the art. I don’t have the power to read right now. Frankie leans on my shoulder, looks at the art with me. 

I close my eyes and we're back at Mom and Dad's house. The trade in my hands was my pick. We read this one first, then Frankie's, then we find some chores to do. We'll earn some more allowance before the weekend and then get some more comics. Then, we'll read Frankie’s first and mine after. We'll keep going like this until high school rolls around and I decide I'm too cool for comics. Then, we'll move out, I'll catch up on all of the trades Frankie collected, and we'll keep doing this forever.

I wish that's what happened. I open my eyes to the ephemeral.

“If I die, I want you to eat me,” Frankie whispers. I’m not sure he could speak up if he tried.

“You’re not going to die.” We both know I’m lying. Neither of us knows why.

“I think I am,” he says. “I feel awful.”

There’s a knife, maybe a machete, slashing through my heart. I’m definitely also dying. My mouth starts crying. My chest cries too, but I’m not even hydrated enough to shed a tear.

Frankie starts coughing. I would scream if I had the energy, but I just whimper. His body throws itself with each cough and he starts to roll on the floor. I don’t know what else to do, so I hold him. I hold him as tight as I can and his cough simmers down into a horrid rattle. I know what it means, I have ever since Dad did the same when we were twelve. He’s not breathing any more.

My brother is dead.

I whimper some more. I think I might vomit. Then I think about eating the puke from the first night, but I’d only be prolonging the inevitable. 

I wish I had any signal, just to tell Mom what happened. I wonder if anyone will be able to find us, how our apartment looks from the outside. Maybe everything outside has been replaced with brick, and people all around the world are in the same situation as us. Maybe someone's on the other side, hacking away with a pickaxe. It doesn’t matter. 

I hold Frankie in my arms, unwilling to let go. My stomach thunders, demanding something, anything. I’m grateful that my brother will be with me when I die. When I finally give up the ghost, we are still holding each other.