“Did something good happen, Alan?” Oscar asks, eyeing him.

“What do you mean?” Alan asks innocently, tilting his head and munching on the leftover piece of bread.

“You’re smiling. You didn’t notice?”

“What, I can’t smile?” Alan challenges.

Oscar rolls his eyes. “Smile all you want. Remember your promises, Alan. Don’t go outside. It’s dangerous out there. You know what happens if I’m not with you.”

Alan bobs his head vigorously. “Yes, sir!”

Oscar squints. “You’re acting very suspicious. You went outside, didn’t you?”

Alan is about to say yes when a sharp pain pierces through his temples. He slumps, groaning as he holds his head. Sarah’s echoing voice comes back to him. “If you love your brother, be good. But most importantly, don’t be too good. Listen to your brother, but don’t listen too hard. Trust your brother, but don’t believe everything he says. Find others you can trust too.”

“—lan! Alan!”

When Alan opens his eyes, his brother is shaking him. “Wh-what happened?”

“You scared me to death, that’s what. You suddenly fainted.”

Alan gapes. “How long was I out?”

“A few minutes. It’s all because you went outside this morning,” Oscar sighs.

“No,” Alan blurts. “I didn’t.” A small niggling feeling sprouts inside of him, a newfound suspicion and wariness towards his brother. Perhaps Sarah’s words held some truth to them.

They stare at each other for some time, neither one moving. The sore red marks on Alan’s neck throb and tingle, a reminder of the pain that will come if his brother finds out he disobeyed again. He’s not keen to get another taste.

“It’s okay,” Oscar finally says. “It’s fine if you go out.”

What? Alan blinks. Such easy-goingness isn’t like his brother. Oscar was always overprotective, smothering Alan with love and worry until he felt like he was suffocating. Sometimes literally.

“You don’t have to lie,” Oscar says again. “I get it, you want to go out. Six months in this tiny room, I’d want to leave too.” He spreads his arms out. “The world outside is so much more exciting, after all. But you have to learn to read and write. I won’t have people looking down on you or anything associated with me. And you have to come back before it gets dark.”

Alan smiles slowly, eyes sparkling with wonder. This is too good to be true, and he can’t help but wonder if there’s a catch. Seriously, what’s gotten into Oscar?

“Now go to sleep.” Oscar points to their bed.

“Okay!” Alan says, snuggling into the blankets immediately.

Oscar chuckles and blows out the candle on the table.

In the darkness, Alan dreams of a time when he was younger. Before there were any red fingerprint marks etched upon his throat.

Bleary eyes open to see Oscar rummaging through the trash. His brother claws for scraps. Blue eyes widen at the sight of bones. There’s some meat attached still.

“Look, Alan,” Oscar says. “I found lunch.”

Alan nods weakly.

His brother sighs. “No, this can’t go on, can it?” He drops the bone, lips curling in distaste. Coming over to Alan’s side, he wraps him tighter in the bundle of blankets. “I’ve decided, Alan. I’ll be back with real food soon. Just you wait.”

“Where?” Alan asks meekly.

Oscar just smiles. “Don’t worry about that.”

As Alan’s eyes droop with sleep, he sees his brother’s dirty feet walking away. I’m tired, Alan’s mind echoes. For just a second he dozes off.

He awakens to gentle nudging and the aroma of something nice. Something that fills his entire body with warmth. Cracking open a dull jade eye, Alan sees his brother, wearing a coat he’s never seen before, holding out a half-eaten sausage to him.

“Here, Alan, eat slowly,” Oscar says, blowing on the sausage.

“How did you—”

“Don’t tell anybody anything,” Oscar shushes him. “If you want to keep eating real food, the good stuff, don’t let anybody know that I can get these things.”

Alan wonders, but the meaty smell is too luring, too seductive. So, he nods and opens his mouth to eat.

“Oh, right, I got you something,” his brother says, rummaging around under his new coat. He pulls out a soft green fabric. He pulls and pulls. “A scarf for the winter! This ought to keep us warm, Alan—”

He nods, vaguely registering Oscar’s words. All he knows right now is bliss.

It’s heaven on his tongue.

Alan awakens with an empty stomach to an empty room. The heavy taste of meat lingers in his mouth and his hunger pangs have all but disappeared, throbbing at the edges of his consciousness. But he knows they’ll get worse as time goes on. It’s inevitable.

He may be free to come and go as he pleases now, but that will do nothing to solve the bigger issue at hand: food.

He gets dressed anyways, putting on his dirty coat and wrapping his green scarf around his neck. Oscar’s first and last gift to him.

To this day, he still wonders where Oscar got the food and the clothes back then. Or where he kept getting them, day after day, night after night. Sometimes it was a new blanket, or new shoes—and very rarely, Alan would spot valuable-looking jewelry and accessories, which Oscar would ask him to hold on to.

There was one time, though, when his brother tried to feed him moldy bread. That was the only instance Alan had argued, wondering why they’d ever revert back to eating such…garbage.

Otherwise, it seemed endless. The better food and the better clothes, they all came like an endlessly flowing river. Until one day, Oscar got them a home. Right here, with Sarah’s generosity. And then the good stuff stopped coming as abruptly as it all started. He had to make a lot of promises to his brother if he wanted good things again: don’t go out without Oscar’s permission, don’t talk to other children and adults living around here, keep Oscar’s activities a secret, don’t tell anybody about the stuff Oscar brings back…

It was fine though. He was good at keeping promises. And if it made his brother happy too, all the better. That meant less punishment and pain. Not that he would ever say that. His brother only wanted the best for him, and Alan’s a believer in tough love too.

He steps out onto the streets, wandering aimlessly past the apothecary and the bakery, into the plaza. Merchants haggle with bargaining customers. Crows caw and seagulls squawk overhead. The cloudy skies start to drizzle.

A gruff looking man in a suit bumps past Alan, knocking him backwards, and he falls on his bottom. The strangers passing by merely walk around him, elongated pant legs and puffy dresses marring his vision. The world expands and stretches before his eyes. The clamour of people and birds reach a fever pitch. The shadows in the absence of the sun grow longer and he can’t remember where he is.

It’s too loud… Help me, Oscar!

But Oscar isn’t here. Alan cradles his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he whimpers. He withdraws into his mind once more.

Once they had moved into their apartment room, taking what meager belongings they had, Oscar took the jewelry Alan had been safekeeping for years. He had shoved it all into the closet in the room, making Alan promise that he’d never tell anybody, not even Sarah. It was back then that Oscar had also made him promise not to go out anymore, to stay inside for his own safety.

Alan understood that a promise to his brother was absolute and unbreakable. The last time he argued and broke a promise, he had woken up alone in a seedy back alley with strange men and crooked women eyeing him up. If Oscar hadn’t come to save him in time, bringing him out of that unfamiliar alley and back into the safety of their old one, Alan knew something bad would have happened to him.

And the other day, Alan had broken another promise. The promise to never go out again.

Oscar was right. I shouldn’t go out. If I do, I’ll end up—

“Are you okay, Alan?” Sarah’s voice floats around him.

A cold hand caresses his face and curls his messy brown locks behind his ears. When Alan opens his eyes, he sees Sarah holding out her umbrella over him, extending an outstretched hand. Around him, the rain falls silent and the world seems to slow.

“S-Sarah?” he croaks. I thought she wasn’t—

“What are you doing alone out here?” she asks, helping him to his feet. “Sitting on the pavement, at that. It’s dirty”—she dusts his bum—“and you’ll get sick if you stay out in the rain.”

Alan blinks owlishly, looking around at the falling droplets. “Oh, it’s raining.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“I-I don’t know where I am,” Alan admits sheepishly. “I got lost.”

Sarah laughs. “Home is that way,” she tells him, pointing to the other side of the street. He looks in the direction she points at. “And if you turn left two blocks down and right on the next, you’ll be right where you started.”

“Thanks, Sarah,” Alan starts, turning back around.

But there is no Sarah to be seen anywhere, leaving him wondering if she had ever been there at all.

Alan is alone once more in the hammering rain.