He stood in his bedroom, staring at his window, blind to the night beyond it. He could see himself in the glass pane, and strange words filtered through his mind. "...Against my will I stand beside my own reflection/ It's haunting how I can't seem to find myself again/ The walls are closing in..."
My name is Dylan, he whispered to himself in his mind. But it wasn't hard to mimic that slick, smarmy smile that brought girls running, and become Nick. Nick, eight minutes his senior, sharing his face, his body...he shivered. Maybe they even shared a soul.
Dylan ran one finger against the smooth skin of his left upper arm and shoulder, tracing the permanent ink lines that give him his name when he roamed the streets at night. No, he wasn't Nick. Nick had one physical difference - flawless skin. Fresh purple bruises marred Dylan's body, along with some yellowing and less recent, criss-crossed by angry welts from a switch. He yanked on the white undershirt, tugging on the sweatshirt after it. Gazing at his reflection, now he could easily pass for Nick.
He reached out and locked the bedroom door first - he didn't want to climb into his room to find his twin and the latest bimbo of a conquest in his bed.
It was a quick preparation for an even shorter journey. Six-string across his back, sketchpad under one arm, pencil behind his ear and pick in his teeth, Dylan flung open the window. He balanced precariously on the empty planter box before hoisting himself up onto the tiled roof. A blanket was tucked under a chimney edge, wrapped in plastic and lashed in place with rope. Dylan spread it out and then sat down. He eased his guitar off his back, mindful not to drop it, and set it down beside the blanket before lying back against the tiles, gazing at the cool spring sky.
After a few minutes of silent watching, he set his sketchbook aside and let the pick drop from between his teeth, grimacing at the flavour of warm plastic. His guitar had seen better days, but he'd bought it with his own money, (not the money his father bribed him with to get out of the house while he "conversed" with his secretary) and he was proud of it.
Silverchair's Abuse Me was more than appropriate for nights like this, and he played it fiercely, trying to hold back forbidden tears. Why? his mind demanded to know. Why me and not Nick? Does that eight minutes really mean so much that you feel it's right? Does that eight minutes between us make so much difference that Nick is pampered while I'm punished for merely existing?
Dylan set the guitar aside and grabbed his sketchbook, flipping it open to a clean page. Nothing stayed clean with him for very long. He was reticent, he knew he didn't say much, but he didn't care. He had no eloquence with words, couldn't charm people the way Nick could. But he could draw, and so draw he did. His sketchbooks were his journals, his wrist moving freely to create the symbols from his life, faces of people he knew. When he drew, he hid nothing, especially not the truth. His sketchbooks were filled with the horrifying scenes of what his parents subjected him to. He was venting now, creating a scene from a fight with the Demons (Diablos) across town. He could fight well, he packed a fierce punch, but with his parents he became a child again, so small and helpless. He was drawing furiously, using heavy, dark, angry lines to define the hulking form of his father, his willow-switch thin mother.
Tears streaming down his face, he flung the notebook and pencil away, curling into a ball on his side, sobbing silently.
Why did you bring me here if you didn't want me? Why didn't you drown me at birth? What is so wrong with me that you constantly for? What did I do to earn this? Why do you hate me? Why does everyone hate me?
Despite what the other guys thought, what they saw in the streets during fights, he was weak. He was small and vulnerable and weak. And he hated that. He didn't understand why things were the way they were with him. He wanted his parents to tell him, make him understand.
Why wasn't I born on the other side of midnight?
Nicholas Bernard, January 26, four minutes before midnight. Dylan James, January 27, four minutes after.