[Saturday night, 10pm, Klavier pulled his hair out of its coil and brushed out the spray and tied it back into a severe ponytail sitting low at the back of his head. Already well on his way to wasted at the time, music loud enough to earn any tenant complaints in any lesser building, bass vibrating in odd tingles throughout his body. Alone. Crescend was … somewhere and who else would he be spending time with? He smirked at his reflection. Nobody else, on a night like this. Except, somehow that train of thought led to a new option. Shivering around his apartment beneath the bass and the weird scratching drums he thought, I wonder if Herr Godot paid my brother a visit yet. And then he thought, perhaps I should pay my brother a visit. Because suddenly he had things to say. That happened, sometimes, left to his own devices. His brother entered his thoughts as naturally as anything and as naturally as anything in his thoughts he tore him apart. In ways he never would out loud, in the real world; from limb to metaphorical limb.
He wasn’t sure what it was about tonight which made him want to so badly to say them outloud. Maybe it was his interaction with Herr Godot, or the younger Phoenix Wright, or even Herr Edgeworth. All of the above, none of the above.
In no state to drive, he hired a car. Drank a little more on the journey and left the bottle half-full on the back-seat when he got out, forgot to tell the driver when to pick him up, too busy pushing back the small, aggressive voice of reason he carried with him in the back of his mind at times like these - it sounded like Daryan, of course, saying things like I swear if you visit your brother in this state I will punch you in the face.
Not too far gone to talk his way past the guards without seeming as buzzed as he was - and the trick to that was to talk as little as possible, hide his smile (and his hands) as he passed over chain, pendant, rings, everything they always asked for, emptied his pockets. When he first started visiting, they would go further – demand to see the contents of his mouth, pat him down, empty his sleeves, but he’d come enough times and been on best behaviour that they didn’t bother. They didn’t even question the hour of his arrival this time, knowing, no doubt, that there would be a reward in their next paycheck for the trouble.
The lights in the long corridor flickered on one by one as he walked down it; giving the whole scene a movie-like effect, he thought, and though they’d done it every time he’d visited very late (or very early), it was hard, this time, not to suppress a laugh. What kind of movie would this be? Not for your average American audience.
As he placed one hand on the bars which held Kristoph, each of his fingers felt like it was twitching a little. Bars! Simple, iron bars! Not even reinforced glass, or concrete. Sort of comical, when he thought about it. The guard, because he knew him, rapped sharply on the door to wake Kristoph for his visitor, twisted each key in its lock, ushered him inside and walked away. Eager to return to his nap, or porn, or whatever it was he was doing in his little room.
In the fluorescent light overhead, faced with the prospect of actually speaking to his brother like this, Klavier suddenly felt weak. Over-aware of the ponytail which had replaced, for the night, his usual coil, and the anxious trembling in his limbs. He drew a breath, curled his fingers tighter around the bars behind him, not yet willing to step forward. The low, drunken smile, however, remained on his lips, his brain a little ahead of his body’s reflexive anxiety, and after a moment’s frozen silence, one heavy, twitching hand came up to brush back his fringe with a flick of the wrist.]
Hi — I hope I didn’t w- [a breath] w-ake you [w’s were difficult, all of a sudden. Why? And then the smile widened into a grin, for no reason whatsoever.] I was in the a-aarea, thought I’d drop by. It’s been a while since I paid my brother a visit.
[The last part was almost sing-songed, dripping off into a giggle at the end. Again, for no reason whatsoever. Another sharp inhale, attempting to calm himself.]
Anonymous
