The Death of My Brother

Discovery

It was about 5 in the morning when I grabbed my house key and left my apartment. I locked the door and pocketed the key. I began to walk to Wilbur's apartment. I knew that this probably wasn't a good idea, going to your dead best friend's apartment at 5 in the morning. Especially when you found their corpse there three days earlier.

As I stepped outside of the hallway, I felt the cold December breeze blow through my hair. I put my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and pushed forward.

I'm so cold.

I knew, deep down, that this was a bad idea. I don't really know why I decided to go through with this and visit his apartment, but now I was twenty minutes away from home in the freezing cold. It was too late to go back now.

I pulled my hood over my head trying to shield myself from the frigid air. I paused for a second and just looked up at the stars. I took in the small twinkling lights and the cold breeze. This was the kind of weather that excited you, made you want to run, to jump, to move.

I kept moving forward.

I'm so cold.

Every step on the concrete seemed to echo through the empty streets. People didn't wake up early during this time. It was close to the holidays. People took breaks from work, children were enjoying their Christmas Vacation, and nobody woke up in the early hours of the morning. There wasn't any need to.

I was almost there now, about five minutes from his apartment. As I arrived closer to my destination, moments from that day began to flash in my mind. His face, his body, the eerie stillness in the air, the smell of... books.

Now that I thought about it, it had been strange how heavily the air had smelled of old books that day. Wilbur liked to light candles, so the air was normally filled with the scent of french vanilla or raw cinnamon.

So why did it smell like books that day?

I reached the apartment door and pulled out my keys. Wilbur had given me a copy of his key a while back, that way I could get in if there was some sort of emergency or something.

This felt like an emergency, alright.

I slid the key into the lock and held the door handle in my hands. I suddenly noticed the shake in my hands, and it began to feel like a brick was slowly crushing my lungs. I wasn't sure whether it was the cold or the realization that the last time I opened this door I found him dead moments later that made my body tremble.

I took a shaky breath and slowly opened the door to his apartment.

As I stepped in, I noticed how incredibly still the apartment was. It was like time froze here. Nothing had changed since that day. It seemed that when Wilbur died, time froze for his home.

Time had frozen for me, too. When Wilbur died, he left his home behind.

And he left me behind.

I took a deep breath, and this time picked up on the strong scent that lingered in the air. The smell of old books. I smiled a bit to myself.

Wilbur always talked about how much he loved books. He loved everything about them. He loved the feel of the paper, the smell of a worn book, the look of the cover, but most importantly he lived the words.

Wilbur loved words more than anything. He loved the way they could make anything, birth something completely new. Scientists said the world was made of atoms. Wilbur said the world was made of words.

That was probably why he loved writing songs so much. Writing lyrics had always been something Wilbur loved. He could get completely engrossed in his work, making and tweaking lyrics for hours upon hours. I had always looked up to him for that. I admired his dedication.