Written in Anger

~ 15

Chapter 15 |

Kyela's Pov

"Well," Marlon starts, "Joe is, well, was really jealous of Michael."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because Michael is a lot more successful than he was," Marlon says as if he just stated the obvious. Last time I checked, both Joe and Michael were successful, neither were more apparent than the other.

"How?" I sound desperate.

"Now, when we were younger, Michael was probably the most hateful towards Joe... I think. He hated Joe so much that it drove him crazy, but he could never get away from him because Joe would use him for things, and I always felt really bad about it. I mean, he was my little brother, and he didn't deserve to see the things that he saw at that age," Marlon scoffed.

"How old was he?"

"Maybe five... or six," he said, "but Joe didn't care. He pretty much didn't care about us at all. We were just like soldiers to him. By the time Mike was like eleven, he had so much hate for Joe that it would make him sick. Literally, when Joe would come home, whenever that was, Mike would be in the bathroom for hours at a time, and we thought he died once."

I gasp at the thought of Michael dying, especially at such a young age. It doesn't make any sense of why he would let someone bug him like that. That doesn't seem like Michael.

"He was in there for so long, and we hadn't heard anything for like two hours, so our mother had us kick the door in so that we could see if he was alright because he wouldn't respond to any us through the door when we called him. We rushed him to the hospital, and Mother and the girls were hysterical, but I knew that he was okay. I just knew it because he was strong, and from the things Joe had put him through, I knew he would make it through that time.

It was scary at first, but the doctor came and told us that he was fine, and he could go home that night, but something was different that day. He wasn't speaking to anybody, and it wasn't like him because he would normally talk to us about stuff even if it was about how much he hated Joe, he talked to us. Everybody had gone to sleep except for me because I was really worried about my brother. I thought he was going to do something crazy that night, but he didn't, luckily. But I found him underneath one of the bunk beds in our room, then he told me to go back to sleep, but I wouldn't. I noticed that he was writing something in a notebook, but I just ignored it because I knew he wouldn't tell me what was in it, but..." Marlon trailed off.

I wanted him to continue, but Rebbie walked into the room before he could finish. She had a frown etched onto her face, but her eyes carried a different emotion, but when she saw me, it disappeared before I could determine what it was.

"Is he okay?" she asked, gesturing to his bedroom door upstairs.

"I don't know. He locked the door," Marlon said.

Rebbie sighed before shaking her head in disappointment, and she left the room. I kept my gaze focused on the beige pillows that were perfectly arranged on the couches.

"Do you want me to finish, or..." Marlon began to ask.

"I don't think he's coming out anytime soon," I say doubtfully, "You can continue."

"Where was I?" he asks himself, "Oh yea, so while he wrote stuff down, he began telling me this massive plan that he had to get revenge on Joe, but I didn't agree with him. But I didn't disagree with him either. I didn't like the thought of trying to hurt my own father, but Joe deserved a lot of things that Michael wanted to do to him. He wanted all of us to stand up to him and tell him that we weren't going to be his slaves, then James came along.