Through Glass: Episode Four by Rebecca Ethington

looked so sad as he walked
through the kitchen, his heart broken, his soul pierced. I knew I
had to say something – I couldn’t just let my little brother hurt
like that.
    You have to make your own
decisions, no matter how hard they are. And sometimes they really,
really suck
    They were such childish words at the
time. But somehow they had begun to mean more that that.
    I wound my fingers around the blanket
as I pulled it to me, the memories flooding me and loosening the
fear that always lived inside.
    “ You just looked so sad…” I
said, unsure of how else to explain.
    “ Yeah.” Travis’s voice was
soft, the one word fading into the endless soothing crackle of the
fire. I lay still as I looked at him, looked into the eyes that had
lined my walls for all those years. Just like Jason’s and Tyler’s
and Richard’s. Just like everyone I had loved and had never gotten
a chance to say goodbye to, had never gotten a chance to hug and
tell them how much they had meant to me.
    I couldn’t let that happen
again.
    My brother sat right in front to me. A
brother I had thought I lost. A brother that I could very easily
lose again. I wouldn’t let that happen.
    “ I’m sorry,” I whispered,
scared to let my voice get any louder, scared that I would lose my
momentum and not be able to say what I needed to say so
desperately.
    “ Why?” Travis asked as he
turned his head toward me, his eyes moist and
glistening.
    I sucked in breath as I looked at him,
knowing that I needed him to hear this, but suddenly I was very
scared and insecure about how he would react, what he would
say.
    “ For never telling you all
how much I loved you, how much I loved everyone. I never really
noticed until you were all gone, until the house was quiet and
dark, how much I missed you all. How much you meant to
me.”
    “ I love you, Alexis,” he
said, the tears falling down his face again, my own joining
them.
    “ I love you, too,
Travis.”

Chapter Four
     
    “ I like that one better.”
My voice was low and deep as I spoke through the silence of the
world, careful not to let the sound get too loud and attract the
attention of the creatures I could still see moving through the
dark out of the corner of my eye. I was sure they were just lurking
in the shadows, right beside the army of assassins Abran had sent
after us.
    “ Lex, someone obviously
held up in that house for a while. There’s not going to be anything
inside.”
    I knew he was right of course. The
house I had focused on was intact, glass in the window panes, car
in the driveway, the door only slightly ajar. It might look like
the logical choice, but it was obvious someone had lived there
after the world had gone black and the Tar had taken over
everything.
    It didn’t mean I thought Travis’s
choice was any better.
    From the outside, this other place
looked as though it was haunted, like the abandoned homes you would
see on the edges of town. Old and forgotten. Shutters hung from the
empty window panes, torn curtains had been pulled through the
shards of glass where they sagged lifeless in the nonexistent
breeze.
    I stood before the house, the silence
of the dark world drowned out by the gentle buzz of the light
Travis always held, and the one I had strapped to my backpack
before we left the department store sometime yesterday. I looked up
at the house, the winding pit of fear I always held in my stomach
tightening. I knew at once I didn’t want to go in.
    I didn’t know if my desire to run away
from the home stemmed more from a childhood of scary stories told
around a campfire, or if it was just because a house this big
harbored its own dangers. I had only found sanctuary in a broken
house like this once before, and even then I had been lucky to make
it out alive.
    The empty shells we were surrounded by
weren’t just houses; they were mazes of doors and hallways. At
least the other one still had windows—it still had the false sense
of security I had been raised to