IGMS Issue 5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyway, I've still got a sister. If you can get through the rest of your life without ever having that feeling, I'd recommend it.
    Esau said, "She goes back where she belongs. Now."
    "She didn't belong there in the first place," I said to him. "Leave her be, Esau. She's got no business being dead."
    "You don't know what you're doing," he said. His lips were twitching like they didn't belong to his face. "Stay out of it, Jake."
    "Not a chance," I said. "I can't fix up all the things you do, what you've already done. Might be Superman, Spiderman, Batman could, but it's not in me, I'm no hero. I'm just a stubborn man who runs a hardware store. But I always liked Susie. Nice girl. Terrific whistler. Susie's not going back nowhere."
    Even a little bit younger, I'm sure I'd have been showing off for her, backed away against the wall as she was, looking like a lady tied up for the dragon. But I wasn't showing off for anybody right then, being almost as scared as I was angry. Esau sighed -- very dramatic, very heavy. He said, "I did warn you. Nobody can say I didn't warn you. You're my brother, after all."
    I started to answer him, but I can't remember what I meant to say, because that was when Esau hit me. Not with his fists, but with such a blast of -- I still don't know what to call it ... hatred? Contempt? Plain meanness? -- that it knocked me off my feet and right over my chair. For a moment I swear I thought I'd caught on fire. My head wouldn't work;
nothing
worked; it was like every single string in my body had been cut -- I couldn't even flop around on the floor. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know
what
I was.
    Susie screamed, and Esau hit me again. That time I did flop around, after I slid across the floor and fetched up against the wall. To this day I can't honestly explain how it felt -- been trying to describe it to myself for years. Best I can do is that it wasn't like an electric shock, and it wasn't really like being burned, or beaten up either, although I was all over bruises next day. It was more ... it was more like he was
unmaking
me, like he was starting to take me apart, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, so I wouldn't exist anymore -- I wouldn't ever
have
existed, he'd never have
had
a brother. I could feel it happening, and I tell you, I'll never be scared of anything again.
    But I didn't die. I mean, I didn't get
lost,
the way he wanted me to. Susie ran to me, but I managed to wave her off, because I didn't want her getting caught between us. Esau went on hammering me with whatever it was he had that let him smash planes out of the sky, trains off the tracks, set mudslides boiling down on little mud villages. But it wasn't hurting me any more, not like it had been. I was still me. He hadn't been able to make me not
be,
you understand?
    I got my back against the wall and pushed myself up till I was on my feet. Took more time than you might think -- I work, I don't work
out
-- and anyway Esau just kept at me, like point-blank, coming close up to me now and knocking me this way and that, one belt of crazy rage after another. I couldn't do much about it yet, but he couldn't quite put me down again, either.
    I did tell him to stop it. Same way he warned me, I told him to stop. But he wouldn't.
    So I stopped him. Or the thing stopped him, the thing that had been rousing up in me all this time, while he was whupping the daylights out of me. It burst out of me like from a flamethrower, searing me -- mouth, throat, chest, guts -- way worse than anything Esau'd done to me, and slamming me back against the wall harder than he had. I couldn't see, and I couldn't hear a thing, and right that moment, that's when I did think I was going to die. Looked forward to it, too, just then.
    When my eyes cleared some -- ears took a lot longer -- I saw Esau lying on the floor. He wasn't moving.
    If it was just me, the way I was feeling, I'd likely have left him lying there till the neighbors started complaining. But ... see, I