Stories: All-New Tales - By Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio Page 0,7

The first to crawl. The first to rise on shaky baby legs. The first to toddle about wide eyed in triumph at being vertical. The first to speak: Mama. The first to drink in, to swallow up, to suck nourishment from all that he encountered, eyes widened in wonder, in greed, his first word Mama not an appeal or a plea but a command: Mama! Belatedly the smaller brother followed the demon brother, uncertain in his movements, poorly coordinated in his legs, his arms, the very tilt of his head questionable, and his head quivering on frail shoulders, the eyes rapidly blinking, watery, seemingly weak as the facial features were less defined than those of the demon brother of whom it was claimed proudly He’s all boy! while of the smaller brother it was murmured Poor thing! But he is growing. Or it was murmured Poor thing! But what a sweet sad smile. In these early years the smaller brother was often sickly and several times had to be hospitalized (anemia, asthma, lung congestion, heart-valve flutter, sprained bones) and in these interims the demon brother did not seem to miss the smaller brother but basked in the full attention of their parents and grew yet taller and stronger and soon it could scarcely be claimed that the brothers were twins—even “fraternal” twins—for observers would react with baffled smiles Twins? How can that be possible? For by the age of four, the demon brother was several inches taller than the smaller brother whose spine curved, and whose chest caved in upon itself, and whose eyes blinked, teary and vaguely focused, and it came to seem that the brothers were not twins but, simply, brothers: the one older than the other by two or three years, and much healthier. We love the boys equally. Of course. At bedtime the demon brother sank into sleep with the abruptness of a rock sinking into dark water, come to rest in the soft dark mud below. At bedtime the smaller brother lay with opened eyes and stem-thin limbs twitching, for he feared sleep as one might fear sinking into infinity Even as a young child I understood that infinity is a vast fathomless chasm inside the brain into which we fall and fall through out lives, fall and fall unnamed, faceless and unknown where even, in time, the love of our parents is lost. Even the love of our mothers is lost. And all memory waking from a thin tormented sleep like frothy water spilled across his face and he’s struggling to breathe, choking and coughing, for the demon brother has sucked up most of the oxygen in the room, how can the demon brother help it, his lungs are so strong, his breath so deep and his metabolism so heated, naturally the demon brother will suck up the oxygen in the brothers’ room where each night at bedtime their parents tuck the boys in, in twin beds, kissing each, declaring their love for each, and in the night the smaller brother is wakened from a nightmare of suffocation, his weak lungs unable to breathe, panicked and whimpering, in a plea for help managing to crawl from his bed and out of the room and into the hall, collapsed partway between the brothers’ room and their parents’ room where in the early morning the parents will discover him.

Such meager life, yet such life struggles to save itself!—so the demon brother would recall, in contempt.

OF COURSE WE LOVE Edgar and Edward equally. They are both our sons.

This declaration the demon brother knew to be a lie. Yet was angered by the thought that, when the parents uttered the lie, as they did frequently, those who heard it might believe. And the smaller brother, the sickly brother, with his caved-in chest, crooked spine, wheezy asthmatic breath, yearning teary eyes and sweet smile wished to believe. To rebuke him, the demon brother had a way of turning on him when they were alone, for no (evident) reason pushing him, shoving him, wrestling him to the floor, as the smaller brother drew breath to protest straddling him with his knees, gripping the breakable rib cage like a vise, thump-thump-thumping the little freak’s head against the floor, the moist hard palm of a hand clamped over the little freak’s mouth to prevent him from crying for help Mama mama mama faint as a dying lamb’s bleating and so unheard by the mother in another part of the house downstairs in