The Chancery

by Jamie Lie

Mentor’s Remarks:

In this continuation of Jamie’s brother-hood saga, which revolves around a detective intern younger brother and a mafia grunt older brother; Jamie explores the role of archives as a tool simultaneously entity which records, witnesses, and yet can be complicit in the silence, erasure and manipulation of an entire existence. Crime itself — as many sociologists and anthropologists have studied over decades — is systemic, decided by few people in power and is an instrument to maintain that power. How many people have fallen into its machinations? In this sample of a future novella, Jamie dives into the complex lives of brothers who seem to be on opposing polarities, but actually are victims to the same corrupt moral order.

---

“Are you sure we should do this? I don’t think— it just doesn’t feel right he’s our son after all— ”

“Look, we can’t have any second guesses right now, it’s too late for that.”

I try to peek around the doorframe a bit more, squeezing myself into the wedge between two cabinets in the hallway. Are they talking about me? What are they going to do? Did I do something wrong? Cold seeps into my limbs as their words are processed.

Both my parents are in the living room diagonally opposite from where I’m hidden. They think that they’re being subtle, having this conversation in the middle of the night, when I’ve attuned myself to listen for the tiniest disturbances in the house. Their anxiety is palpable, even from my bedroom. Mommy sighs and rubs her head, she’s been doing that a lot recently. She turns away from dad, catching sight of me.

She gasps. “Maxwell, dear, how long have you been standing there?” She motions me to come closer. I timidly walk over to her, where she’s standing by the fireplace. It is warmer here. The light makes Mommy look very pretty, like she’s glowing.

“What are you doing down here? You’re supposed to be asleep.”

I look up at her, glance down again at my fingers, suddenly feeling fatigued, but I manage to mumble out an answer. “Eddison wanted milk...” I cautiously peek at Dad from the corner of my eye, but he avoids my scrutiny. I search for Mommy’s eyes to mommy, yet the glow of the fireplace eclipses them, casting a soft glow about her almost like an angel’s halo.

“Oh dear... Did we forget to give him his milk?” She turns to Dad; he’s still looking away. “...honey?” Her voice quavers. Why? Why doesn’t dad want to look at me? Look at us? She draws out a ragged breath, pulls back her hair in one hand, and falls to the nearest seat.

She lifts me onto her lap.

...That can’t be right. When was the last time I was small enough to do that? She strokes my hair. I look at Mommy again, her face is almost completely blotted out by the light now, I glance at Dad again and he seems farther away than last time, nearly engulfed by the black hole in the corner of the room. I can only make out his figure.

“Mommy?” I ask. “ Why were you talking about me? Were you talking about me? What’s happening?”

“It’s nothing, dear. Now be a good boy and go back to sleep.”

“...But Eddison’s milk?”

“Be good and go back to sleep.”

She strokes my hair.

—

The sound of shuffling papers is all that fills the room, though at this point the white noise might as well be a part of the walls. Eddison isn’t sure how long he’s been doing this; there’s a clock on the wall, but it’s been broken for a while and he and Mia were way too lazy to fix it. Well, more like Eddison was too lazy to and Mia just never bothered to — there’s a difference in that, after all. He leans back against his chair and stretches. He tries to spin his pen in his fingers, but fails, and throws it on the table with a huff.

He is twirling around in his chair for a while — the boredom is killing him — when the door behind him slams open.

Mia walks in with her arms full of more paperwork. Kicking out her leg, she stops his spinning chair. “Come on, you may be an intern and our town is pretty sleepy, but you’re still here to do your job.”

She dumps the stack of paper onto their table. “We need to put this all in the system.”

Eddison groans and puts his head on the table. “Seriously? What are the police even making reports on? Nothing happens here anyways.” He starts sifting through the sheafs of documents. “Did another kid try to shoplift something again?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Mia ungracefully crashes down onto her chair with a sigh. Sometimes she wishes the age of retirement wasn’t sixty-six. “Look through the files, something big has happened.”

As he flips through the files, his eyes skimming through the text, he can’t help but suspect that his department had accidentally mixed the cases up with a big city crime somehow, surely this can’t be happening. In his town? He puts down the paper and slumps into his chair. He had heard the townspeople complaining about a smell in the woods but he had always thought it was something like a dead deer. He wasn’t expecting rotting human corpses of all things. His stomach churns at the gory photos.

He places the file on the table and turns to Mia. “Is this information... public?”

She shakes her head. “Of course not. That would cause too much panic. For now, any information about it stays within these walls, and no, we still don’t have a clue on who it is. Hope we can catch whoever it is soon, though. If one of those dead bodies happens to be someone I know...”. She hums thoughtfully, “I actually wasn’t supposed to show you what was inside these files, but you’re interning here. You might need to handle information like this in the future, best you get used to it now.”

She grabs the cup of coffee on her table and brings it to her mouth, only to be disappointed when a sole drop of coffee trickles down the cup. She hands her cup to Eddison. “Hey, mind if you refill this for me? The usual.” Then she cracks her knuckles. “You’ve been in here a while, I’ll get started on this first. Grab a cup for yourself too if you need it. I think you need it.”

It’s not until she says that that he realises he feels really light-headed. He kicks off from his desk so his chair rolls over to the door. He stands up and walks out, already hearing the rapid clicks of Mia’s typing behind him.

The last time he drank straight black coffee, he could barely drink more than two gulps and also started twitching, so whenever he needs a boost in energy he likes to make what Mia calls ‘milk-flavoured coffee’. He was not too big a fan of it, he liked the smell of it though. He drums his fingers against the countertop while waiting for the coffee to brew, until he overhears a pair of police officers at the water cooler near him talking about a new guy coming to town.

Now, that’s interesting. Nobody moves to towns like these, mostly it’s just the original inhabitants there moving out to the city or whatnot.

He softens his drumming and tries to eavesdrop on the conversation. He can’t help it really, nothing entertaining ever happens here. He needs something to keep his mind off of the whole ‘rotting corpses’ thing anyways.

“...Seriously? That young?”

“Yeah, could you believe it? That guy must be like, sixty mentally.” They both share a laugh. “Man, who would want to waste their life here?”

They’re not exactly wrong about that, Eddison thinks wryly. Their small town isn’t exactly everyone’s dream destination, nor does it have a healthy population of young adults. The police officers are still standing around and sipping water from their paper cups.

“Anyways,” one of them continues, “I swear those crows keep ruining my garden. There’s got to be at least seven of those pests—”

Eddison tunes out the conversation at this point and mulls over his schedule. He should try and meet his brother after work; it’s not like he has anything that important to do once the day ends, anyway. He pours out the coffee from the pot into the mugs, then adds the milk, opting not to stir it until it blends in with his coffee. He prefers to leave it like that. It’s just nice, the way the dark coffee looks marbled. He’d say that it doesn’t really affect the taste as well, but Mia would probably say otherwise. He walks back over to the archival room, mugs of warm coffee in hand.

—

There’s a cool breeze outside today, it’s still light enough for Eddison to see where he’s going but dark enough for the street lights to turn on. The walk over to his brother’s house was never very long, but nowadays it feels longer, like a chore. He’s not too sure why he keeps doing this to be honest. Ever since he’s moved out of the family home he’s always visited Maxwell at least once a week. It’s... polite to do so, right? If his family was like others, he’d probably chalk it up to filial piety. He used to go more often, he usually thinks about that whenever walking there — what changed?

The family home is huge; from his memory, as a kid living in it, it almost felt like he could run in any direction and it would never end. A small two-story mansion, with a sizable front yard to keep. Maxwell appears to still keep the garden tended, hiring a monthly gardener to trim their mother’s rose hedges and clean the fountain. It was already quite big for a family of four, but now with only Maxwell living there, the house seems even more so. Until now, he’s not sure why his brother stayed. Granted, Eddison and Maxwell’s parents treated Maxwell far better than they ever did Eddison, so he doesn’t have as many bad memories as he does, but still. Isn’t it nice to find something new? How is he not tired of the place...?

Huffing, Eddison knocks on the door. He hears a muffled “Coming!” on the other side.

The door swings open to a familiar face. He has the same hair as Eddison, but shorter. He’s sharper than Eddison, skinnier, taller. He has a bit of a stubble on his chin today (there’s been a couple times when he’s been so busy he forgets to do anything but work), and hair knots.

Eddison guesses that he’s been messing with his hair again, like he always does when he’s nervous. He usually tries to keep his appearance neat and tidy (Every time Eddison has visited, he always looks like he’s ready to get up and go to another meeting, even if his plans that night consist of doing nothing but dusting the bookshelves and watching movie reruns on his fancy, expensive TV). Today though, he looks as if he hasn’t slept for a week. He tries to stand up a little straighter, trying not to let the tiredness be too obvious. “Eddy! It’s been so long.” He ushers Eddison inside. “It’s so cold outside... .”

Eddison sighs and shakes his coat off. “It’s only been a week or so, and it’s not that cold outside.” It is a bit cold outside, but it’s not like it is going to give him hypothermia or anything.

He takes a seat at the leather couch — though he has never quite liked it, as it always felt oddly plasticky. The couch is warm from the fireplace in front of it, casting the room in a warm glow. Well, it’s that and also what must be six different lamps; his brother is an ambient type of person. Eddison has seldom seen Maxwell turn on the overhead ceiling lights. Not that Eddison minds, he had always hated the ceiling lights; they were so... white. It felt like being in a doctor’s office.

Maxwell hums as he prepares two mugs of tea. “You can stop acting so tough, I’m your older brother, I need to take care of you.” He takes a seat on the couch with Eddison, offering him a mug, before taking a few sips of his own tea. They sit like that for a while, doing nothing but watch the fireplace and drink their tea. He nervously taps on his mug before breaking the silence.

“So... how’s, uh... work, going?” Maxwell sounds like a parent trying to start a conversation with their child about school.

“It’s fine.” Eddison sets his mug down on the table. Another awkward silence stretches between them. He leans back and works out the kinks in his back from sitting all day in the office. He stares at Maxwell; the older man is sipping his tea again, almost finished. Eddison didn’t notice it at first, but now under the light, his eye bags seem darker than they usually are.

“Hey, Maxwell.” Eddison sits up and turns to him. “...are you alright?”

Maxwell smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, yeah I am. Uh— why wouldn’t I be?” He laughs again, though it sounds more strained than before. Eddison sighs and looks at the ceiling, what was he expecting? For him to reply honestly?

“No, it’s just... you look really tired—” He groans and shakes his head. “Okay, you know what, let’s just change the subject.” Nobody wants to actually confront their problems, and they certainly have never been the type to do that. They are brothers, sure, but it is none of Eddison’s business to ask stuff like that; they aren’t close enough for that. Asking how each other was is just another layer of polite pleasantries to show that on some level, you care. It’s probably just because of his work, anyways... Eddison is probably just worrying too much about nothing.

What’s a lighter topic to talk about...?

Eddison thinks for a bit, before remembering the conversation he overheard at work.

He turns to Maxwell and smiles. “Have you heard of the new guy in town?”

Maxwell almost chokes on his tea. “O-oh, right! I almost forgot to tell you, how could I forget?” He immediately brightens up; Eddison can’t tell if it’s real or fake. “He’s my business partner! He’ll be staying with me for a while. We need to discuss, uh...” He pauses, the gears turning in his head. Coughs. “...sales, yeah. Some guy screwed up the shipment orders, you see...”

Eddison hums in acknowledgement. He in fact, does not see. Can’t you handle this sort of thing through e-mails? He can’t seem to think of any sort of scenario as to why someone would need to come over, but then again he doesn’t know anything about business. Maybe it’s a really important partnership; after all, Maxwell does need the money to run this house. Not questioning it, he just nods along to whatever Maxwell says.

After that there’s nothing but silence, nothing but the crackle of the fireplace. Eddison finishes up his tea in a few gulps, says a polite goodbye and leaves, heading home. It’s getting late, anyways.

—

Eddison is rudely interrupted from his sleep by the blaring ringtone of his phone. Grumbling, he sits up in bed and rubs the drowsiness from his eyes. He squints into the dim room. There isn’t even any light coming through the windows yet! God, how early— or maybe late is it right now? He picks up his phone, immediately getting blasted with a bright light.

He blinks and squints at his phone, trying to adjust to the light. It’s a call from Mia, he picks it up. Her voice sounds raspy and slurred, as if it is taking her massive amounts of energy to talk. She obviously hasn’t slept in quite a while now.

“Hey, sorry about this, the cops keep asking for files that I sent to the record office, but they also need me here with them to record any data or something... .”

Eddison nods. “Right, so... you need me to pick them up?”

“... yeah.”

He sighs. As an intern, it’s not like he has the option to say no.

“Yeah, I’ll go get them. God, they better give me a bonus. I did not sign up for this.”

Mia groans in agreement before hanging up.

Eddison sits up in bed before shuffling over to his closet to get dressed, before almost tripping over a pile of clothes on the floor. He really needs to clean his room one of these days; he’s been putting it off for far too long now that if his clean freak of a brother saw the pig sty of a bedroom, he’d have an aneurysm. By the time Eddison is dressed, ready, and outside the flat complex, he can see the lighter, dusty blue of the sky slowly creeping in from the horizon, though the moon is still out. It’s still dark enough for the streetlights to be on.

Eddison’s starting to zone out before a voice catches his attention.

“Hey! Hey!” It’s ridiculously bright and cheery, Eddison looks over to the voice, glaring at whoever could be so chipper this early in the day. It’s coming from a man walking next to... his brother? What’s Maxwell doing up at this hour? With a friend, no less? Maxwell doesn’t tend to hang out with any of the people in the town.

“Um... hi.” Eddison smiles hesitantly and waves at him.

The stranger bounds forward towards him, leaving Maxwell behind. He grabs Eddison’s hand and starts shaking it with so much energy it feels like it’s going to fall off.

“Hi!” He continues shaking Eddison’s hand. “Nice to meet you! I haven’t actually met any of the townspeople! You’re one of the first, I think.” He looks like one of those smiling cartoon suns you always see in children’s shows. At this point Maxwell has caught up to the man shaking Eddison’s hand. His brother smiles sheepishly.

“Sorry about him.” Maxwell wipes his hands on his coat, looking around while he does. He looks rather pale, and keeps swallowing as if he’s going to throw up.

“T-this is Leon. You remember me talking about him, right?”

Eddison nods, Leon has stopped waggling his arm by now and has moved to stand side by side with Maxwell. He’s still smiling, though.

“So, uh... what are you doing, up so early?” Maxwell asks.

Eddison shrugs. He should be the one asking him that. “Work stuff... Need to go to the city to grab some police files. What are you doing?”

Maxwell is about to say something before Leon waves him off. “Oh, Maxwell here wanted to show me around town but said we needed to do it at a time where there are no people. So that they don’t pester me with questions. Obviously, he chose the wrong time because you’re out here.”

Eddison laughs. “Yeah, I’m an outlier, though.”

Maxwell shifts in place before adjusting his coat collar. “...right. So, we... best get going. Right, Leon?”

“Aw, I want to talk to him more, though! Do you two know each other? Seems like it.”

Maxwell’s eyes dart to Eddison before glancing anxiously at Leon again. “He— yes. Yes, we know each other. We should go, we don’t want to keep him. His taxi is already here.”

“Aw, come on!” Leon slings his arm around Eddison’s shoulder. “Do you really need to go? You should walk with us! You can just get it later in the day—”

Eddison shakes off his arm. “The roads get super jammed later in the day. Also, I would rather not get fired. Maybe later though?”

“Aw, are you sure? Come on—”

“Alright. You heard him. Let’s go.” Maxwell promptly steers Leon away from him, looking back over his shoulder at Eddison, then ducking and rushing down the street — as if to get them out of Eddison’s sight as soon as possible.

Eddison watches them until they disappear around the corner, before getting into the taxi. The driver promptly confirms the destination and pulls out of the driveway. He manages to suppress a displeasured groan as he shifts around in the backseat, trying to get comfortable. The smell in cars always makes him sick. He tries to focus on the objects that pass by the window, on the low murmur of the radio. He watches the sun rise in the horizon, and the buildings that start to tower higher and higher.

By the time he arrives at the office, the sun is fully up and the sky is a beautiful blue. The archival building stands magnificently in front of him. Eddison runs his fingers across the building’s columns, feeling its ridges and valleys. Marvelling how it stores the truth that serves and protects people from danger, in the warmth of the sun.

He pushes through the doors, walking past a group of rather bored students and their teacher. It’s pretty quiet inside, the thick walls muting all the sounds from outside. The only noise being the echoing footsteps of the few people there and a computer mouse clicking at the front desk. The receptionist doesn’t look up when Eddison gets there.

Eddison stands there, tapping his foot, waiting for her to notice him. Eventually, after a few minutes have passed, he just sighs and asks her.

“Excuse me miss, can I—”

“Access your town’s police records? Yes, you can. Walk through those doors on the right, take two lefts and keep heading straight. It’s the last door in the hallway. You’re pretty lucky by the way. If you had come any later, we wouldn’t have been able to let you in. Renovations in that wing.”

Eddison blinks in surprise. Good thing Leon didn’t hold me up for any longer than he had already done, he thinks.

He starts walking over the door before realising what she said and stopping. “Wait, how did you know—”

“It’s a special trick only receptionists know.”

“Really?”

Eddison stares at her for a while. She looks up from the computer.

“Your department called me ahead of time. Don’t tell me you actually believed that?”

“No! No, no. No, I didn’t.” He nervously laughs, then speedily walks over through the door.

It’s pretty clear that the wing needed renovations.

The paint is peeling off the walls, a third of the lights are flickering and he is pretty sure he saw some mold growing on a wall just now. He steps over a patch of wet on the carpeted corridor, hoping that it was water and not some other mystery substance. Finally, he reaches the room. The door handle is freezing. He slowly opens the door, as if he half-expects something to jump out from behind it and kill him, but all he finds is a dusty cabinet and a couple cobwebs.

He steps into the room, the light above isn’t strong enough to light up the corners. Wiping dust off the cabinet’s handle, he pulls it open, seeing several yellowing files. There’s not a lot; he just grabs what he needs. He’s about to close the cabinet door, when he sees something.

It’s a thick folder, but he doesn’t recognise the case name on it. Which is odd because there can’t have been any crime big enough to warrant its own case file before he interned right? If there was, he surely would have heard of it. The cover is faded, and the only word he can read without squinting is ‘Confidential’. Carefully, lifting it with the gentlest of touches, he is afraid the whole thing might crumble in his fingers.

He can’t see the date it was made, but he assumes that it must have been made when he was really young, or maybe when he wasn’t even born yet, just by the state it’s in. He looks behind him. He didn’t fully close the door, so there was a bit of light from the hallways pooling into the room’s entrance. The file is confidential — he’s not supposed to look through it. He’s supposed to take the files Mia needs and give them to her.

Nobody will know though, right? Nobody would know he reads this file. There’s a camera in the corner, but he highly doubts it’s working properly. He stares at the cover, before feeling a chill and putting it back in the cabinet, into the far back.

Whatever is in the folder was not made for him, so his gut tells him not to read through it. It has an almost sinister energy to it. He takes what he needs and walks out of the room. Mia’s been waiting for him. He doesn’t leave before looking back at that cabinet hugging the back wall. That file contains something important, he can just feel it, but he’s too scared to open it.

The lights overhead flicker. He takes that as his sign to leave.

—

Eddison walks in through the station doors, waving to the receptionist in front. The man doesn’t meet his eyes.

With his files in hand, he waltzes into the archival room, humming a tune. He opens the door, expecting to see Mia inside. The only thing he sees though is darkness, the lights are off. It’s around the middle of the afternoon, though it feels like it should be later in the day for Eddison because of how early he had woken up. There’s an eerie silence draping the entire place.

On normal days you would have been able to hear someone faintly walking on the other side of the corridor, or keyboards clicking, doors opening and shutting, some conversations at the rest area, a relaxed, peaceful quiet. Nothing much ever happens here anyways. Right now though, it seemed like they were trying not to wake up some sort of ancient evil. The few people he does see are giving him some worried glances, or murmuring something into the other person’s ear when they think he is out of earshot.

He eventually finds himself in the back of the station, a place he has never really been to. Walking through the hallway, he hears Mia’s muffled voice through a door, as well as several other people’s voices. He stops and knocks on the door. After a word of confirmation, he cracks it open and waves to the people in the room. Several officers are standing around something, their spines rigid, their faces somber. He recognises some of their faces — they must be the detectives for the case, right. Mia showed him the file before; they look more or less like the photos in the file.

He smiles at them, but immediately drops it once he has fully stepped into the room. One of the first things that hits him in the face when he goes into the room is the smell. It reeks of death.

“...I have the files Mia and I assume the rest of you asked for...?”

The room is dark, with a bright white light shining down onto a... table? They are all huddled around it, looking at something on it, mumbling and whispering among themselves before Eddison walks in. He really hopes the smell won’t stick to his clothes. He takes a step forward. Mia lashes out one hand, motioning for him to stop.

She mumbles something to the group before they nod and she walks over towards Eddison. It’s a bit hard to tell in the minimal lighting of the room, but he can sort of see how bloodshot Mia’s eyes are.

She takes the files from his hands and thumbs through them, her hands are twitchy, Eddison is still worried that one of these days she’s going to finally overdose on caffeine. “Thanks for that, really. I think I would have fallen asleep at the wheel if I’d have tried to get them myself.”

“It’s no problem, really.”

Mia tucks the files under her arm. “So, I’m sure you’re wondering about what’s been going on over here.” She motions at the table and detectives with her hand.

Eddison nods. “I’m kind of under the impression that I’m not allowed to know...?”

“Well, under normal circumstances, you’re not. This, however... I think you deserve to know.” She turns back again at the detectives. One of them nods at her. “So, how are you around dead bodies?” she asks him.

Eddison freezes, so that’s what’s on the table. He nods though, there isn’t much of a difference between a dead body and one that’s alive, right? Just that one is conscious and the other isn’t? He slowly walks towards it with Mia, he’s going to be surrounded by people. The body on the table is dead, it’s not like it’s going to jump up and attack him or anything, he’s just being irrational.

When he gets there though, his breath catches in his throat. Mia failed to mention that there are actually two bodies on the table: a man and a woman. That isn’t the most disturbing part though.

The thing is, they both bear resemblance to Eddison.

They lay there, still and pale, the light above making their skin almost glow in ethereal beauty. Their eyes are glassy and hollow, wide open. Eddison stood there, looking at them. It felt so strange to see his own eyes, dead, on someone else’s face, in this dark, dingy room. They don’t belong there, and neither does he.

One of the detectives cautiously broaches the topic, their voice soft, as if they worry Eddison might break down — for that, Eddison is grateful. “We didn’t really want to assume anything, but Mia had pointed out that they look like you. We... We all know what happened to your parents. We decided to wait here for you before we did anything further with the bodies.”

Another detective chimes in, “I mean, they don’t share the same last name with you oddly enough, so they could just be a doppelganger of your parents. What are the odds, really.”

“But why would the murderer do this?” argues a different detective. “I mean it could just be a coincidence but that’s highly unlikely, we need to—”

White cotton fuzz fills his ears, muting the conversation at that point onwards.

His parents.

After the detectives mentioned it, he examines the bodies more closely, his mind begins erratically pulling an imaginary red thread of connection between their features, over-analysing the placement of each mole and the slant of their eyes, even though his heart is in a tug of war with denial and dread. The past is gurgling, resurfacing — or rather, the frightening, black absence of his memories.

He doesn’t really know his parents. They never really paid much attention to him, and they left when Maxwell was twenty and he was thirteen. Though ‘left’ probably isn’t the correct word to use; that implies that he knows where they went. A more accurate word would probably be ‘disappeared’. It’s been so long since he’s thought of them. Maxwell had made sure Eddison’s wellbeing was never affected by their absence.

So, he stands there looking at their bodies, trying to feel something. Grief, distress, maybe? But he can’t seem to muster up anything of note. He thought he would have felt something. He had always wanted his parents to notice him, to love him as they had his older brother instead of treating him as something they just had to keep alive to avoid bad press.

When he was younger, he had thought of them almost as gods. He remembers how they lived like lords, untouchable by anyone that came to their place or brushed in proximity. Perhaps this illusion was shattered when he saw them laying under the fluorescent lights — just as mortal as he is.

He walks towards the door, and exits the room. He can vaguely hear Mia calling his name. He doesn’t stop. He needs to get out of there. He’s not particularly frightened, but his mind is abuzz, thoughts ricocheting like gunshots in an enclosed space. He wanders out of the police station in a daze.

If Eddison had looked up, he would have been able to see the sunset. It must have been one of the most beautiful ones the town had seen. The sky was a gradient of purples and pinks, the setting sun slowly turning the town into a deep purple. The lights were turning on one by one. But he doesn’t process any of this, and so he misses another piece of life.

Eddison isn’t really sure where he’s going, turning from one street to the next; he just needs to be somewhere that isn’t there.

Eventually, he starts returning to his own body. He finds himself walking up the hill to Maxwell’s house. He hadn’t really realised it, but there he was, standing in front of the door, as if deep down inside his body, he desires a fragment of comfort in an ironically painful site of his past. He rings the bell, waits outside.

Maxwell opens the door, rubbing his eyes and frowning. “Look, for the last time I don’t want to sign up for your—”

He trails off when he sees Eddison, taking in his condition. His eyes cloud with concern. Without any more words exchanged, he ushers him in. Eddison throws his coat onto the living room couch before sitting down, cradling his head in his hands.

Maxwell sits down next to him. “...You’re early today.”

Eddison simply nods, just sitting there, staring at the ashes in the fireplace. Maxwell doesn’t pry or prod. Patiently waits for his younger brother to open up. It’s during these moments that Eddison feels very grateful for him.

“Something happened at work.” Eddison pressed his fingernail into his arm, making patterns in his skin. “I need pictures of our parents.”

Judging by the surprise on Maxwell’s face, he least expected this topic to come up. “Er... no can do.”

“What.”

“Yeah, uh.” Maxwell shifts in his seat and watches the wall sconces flicker, looking away from Eddison. “...burnt them all.”

Eddison is stunned into silence before throwing his hands into the air. He leans back and groans, muttering exasperatedly, “Why, why, why...”

Maxwell had always felt the need to protect Eddison, and he was grateful for that. He treated Eddison like an actual member of the family instead of ‘just another person’. Whatever his parents didn’t give him, Maxwell provided.

“They weren’t good people, it felt weird having their pictures around the house. Why do you want to know anyways?” Maxwell shakes his head and sighs. He picks at a hangnail on his thumb, feeling the sharp pain as he pulls it open. As he fidgets and taps his foot, his whole body seems to vibrate in nerves.

“I’m just curious, why is that a crime?”

“No! No.” Maxwell laughs, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s just, it’s an odd request at an odd time. Did anything happen?”

“I just...” How on earth is Eddison supposed to explain that he saw what probably-maybe their supposedly missing and now dead parents at the police station?

“I just want to know, please?”

Edison watches Maxwell in silence, waiting for an answer. Maxwell is staring blankly at the fireplace, looking at its ashes.

“I think you should go home, Eddy.”

“But Maxwell—”

Maxwell’s stare hardens, hands clenched tight. “Eddison.”

Eddison sits there. He scowls and grabs his coat, walking out the front door.

—

He heads home and crashes on his bed. The next morning, he calls up the police station and says that he’s sick, so he won’t be going to work for a while. Mia had texted him after that, but Eddison hadn’t bothered to check them. He lays there for a while, staring at the ceiling for so long he starts to hallucinate patterns on it.

He rolls over to check if Maxwell had responded to any of the texts he sent, he’s read them but hasn’t responded. Probably doing work stuff with Leon or something. He rubs his eyes, what’s he going to do now? God, he wished he hadn’t gotten those files for Mia, maybe if he didn’t he would never have seen his dead parents’ corpses laid out in front of him.

He sits up, the files. That file in the back... the faded one, maybe that could help him? He kicks off his blankets and rushes over to the coat he used yesterday, rummaging through its pockets. He pulls out a couple slightly crumpled papers, they forgot to take back the forms that allowed him to access the archives.

He has never gotten ready faster than he just did, he haphazardly throws on some clothes and rushes out the door, calling a taxi to head straight to the archival building.

When he gets there, he half expects for there to be something new. He half expected to go inside and see that the whole interior was painted a dark red, like if he had walked into the inner organs of some kind of beast. But no, it was as pristine and white as it was when he had first walked through its doors yesterday. The receptionist raised an eyebrow at him as he walked towards the counter.

Eddison pulls out the crumpled piece of paper and puts it on the counter. “ I need to see the files again.”

The receptionist picks up the paper and squints at it, before shaking her head. “Sorry, I can’t do that. Not because of the horrendous state the paper is in, but someone called me ahead of time to tell me that I can’t let you see it.”

“What?!”

She sighs. “Yeah, I’m sorry, I really can’t.”

Eddison groans. What is it with him and unlucky surprise phone calls?

He closes his eyes and breathes in and out. “Alright, alright. I’ll just... leave now I guess.”

He grabs the papers on the table and pockets them, heading out the front doors. He wanders around the unfamiliar, bustling city before finding a cozy coffee shop in a corner, and orders himself a latte as he thinks about what to do next. He really needs to see that file, he can feel it in his gut, it’s the only lead he has right now anyways.

There’s a pleasant chatter behind him. He’s seated outside, under the shade of the cafe’s awning. He feels the cool breeze flow through him, it would have been a lovely day if he were to forget the reason why he was here in the first place. He takes a sip of the latte and grimaces, could use more milk, maybe a bit of sugar even.

He drums his fingers on the table and dumps the entire contents of a packet of sugar and creamer into his coffee before pulling out his phone. Surely it can’t be that hard to break into a building right?

—

Eddison is standing behind the archival building with the powers of several lockpicking tutorials online and some makeshift lockpicks he had made out of paper clips and bobby pins. He had managed to look up the building’s blueprints and maps online as well, and right now he was standing behind the door that was the closest to the wing he needed to be in. The camera watching the back door has been covered with fabric, and he’s surprised that no security guard has appeared around the bend to arrest him yet. He shakily sticks the lockpicks in the keyhole, fiddling around.

He’s not sure if what he’s doing is correct, he’s just trying to find the ‘binding pins’ or whatever those videos said. He doesn’t have a watch, and he doesn’t want to pull out his phone in fear of the light drawing unwanted attention. He keeps fiddling around for what feels like hours, applying pressure to God knows how many different springs. He’s about to call it quits and try another time before through sheer dumb luck, he hears the lock click open.

He shakily puts his hand on the handle, and turns it, hearing a click as the door opens. It takes Eddisons entire will power to try not to jump in joy and cry in relief, he steps into the hallway, and then he finally feels the weight of the situation creep in. He is breaking into a building, what he is doing right now is very illegal. Eddison hears a sharp whistle of wind behind him, and he sees the light behind him from outside get smaller and smaller, until eventually the door clicks shut behind him and plunges him into complete darkness.

He quickly shoves his hands into his pocket and turns it on, shining a narrow beam of light through the hallway. Half of the wall’s plaster has been smashed in, and most of it is lying on the floor. The carpet looks like it’s currently in the process of being torn up, and the once flickering lights above him are now empty holes, sparking wires protruding from it. Well, the receptionist did say something about a renovation in the wing after all...

He wanders around the hallways, praying to not bump into any security guards while checking the numbers on each of the doors he passes, trying to find the door he needs to get to. Eventually he does find it after hopping over the pile of rubble on the floor. He peers in, shining his light in, he sees the cabinet, coated in even more dust than yesterday. He steps in the room, and immediately feels goosebumps all over him, as if there’s someone he can’t see standing in the corner, watching him as he walks towards the cabinet. He doesn’t really want to swing his light over to the corner to check.

There’s no way that someone is actually there... but he would rather not find out.

He just opens up the cabinet, grabs the folder, and takes a picture of each of the pages to review at home. He replaces it back in its original spot, or at least tries to, and closes the cabinet again. He turns around and looks at the ground while walking out the room, not daring to look at the corners in fear of seeing something he was never supposed to see. The walk back to the door he came in from was somehow more terrifying than the first walk through, the narrow beam of light his phone gave him could only light up what was in front of him, but not what was beside him.

It’s oddly anti-climactic. He braces himself for a cop to jump out from behind him, yelling at him to put his hands in the air. But nothing comes out, yet.

He genuinely felt as if there was someone walking behind him, trailing and watching him, but he couldn’t hear anything other than his footsteps and the occasional sounds of dripping water from the leaky pipes. He doesn’t dare to turn around and check for himself, though. He doesn’t run despite the feeling, but quickens his steps when he sees the door he had entered from. Twisting the handle, he immediately dashes out through the dark squeeze between two buildings, running towards the safety of the streetlights.

He skids to a stop under a light as he feels his heart in his throat and gasps for breath. Frantically, he looks behind him, towards the alleyway he had just exited, half expecting someone to be standing there. Instead, he finds nothing. He grips his phone, and walks towards the main street.

He can’t help but feel like the information he has is cursed somehow.

He waves down a taxi on the side of the street, clambering in, exhausted. He shows the driver the destination on his phone. Looking back towards the alleyway, he hopes to see something. There is nothing, but he keeps looking back anyways, until the taxi turns around a bend into the  bright lights of the city.

He can feel the bumps of the road, a nice thing to focus on instead of the questions clouding his head. Eventually, he falls asleep to the yellow streetlights that wash over the car. He plunges into a dreamless sleep. When they get to his flat complex, the driver has to shake him awake.

—

The next morning he wakes up in a daze, with his neck and back feeling like they’ve been hit with hammers over the course of the night. He groans and tries to orient himself within his surroundings, he sits up and feels the wood of his table in the corner of the room. ...He’s not in bed? He looks around and sees his depressingly undecorated walls and lone closet greet him.

There’s a slice of warm sunlight streaming through a crack between his curtains, shining right on his back.

He leans back in the chair and stretches, cracking his back, before muttering to himself about how he should get better curtains as he stands up and kicks a path through the clothes on the floor to it. He draws the curtains back and squints at the sunlight, letting his eyes adjust. The sun is pretty high up in the sky, he must have slept in for quite a while. A ding from his phone over by the table reminds him that he had spent the entire night pouring over the photos he took of the file.

Right, he yawns, great thinking past me. He doesn’t even really remember what was in that file right now, so he assumed that last night he had just scrolled through all of them to have the feeling of accomplishment before immediately crashing out on the desk. The more he stands there and watches the dust swirl under the sunlight, the more unreal last night feels. Breaking into a building? Him?

He picks up his phone, rubbing his eyes. A lot of text messages from Mia, none from Maxwell. He scrolls through all of Mia’s texts, which basically all summarise to her asking him if he’s okay. If anything happens, you know you can just talk to me right? Eddison sighs, pockets his phone, and walks over to his kitchen to make himself some coffee first. He’s going to do a lot of reading.

He sits at the little coffee table he bought but never used, the smell of the coffee grounding him. He takes a sip, before placing it on the table and leaning forward to see the pictures on his phone better. The first page of the file has a photo, he squints and tries to zoom in, recognising the people in the photo. He sinks further into the couch, there’s no doubt that it’s them.

He didn’t really want to believe it, but he could see it right here— the people lying on that table were his parents, and now he has the photo evidence to prove so. It’s a bit blurry, but he can make out the names typed under the photo, ‘Lily and George Flynn’. He vaguely remembers those names from his childhood, when his parents were arguing downstairs, yelling each other’s names. Maxwell would sit at the top of the stairwell, listening.

He had followed his older brother without him realising, he wanted to be just like him, but when he had heard his parents shouting he got scared and started crying. Maxwell had noticed he had been standing behind him, and brought him to bed with him, and told him that everything would be okay.

If those people on the table really are his parents, then why did that detective say their last names don’t match? He shrugs it off, he’ll worry about that later, there’s more important things at hand right now. The detext on his phone screen, letting the memory fade back into near non-existence.

...What were his parents doing in a police file? This isn’t a missing person report, but even if it were that wouldn’t even make sense since neither he or Maxwell filed anything. Maxwell had asked him not to look for them when they first disappeared, and Maxwell was always the smartest out of the two, so he didn’t bother trying to look for them. Not that he really needed or wanted to anyways.

That was around the time he started acting strangely, not properly sleeping for what Eddison assumes must have been days on end with how tired and disheveled he looked.

He skims past the formalities part of the page, something something ‘info gathered from someone or other’. Mia would usually do all the hard work of actually analyzing the files, Eddison mostly just moved the files around. He’s about to read the second page of the file before his eyes stop at a word, or more specifically, a sentence. ‘Suspicions of working with the mafia/organised crime’.

Eddison has to stop himself from laughing. Sure, his parents weren’t the best, but working with organised crime? Right, of course, they must have just been taking a shot in the dark or something. There’s no way his family could be involved with stuff like that right?

But there, in those files, are sheafs of numbers to prove it. He reaches out to the backburner of his mind, trying to recall what one of Mia’s long lectures about archives during file organising. He had halfheartedly listened, but now he’s grateful he had picked up some words still. Archives are fluid, opaque, fragmented, incomplete, but ... can also be too large for life. They befuddle, erase, and amplify ... More often than not, they disappear and return, altered ... don’t always show you what you want, but ... show you what needs to be shown and what needs to be found.

Eddison stares at the words blankly, trying to make sense of them, flipped through the pages to scour for something that could clarify. Ledgers, receipts, printed digital transaction proofs, bills, cheques and so many graphs... Numbers tell a story, Mia once said.

He rummages through his memories from when he was younger that could possibly illuminate the connection between these numbers and the enigma that were his parents. Well, there were times, I suppose. He remembers Maxwell holding him up when he wasn’t tall enough to look out the windows, both of them watching their car roll out the driveway and into the dead of night. Several times in fact, it’s all quite blurry, but he was sure they went out at ungodly times of the night many times during his childhood.

What he couldn’t see, he could hear. He would get scared of the metal gates opening as the little kid in him thought that because the gate was open for a bit when his parents went out, bad guys would be able to sneak inside and come attack them while mom and dad were gone. He would tiptoe over to Maxwell’s room, trying not to make too much sound so the bad people wouldn’t realise he was there, and crawl into bed with him. Maxwell would always try to protect him, right?

His family’s money... he doesn’t actually know how they got so rich. He doesn’t even know what his parents’ jobs were. He had always assumed it had to do something with business though, they would talk about money a lot. They would always have those conversations at night, down in the living room, on the chairs and couches in front of the fireplace.

They always thought they kept their voice low enough so that Maxwell and him wouldn’t be able to hear. Apparently, they had forgotten how sharp their ears are. Maxwell usually wouldn’t let him listen, but occasionally, he would summarise what they said to Eddison. Even in his room though, he could still hear their voices, though they were very muffled.

If he really strained his ears, he could somewhat hear what his parents were talking about. He didn’t really understand most of it though, so he usually just waited for Maxwell to summarise it all for him. Right now, he really wished younger him had decided to really listen into the conversation. Now that he’s older, it has occurred to him that Maxwell probably censored or removed some parts of the conversation that he deemed ‘not good’ for Eddison.

With his parents dead, nobody other than Maxwell would know the truth. So unfortunately, there isn’t a zero percent chance his parents weren’t working for some type of organised crime. He closes his eyes, his head replays the image of his parents on the table. His parents are dead now, if they were working for organised crime, that crime syndicate probably wouldn’t take it too kindly.

From the information Eddison had gathered through looking through big city police files online while he was bored at work and various stories from Mia about when she was a police archivist in a bigger city before she moved, they don’t take too kindly to that. Faint murmurs of words surface to the top of his mind, his parents... they would always argue about money because they had... debts? Was that right? If the people who work for them have children and they die or disappear with debts that still haven’t been paid, the eldest son or child would work for them instead.

But that can’t be right, can it? Since his parents are dead, the eldest son should be... Maxwell. ...Max? He feels his stomach drop, no, his parents did not work for any sort of organised crime, and neither is Maxwell.

It can’t be right? All evidence points to yes, but... Max? His family? No, no, no, it’s... it can’t be... can it?

Opening his eyes again, he leans back into the couch with a sigh, his head is pounding. All the blue light can’t be good news for his already deteriorating vision. He switches off his phone, it’s probably best to take a break from reviewing all of this. He feels like he’s being pulled from all directions and that he’s going to snap soon.

He puts his head in his hands and tries to soothe the headache, he should go for a walk. People always go on walks when they’re stressed right? He needs to get groceries anyways, he’s running out of milk and if he has to drink his coffee straight black, he might finally die.

—

He’s weaving his way through the throngs of people on the sidewalk, he groans internally, he has lost track of time with all that’s been happening over the course of the past couple days. It’s Sunday today, and he didn’t realise. So here he is, trying to walk through the sea of people who also thought today would be a good day to shop for groceries as well as pretty much anything else. This was supposed to be relaxing.

Eventually he manages to stumble into the town local supermarket, he walks through the automatic doors and gasps for breath. He readjusts his sleeves, it’s not like they got messed up, he just feels untidy after that many people bumped into him. He sighs and walks towards the shopping carts, before bumping into someone, again.

Now, Eddison is thoroughly pissed after the whole ‘kind of unexpected crowd’ fiasco, so he snaps, “Hey watch where you’re going—”

“Eddison?” A chirpy voice perks up.

Ah, Eddison looks over to the man he bumped into. He’s smiling, like he was when Eddison had first seen him. Maybe his face is stuck like that. Leon pulls out the shopping cart from the rest of the line, making them all rattle like chains.

“You never got back to me about hanging out!” he laughs, again. Why does he always laugh...?

He nods to Eddison, waving towards him. “Since you didn’t get back to me, I guess we’re just going to do it now. What do you need to buy?”

Eddison walks up to Leon’s side, browsing the shelves as he walks by, “Uh... vegetables, meats, snacks, milk...” He pulls out a bag of chips from the shelves, flipping it over and grimacing at the price. Right, he hasn’t been coming to work, so they haven’t paid him yet. He puts the bag back on the shelf. “On second thought, I think I’m just going to get whatever’s cheap.”

Leon nods along to what Eddison says. “Prices have been getting higher lately.”

Eddison hums in agreement, pretending he did actually notice, he didn’t really. He always just swept his card on the register without bothering to check the price because he knew even if he ever did happen to run out of money Maxwell would be there to help him. Though now with Maxwell ignoring all his texts and calls, he’s worried he wouldn’t.

They walk for a bit more in comfortable silence, the sound of other people walking past them and the sound of them shuffling through the shelves accompany them. Leon is humming a tune Eddison doesn’t recognise, it sounds like a folk song.

“So, Leon.”

Leon hums in acknowledgement, currently carefully inspecting two bags of frozen vegetables, trying to decipher which would give him a better deal even though they’re both from the same brand and weight.

Eddison walks over to where he’s standing leaning over to see them for himself. “I think that one is better.” He points to the bag on Leon’s right.

Leon nods and tosses it into their shared shopping cart.

“I just wanted to ask... where are you from?”

Leon jumps a bit from that question, before mumbling something Eddison can barely hear. He immediately bounces back from that question, pretending Eddison had never asked him that.

His face immediately switches back into a dazzling smile. “It’s nowhere spectacular really.” He shrugs as if trying to get the topic to roll off his back.

“But now we’re on the topic of questions, mind if I ask you something?” There’s a gleam in his eyes, Eddison isn’t too sure what kind of gleam it is. He sure hopes it’s a good one that’s for sure.

“Right, so.” He wrings his hands. “Are you and Maxwell friends?”

Eddison’s eyes widen in surprise, “...No? We’re brothers, I thought that was pretty obvious... .”

Leon seems to be just as surprised as Eddison, if not more so. “Really? After you had left in the taxi, he told me you were just a close friend. You two have different last names as well... .”

Eddison stares at him blankly, first it was the detectives and now this? Goddammit, this was supposed to take his mind off of his family drama! All he wanted to do was buy some groceries but it seems life can’t stop throwing things at him. He snatches the shopping cart and starts wheeling it towards the check-out as quickly as he possibly can, not fast enough for the random people around him to deem him a mad-man though.

Leon calls out to him from behind, “Eddison?! I’m so sorry! Did I say something wrong?”

Eddison can barely hear him though, the beeps of the cashier’s scanner suddenly sound like they’re piercing his eardrums, high and shrill. The once pleasant mumbles of conversations between people are suddenly loud and chattering. He absentmindedly starts indenting his skin with his fingernails again. Leon finally catches up to him and tries to put a hand on his shoulder, Eddison steps away from him.

The cashier finally finishes scanning and putting everything into plastic bags after what feels like years. He grabs his stuff, leaving the supermarket and Leon behind to pay for all of it. Normally he would never do that, but right now with his mind in such a frenzied state, the most important thing he needs to do right now is go home. He looks back to Leon.

He’s staring, but not in a worried or even ‘angry for having to pay for Eddison and his own groceries’ way, it feels like he’s drilling holes into Eddisons head. It’s cold, calculative, he’s storing and sorting the interaction he had with him into little compartments in his head. After he realises that Eddison noticed though, he immediately whips his head around to the cashier, beaming and saying something to them. Eddison feels a chill run down his spine even though he’s standing directly under the noon sun.

He looks back at Leon one more time, he’s still talking to the cashier, probably about the weather or some other basic thing. Though for a split second, he catches Eddison’s eyes, and though he’s smiling, Eddison sees nothing behind them. Eddison shivers and walks back to his flat. ... What on earth is he going to do with all this information?