Rock 'n Roll pt.2

The game went on for over an hour until they beat another team. Sloth excused himself and took a short nap while the two talked about high-protein meals. He muted the call but left it on as he fell asleep on video. Gluttony grabbed a pint of ice cream as he went through the recipe and guided Pride on the correct steps of the meal preparation.

"Isn't that Lust's butcher knife?" Gluttony interrupted.

"Yeah, why does it matter?" Pride tried to avert the attention and put it in the sink.

"Why are you using his knife? He wouldn't even allow me to use for my club sandwich the last time I was over," he folded his arms.

"Okay, fine. I'm in their house right now. Happy?" the leader rolled his eyes.

"Oh, make sense. Where are they then? Wouldn't they know how to cook better?"

"They're away on a short vacation. You know how Wrath is. Spontaneous," he forced a chuckle.

"Everywhere Wrath goes, Lust goes. But why didn't you go along? You always follow Lust too."

Pride got irritated by the blatant statement, "I only follow him sometimes to make sure that he's safe. Besides, I told you. I have an important game coming up. The team is relying on me. My scholarship is riding on it too."

"I don't know much about you two or siblings for that matter. But he's the older brother. I'm sure he'll be fine. Now flip that steak over and baste it with the butter," Gluttony continued.

"Thanks for the advice," he said sarcastically.

"Unless it's Wrath you're worries about."

"You can shut up now," Pride glared as his friend giggled in satisfaction.

Pride plated his dinner in the same skillet he had cooked the meat in and ate it standing up. The group call was still on as one of the members silently snored and the other grabbed a fresh bag of salt & vinegar chips. The awkward silence along with Gluttony's atrocious crunchy munching had caused Pride to finish his meal near the sink and chewed silently. Suddenly the memory of the striking semblance of him and his brother flooded in.

His hands started to shake. People had never mistaken them before. Being brothers, they obviously looked similar to each other. But the image he had seen on the mirror was something else. Something that was neither him nor his brother, but somehow both of them at once. He saw it for a split second before he blinked it away. The hazy memory didn't do him justice in recalling what it looked like exactly. After the somber meal, he cleaned the kitchen and continued the game.

Throughout the session, an icky feeling stuck to Pride's chest like a tape. He just needed to find its exact position and yank it away from him. He turned off the lights in the house and retired to his room. The room was freezing as he slowly slid under the blanket and used one of the pillows as a pretend cuddle buddy. He scrolled through his social media and found an old tagged picture of him and his older brother in one of their overseas vacation. Their faces were nothing alike except for their eye shapes and lips.

This sparked an idea in Pride's brain. He opened his gallery and sorted pictures with him and Lust in the same frame and compared their features. People always regarded Lust to be the beautiful one with purple eyes and thick fanned out eyelashes while the younger brother possessed the masculine attributes. From afar, they were polar opposites. Even within, they held different principles and had opposing ideas of life. He started to instill an idea to himself that whatever happened earlier that day was just his imagination.

A draft of air caressed the younger brother's cheek gently. His eyes widened with a surge of sudden fear of being watched. Not from afar, not from around, but from within. He leapt to his feet and turned on the lights in the room. His hand was on the door handle as his heart thumped hard.

He searched Lust's closet and found Wrath's old plushy inside a red scarf that he once saw in an old picture of her. She accidentally dropped the photograph from inside her school journal when he first met her. The picture was taken on her fourth birthday, she held the plushy in her arms as her grandma held her up to blow the candles off on the cake. She quickly became defensive and snatched the photo away from him.

He started to wonder if Wrath had given the plushy to his older brother or maybe he recovered it somehow and kept it to himself. Either way, he took the plushy out of the closet and went to bed with it. He turned the desk lamp on to its dimmest setting and embraced the pink stuffed octopus.

It still had a faint scent of Wrath. Not in an obvious way in which he could describe, but he knew it was hers for sure. After minutes of examining the doll, sleepiness crept in and took him with one fell swoop. The presence of a guardian in the form of a cotton-filled mauve mollusk brought him a feeling of safety. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that it previously belonged to his beloved longtime friend.

"Humans are weird," Simbi shook her head.

"Tell me about it," someone said from behind her.

"Eros!"