1: My Brother Left Me Alone, for Good This Time

By Bea Bongat

I remember the times when my brother left me alone. 

Alone at home, while he played with his friends. Alone at school, while he stayed behind and played soccer with his team. Alone with our parents, while he went out for ice cream. I’m not trying to paint him as the bad guy because he DID take on the role of being my older twin brother. (As much as I cared about my brother, I wished he had stopped boasting about our times of birth.) 

But when he actually stayed and paid attention to me, we were like inseparable friends– correction, best friends. It’s quite unusual for twins to actually be able to stand each other; in most cases, twins would usually argue over the littlest and stupidest things. But us? We were as close as any fictional sibling should be. Wherever I went, my brother would follow me around like a puppy. Sometimes, I’d even tease him about the fact that he’s acting like our pug whenever we’re about to leave for school, always wanting to stay by our side. Maybe if he hadn’t followed me back then, he would have gone home.

When we discovered the game, it was by accident. And I’m sure if I hadn’t brought up the fact that I saw a suspicious looking man in the alleyway, my brother wouldn’t have been so curious as to walk up to him and ask what he was doing. Curse me, my loud mouth, and impulsiveness! I knew my brother was a curious kid, so why did I go on and state the obvious? 

If we had ignored the man, he wouldn’t have given us a bag of treats and a card with an address. 

If we had ignored the man, I wouldn’t have been curious enough myself to try and find the address on the card. 

Needless to say, it didn’t go well, as my brother caught me and decided to come along. I knew that when my brother’s mind is made up, he won’t ever go back on his decision. I reluctantly agreed and we both walked to the address in the middle of the night. I don’t remember what happened or how we got there, but we both knew our fates were sealed. If I had known that he’d die so early on, I would have tried harder to convince him to stay home.

The last thing I recalled was waking up in a room full of strangers… and then the game started. The first and second games passed by with a sense of bliss, and I would be lying if I said my brother and I weren’t the least bit disgusted by the… permanent absence of the other victims. 

But then came the third game and everyone was doing fine, which worried me, considering one person needed to die for the rest of us to move on. I was occupied with my task to not get left behind and be the one to die this round, but my attentiveness faltered when I noticed my brother struggling to keep up. I knew from the moment we heard the rules of this round that my brother would suffer quite a lot considering he was never very interested in the tasks. So when I saw my brother struggling with the task at hand, I offered to give him my finished work while I continued to work on his, as there were no rules stating that we couldn’t switch. But he strongly declined, saying he would make sure he finished in time. If only I had convinced him hard enough to trade our works, maybe he would have lived longer.

Once everyone had finished their tasks, the man orchestrating this entire game (I refuse to refer to him as his title, as I despise him) inspected and criticized every one of our works. It was no surprise to anyone that he disliked– no, hated what my brother had created.

“Such a mockery of such arts”, he complained, while making hand gestures towards his crew to prepare for the execution. My brother, understanding what’s happening, walked up to me and shook my hand. My hand! As if we were competitors in a game that he had lost, not even bothering to have the decency to hug his distraught and disbelieving twin brother! 

His permanent absence was… brutal to say the least, just like the two strangers before him. I was barely able to process everything that I had just witnessed when we were all ushered to the next room to start the fourth game.

I was stunned. Because the next thing I knew, we had finished the fourth game and are now getting mentally prepared for the fifth. Do they seriously think we can just move on like that? We’ve literally just witnessed people being permanently taken out and all they do is shove us into the next room without any warning. And for me, as the only one that’s lost an important person in this game, I was deeply insulted and angered by the fact that killing a child could be an easily brushed aside topic. Nonetheless, I held my ground and am now even more motivated to win and survive to tell our tale. As we enter the fifth round, I can’t help but ponder on a thought. 

How would I ever explain this to our– I mean MY parents?

November 12, ####