Kitsune: The Flip Side

“Still alive, you fucking bastard? Bloody hell, you scared the life out of me… you prick… I hate you!” That was the first thing Louis heard after his failed attempt at checking out. Tommy… his beloved younger brother, swearing every other word, trying to be just like him in everything… he was the one who had found him in a pool of his own blood, nearly dead. Sensed something was wrong with some sixth sense, raced halfway across the city… and made it in time. “I nearly kicked the bucket myself when I saw it! Why, Lou?! Why?” His little brother’s blue eyes, round with worry, looked at him with such reproach. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding Louis’s tied-up hand. Louis vividly imagined Tom shaking him, tying a belt around his shoulder as a tourniquet, pressing kitchen towels against the wounds, dialing for an ambulance with fingers slippery with blood—and he felt a sickening wave of shame. “I… I don’t know… sorry, Tommy… I didn’t mean to, really… it just sort of happened… by accident…” His tongue could barely move in his parched mouth. “How are you? Want anything?” “Drink… I’m dying for a drink.” “I bet… you have no idea how much blood they pumped into you… hang on, I’ll get some…” “Why the hell am I tied up? Is this necessary? I’m not going anywhere, I haven’t got the strength…” “Maybe so you don’t hang yourself with the IV drip?” Tommy asked dryly. “And… the parents? Were they not allowed in?” “I haven’t told them… yet. I’ll tell them later. Everything’s fine now, isn’t it? They wouldn’t let me in either—the nurse buggered off somewhere, so I snuck in.” Gratitude made Lou’s nose sting. He couldn’t have handled his mother’s tearful eyes or the silent reproach in his father’s gaze—eyes so much like his own—right now. “Untie me?” he asked as Tom tried to give him water from a paper cup. Plain water… how delicious it could be! The best thing in the world. “Not a chance, drink it like that,” Tom snapped. “What if I need a piss? Come on, Tom…” “Given how much blood is left on your kitchen floor, you won’t want a piss for a week. Just drink. So forget it. And if you do want to—tell me, I’ll tell the nurse, and she’ll bring you that… vessel… the kind paralytics use.” “Oh, for fuck’s sake… Who’d you get so stubborn from, eh?” “What the hell did you expect?! Once your arm heals, they’re chucking you in the loony bin. For a couple of months. To get your head sorted.” The loony bin? For a couple of months? Lou definitely didn’t want to go to a psychiatric ward! “I don’t want to! We have a tour in Australia, what the hell do you mean, loony bin…” “Nobody’s asking you… you’re a suicide risk… it’s protocol… the doctor told me. And I’m all for it. Look at him, remembering the tour… Not long ago, as I recall, you were planning to die, and you didn’t give a toss about the tour! Or me. Or Mum. Or the band. Egoist… You’ve gone completely mental…” Lou stayed silent, hearing the catch in his brother’s voice. “It’s because of her, isn’t it? Louis, tell me—is it because of her?” “I’m falling apart without her, bro… you have no idea…” “And you think she’s having a grand old time? You wore her out yourself, pushed her to the edge… She told me. About the drugs TOO.” “You’re talking to her?!” Louis perked up, completely ignoring the word 'drugs'. “Yeah, for ages. You know that.” “Still?!” “Sometimes,” Tom looked at his brother as if he were asking something utterly stupid. “So what, in your opinion, everything’s just sunshine and roses?! She tells me to go to hell, but she’s chatting with you! Brilliant, just brilliant!” “You’re such a tosser!” Tom marvelled, tapping his brother on the forehead. “We’re talking about you, actually. Or rather, she only ever talks about you.” Louis’s heart bounced in his chest like a ball, pumping someone else’s blood through his veins, thumping: Kit, Kit, Kit… How strange—he had someone else’s blood in him… Suddenly, Lou felt a burning pain in his bandaged arm. The painkillers must have been wearing off. “Do you have her number? The new one?” he asked his brother greedily. Tom nodded. Bloody hell. “Give me the phone, Tommy… and untie me, please… Come on, Tom…” “And what will you say to her? 'I was cutting a salad in the kitchen and decided to slit my veins because I love you so much? But I didn’t die. Come and feel sorry for me.' Is that it? Fat chance. Let the girl sleep in peace. Once you’re better, once you’ve had treatment, then…” “Then what?” “How should I know?” Tom shrugged. “She’ll find out anyway, Tommy… someone will sniff it out, it’ll be all over the internet… And anyway, it’s out of order—being on her side… thinking about her more than me!” Tom snorted: “Right… because I was the one, bloody hell, tying up your arms with my own t-shirt and praying the doctors would make it in time…” Lou felt like absolute scum again… Looks like that feeling would be with him for the rest of his life. “Sorry, Tom…” Just then a nurse walked in, smiled at them, checked the IV, and ushered his brother out of the ward, saying Mr. Sparks needed to sleep. Tom squeezed his cold fingers, said he’d be close by, and left. At the door, Lou called out to him. “Tommy…” “What?” “I love you.” “Yeah, I know, for fuck’s sake… I love you too…” Louis didn’t want to sleep at all. But the nurse added something to the IV, his eyelids grew heavy, his thoughts began to drift and turn syrupy… Kitty loves him, she loves him… that’s the main thing… He’ll get her back… He’ll definitely find a way to get her back… Poor Tom… And Austin? He didn’t ask… Austin was sleeping on the bed when Lou slit his veins… he must have been scared later… funny little dog… He loves Kit… She’s quite firm with him and he likes that… Dogs sense strength of character… Kit is strong… a thousand times stronger than him… She’d never have done this… Right, thousand-year-old foxes have seen and tried everything in their time, you can’t surprise or scare her… Mum, bloody hell, she’ll cry… say things that will make his guilt grow to the sky… God, I’m so sleepy… In the morning, his bandmates took over the watch at his door. Tom had called them and gone home to get some sleep. As soon as the nurse was distracted, they slipped into the ward with booze and fags. Every one of them felt it was his duty to express his “Ugh, bloody hell, you’re such a tosser!” to Louis. After that, the lecturing was over, and they started howling with laughter at his “straitjacket” bed. And taking photos with him, all swaddled up. Of course, each of them would have a heart-to-heart with him… later. For now, they were just trying to make him laugh. And it was working. “Hannibal Sparks in the Sanatorium” was funny. Smoking with your hands tied up was funny. Jeff rigged a bottle of whiskey into the IV stand and suggested treating the patient intravenously instead of orally. Thank God it wasn’t anally… When the nurse came running at the sound of their cackling, they sat on the edge of his bed with perfectly serious faces and suggested she perform a striptease for the patient. After all, he was completely harmless in this state. And they yanked the sheet off Lou. Naturally, they were kicked out immediately… Lou lay there, grinning from ear to ear, staring at the white ceiling. They were right—he was a tosser. A selfish, bloody tosser.