A Shirt and Tie

[ProMetaAnaTelo]

Today is mother's funeral. It also marks the day that I'm orphaned, which I guess doesn't count so much now that we're older. My mother died in a car accident two days ago, swerving off the road to avoid some animal. She had always slowed for birds or squirrels, making my father very upset about being late to the movie, to church or to whatever we had been driving towards.
Father was a police officer, shot in a McDonalds down the road from our home when I was fifteen. That was about years ago, making me 24 now.
Sitting in the funeral service, musing the thought of my mother no longer being there for me, I realized that my brother isn't anywhere in the church. Which, sadly, doesn't surprise me. I don't like to describe myself as an uptight or rigid man, but I'm reserved and level headed. My brother on the other hand--
“Tim, sorry I'm late.”
“Aaron... you're late to mom's funeral?” I whispered back, turning to look at him. “Oh, God. Why are you wearing those?”
Aaron touches his sunglasses, which he shows no interest in removing them-- instead flaunting them inside of a church where sunglasses aren't necessary. “You know I don't go anywhere without my stunna shades, bro.”
I shake my head. Eventually I'm past the point where I get outwardly upset with him, putting up with all the nonsense he carries on. Things like this don't surprise me anymore.
“Take them off.”
“Huh?”
“Aaron, stop. Show mom some respect please.”
Aaron, gives a half-hearted frown and puts them in his jacket pocket. “Tim, I think you need to chillax, me and--”
“Chillax?”
“Chillax.” He says, placing a hand on my shoulder. To the rest of the family, along with all of my mother's friends, we probably look like the two worst sons in the world. One of us came in late with shuttered sunglasses and the other whispering back and forth during the service.
“Tim, me and you are gonna go and take a day off. Call off work tonight and let's go to the carnival. Maybe meet a girl?”
“That's... no. I want to work tonight. It'll soothe me, which is something I need after this crap you pull every day.”
“I'm not going to the carnival tonight.”


“I can't believe I'm at the carnival on the day of our mother's wedding.”
“Whoa, bro... You just need to relax. Yo, look. Palm reading. That'll get your mind off of mom for a sec.” He says, leading me by the shoulders to the psychic's shop.
Within seconds I'm sitting in the chair of a dimly lit room with red curtains and a small table. The psychic sits opposite of me, leaning over the velvet tablecloth and looking at my brother who leans on the doorframe and overlooks the two of us.
The palm-reader begins feeling and studying my palm in silence. This continues for a few moments before she stops and looks at me. “You're going to have very tasking times ahead of you.” She says, cryptic and vague. She continues to read then stops again. “You will also travel far, farther then have ever before. Across seas.” She continues and closes my palm. “And you'll even find love...”
That peaks my interest. “Love...?”
“Well...”
“What?” I ask, legitimately interested. The promise of love is something I've looked long enough for. Girls around town aren't hard to find, but there always seemed to be something wrong with them, something trivial: Laughs, earlobes or sometimes something legitimate, like their awful personalities.
“Well... it's not certain.” The psychic says, turning and examining a shelf that is cluttered with junk for sale.
“What do you mean?”
“You'll have to find her.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
“And work for it. And live through all kinds of trouble and turmoil.”
My brother pushes off the doorway. “How do we find her?”
“With this...” The reader says, turning and revealing a golden compass. “A magical compass, that'll guide you to true love.”
“And you lost me.” I say, standing and getting ready to leave at the ridiculous thought of magic.
“No, bro, come on. What if this is... Tim! Come back!” But by the time he finishes the sentence I was out the door, more upset than I had been when I came to the carnival.


“Bro, there you are.”
I had been sitting on the field near the airport, looking over the runways. As a child we had frequented the field to watch airshows, but the airport eventually stopped funding them.
“Aaron, stop. I'm just done with you today. I'm done with you in general, really. I have no clue how mom raised you without murdering you, because I'm at the point where I'm ready to disown you as my brother.”
“Dude, you don't mean that. Do ya...?”
“Life would be a lot easier if I really did. I just wish you'd leave me alone for a while...”
“I bought that compass.” He says after a few minutes of quiet. “Wanna see?” He hands it to me, opening the case. The arrow pointed towards the airport. North.
“It's just a broken, normal compass. You wasted your money.”
“Dude, just have fun for once! You're always bringing me down, bro... we went to the carnival and you were in a bad mood. You gotta be one sorry dude to have a bad time at a carnival.”
“Aaron, I'm just sick and tired of the shenanigans that happen all of the time...” A plane begins to take off on the runway. “You drug me to the carnival after our own mother's funeral. That's just ridiculous. I don't know how I managed to--”
“Dude...”
“I'm trying to talk here!”
“DUDE!” Aaron shouts, spinning in circles with the compass.
“WHAT?! What could it possibly be!?” Aaron responds by tossing the compass into my lap. The arrow slowly turns to the west. “Big deal? It's turning.”
“DUUUUUUUUDE!” He groans, turning my head up towards the plane beginning to fly off the runway. I looked back down to the compass. Then back up again.
“The dial's following that plane!”
“Bro, I know! This is legit! Dude! We HAVE to find out where that plane's going.”
I smile, but then sit down again.
“What's up bro?”
“This is ridiculous. I'll never find love. This'll just be some wild goosechase and I'll end up getting hurt.”
“Dude.” Aaron says, looking at me. “If you don't fight that fish then you'll never reel it in. You have to work for it. Bro, we can do this...”
A few moments of silence follow, filled with me considering the silly notion.
“Let's go.” I finally say.

[pyroflasher]

I like the dynamic between the two brothers.

This should be interesting.

[Admin]

So far, you definitely have the best developed characters. I'm interested in learning what makes these characters tick. Good work.

[ProMetaAnaTelo]

“Aaron? Aaron!?” I call out through the busy airport. My brother had left for the bathroom and hadn't reappeared. The flight leaves in three minutes. “Aaron! Where are you?”
I had talked to a buddy of mine who works here and he tracked the flight down to an airbus heading for Pheonix, Arizona. She might have been switching off somewhere from there, but that would have to be something we would find out on arrival. The fact that there were two flights to the same airport in the same day was astounding. I never expect to have that amount of luck ever again.
But, Aaron. A minute and a half left before we are supposed to be on that plane. “Aaron!” I shout again. One minute now.
“Shit, shit, shit...” I mutter to myself.
“Bro, where you been?” Aaron's voice. I spin around to see him eating a bag of Twizzlers. “You gotta get on the plane. We'll miss our flight!”
Scowling furiously, I grab him and rush onto the plane where we quickly find our seats. After just a few minutes we start to take off. Aaron makes multiple attempts to speak to me, but I close my eyes and use the time on the plane to nap. A silent treatment sounds just.

---

“Get off of me, Aaron... Stop. I don't... I don't... quit. Quit it.” Mumbling. So much mumbling. I wave my hand to shoo my brother and tell him to quiet down.
“OH SHIT MAN!”
“That's it.” I wake up, grabbing him. “You need to control yourself. I'm sick and tired of being the big brother here. You nee--” I stop myself, seeing him squirming violently in the chair.
“Nah, bro. Nah, this is bad.”
“What?”
“That guy, Tim... He's bad news.” He says, pointing to a lanky, Caucasian person looking out the window.
“Him?” I ask, making eye contact with my brother. “Him?”
“Yeah... I saw him get up to the bathroom when everyone was sleeping. He had something shiny in his pocket. I think... Bro, I think he's packing heat.”
“You think he has a g--” I look around, not saying the word. “one of those on the plane? He couldn't have gotten anything metal past detection. That's impossible, they check you thoroughly. Nobody could have gotten something like that on a plane.”
“No, bro. He's bad news.”
“Whatever...”
“Bro... I have an idea. Hear me out, okay?”
“No, stop being stupid.”
I curl back up against the wall, trying to return to sleep. Thoughts drift towards the girl on the other plane, the reason I'm in the air on this wild adventure... I wonder what sort of hair she has. Maybe it's wavy, but not too curly. And red. I always had been a sucker for redheads. I smile slightly, imitating the soft lips she has. Her pearly white teeth just barely sparkling through those rosy lips. I bet--
“Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step aside. Sir, please cooperate. I'm an air marshal. Sir...”
“What the hell...?” I mumble, breaking away from the edge of sleep. Peeking over the chairs so slowly I see Aaron talking to the man. “No!” I whisper to myself.
“Sir, please cooperate before I have to use force.”
The man glares at him. Evil. If I didn't know better, I would think he actually was--
“Get back!” The lanky man shouts, pulling out a gun.
“Oh God!” I jerk, flying back into my seat.
“Get back I said! I'll shoot!”
“Sir, please drop that weapon...” Aaron says calmly and officially.
“Where's your gun? Huh, marshal?” The lanky man hisses.
“He's not a marshal, he's just an idiot.” I say, hiding behind the chair in front of me. For strategic positioning, of course.
“Who said that?” He hisses again. Silence. “WHO FUCKING SAID THAT?!”
I slowly raise out from my chair, hands above my head. “Me...”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I'm his brother. He's just a normal guy. Come on... please don't shoot him.”
The lanky man stares at my brother, then spits onto the floor.
“Suck my dick.” Aaron says with a straight face.
“Aaron!” I squeak. Why would anyone in their right mind say that in this situation?
“Brothers? Huh? Come here... uh...”
“Tim.” Aaron says.
“Come here, Tim...”
I slowly inch over, hands still above my head. “Yes? What do you want?”
“Suck his dick.”
Silence.
“Wait, what?” I ask, seeing Aaron's emotionless face.
“Did I stutter? Suck. His. Dick.”
Aaron makes eye contact with me, but keeps a straight face. No words.
“Why?”
“If you don't, I'll shoot both pilots and kill everyone on this plane.”
“Weren't you doing that anyways? Isn't that what terrorists do?”
“Suck his dick. I just wanted money, holding this plane for ransom is all I was going to do.”
I pause, indecisive. Next to me a woman make eye contact, giving me vision into her scared soul. “Please...” She mouths.
“Oh, Lord forgive me.” I say, leaning down onto my knees and unzipping my statue-brother's pants.
“Yeah... You better pray to that Lord of yours that he shaved down south recently.”
I think I'm going to be sick. I can feel the stomach acid gurgling into my throat. I drop Aaron's pants and notice a strange bulge on this side of his crotch. From this position, the terrorist can't see a thing. We are angled sideways, so he is oblivious. I look up at Aaron and he winks with the eye opposite to the terrorist.
Slowly pulling the underwear down, I pause. Then I jerk my hand into his undergarments, half praying for it to be what I think it is.
Out comes a gun. “Okay, get down!” Aaron shouts, grabbing the gun and pointing it at the terrorist. Aaron pulls up a fat woman and uses her mass as a shield. Somehow, I'm less appalled by this action and more amazed at how both of them got guns onto a plane.
“Aaron, what the heck!?” I shout, falling back onto my knees.
The fat woman grabs her heat and goes limp. The three of us in the aisle stop and stare. She had just had a heart attack. I squirm over and check for a pulse and my pantless brother and a terrorist have a wit battle overhead. No pulse. She had died. Moments of silence build up and the discomfort becomes as thick as fog. At least a minute passes.
I open my mouth. “What the heck is going o--”
The a man with a beard flies through the cabin divider, defibrillators in hand. “MOOOOOOOOOVE!” He roars, slamming the paddles into the terrorist's temples. A beep and a shock sound off and the terrorist drops his gun and reels back.
The following events take place in a matter of seconds, all on smooth motion. The bearded man, curls past the terrorist and my brother, falling onto the fat woman and shocking her. My brother throws his gun at the terrorist, smacking him in the face. He then leaps over the fat man, who was between Aaron and the throwing-knife-gun for only a brief second. Aaron tackles the terrorist to the floor and flips him over just as the fat lady shoots up and screams in shock. My brother sees the terrorist reaching for the firearm, so uses the pants around his ankles to clothesline the terrorist and drags them both backwards with his arms.
“Shoot, Tim!”
Then I shoot the terrorist. A completely out of character action. I shoot the terrorist.
I shot someone?
Aaron looks at me, confused.
“You shot someone?” He asks.
“I shot someone.”
“AIR MARSHALL, get down!” I look up. A real air marshall.
“HE SHOT SOMEONE!” The fat lady screams.
Then I pass out.