Swansong Read Online Free

“How?”
    “In prison.”  He puts the car in reverse.  “They’re not going to just let you sit around in your cell all day.  They make you work.  I built cars, power plants.  Bombs, too.”
    “ Bombs ?” I sputter.
    He smiles a half-smile at the look on my face.  “Don’t look at me.  Take it up with UNICOR.”
    Without my realizing it, he’s distracted me from my fear.  I look out the window.  We’re already on the road.  In and out, in and out, I breathe deeply.  My brother built this car with his own two hands.  Maybe this one won’t explode.
    “You paint?” Judas asks me.  His arms are long and scarred.  His hand rests on the steering wheel when the traffic light stops us.
    I rub my quaking hands.  I squeeze them between my knees.  I smile at him, or try.  “Yeah.”
    “What’s the last thing you painted?”
    I falter.  It feels like gravity’s pulling against me with all its might.  “A dolphin.”
    “You like dolphins?”
    “No.  Joss does.”  Did.  Joss did.
    The light turns green.  Judas drives.  I don’t expect him to say anything to me.  But then—
    “Close your eyes.”
    “W-What?”
    “Close them,” he says.  “We’re going to pass the crash site.  I don’t want you to see.”
    I close my eyes.  I bury my face against my hands.  Darkness falls over me.  If not for the squealing of tires on gravel, the clicking of the car’s lighting system, I can pretend I’m in my bedroom late at night.  I can pretend I’m only sleeping.  I’m having one very long nightmare, and I can’t wake up.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Judas drives us right into The Spit.  Tall white buildings, bulky and plastic, cast shadows on my window.  Big-name corporations have jammed their neon advertisements on every inch of available space: on the bus stops, on the overpasses, on the plastic buildings themselves, a plastic city of plastic values.  “Internet too slow?  Switch to Phantasma!”  “Binder & Gamble, for all your Small Claims needs.”  The streets are smooth and charcoal gray.  I wonder that no one found a way to smother those in advertisements, too.
    “You live in The Spit?” I ask Judas.
    He rounds the corner.  We drive past a shiny metal dome—I’ve always wondered what it’s for.
    “You said you go to school here,” he responds.
    Then he moved here for me.  “I didn’t think…”
    I feel dizzy.  I don’t know what’s doing it: the skyscrapers, or the kindness of a stranger.  And then I remember that my brain’s broken, so likely, it’s neither.
    Judas pulls us into an underground parking tunnel.  I hold my breath and I don’t know why.  Dim orange lamps permeate the grungy darkness.  He pulls us into a spot beside a stone pillar.
    “C’mon,” he says.
    We get out of the car.  My heart’s beating a mile a minute.  We walk the sloping incline up to the sidewalk.  I breathe with relief when the muted sun touches my face, blustery, gray-white clouds dancing in the sky.
    Judas’ apartment building is right down the block.  Smothered in angry graffiti, it looks like it’s on the brink of collapse.  A dog sits chained up outside, barking at us.  He looks underfed.  I wish I had something to feed to him.
    I follow Judas in thr ough the weak wooden door, up the stairwell, the banisters feeble, the carpet bloated.  It’s almost as dark in here as it was in the parking lot.  I wish I could hold onto the back of Judas’ shirt.  But I don’t want to be a child; and my brother is a stranger.  My brother is a murderer.
    A murderer has custody of me.  How did that happen?
    I ask him—in not so many words.  He pulls out his apartment key when we reach the top of the landing.
    He answers me.  “The justice system gives preferential treatment to biological families.  I went away for manslaughter.  If it had been murder, you’d be in foster care right now.”
    I thank him; and I mean it.
    “Told you not to thank me.  Go