Carlisle

When I was nine, my father and I used to smoke at the back of the house with two packs of cigarette. One was for him and one was for me. It was my first time lighting up a stick on my mouth. The first few tries led me to coughing and wheezing but as months grew I was already a pro. It was sickening how young I was when I started smoking.
My mother complained a lot about my father and my smoking escapades. We loved to smoke together and talk about politics, religion and science. We even debated if aliens ever existed and my father would say, “In an alternate universe, maybe.” I was ten when we talked about physics—may it be modern or theoretical. He loved Schrodinger’s cat and the idea of it because he was inviting the fact that maybe in another universe he was a wealthy man.
I only nodded because I was ten and when I was ten I only learned about plants and animals and the ecosystem. I wasn’t the curious one but my father always were. My mother would sometimes escape from their intelligent conversations because she loved mathematics but not theories of dead scientists.
My mother died two years later. I was eleven. My father raised me like a father should do. He was good. He taught me smoking could kill me but we didn’t stop smoking. Instead we lit up one once a week. I was fine. He was fine.
When I was eleven, my father met Morella. She was the owner of the Morella Linen and she had a twelve-year-old son. He had green eyes and freckles were dusted at the bridge of his nose. He had sandy blond hair and he wore awkward braces. He was scrawny.
Morella and my father married after the year of relationship they had together. I couldn’t say sparks flew but I knew they loved each other. I wasn’t a hopeless romantic. Father taught me to be real and that words were ideas that we might fall in love with.
Morella was good. And so was her son Samuel.
I was thirteen and he was fourteen. Samuel and I weren’t close but when there were times Morella and dad went out, I would talk to him about physics and Schrodinger’s cat. I would offer him a cigarette but he would decline.
I lit up one.
“Do you believe in alternate universes?” I asked once when Morella took my dad to buy a tie for Christmas.
Samuel just stared at me. Maybe he was too young to understand the wonders of the universe. He shrugged and coughed when I blew a puff of air his way.
“Do you believe you’d get lung cancer?” he said, scrunching his nose in disgust. He walked away.
He didn’t believe life shouldn’t be wasted on the good things. Life should be wasted on the bad.
But things changed and Samuel had become such a handsome man. He was twenty and I was nineteen. I was sexually attracted to him. I didn’t see him as my step brother. He was just a person who I was living under the same roof with him. My father passed away and I cried because I would miss talking to him about physics and Schrodinger’s cat.
Nobody understood me except him because everyone thought I was a gothic weirdo nerd. But I didn’t give a crap about them.
It was night time and it was the night after his burial. Morella cried. She really loved him. Samuel didn’t shed a tear for father but the way he pursed his lips was a dead giveaway that he was somehow became attached with my father.
“Carlisle,” Morella called my name. Her eyes were rimmed red.
I only stared at her green eyes. She hugged me tightly and she cried on my shirt. I didn’t know what else to do other than rub small circles at her back. She let me go and gave me an awkward smile and left, leaving Samuel and I in the cemetery.
“I’m sorry that you lost Charles,” Samuel said but his tone wasn’t as sympathetic as his mother was.
“I’m sorry that you will lose Morella, too,” I answered in a cracked voice. I was about to walk away. I needed to forget father’s death. I needed to immerse myself in physics and Schrodinger’s cat. But Samuel’s hand convinced me, he convinced me to stay with him inside his apartment.
He was majoring in chemistry. I was majoring in physics.
He led me inside his dusty apartment, large boxes scattering everywhere. He sheepishly sent me a smile and I shrugged. He pushed the boxes away and grabbed two bottles of beer.
I never drank any liquor.
I needed to smoke.
“Beer?” he offered. I shook my head.
He grabbed a box of cigarette in his pocket and threw it to me, gesturing me to light up one.
I did.
“I started smoking when I was nine,” I said, my mouth in a whisper. Tears fell. I missed my father.
“I started smoking yesterday,” Samuel replied. He was good. He was twenty and he never did things that a nine-year-old should not do.
“You’re too good,” I whispered. Samuel drew his brows.
“Nicotine makes you addicted,” he answered. He knew, of course, for he majored in chemistry.
“And the gravity of your words will never affect me,” I only threw as a comeback.
“Charles isn’t a good father,” he said. “He taught you bad things—“
“Because life is like that. Bad things should be taught in order to realize something good in it.”
He went silent and I smiled in triumph. Father taught me well.
“Is Morella a good mother?” I asked. “Did she do something for you? If she was, she would be asking if you were fine right now.”
He still went silent. It was true. Morella might be kind but she didn’t make an effort of making time for him because all she did was work.
Father taught me well.
“Carlisle,” he hissed but it made me uncomfortable. The way my mouth sounded from his tongue was eliciting pleasures on my core.
I was nineteen. He was twenty. He was my stepbrother.
This wasn’t what I wanted. This was bad but I wanted a taste of him.
So Samuel kissed me and I kissed back until everything became a haze.
I woke up seeing he was already gone from his bed. He was cooking breakfast with a grim look on his face. I knew he regretted the sex. I didn’t.
“You need to get out of my life,” he said angrily, almost pushing me to the door of his apartment.
“I know,” was all I answered.
And I left. Not because I didn’t like him but because I didn’t want pain.
Father forgot to teach me that some bad things would only cause me pain. I loved him until we grew together. He was never mine to be with and I was never his. I was not enough to be his wife.
He was good and I was bad. I was not a trophy wife, a walking tiara. I was a bad habit.
And so I, Carlisle, left.