BRO STRIDER:

This writing sample is dated: 09/09/22.

Anguished screaming tears through Bro’s subconscious like a hot knife through butter. He jolts and bounds forward, on his feet before awareness begins to nibble at the mangled edges of consciousness. Bro’s heart beats a frantic staccato against his ribs as he ducks down into a protective crouch, his arms pulled in tight against his body. His eyes dart from one frenzied corner of the room to the next, agitatedly searching for the source of the awful bleating and crying.

It’s not here. It’s not in this room.

Bro jerkily sucks in shallow breaths as he makes for the hallway. He’s in his apartment, in the living room. He’d been stationed on the couch and he must have drifted off because he doesn’t remember falling asleep. The last thing he recalls is — is — dying? “Shit,” he says, his voice monotone with a calm he doesn’t feel. All he knows is that there was a pimped-out orange Dave, sleek with feathers and a cry not unlike the soon-to-be-dead thing screeching down the hall.

His legs trip over nothing, oxygen, and Bro stumbles; his arms snap out and he grabs whatever’s nearest – the 60” tv. It tips unsteadily under his weight before pitching forward and crashing at his feet with the kind of noise that would haunt Bro’s dreams if there weren’t something else giving it a run for its money. “Motherfucker, ” Bro grunts, his eyes narrowing beneath his shades as he shakily runs a hand through his hair.

This was not how he imagined his day going. His afterlife? Fuck if he knows, is he even alive?

There’s a hollow ache growing inside him. It’s accompanied by a nagging thought that has him hooking his fingers up under his polo shirt and yanking it up and off his shoulders. Instead of the tanned, lightly scarred chest he’s used to, there’s hard-to-miss healing scar tissue. It’s centered on his chest and vividly pink, almost as raw as he’s sure it was when there was a sword impaled in him. Bro scrapes a thumbnail over it and feels nothing but pressure. The nerves are dead then, he thinks idly, but I might be alive.

Huh, well that’s something, but it doesn’t explain the — the screaming cuts off as abruptly as it began and Bro hesitates only a moment before flash-stepping and stumbling down the thin length of the hallway. His legs feel like weights are strapped to them, but that doesn’t stop him from kicking in the door like it’s wet cardboard. He aims for the hinges and it unhooks itself from the frame with a crunch that has him grinding his teeth together.

Bird Dave is inside, now with a solitary wing and a sword buried deep in his chest like it’s a style that’s catching. His face is contorted into a gruesome rictus, his talons spread across his expression like he’s trying to catch the look of acute horror and lock it back inside. Bro can feel the way his heart hammers against his chest, can see it’s mirrored inside of Dave like they’re part of the world’s worst horror club and they’re badly failing the intake.

“Sup, kid?” Bro croaks out, his voice rough but riding on deadened nerves. He says it like any of this is normal, like he regularly intrudes on bird boys losing their shit the loudest way possible. His ears are still ringing and Bro thinks he’ll hear those deafening screams for the rest of his life. Not a great way to start the morning (or was it afternoon?), but hell, he’s had worse.

“Scale of one to ten,” Bro continues and his voice evens out into something more normal as he speaks, “Four. Your impression of an alarm clock leaves a lot to be desired. It was like you took a ripe, stinking dump all over my pancakes and, I gotta say, I didn’t love it.” He places extra emphasis on the “t” and slowly rolls an eyebrow, though it doesn’t peek up over the length of his shades. “So what’s with all the shrieking? Could have sworn a crow took a punch to the solar plexus.”

It’s been a hell of a day. Bro’s been cooped up in his studio for the majority of it, rocking little to no clothing as he experiments with unconventional niche kinks for his online audience. He’s an alpha that’s unafraid to play where others dare not follow and they eat it up like candy. Sitting on a knotted toy when he’s just not meant for such things makes for delicious content and there’s an endless stream of patrons with a plethora of suggestions they’re willing to pay him to see. Bro racks up hundreds of dollars with one livestream, not that he needs the money when his smuppet industry makes thousands a month.

Locking the door to his studio behind him, Bro strides over to the bathroom clad in only a pair of orange boxers. They drop to the floor with a flutter of cloth seconds after he shuts the door. Kicking them into his laundry basket, Bro turns on the shower and takes a minute to adjust the temperature until it’s steaming hot. He hisses as he steps under the spray, his shoulders immediately relaxing under the beating water pressure. Giving himself a moment to just enjoy it, Bro wonders at how quiet the day’s been. Usually he’s heard something from his kid sibling by now (even if it’s just the sound of their wandering around the apartment) and that he hasn’t is a little weird.

Bro’s shower is quick and soon enough, he’s drying himself off and stepping out of the tub. Wrapping his towel around his waist, he knots it at the side and steps from the bathroom to the kitchen. The fridge opens with a cacophony of shitty swords that he quickly captchalogs before reaching for the orange juice in the door drawer. Bro pours himself a glass before throwing it back, gulping down the sweet juice and wetting his whistle. He discards his cup in the sink before returning the OJ and shitty swords back to the fridge.

It’s a quick trip down the hall to his sibling’s room. Bro knocks his knuckles sharply against the door and says, “Hey kid, you alive in there or am I going to have to drag your ass out of bed?” When there’s not an immediate response, Bro’s brows furrow. Clearing his throat, he knocks a second and then a third time before reaching for the door knob. It’s unlocked and the door easily opens, Bro steps into the room and it feels like he’s walking into a physical barrier of scent. It practically knocks him off his feet, has him salivating and his own smell stinking up the room in a small explosion of burnt wires, leather, and oranges.

Bro can hardly recognize himself anymore. He’s still the same person deep down, but he’s better, more responsible, and always learning. Even more significant, he’s happier than he’s ever been and Bro’s not sure how that happened because he’s always assumed he’d peaked with his raider career. He’s got a baby turned toddler now, something he never thought would feasibly happen after having turned his back on the last one. He’d been impossibly young at the time and Bro can’t fathom having stayed, but his time with Dave has made him regret his hasty decision to run.

Running seems to be what he’s best at – Bro’s made a career of it. He’s been doing it his whole life, from the earliest ages as a street rat to his first dalliance, and even still with all the drugs he was using to distract himself from an unhappy reality. It’s only Dave coming into his life, injured due to his own carelessness, that shook him from his stupor into sobriety. The raiders had hardly been accommodating, especially with all the noise Dave had a tendency to make at all hours of the night, and Bro had chosen to leave before they grew enough of a thought to make him.

Traveling the wastes with an injured baby and only a handful of caps hadn’t been easy. It’d only been the spare psycho and jet he’d stocked up on that’d eased their way. The withdrawal had eaten away at him within days, and Bro had been a shaking, miserable mess as he made his way into Harley’s settlement. A screaming Dave had been strapped to his chest, covered in dirt and dried vomit from Bro’s violent retching. He’d been lucky that the only people to cross his path had minded their business after bartering, that’d it only been mongrels that he’d staggered across instead of something more sentient like a super mutant.

Harley’s children had been immediately suspicious of him. They’d wanted to take Dave, but despite the sweat pouring into his eyes, Bro had protested and eventually leveled a gun to them to make his point. It’d been Harley himself who’d smoothed it over, clarifying to a shaking Bro that they wanted a doctor to look them both over, but that children as young as Dave were especially vulnerable. It wasn’t often that someone as untrusting as Bro was set at ease, but Harley’s twinkling eyes and jovial laugh managed it.

Even half out of his mind, Bro’d still refused to pass Dave over. Harley had taken the hint with a bark of a laugh and sent his children scurrying for a cot to carry Bro and Dave in rather than make him walk the rest of the way to the doctor. The rest was history after that. Bro’d gotten the help he needed; Dave had stayed with Harley while Bro finally stopped fighting his withdrawal symptoms. It’d been messy, uncomfortable, but Harley had been there to flirt with and Dave made the occasional appearance when Bro asked after him.

It was easier after that. Bro’d become a part of the community, returning to his sewing roots to tailor clothes for the folks of Harley’s settlement. He’d learned what it meant to rear a child and received tips from other parents who saw him struggling. The first year had been the hardest, but it became easier as Dave aged and grew a personality of his own.

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