Writing Practice, May 8 2015
They were trapped underground, and they felt the weight of earth coming down on their heads. The oxygen in the small stupid space they’d concocted was being too quickly replaced by their own quick, panicked breaths. Their legs were already crushed under rock and soil, and the sound of gravity and leverage meant it wouldn’t be long before both brothers of a famous man were truly buried.
“Bye, Torq.” One said to the other. He thought, why did we do this? He’d been thinking that since they’d stopped screaming for help, when the hope ran out and the turquoise stones shon black around them.
The brothers of people you’ve heard of made the news. Every newspaper, checked social media, and information tv in the subway displayed half a sentence or more about a daring and preposterous stunt gone awry. Newscasters and bloggers alike scratched away at the facts and did their best. People with jobs in the field summed up their theories on camera.
The brothers were looking for attention, surely. They were trying to make a statement about something cultural, or political, presumably. They were trying to steal something, perhaps. They knew the truth about something none of us knew the truth about, and tried to do something about it, maybe.
“Those boys were murdered,” a woman with too much fame spoke in a room populated with lawyers and hats.
“There’s no evidence,” a hat said, not to the woman with too much fame, but just aloud. The hat then said what everyone pretty much thought. “They were stupid, and they did a stupid thing.”
“Not my boys,” the woman with too much fame said. She was now the woman with too much fame and two buried sons. She was now two things.