Heavy like chronic heartache, Sunny ran. His feet splintered, his shins metal, he ran so fast he became the brightest illumination in the sky. Brighter than the stars, louder than gunfire; he was all-encompassing, omnipotent. His energy, too stubborn to confine, exploded, and Sunny Matthews rained down on his enemies. For seven days and seven nights, he rained a boisterous, bloody rain, leaving nothing but a blue bandana and a pack of cigarettes in his wake. His sister, Little Ruthie, never stopped looking for him. She wore his bandana around her neck like a coat of arms; she tasted his evanesce, sweet like lemonade. The local kids watched as Ruth walked, barefoot, smoking his cigarettes. She stared at the sun without flinching. They said, “Ruthie Matthews has gone and made herself blind,” but they only knew what they knew. 

Night after night, Ruth fell asleep staring at the ceiling. As her eyes screwed themselves shut, she saw him: Sunny, burns and bones, his mouth turned up in a rotten scowl. She laid, silent, as he took pieces of her skin to paste onto himself. She held her breath as she decayed from the outside in.

“Morning, Ruthie,” he said, his breath ferric.

“Night, Sunny,” she echoed, wiping red from the fissure of his mouth. 

She waited for him with her palms faced up, and if he didn’t show, she carved out pieces of herself and left them on the windowsill.

“Sister, sister,” he roared, collecting her trophies.

“Brother, brother,” she cooed in a drunken reply. 

Their mother watched from the doorway. Her blonde hair, wrapped in strict a bun, was made of laden honey. Her eyes, black as coal, were pits of oblivion, letting her see what others couldn’t. She saw her children, limbs dangling off childhood sheets, guffawing at the ambivalent darkness. She watched her son steal from his sister, and her daughter fold into herself, cursed with waiting for him as she laughed at her own repetition. When they were young, they’d lay horizontal on Ruthie’s bed, squealing and pointing at the ceiling, creating pictures out of white paint. When they were young, they stomped on the precipice, communed with mud; they reached out for immortality as it slipped through their fingers. Their virginities gave them courage and bestowed blemished armor upon them, the brother and his little ducking. Sunny was bigger, louder, phlegmatic. Ruth was timorous, terrified of her own shadow, heavy. Their mother knew Sunny would fly, leaving Ruthie to mold wings from papier-mâché.

Ruth depended on her candy. Valium. Restoril. Abilify. She begged for it in the early morning when the sun filtered her room fluorescent and past midnight when her vision deceived her. She called for candy when she felt her brother trace his fingers along her face.

“Candy, candy, candy,” she chanted. 

Her mother watched from the doorway, listening to the heartbeat of her diabolical daughter. She held her rosary so tight it stitched itself to her skin, implanting permanent grooves. Her dress, loose and flout, covered every inch of her body. Ruth wondered what her mother, the woman in white, was hiding. Was she carved hollow too? Ruined?

“Give me candy,” Ruth bellowed, her mane tangled, her face wet with desperation. She kicked and screamed and flung her body into contortion. Her mother thought, how beautiful was her creation, her only daughter: the fish out of water. “Candy, candy, candy.”

Ruth’s mother tightened her daughter’s restraints knowing she couldn’t soothe the calamity. Sunny had taken her voice and she’d given Ruthie what remained of her sanity. She could only kneel, her knees a blackish blue, in front of the cross. Storms quenched her perpetual thirst and the body of Christ kept her full. She ingested His words, though her prayers proved fruitless. Ruthie only wanted candy.

“Mama, candy. Candy, Mama.” Ruth balled her hands into fists as she crumbled against her soiled mattress. “I need to see Sunny. I have to tell Sunny.”

Sunny, who ran away. Sunny, who forgot his cigarettes and favorite bandana. Sunny, who didn’t leave a map behind. Sunny, who, for five seconds, was the universe’s firework, the brightest being in the sky. Sunny, who could take and take and take and still want more. Sunny, the one He gifted wings.

Sunny, who had gone and killed himself.

Her mother shook the bottle and Ruth’s insides crooned. A coldness washed over her as the candy melted into her bloodstream. She smiled: “Sunny.”