Incinerated

My breath comes quick as I run, short, fast.
Running is the only way to escape. Has been for thousands of years, probably way more than that.
And so I run. I run for time to myself, to feel exhausted, to maybe stop breathing one day. That's why I run.
Many a time I've been begged by my mother not to. I wake up a four to run, she wakes up at six to make breakfast. When I've returned from my run she's there, waiting, she begs me not to run. I don't give in, but I don't try to make her happy about my running, either. But then my father comes into the room seeking breakfast and grumbles, leave the poor girl alone.
I run for Q. Q for Quain.
Quain was my big brother, he was. He played with me, taught me half the things I know, and told me the truth.
That was the most important thing. He told me the truth.
No matter how incredibly hard to bear it was, he always told me the truth. And before he was taken, he told me, whispered it, breathing shallowly in the dark as our house creaked; you are not alone.
And then he was gone.
Incinerated.
My brother was, without a doubt, incinerated by someone.
I think it was the government, because he was a known suicidal, and our Uncle is on the council. He probably wanted to save the family from shame by killing Quain before Quain could kill himself.
Of course, Uncle Adalric simply didn't understand that without Quain here, I would shame our family. He didn't understand that he had to get rid of both of us or neither of us in order for our household to be in balance.
There were other choices for fixing a suicidal, of course.
If you had enough money, you could send them in to Therapy, which was a big white building a few blocks down from the council hall. I was terrified of it, partly because of its appearance, partly because you had to have a password to get in, and mostly because of the truth Quain told me about it.
In Therapy you don't actually recover, because the government could care less if you died or not. What they do is make a clone of the patient, and insert everything from the patient's mind into the clone except for the suicidal tendencies. Then they have the clone stay for a few weeks so it seems like they're actually recovering, and then send them home.
Of course, there are all these suicidal people left, right? So what happens to them, you ask?
The government throws them in a maze full of weapons and other people and they either kill each other or kill themselves. And then they're gone. Gone, there's nothing you can do to get them back after that.
My brother was not sent to Therapy, I know that much. But now I don't know who to trust, because Quain's not here.
And so I run.
Now, I run outside of the city, which is illegal. And since being outside of the city is illegal, all the old buildings out there are riddled with resistance movements. The graffiti on the walls shows just that. It's guided me through the streets, with words like, to the right you may die, but to the left you may thrive, many of them rhyming couplets. The graffiti comes from various groups, many of them responsible for seemingly random attacks on trains and other vehicles bringing supplies into the cities from farms and going between cities with people in them. They mostly attacked supply trains, but occasionally attacked people.
That's why we live in the city now. Because of the attacks.
You see, when Dad was a kid, Uncle Adalric left home for the city. Dad was fourteen, and Adalric was seventeen. After failing to convince Dad's parents to move the family into the city, Adalric left, telling Dad to take care of their parents. So Dad stayed. He stayed to take care of Oma and Opa, and then he got married to Mum, and they were going to leave after Opa died of a heart attack, but then Caela was born. She was my oldest sister, born a few years before Quain. Two years after Quain's birth I was born, and when Mum and Dad found out they were expecting a fourth child, they immediately prepared to move to the city. The day before they were going to leave, another attack was launched on the town. This time five people were injured, and two killed. The dead were Oma and Caela, who had only been nine at the time. Quain was six and I was four when we left. The funeral was held the same day of their deaths, and Dad decided we would leave that night instead of the next day, for we were all anxious to get out of the kill zone.
As Quain grew, he kept asking Dad to let him join the resistance, but Dad would argue and say no, you don't understand them, and the two would only cease their arguments when Mum begged Dad to stop and Quain would come upstairs angrily and sit down on his bed, placing his head in his hands, and then he'd whisper a truth, his breath short and his hands shaking as the house creaked.
And he knew I was awake. He didn't used to, but the first time he whispered a truth in the dead of night, I slid out of bed and asked him what he was talking about. He had been twelve, so I was ten. Quain was six or seven inches taller than me then, and that's what enhanced the big brother affect from him. The first truth he whispered wasn't that surprising, and it didn't hurt as much as you would have expected. In the dark that night, as the house creaked around us, and he sat there staring at the floor through his shaking hands, the cross hanging from his neck glinting from the weak light of a lamp. He whispered slowly, his breath short, we live in a world of lies. And honestly, I knew that, even in my young age. But I wanted to know why, like all children do. And so I slid out of bed and climbed onto my brother's lap and he told me about the truths without skipping a beat. Then he sent me back to bed and whispered goodnight as he turned off the lamp, and his eyes shined through the darkness as he laid down in his bed across the room. Seven year old Alai slept peacefully on his mattress just a few feet away from me, and a few more feet away lay Maeve's four year old frame, rolling over in her sleep. And for five years after that, Quain would tell me a truth as Alai and Maeve slept peacefully. And as I fell asleep each night, Quain would whisper prayers, and once I swear I saw his ghost praying over me. And some time after he left, an envelope was left on our doorstep, the words for Ailie scrawled in Quain's handwriting across the front. When I returned from my run I saw it, and I saw a dark figure receding into the darkness. I was stupid enough to call out, but they did not respond, so I picked up the envelope and brought it in, and that morning Mum's begging was halted by the envelope resting in my hand. I'm sixteen, and it's been exactly a year since Quain was incinerated. And now, the envelope. Strange things have been happening this past year, and this is by far the strangest of all. To some it would be seen as a last wish that had only been recently carried out, to others a sign Quain was still alive, but I wasn't sure what to think. And I was only more confused when I opened the envelope, Mum watching in silence, and found the cross necklace Quain had worn. Actually, it was a little different. Quain's had the inscription QAL, while this cross read ALL. It took me a moment to realize it was my initials, at which point I clasped the chain around my neck. Mum still stood at the stove, silently tending the porridge. Dad came downstairs then, confused as to why we hadn't been arguing. He saw the cross resting on my collarbones and smiled a little as he sat down.
And others looked at my cross, too. And I started praying. And that's when my life changed. I run to be free, not to die. I ran to rebel, not to tire myself out.
And again, I ran.