Trainwreck

Garrett laughed. "Right, well, that's not what I was referring to."

"Oh. Then what is it?"

"Well...I smell you, Autumn. Your room, not surprisingly, smells just like you."

"Oh," she said, looking a bit confused and slightly offended. "You mean you smell me in, like, a stinky way?"

Garrett sighed. "No. I mean like in a I wanna crawl up into a ball and die kinda way."

A look of understanding crossed her face. "I see," she said simply. They stayed quiet for a bit, Garrett choosing not to enter just yet. "Is it bad that I'm strangely flattered by that?" Autumn asked eventually.

"You mean at my misery at your scent?" Garrett asked.

"Yes."

Garrett shrugged. "I'll give you a pass. Only because you're dead, though."

"That's fair."

Eventually, Garrett stepped slowly into the room and sat down on the bed beside Autumn. "Where do I even begin?" he asked, feeling overwhelmed at all the stuff around him.

"Start off by going to get some trash bags and boxes," Autumn suggested. "No point in cleaning out my room if you don't have somewhere to put all the crap you come across."

"Boxes?" Garrett asked. "Where I am supposed to get boxes from?"

Autumn sighed in frustration. "Do you have no accountability of your possessions? We have boxes, and lots of them."

"Where do we live, Home Depot? Where do we have a bunch of boxes stored? In the giant warehouse we keep in the backyard or something?"

Autumn rolled her eyes. "After we moved in," she began with a tone of annoyance, "I told you that I took all the boxes we used, broke them down, and stacked them neatly in the garage. That way we could use them again when and if one of us decided to move out."

"That was...very thoughtful of you, actually," Garrett admitted.

"Duh! Now go get them, and don't forget to grab some trash bags, too." Garrett left and returned quickly with the boxes and bags, dropping them on the now empty bed. Autumn had gotten up and was now standing over her computer desk, looking down at her old things.

"Is it weird for you?" he asked, moving to stand beside her.

"A little, I guess," Autumn replied. "Part of me feels sad and nostalgic looking at my old stuff. Another part really doesn't feel anything at all, which is sad in itself."

"I get that." Garrett sat down in her desk chair and slowly started going through her things one at a time. There were sticky notes everywhere, each with different lists on them that had been partially crossed off. Other than that, most of what was on the desk was basic stationary items and a few old framed pictures.

"Hey, I remember this!" Garrett exclaimed as soon as he opened the first drawer to her desk. He reached in and pulled out a small stuffed blue octopus. "I won this old thing for you when we were kids!"

"You sure did," Autumn replied.

"I remember we were at some dingy old arcade in the mall or something. I was like, nine, maybe? We walked in, and out of all the prizes that were kept behind the counter, for some reason you immediately became fixated on the blue octopus. Mom had given us each five dollars in quarters to play games with. You were trying so hard to win enough tickets to get it. You tried skee ball, Street Fighter, Pac-Man...but you were only seven years old, and, well, sucked at all those things. You didn't even come close to getting enough tickets."

Autumn laughed. "Yeah, playing arcade games was not my strength. Lucky for me my big brother was there to save the day."

"Yeah, Whac-A-Mole! I was on fire that day! Whack! Bam! Thump!" Garrett recounted, hammering his fist down on the desk as he spoke.

"Remember how I stood by you and rallied you the whole time? Like some sort of little cheerleader?"

"Yeah I remember. It helped, strangely, knowing that you were watching me. Gave me special whacking powers or something."

"You won just enough tickets to get that octopus for me. I was nervous that when you gave the man your tickets you were going to change you mind and get something for yourself instead, but you didn't."

"I almost did, though. There was a G.I. Joe with my name on it. But I couldn't do that to you, even if you were just my bratty little sister."

"Gee, thanks."

Garrett held the octopus in his hands and gazed down at it. "You really kept it this whole time?"

"Of course I did. Little Garrett Jr."

"Oh yeah, I forgot that's what you named it!" Garrett laughed. He held onto it for a bit longer, thinking back on random and distorted memories from their childhood before laying the octopus down gingerly on top of the desk. He continued to go through the drawers until all the stuff was sorted into its proper location.

"Alright, well I think that'll just about do it here," he said as he scanned the rest of her room. "What do you suggest I tackle next?"

Autumn thought briefly. "Maybe try the closet?" she offered. "I'm not gonna lie though, it's a bit of a mess."

She was, of course, correct. As soon as Garrett opened the doors to her closet, a small avalanche of items fell from the top down to his feet. He began sorting through the objects, most of which were old shoes that she had never gotten rid of for some reason. A couple of things went into his 'keep' pile, such as old photos, yearbooks, and the like.

"What's this? he asked, picking up a small, glittery pink book with a large "A" on the cover.

"Oh, just some more old trash," Autumn replied, her voice sounding suddenly shaky.

Garrett opened the first page, letting his eyes briefly scan the contents. "It's your diary!" he exclaimed with excitement. "I didn't know you had a diary, Autumn!"

Without warning, the diary suddenly flung violently out of his hand, smacking the wall and falling to the floor. "It's my private journal, actually," Autumn corrected, "and I'd appreciate it if you just put it straight into the trash bag."

"Why?" Garrett asked, reaching down to pick it up once more.

"Because it's private," she repeated.

"But...you're dead."

"Are dead people not entitled to privacy? Doesn't exactly seem fair."

Garrett looked sideways at her, then once again opened the cover. Just as before, the book flew out of his hand, this time landing in a spot even farther away.

"Come on, Autumn, what's the big deal?"

"I've had that thing since I was, like, twelve years old. I don't even remember what all I've written in there. There are probably things that I never intended on having another person know about. Especially my big brother."

"Just let me look at a few pages. If I start reading something that you think is too private or whatever, just tell me and I'll quickly turn the page."

"I don't know..."

"Please, Autumn? I just...I miss you so much. I've felt so disconnected from you since you've been gone, and somehow reading your diary would make me feel close to you again. How can you deny me that after all I've been through this year? Heck, after all I've been through today."

Autumn frowned at her brother. "Are you using your sadness from my death to justify reading my private thoughts?"

"Maybe," he admitted with a smile.

"Ugh, fine!" she relented. "But like you said, if I say turn the page, you do it immediately. And when we're done, it goes straight in the trash. No keeping it to comb through later after I'm gone. Got it?"

"Got it!" Garrett said excitedly as he picked up the diary and sat down on the bed. Autumn positioned herself behind him so she could look over his shoulder as he read.

"Alright, page one," Garrett began as he opened the book. He read the date and did some quick math in his head. "So you were twelve years old when you wrote this." He began reading aloud. "Hey journal, it's me, Autumn. Life sucks. I just got my first period today-" Garrett stopped and looked back at his sister. "I think I'll just turn the page," he said, grabbing several pages at once and skipping ahead in time.

"You don't want to hear about my first period?" Autumn laughed.

"Um...maybe some other time." He looked down at the fresh page and scanned it briefly. "This could be good," he began. "It's four years later, so you were sixteen." He began reading aloud once again. "Today was a weird day. Not a good weird, either. My brother just left for college, and I don't know how to feel about it. The good thing is that now I don't have to share a bathroom with him anymore and deal with the clumps of hair he always leaves in the shower drain." He paused and looked questioningly at Autumn.

"Oh yeah, you did that," she confirmed with a nod. "Still do, actually."

"Oh...sorry," he replied before continuing to read. "The bad part is that he's been, like, my best friend for as long as I can remember. I don't think I've ever told him that, and I doubt he feels the same way about me, but it's true. I'm kinda freaking out about what I'm supposed to do with myself now that he's gone." He stopped and looked back at his sister. "I didn't know you felt that way when I left," he said to her.

She shrugged. "I did," she said simply.

Garrett smiled. "Now I'm the one that feels flattered at your pain." He kept reading. "Honestly, this whole summer I've been feeling kind of funny about him. He's always been a great brother and a great friend, but there are these feelings I've been having-" The book suddenly flew out of his grasp and landed on the floor.

"Done with that page," Autumn said simply.

"Why?" Garrett whined. "It was just starting to get interesting."

"Exactly the point of stopping."

"What were the feelings?"

"Nope."

Garrett sighed. "Does it even matter at this point?" he asked. "In the end, we both ended up having inappropriate urges towards one another. What's the big deal if you were having them a little earlier than you let on?"

"It wasn't just urges. It wasn't even a physical thing," Autumn explained. "I mean, there may have been a few physical feelings, sure, but it was more than that. I don't really know how to explain."

Garrett picked the journal up off the floor. "I bet sixteen year old Autumn could do a good job explaining it to us," he said.

"Look," Autumn began once more. "Did I write something about having slightly romantic feelings towards you in my journal? Yes. Am I embarrassed about it in this moment? I am, as much as a dead girl can feel that emotion. Do I know why I feel that way? No."

"Can you not do the ask a question and answer it yourself thing?"

"The point is," Autumn continued, "I did feel things for you at that point in time. After you left, I went into this sort of depressed funk about it, but soon after I got over it and moved on. Can we just leave it at that and not revisit the exact words in the journal?"

Garrett slumped his head. "Fine," he agreed reluctantly. "So you really got over me then?" he asked, feeling slightly disappointed.

"Yeah, but only after you had been gone a few months. I purposely got a boyfriend just for that reason. Having someone else to focus on helped put you out of my mind."

"I get that," Garrett said with a nod. "I wonder if you had just told me about it...do you think we would have started up sooner than we did?"

"Do you think you would have returned my feelings?"

Garrett shrugged. "I honestly don't know. But if I did, we may have actually gotten a chance to have sex before you died, and that would have been nice."

"Indeed it would have," Autumn agreed.

Garrett turned his attention back to the journal. "Can I keep reading? Something different, of course."

"Umm, maybe just one more page."

"Well, in that case, I'm going for the most recent," he said as he turned to the very last page with writing on it. "Holy crap, this was just a month before you died! I didn't know you had written in it so recently. I thought this was just, like, through high school or something."

"It mostly is. I picked it back up after you and I started living together, actually."

Garrett scanned the page. "This one seems to be about me, too. You mind?" he asked, looking to Autumn for permission.

She thought about it for a moment. "I guess it's fine," she relented.

"Do you remember what it's about?"

"Oh yeah, I remember," she replied in a sheepish sort of way.

"And what is that supposed to mean exactly?" Garrett asked.

She gestured towards the journal. "Just read and you'll find out."

"It's two o'clock in the morning," he began aloud, "and I'm laying in my bed all in a tizzy. I have been very strict on what I will allow myself to do and not do with Garrett, but fuuuuuccccck I'm horny." He turned slowly to Autumn and grinned. "Yeah, baby!" he exclaimed.

"Just keep reading, dork."

"I don't know what to do," he continued reading. "I don't want to cross any boundaries with my brother too soon. I'm so scared that something bad will happen between us and things will never be the same again. But oh my god I want him so bad! I've fingered myself to orgasm like five times tonight just to try and take the edge off, but if anything it's just gotten worse. Maybe I need to get myself a dildo? But even then I don't know if it would satiate my lust for him. All I've let us do so far is make out, and I think I'm becoming a victim of my own rules. I am soooo close to just going into his room right now and letting him fuck the shit out of me, but I know that would be bad. We are just not ready for that yet. What do I do? Oh fuck, what do I do!?" Garrett took a deep breath and looked once more at his sister. "You almost came into my room that night?" he asked with an edge of disappointment to his voice.

"Yeah, almost," she admitted. "Sorry baby, I know it's probably hard to read that."

He nodded. "It is in a way, but it also makes me feel better."

"How so?"

"You had such self control the whole time we were in a relationship. There was always a nagging part of me that wondered if you even wanted me like that."

"Oh, I fucking wanted you, Garrett," Autumn confirmed. "This was not an isolated incident, either. There were a lot of nights I almost went into your room and jumped your bones. Rationality, unfortunately, got the better of me each time. Hell, at this point I don't even know how rational it was. Maybe the more rational thing to do would have been to just give in to my urges."

"Damn," Garrett said simply.

"Damn, indeed," Autumn agreed. They sat in silence for a bit longer. Eventually, as promised, Garrett threw the journal into the trash bag and continued to look through her closet.

"You have so many clothes!" he exclaimed as he began piling them on her bed in an effort to better sort through them. "Did you never get rid of anything?"

"Pretty much," she admitted. With each item he pulled off a hanger, Garrett brought it to his face and smelled it, each time getting a fresh wave of his sister's beautiful scent.

"Sniffing your little sister's clothes is always cause for concern, you know," Autumn joked.

"I wanna make a quilt out of all your clothes," he said, ignoring her comment. "A giant quilt that I can curl up with every night and never wash."

"Not gonna lie, that seems a little weird," Autumn replied.

"Can't I just keep all your clothes?"

"Of course not. You need to get rid of them. You're never going to wear them, but someone, somewhere, would appreciate them. Just put them in the donate box and move on." Towards the back of the closet, Garrett came across an old, stretched out t-shirt of hers. It was lavender in color, and had a giant sparkly unicorn jumping over a rainbow on it. The sight of it immediately took him back to their childhood.

"How do you still have this?" he asked, holding it up for Autumn to see. "You wore this when you were a child!"

"It was really big on me then, and over the years it's just kind of been stretched out to fit my ever changing form," Autumn replied. "I would wear it to bed every now and then."

He turned it around and looked at the front of it once more. Memories of him and Autumn dancing around the living room to random songs on YouTube flooded his psyche. He brought it to his face and breathed it in, almost collapsing at its potency. Then he tossed it onto the keep pile on the bed.

"What are you doing, Garrett?" Autumn complained.

"I'm keeping that shirt," he said in an authoritative way. "I'll agree to get rid of every other article of clothing I come across, but that shirt I'm keeping."

Autumn stared at him for a bit. "That's fair," she said simply. "But just the one item."

"Just the one item, huh? In that case...where's your underwear drawer?" She threw him a threatening glance as he laughed stupidly at his own joke. Continuing to clear her closet, he reached far in the back corner and pulled out the next thing his hand touched. "Wait a second, a new contender has suddenly made an appearance!" he exclaimed as he pulled the next item into view. It was a red, lacy negligee with thin straps and a little bow on the front. "Holy shit, Autumn! How long have you had this!?"

She smiled. "Not too long," she admitted. "I got it just a few months before I died."

Garrett looked at her suspiciously. "And why, exactly, did you get it?"

"What, a girl's not allowed to feel sexy just for herself?" she replied.

"Man, I would've killed to have seen you in this!" Garrett said as his eyes continued to scan the article. "The lace on this...I would've been able to see your nipples right through the material!"

"Yes you would have," Autumn said. "So you wanna see me in it, huh?"

Garrett looked over at her with wide, excited eyes. "You can do that!?"

She shook her head. "No, I can't put that on and prance around for you," she admitted. "But there's still a way you can see me in it."

Garrett gulped. "Pictures?" he asked hopefully.

"Even better," Autumn said with a smile. "You see, I was starting to feel really guilty about how off limits I was keeping our relationship. I know it wore thin on you, but you were so patient with me. And as a thank you, I had planned on putting this on and making a little video for you as a birthday present. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it to your birthday."

"Oh god, PLEASE tell me there's a video!"

Autumn sat silently for a moment, taking a purposeful dramatic pause. "There's a video," she finally confirmed. "It's saved on my-"

Before she could finish her sentence, Garrett was already sitting down in front of her computer and searching for the file. After a frantic random search, Autumn was finally able to calm him down enough to guide him to the right location. Garrett excitedly clicked on the video, which brought up a screen of a still shot of the first second, which was just Autumn's face leaning over the front of the camera.

"You sure you're ready for this, Garrett?" Autumn asked before Garrett hit play. "Seeing a video of me might be a little tough."

"Do you take your titties out in it!?" Garrett asked enthusiastically, seemingly unaffected by Autumn's warning.

Autumn rolled her eyes. "You'll just have to wait and see."

Before he hit play, he noticed that the video was a only a little less than a minute long, so he tempered his expectations slightly. He took a deep breath, waited for his heart rate to slow down a little, then played the video.

"Hey baby!" Autumn said to the camera. Seeing her standing there talking to him again was, in fact, difficult to take. "This is my thank you for, well, everything that you've done for me." She slowly backed away from the camera until her whole body was viewable. The negligee hung down just low enough so that he could see a hint of red underwear poking through the bottom. He paused the screen and soaked in her image, feeling himself immediately get hard at the view.

"I see that you like it," Autumn said from over his shoulder, looking down at his crotch.

Dumbfounded, Garrett nodded and hit play once again. In the video, Autumn began awkwardly swaying her hips from side to side. "Wait, this doesn't feel right," she said in the video, stopping her movements. "Sorry, not much of a dancer," she said with a laugh. "You probably just wanna see me, like, play with myself or something."