Shaun

I groaned. Oh Jesus. Hangovers suck. I looked around my apartment ... my blurry eyes slowly beginning to focus. I stumbled over to a figure lying half naked on the floor. I rolled him over with a grunt and saw that it was my half-brother, Shaun. Last night's events suddenly came rushing into my head, and I realized that I was now officially twenty-one, and that Shaun, a recovering alcohol addict, had gotten me drunk.1

Oh, God. I tried to wake Shaun, who obviously had gotten wasted last night because of me, and found that he was cold. That was weird, I thought. He was also clammy, and he felt like...like, he wasn't alive. I gasped, and tried to take his pulse. In my haste I knocked my nightstand over, and then tripped over it. I landed on my back and got a huge, gapping pain in my side. I couldn't move. It didn't matter. I knew it was over.2

The body was removed, I took a couple advil, and then I went to bed. That stupid hangover wouldn't let me think straight, and probably if I went to bed, I would wake up and this turn up to be a nightmare. Several hours later, when it become dark, my eyes opened. "Shaun." I thought I heard movement. "Shaun? Is that you?" I turned on the light and saw a splotch of blood. I screamed.3

I came to my senses when I grasped the fact the Shaun, at least in my dream, didn't die from murder, but of alcohol poisoning. There was no blood involved with that. I looked at my messaging machine, and got a sinking feeling in my stomache. Thirty-two new messages, today. Why thirty-two? They must be about Shaun. I listened to a couple, confirming my fears. He really was dead. 4

Tears started sliding down my cheeks when the fifteenth message came on. It was from Shaun's girlfriend. What she said, I will never forget. What she said, will haunt me. "How dare you take him out and force him to drink? How dare you?" Was that me? I doubt it. But I know the harm; I know what I did. I let him drink, over-drink, for that matter. I silently agreed with his girlfriend, but out loud I cursed her with as many horrible words as I could think of.5

The night I turned twenty-one, I went out to have a good time. Instead, I killed my half-brother. I knew that my first night of drinking was forever going to be my last.