Come, my brothers!

Andrew awoke with a start, despite the stillness and silence of the Christmas eve. The clock said 3:30. He rolled off his bed, found whatever clothes lay next to it and pulled them on. With a quick step, he headed for the door. By reflex his hand reached for the keys just as he touched the doorknob -- no, damn the keys -- and, after shambling into the elevator, he found himself outside.

His brother needed help.

By this time, his legs had accustomed to movement somewhat. He no longer shambled, but walked confidently down the street. The snow crunched underneath his feet, sticking to his bare socks. The crystal haze from his breath was clearly visible in the orange light of streetlamps, till a stiff breeze blew it away. He shrugged and pressed together the sides of his shirt, which he forgot to button.

In an alley three lights down Main, his brother called out for him.

A heavy oaken door of a townhouse behind him softly creaked, then a storm-door's spring made it loudly smash against the doorframe. An elderly woman in a bathrobe tiptoed between the little puddles of muddy slush in front of her house. Making it to the sidewalk, her feet steadied. She walked behind Andrew, confidently, unwaveringly, silently.

The more, the better. He called still, his clarion voice unfaltering.

By the time they made it to Main, a crowd of a dozen or so was passing just in front of him. He turned off his street and merged with the crowd. All of them were looking down at their feet, so as to not damage them and impede their progress towards his brother. None cared that the first light they had to pass was red; there weren't any cars around. Except the police car, that is-- the policeman cracked the door and looked at the crowd in confusion. He broke into a run and caught up with the crowd. His head felt cold all of a sudden, though it did not bother him that he lost his hat and his sweaty hair would probably do no favours to his head in cold weather.

So very insistent.

An entire family joined them by the next light -- momma, poppa, sis and bro. A glass shattered high above them as they passed by a high-rise, and the falling body smashed into the ground at high speed, bouncing off a few centimeters into the air and falling back down. He wanted to get to the street faster, and only considered the window rather than the door -- an easy mistake to make, Andrew thought. Poppa kicked the head by accident, but sis hopped over the corpse. Momma and bro walked to the side, paying no attention to it.

There were more important things to do.

The last light took them past a park. The crowd cut through the park, each picking up a nice, solid stick or two. Andrew heaved his on his shoulder, and patted it on the side. There -- the alley -- another approaching crowd from the opposite direction, also with sticks. They all merged quickly into a mob of fifty or so, cramming into the alley.

A girl with a distressed face, disheveled hair and disturbed clothing spoke to the crowd in a quivering voice. Andrew had no idea who she was, but he knew exactly whose voice she spoke with. Brother emanated from her heart -- no -- from inside the microphone she held there, its frayed, destroyed cord dancing in front of her shaking knees.

Andrew had no idea what she was saying. He dazedly stared through her, underbrow, akin to the rest of the crowd. His blind obedience was giving way to frustration. I don't care. Shut the hell up. I don't care. Just tell me how I can help my brother.

Finally, she pointed at the three cowering, tattooed, bald ones behind her, huddled between the trash cans at the end of the alley, and screamed. Red filled Andrew's vision, light obscured by pounding rage. A hundred feet stampeded towards the thugs.

They took great care not to strike the face and not to break the skin -- lest bloody evidence is left or they die too fast. As Andrew worked with the harsh end of his stick, he saw Poppa kicking one of them in the kidneys in big ol' army boots. A hint of jealousy slipped through his mind; his parents never let their only child go to the army as he wanted, but any envy slipped behind the roaring flames of anger quickly. The crowd continued until the thugs' skins were but bags to hold the crushed and churned slurry within, and Andrew's brother sighed contentment.

And while contentment was good, it also meant that his brother was done with all of them. That there was no more a brother to help meant moments of agonizing clarity. Andrew looked right into Sis's widening blue eyes, at first realizing she wasn't careful -- there was a long, narrow splatter of blood on her PJs -- before turning back towards the three dead men and realizing there were three dead men in front of him. His face stretched in shocked amazement and his loose fingers let the stick drop into the snow. A single piercing scream from Ma froze solid his heart for a respectable moment, and he, along with most others, drew in breath for a scream of his own, before -- no doubt -- reaching behind his head and falling onto his knees, crying into the suddenly burning-cold snow.

"Enough!"

The clear voice cut him off before he managed to let out a single squeak, and he shut his mouth. Momma cleared her throat, almost as though in embarrassment. Long day at work, she seemed to be saying. Excuse that little outburst. The girl with the microphone stood braced against the wall, crying, mascara running down her cheeks. Then she said more things, but Andrew did not and could not care less. The rest of the crowd threw their sticks where they stood, and all headed home. About halfway into his walk home, Andrew woke up.

He got up, got dressed, made tea, and went to work. It was a day like any other, until lunchtime, when he read about a strange suicide on the night of Christmas eve, a jumper. Oh yeah, he thought. I dreamt about that  sometime last month. Weird world.

He finished his lunch and moved on with his day.