[#050] I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died. (Part 1)

I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died.

He used to blow a lot of time on 4Chan, so I figured he picked it up from them. George was the sort of desperate social sponge who sopped up all the attitudes around him for acceptance. He wasn't a bad person at heart, though I'll never forget the time I heard him drop the N-word in a game of Overwatch because he lost to a team of six dudes playing the same character.

And let's be clear: George was white as snow. Especially after a few months on chemo.

His traitorous body only carried him past the computer desk on Friday nights, when he'd go out with a couple of our cousins. Some days he wouldn't come back until Saturday afternoon, and he would never tell us where he'd been. Mom stopped freaking out after the first few times, and we both just kind of figured he was drinking to get his mind off all the vomiting and hairloss.

But that's how we got by for months. Right up until the one Wednesday morning last month when he woke up spewing chunky, dark blood down his chest. We drove him to the hospital and he stayed the night, but everything went south fast. I was dumb enough to go home for some fucking pills I thought he'd want, and I came back to hear... That I'd missed him on his way out. Mom told me he'd asked for me, and I locked myself in my room for three days when we got home.

Anyway... The hospital put everything he brought with him in a bag and called us to come get it about a week later. Mom had somehow gone back to work at this point, so I had to pick it up and bring it back to our house. I hadn't left it on the kitchen table more than a minute before the Overwatch theme started buzzing inside, and I reached in and pulled out his old, shitty flip phone. It was a Friday evening and the name on the screen read "Jake," one of our cousins and George's drinking buddies who apparently hadn't heard yet. So I just sat there for a minute on the couch with my late brother's ringing phone in my hand trying to figure out how to answer it.

Then I opened the phone, pushed the green button, and nearly dropped it when I heard the ruckus on the other end.

This piercing, wailing sob broke through the tinny speaker, punctuated by something like a hammer pounding on a metal spike. A voice I could barely make out whispered into the receiver, "Geooooooorge, it's almost time! Better hurry!"

And then I did the second dumbest thing of my life: I spoke up. "Jake? Dude, what the hell are you doing?"
The laughter on the other end choked to a halt, and right away I heard the sound of heavy boots pounding on concrete. The cries in the background grew distant, and the sound of a slamming door muffled them almost entirely.

At last, Jake responded. He asked me what I was doing with George's phone, and my dumbfounded brain just blurted out everything at once: George's passing and how hard mom was taking it, and how I'd left at the wrong time and I was sorry we hadn't called him. For a long minute, all I could hear was the faintest trace of whatever Jake had going on behind the door on the other end.

When he finally spoke, he didn't curse or apologize for my loss or for weirding me out and blasting his creepy shit on the line. Jake didn't ask me when the funeral was or how George felt when he passed.
He simply told me to burn the phone "for your own good." Then he hung up.

I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died.

Now I'm starting to wonder.