The Perry Brothers - Ch. 3

Terri and Terry, 4 years old

The brothers are in their room. They have a bunkbed, but because of obvious reasons the other one isn't used for sleeping. The lower bed has two big piles of stuffed animals, one for each twin, and a small blackboard with a box full of crayons. On the floor there are pieces of a toytrain track. The track hasn't been finished due to fights about wether it should go under the table or on to the shelves. The walls are dark tourqoise, decorated with pictures of trees and clouds. Sometimes dad has had to put a chair in front of the closet doors, because the boys thought that humans could get through just any door.

   Terri and Terry are sitting on the writing desk, next to the open window. Terri is playing with pirate boats and Terry is colouring a colouring book. "Terryyyh, play with meee." "But I'm not done with this picture yet." Terri sighs and looks at his brother, intensly colouring a picture of a football playing monster. Terri continues with his games for a while, but then gets bored: "Come on, Terry! You can finish it later." "But I want to finish it now!" Terri tries to get his brother's attention with peace, but it doesn't work, so he kicks Terry with one of his tentacles. "Hey!" Terry shouts and kicks his brother back. Both of the brothers start smacking each others faces and kicking each others tentacles. Finally both of them are pulling each others sleeves with all the strenght that they have. After a while Terry finally let's go, in attempt of fooling his brother, but the fight takes an ugly turn. When Terry lets go with Terri still pulling with all his strenght, they both fall backwards, and out of the window.

   The twins are sitting on a hospital bed, both moping. Terri's upper arm has broken and is hanging from his neck. Terry's left horn is broken and wrapped up. Both of them have two tentacles strained, making Terri have only one healthy tentacle, while his brother has two. The silence is torture. Terri tries to think of something else to feel a bit better. The hospital smells funny. The doctors are so calm, that it's annoying. It's not helping. Every single thought makes him think about his "stupid brother". Their parents come into the room, breathing heavily. "Oh, we were so worried." dad says. Then they realize the grumpy expressions on their sons faces. "It wasn't my fault!" Terri quickly shouts in defense, even though no-one claimed him to be responsible. The young parents look scared. They have no idea what to do in this situation. "Everything about it is your fault!" Terry says quickly and looks away. The mother tries to lighten the mood: "Hey, um, we brought you balloons." She tries to offer them to the brothers and both of them look at the balloons, but then go back to moping. She sighs and ties the balloons to the end of the bed. A yellow one on Terry's side and a blue one on Terri's side. "They're your favourite colours..." mom says, after that wondering what sense was there in saying it. But actually it was useful. Dad got an idea from it and said: "You remember that song, where they're singing about colours? Yellow and blue made green. Green is a pretty nice colour, isn't it. The leaves, the grass, lots of nice things are green. When you combine two nice things, you do end up with an even nicer thing." Mom realized, what he was going for and so did Terry and Terri, though they were not convinsed easyly, so mom said: "Boys... We think that you are both amazing. But we also believe, that if you work together, you become even greater. You're brothers. And even though you wouldn't think so, you are pretty lucky be brothers." Terri looks up to his brother, that is still quite unsure. "Terry. Please. I didn't mean it. Really, I didn't mean it." Terry turns his head to look at his brother. He sees his eye wide and shining. Terri is staring straight into Terry's soul with that adorable eye, and he can't say no. "I'm sorry, Terri. I didn't mean it eather." They hug each other and Terry can feel a small, warm tear touching his cheek.