Cause and Consequence

There was once a young man, named Cause; an eternally young man who never lost his youthful dreams or his optimism but also never lost his arrogance or his recklessness and the reason why he never changed or matured was because his travelling companion and twin brother, an eternally old man, named Consequence, always suffered the consequences of the young man’s actions.

If the young man got drunk, it would be the old man that got the hangover; if the young man got into a fight, the old man would suffer the black-eyes and bruises and if the young man gambled, because he was such a terrible gambler, the old man would lose all his money.

One day however, the old man had enough. The young man had fallen in love you see, with a pretty young maid with the brightest eyes; the softest hair and the sweetest kiss but the Old man had been lumbered with the heartache, a common consequence of love and it was a pain too much even for him to bear so, at night, while young Cause was sleeping, Consequence drew a knife and leapt upon him.

“You old fool”, said Cause, struggling to fight his brother off, “If you stab me it will be you who dies, don’t you realize that?”.

But Consequence did not care; he did not care even when, stabbing at Cause’s heart, a wound appeared in his own,

“I am stabbing out the pain within my heart”, he said as he collapsed, gasping and wincing in pain, “Pierceing a hole in the darkness of this life and letting in a beam of death”.

“Silly old fool”, said Cause, shaking his head and laughing as he looked down upon Consequences corpse.

But it was Consequence who had the last laugh for when his dead body was found with a stab wound in his heart, Cause was arrested and, because no one would believe the truth, hung for his murder.

Finally, after years of living a selfish and irresponsible life and making his brother pay for it, Cause suffered the consequences of his actions.