20 May A Brother’s Fortune

The swine.

I watched him put away two portions of Kung Pao chicken, eight dumplings, and six spring rolls, and the bastard still has room for dessert. Mom let him have two scoops of black sesame ice cream, and while she was in the restroom, Dad let him have a third.

“Can I have one, too?” I ask Dad.

“Absolutely not,” he says. “You heard what the doctor said. Your BMI is too high.”

Archie laughs and sticks out his tongue at me. There are remnants of grey goo on his braces, and I squeeze the chopsticks in my fist until I feel them crack. Mom returns from the restroom just as my little brother swallows the last spoonful of his dessert.

“Dad let Archie have more ice cream while you were gone,” I tell her.

“Sniiitch,” says Archie.

“Indeed,” Mom agrees. “Next time, Brian, think twice before you tattle. You’re in middle school now, and it would be nice if you started making some friends.”

Dad chuckles, and Archie laughs with the glee of the pardoned. I want to chuck my chopsticks at him. Ten extra points if one gets stuck in his throat and he chokes and dies.

“This isn’t fair!” I say. “This place wasn’t even supposed to have dessert! It’s why I chose to come here in the first place! They didn’t even serve fruit last year!”

“Don’t worry, bud,” says Dad. “We have bananas in the freezer. I’ll make you a ‘nice cream’ when we get back home, okay? With berries and peanut butter, just the way you like it.”

“What I would like—”

“Here you go,” the waitress interrupts me to place the check and a bowl with four fortune cookies on the table. “Thank you for your patronage, come again!” she says cheerfully.

“Yes, Brian, you were saying?” Dad asks me after the waitress leaves. Mom also turns to me. Now that I have their undivided attention, I can’t say what I want to say anymore.

I watch Archie. He has his sticky ice cream fingers all over the fortune cookies and is inspecting each one in turn as if he has X-ray vision. If his fortune ends up being the best one, I’ll be very upset.

What I would like, dear parents, is for my younger brother to stop being the golden child—I won’t say it aloud, but I’m thinking it. I’ve been thinking it all my life.

“I want dibs on the first fortune cookie,” I say, and lock eyes with my brother. He already chose one. “I want the one Archie is holding.”

“Nuh-uh!” Archie protests. “This is sugar, and the doctor said! Tell him, Mom!”

“No cookie for you, Brian,” says Mom.

“Janice, come on,” says Dad. “A fortune cookie won’t make a difference. That thing is mostly air, anyway.”

Mom shrugs and turns to me: “Can’t you choose another one?”

“No. I want that one,” I say and point at my brother. His ears turn red.

“Mooom,” whines Archie.

“Come on, Arch, be a good sport,” Dad tells him. “It’s Brian’s birthday, after all.”

It’s one of the only triumphs I have ever had over my brother. I reach out my open palm and wait for Archie to hand over his fortune cookie. He does. Mom, Dad, and Archie then each choose a different cookie from the bowl, and we all open them at the same time.

I part the halves of crunchy pastry to get to the note inside—and the note is the best birthday present I could have asked for.

“Neat!” I tell my family. “Mine says ‘You will attract wealth and abundance’.”

Mom and Dad cheer at my good fortune. Mom wants to share her fortune next, and when I turn my head to pay attention to her, catastrophe hits:

My little brother—scrawny, spoiled, annoying-as-shit Archie—stands up, reaches across the table, and grabs the two halves of my cookie. I’m too slow to react.  Archie stuffs my cookie into his mouth, chews, and swallows it down in a matter of seconds. I am gobsmacked.

Archie then gives me his classic shit-eating grin and runs his tongue along his braces. “Yum,” he says. “Thank you for your good fortune, big brother.”

Mom and Dad laugh. Maybe, they think this is funny. Maybe, they know I was about to blow a fuse and are trying to release some tension in advance. Maybe they are just as surprised as I am and don’t know how else to react.

I don’t care. The second my senses return to me, I launch myself over the table, ready as I’ll ever be, to inflict as much pain as possible on the biggest source of misery in my life.

30 Years Later

The new doorbell is either broken, or it rings too far inside the house for me to hear.

I ring and wait. Nothing. I ring again—still nothing. I go around the house to look through the living room window. The front yard looks terrible, but at least the living room is clean and all set up for the upcoming wake. I knock on the window—more nothing. I won’t call him. He never answers anyway, and if I text him, it takes him an average of twenty-seven hours to reply—if he replies at all, that is. I return to the front door and don’t take my finger off the buzzer until someone finally opens the door.

He looks like shit, albeit slightly better than he did the last time I saw him. His alcoholism used to give him a perpetual flush and inexplicable outbreaks. Not to mention, breathing problems. I watched Stranger Things with my girls when it came out, and the term “mouth breather” reminded me of him instantly. He’s no longer a mouth breather, from what I can tell. The last remnants of his addiction can only be found in his overgrown gut, but the rest of him has lost so much weight that he fits in my high school graduation suit without a problem.

“Nice suit,” I tell him.

Archie smiles. He is as pale as a ghost, but his eyes are swollen and so incredibly red, they seem almost purple.

“Thanks. It’s my brother’s. He’s the one with good taste,” he says.

Just as I thought he was all cried out, the purple eyes got wet again. I throw my arms around my brother, hoping he won’t cry anymore. He cried enough, the poor bastard. It’s over. No more crying—from either of us. But, still, he cries. He holds me tight, tighter than he ever did before, and he cries. I bench ten reps of 180 pounds on my weak days, and my little bro is holding me tight enough to turn my spine concave. I want to ask him if he started working out, but it seems inappropriate. Another time. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up and crack jokes. The future looks comfortable.

I wait for Archie’s sobs to die out before I pat him on the back and let him go. He left two wet spots on my trench coat—too small and close together to have come from his eyes, but I don’t hold that against him. After all, his mom just died.

Our mom. Whatever.

Archie wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and looks over my shoulder. “Is Sophie looking for a place to park?”

This, I didn’t look forward to. This part of the conversation. “Yeah, about that…”

“Sophie can park in the backyard. I kept the spot next to Mom’s car clear for her.”

He’s still calling it ‘Mom’s car’ even though he’s been the only one driving it for the last four years.

I follow Archie into the house. He keeps talking.

“I didn’t get to restore the front yard to its former glory yet, so sorry about that. We stuck mostly to the backyard, with Mom’s wheelchair and all. It looks great, by the way! I paved most of it and set up a pavilion on the remaining greenery. I replaced the small gate, too, so cars can come and go with no trouble.”

Archie turns to me: “Call her! Tell her, there’s free parking back here.” He looks expectant. Giddy, almost. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks proud. Finally, he managed to see something through without messing it up: repurposing the backyard.

“Sophie isn’t coming, Archie,” I tell him. “And neither are the girls. It’s just me.”

Archie’s face falls. “They aren’t coming?”

A tiny heart starts pounding in my temple. Who does this drunkard think he is, to criticize my family?

“No,” I tell him. “Sophie has a work thing. She’s in Copenhagen until next week. And both my girls are at camp. Isabella is in Debating and Dawn is in Theatre.”

Archie isn’t getting it: “Yeah, but… it’s Mom’s funeral…”

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t exactly a staple in my family’s life. My daughters only met her a handful of times and she called Sophie a slut the very first time they met. So, there you have it. You’ll have to excuse my wife and daughters for not dropping everything to come say goodbye to her.”

Archie shakes his head. “I was there, Brian. Mom never called Sophie a slut. She just asked her if she was pregnant.”

“Same thing.”

“How is that the same thing? You guys announced you were getting married after just three months of dating.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“My point is, Isabella was born not even half a year later. You’re vilifying Mom for no reason! She wasn’t trying to insult Sophie; she was just inquiring about the facts.”

I elbow my brother to the side to get to the stairs. The passage to my room has been narrowed down by the ramp that was installed for Mom’s wheelchair. My childhood bedroom is on the first floor—I just hope Archie and Mom didn’t turn it into a supply closet over the years. Or worse, into a game room for Archie. He already has the biggest room in the house, because why not? Golden child blueprint.

Archie scurries after me and tries grabbing my carry-on out of my hand. I don’t let him take it. I’ll be damned if I’ll allow my kid brother to play host with me in my own house. Archie feels that he’s upset me. He follows me to my bedroom, stuttering through topics he thinks would be more pleasant to talk about: the list of people who promised to attend the funeral: relatives, friends of the family, even people we went to school with. He mentions a wasp nest he had to remove from the attic and that he finally found our grandpa’s long-lost collection of World War II memorabilia.

By the time we reach my old bedroom, Archie starts telling me about his plans to landscape the front yard.

“Don’t worry about that,” I interrupt him. “I’ll take care of it after you move out.”

My bedroom looks the same. There is the distinct fragrance of freshly washed sheets in the air. The nightstand is newly dusted, and so is my old writing desk. Nothing has been moved or changed, not even the saucy posters above my bed. I am home.

Archie stopped in the doorway. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me as if I have grown a second head. I feared it would come to this, but the sooner I rip the Band-Aid off, the quicker he can get over it:

“May 8th, 2004,” I say. “The day of our father’s funeral. Mom called a family meeting with the two of us because she had to rewrite her will and asked us point blank, which one of us wants the house, and which one of us wants Dad’s savings account.”

“Brian…”

“I said, I want the house. Mom agreed to it. I’m to get the house. You agreed, too. Hell, you were more than happy to end up with Dad’s savings. Back then, there was more in that account than what the house was worth.”

“That’s not true.”

“Ah. That old tactic, huh? You getting cold feet now does not change the facts, little brother.”

Archie’s ears turn red. “You want facts?” He enters my room and approaches me slowly.

I’m not scared of this shithead. I have forty pounds of muscle on him, not to mention a clear head and boxing classes under my belt.

“I’ll give you the facts, Brian. Clearly, you hit your head sometime between graduating from law school and attending our mother’s funeral. Isn’t it convenient that you forgot, you were neither smart nor talented enough to go to a prestigious university on a scholarship?”

“Take one more step and I’ll start swinging. Might stain the suit.”

“Who paid off your student loan, Brian? With what money?”

“There was plenty of money left in Dad’s savings account for you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

Archie pauses long enough for me to reply. What am I supposed to reply with? ‘No, I am not fucking kidding you right now’? I’m not about to enable his silly tantrum. I’m not Mom.

“Our mother has had cancer for over five years, Brian! Five years! That’s over two thousand days of battling a deadly sickness! She couldn’t work. I couldn’t work! Someone had to stay here and take care of her! Care costs money, Brian!”

“Oh, so that’s why you didn’t work for years. Because Mom was sick. How altruistic of you! So many employers were aching to hire a chronic alcoholic, but you were out here choosing the hard life!”

Archie’s mouth falls agape. He’s probably shocked that I called his bluff. After all, the rest of the family has seen him as a hero for the longest time.

If he thought he could stay in my house after Mom is gone, he has another thing coming.

Mom’s last Facebook posts pop into my head.

“Ooh, I remember now,” I tell him. “Of course, the money’s gone. You spent it on travels.”

Archie starts shaking with rage. His ears are almost the same color as his cried-out eyes. “I took one trip with our dying mother. One. She wanted to visit Europe before she died, so I took her to Greece and Italy.”

“Sounds like two trips to me.”

“We stayed a total of ten days.”

“Must have been expensive.”

“A ten-day trip in five years, Brian?! Are you seriously going to hold this over my head?”

“No, why should I? It was your money.”

Archie starts pacing around the room. He runs his fingers through his hair, which, despite his otherwise pitiful physique, is as lush and full as it was in his teenage years. Damn him. I inherited my hair from my dad’s side of the family. I started balding in my mid-twenties, and by the time I reached thirty, I had no choice but to start shaving it all off.

“Alright, so here’s how things are going to go: I’ll give you a month. Two, if you ask nicely. I have a good friend in tenancy law. When you find your own place, let me know, so I can get you in contact with him. He’ll go over the lease with you and level things out in case your landlord tries to screw you over. What do you say?”

Archie stops pacing around the room, but he doesn’t look at me. He takes his hands out of his hair.

“I mean, I say you can stay here for two more months, but the girls and I will start moving in as soon as possible. Sophie wants us to be completely settled before Christmas, and I think that’s a good idea. Moving during the holidays sounds like a pain.”

“You already have a house,” says Archie. He is a lot calmer than he was a minute ago. Good—he sees reason sooner than I gave him credit for. Being sober changed him for the better in many ways.

There are many, many comebacks I could give him as to why that is irrelevant. So what if I already have a house? Mom and Dad’s house is larger—and better. The neighborhood is safer. The front and back yards are big enough for both my dogs. The schools in the area are very good and both I and Sophie have the opportunity to work from here. I have a family to take care of. Archie does not. And, despite all this, there is one reason that trumps all the others:

“May 8th, 2004, Mom left this house to me and only me. I’ve seen the will. You’ve seen the will. Our family lawyer, Mr. Sax, has the will in his possession and will execute it as soon as I ask him to. I’m sorry about this, brother, but, as of now, this is my house, and I decide who lives here and who doesn’t.”

I let my carry-on at the foot of my bed and pat Archie on the shoulder on my way out of the room. I am hungry. I should fix myself a sandwich before the rest of the party shows up for the wake.

I’m past the doorframe when Archie decides to speak again: “November 30th, 2022,” he says.

I heard him perfectly. “I’m sorry, what?” I ask him.

“November 30th, 2022. Mother rewrote her will. I’ve never seen the original and only found out about it when Mr. Sax called me to confirm that Mom’s worldly possessions hadn’t changed over the years.”

“Arch, what are you saying? What are you talking about?”

Archie looks at me.

He is the loser brother. The unattractive one. The family failure. The one who dropped out of high school, never went to college, missed his window of opportunity to settle down with a nice girl, have some kids, find a job, and become a fairly stable, albeit thin, pillar of society—and yet, in this room, with this cloying, sickly smell of lavender percolating through my nostrils like an allergy pathogen, he is the one with the content smile on his face. That shit-eating grin…

“I’m saying that this is my house, Brian. Mother rewrote her will and left the house to me and only me.”

30 Hours After the Funeral

I park next to the alley I used to come to during high school, to smoke. A homeless guy sits cross-legged on the ground just beyond the alley entry, to practice a song on his mandolin. He sucks.

I’m at my third cigarette and it’s doing fuck all for my nerves.

The wake, the funeral, the reception—two days of absolute torture with that back-stabbing bastard. The bastard. The absolute bastard. He had Mom’s favorite snacks at the wake, recited Mom’s favorite poem during the funeral, brought out Dad’s last bottle of 40-year-old Whiskey during the repast, and poured it to the last drop among the attendees. I wouldn’t be surprised if he filled out one of Dad’s empty whiskey bottles with the stuff you find for 5 $ at the local supermarket, the alcoholic shitstain. Everybody there gobbled it all up: the perfect son. The caring, loving, Mother Teresa- embodiment of a son. Teary-eyed around the clock. I heard a second cousin praise Archie for his selflessness and how impressed she was with the sacrifices he made for our mother. It was a good thing I left the kitchen when I did because I would have made an indecent suggestion if I hadn’t.

The house. My house. Mom gave Archie my house because she was bitter and stubborn and didn’t want to understand that my family is busy. We couldn’t just drop everything and come wipe her ass or roll her up and down the stairs whenever she wanted. We couldn’t come by to just spin her around in the backyard.

Sorry for having a life, Mom.

Sorry for having a wife and kids, Mom.

Sorry for having a career, and doing my best to be an upstanding citizen like you taught me to be, Mom.

I did everything right—everything! And yet, it was me you punished. You gave my house to that loser, you stupid, selfish, narcissistic bitch.

I should have finished the job on my twelfth birthday.

Someone knocks on my passenger’s side window. It’s the hobo.

“Fuck off!” I yell at him through the closed window.

“Can you give me one of those?”

My first instinct is to say no, but then I remember, I quit smoking over a decade ago. I roll down my passenger’s side window just enough to hand him my cigarette pack.

“Get your own lighter,” I tell him and close the window again. I should have kept one last cigarette—this one is almost finished.

Where was I? Oh, right. My twelfth birthday: the day the swine stole my fortune. The day I gave in to my intrusive thoughts and tried to strangle him. I would have gone through with it, too, if Dad hadn’t separated us when he did.

It’s not too late.

The mouthful of smoke goes through the wrong pipe. I spray phlegm on the inside of my windshield, and my eyes are stinging. The thought came from nowhere.

I am not a violent person. I am not a violent person. I do not wish ill or harm on anybody.

Archie’s shit-eating grin pops into my head. His weight loss depleted his chubby cheeks to deep wrinkles that go from the sides of his nose to the edges of his mouth. Every time he smiles, the lower half of his face looks like parted theatre curtains. And that is exactly what it reveals: theatre, make-belief, a hidden agenda as thick as the bible. A parasitic existence whose sole purpose is to inflict misery on others.

Archie does not deserve that house; frankly, I don’t think he even wants it. He only made Mom give it to him because it was supposed to be mine. The swine always wanted to have what was mine. Why else would he want that huge house? He has nobody! No partner, no kids, not even a pet!

If he dies, I’m his next of kin.

Everyone saw me leave. Archie insisted I stay another night—distant relatives pleaded for me to stay too and join them for coffee in the morning. I didn’t want to. Everyone heard me excuse myself. I wanted to hit the road and return to my place before the day went dark. I promised Sophie we wouldn’t need the dog sitter for more than two days. I hugged Archie and all the great aunts I forgot I had and drove off into the sunset. Nobody has any reason to believe I’ll hang around. And why would they? I had a beautiful home, full of life, waiting for me, not even four hours away.

But, what if…

Say, I got tired. I don’t want to risk driving while tired. I call my wife in Copenhagen. I call the dog sitter. I’m spending the night at a motel because I don’t want to drive back to my brother’s. I spend the night at a motel. The next day, I hit the road around noon and reached home late afternoon. When I get home, I get a grief-stricken phone call that my brother has been found dead in the basement of our childhood home. It was murder. The murder weapon was found at the scene of the crime. An investigation is afoot, but nobody finds anything, anywhere. The neighbors haven’t seen or heard anything. There are no strange fingerprints, no strange DNA, no one-of-a-kind shoeprint that will lead to the killer like they do in cop shows. There are no suspects. Everything is just one big mysterious tragedy.

A tragedy that ends in me getting my house back.

I’d never do it—never.

But if I did, here’s how I’d go about it:

1. I’d recruit a doppelganger. He doesn’t have to look like my twin, but the guy should resemble me enough to pass through a motel reception with my ID.
2. Not just any motel reception, but the one at the Marianne. The Marianne Motel and the Pink Orchid are the two motels in town that don’t have operating surveillance systems in place. The lovely lady I spent yesterday evening with told me this. I asked her if we could go someplace discreet, and she offered up this information on a golden platter. The lady and I visited the Pink Orchid so that one’s out of the question this time around. They’ve already seen my face.
3. I’d make my double buy a duck canvas jumpsuit, Wellington boots, and gardening gloves. Plain old rubber gloves would be too flimsy.
4. My double dresses in my clothes. I then change into the jumpsuit and Wellington boots he’s bought.
5. My double checks into the Marianne Motel with my ID and credit card. He has to give both back to me through the motel room window. If he refuses to do this step, I’m calling the whole thing off. I’m storming into the motel and beating him black and blue for stealing from me. It would be his word against mine, and my word has yet to be distrusted.
6. Leave my car in the motel’s parking lot. Take public transport back to Mom’s house. My house.
7. Put on the garden gloves—make sure the bus driver doesn’t see me.
8. Break into my house.
9. Knock Archie out cold and drag him into the basement. Dad was a hobbyist. The basement is soundproof.
10. This is the step in which Archie dies—but before he dies, I’ll make him pay for all the shit he’s put me through. I’ll indulge. I’ll take my sweet time with his sticky fingers and that shit-eating grin. The basement is my toolbox: Dad’s trusty claw hammer, the power drill, the hatchet, and Pops’ shotgun. It’s high time Archie learns that actions have consequences.
11. Break into the safe behind the painting of the waterfall in the attic. If I torture Archie before killing him, I have to make it look like it was a means to get to the immediate valuables.
12. Return to the Marianne Motel for my car and to make sure my double checks out the next day before noon. Threaten him or something, so he disappears forever. Then, I hit the road.
13. Act devastated at the funeral.
14. Act flabbergasted when Mr. Sax calls to inform me that my house is finally mine.

Something explodes against my passenger’s side window. I flinch, and the smoldering tip of my cigarette jumps and lands on my wrist. It hurts. The hobo laughs. This time, I roll the passenger’s side window all the way down.

“What?!” I ask the hobo.

“Do you have any change to spare?” he asks in return.

“Do I fucking look like I carry around change to spare?”

“Could come in handy if you’re trying to park around here.”

“Then I’d need it myself and couldn’t spare any, could I?”

“Hey, man, I’m not asking for charity. I’m willing to work for it!”

So, the cigarettes from before were supposed to be a loan? “Thanks, but I don’t swing that way,” I tell him.

The guy tips his head back and laughs with glee. To my surprise, he has a full set of teeth. They are mostly white, too. Healthy-looking. Without further ado, he props his mandolin against his lower ribs and starts singing a song I’ve never heard before and would sooner go deaf than want to listen to again.

The guy is swinging left and right, and I become aware of two things. First, he is the same height as me. He’s built differently, but anyone would look buff in my trench coat. Second, his beard has the same color and texture as mine. It needs a little trim and his head needs a proper shave, but other than that…

No. I’m not going through with it. The plan is full of holes. A million and one things can and will go wrong if I give it a shot. Trying it out would be insane, and I’m not insane.

But if I were insane, this guy is perfect: he needs money, food, a shower, and a safe and comfortable place to spend the night.

And I need to reinstate order in my destiny.

The guy finishes his song and beams at me. I open the glove compartment and reach for my wallet.

5 Hours Later

Archie comes back to his senses just as I finish tying him up.

He looks like a passed-out drunk, with his upper body flopped over the coffee table in front of him, arms outstretched, back in the shape of a question mark. I had to drill four rows of holes into the tabletop to position him like this. I pulled the rope through the holes in the table and over his arms in several tight loops. His forearms look like they’re wearing corsets. I tied the rest of him to the chair I made him sit on: lower back to back rest; pelvis and thighs to seat; left ankle to left chair leg; right ankle to right chair leg.

This is it: the 10th step of my plan. I didn’t think I’d have it in me, but the more I look at him, the better this feels. This feels right. I’m righting a wrong in the universe, and I know in my gut that I’m going to get away with it.

I’m about to murder my brother, and nobody will ever find out. I’ll make sure of it.

“Gghh…”

He’s stirring. I might have hit his head harder than I should have. I hope I didn’t concuss him into amnesia. I want him to recognize me. I want him to know who I am and why I’m doing this.

He stops stirring, and I fear he’s gone to sleep again.

“Wake up,” I tell him.

He doesn’t, so I give him a bit of motivation.

The bones in his right hand crack like twigs under an elk’s hooves. Archie screams like a pig up for slaughter. The hammer left a square-shaped dent on the back of his hand half an inch deep. Jeez. After all the work I put in today, you’d think I shouldn’t have this much power left in me. Guess seeing him like this is all the caffeine I need.

“I said, wake up,” I tell him.

Archie is moaning. He tries to lift himself off the table, to bring his damaged hand to his chest and cradle it protectively. He wiggles into his confines and ends up lifting the coffee table off the ground.

“Stop that,” I tell him.

He doesn’t listen. He and the coffee table move left and right, and it bothers me that he isn’t getting the picture yet. I sit down on the coffee table and drop the hammer on his left hand: once, twice, three times. Each scream is louder than the last.

“If I say, stop that, you stop that. Understand?”

He doesn’t respond. I don’t think he heard me through the pain erupting in his brain.

I lift the hammer again.

“Yes! Dear God, yes, I understand, please! Please, Brian, stop…”

I drop the hammer on his right middle finger. “You’re in no position to give me orders, you brat,” I tell him.

Ammonia permeates the air. He peed himself. I strike his left hand again, as punishment.

“Brian, stop, please, stop! Please, oh please…”

“Yeah, I think your sticky fingers got the picture.”

Archie sobbed with his head tucked in between his biceps.

“Next up is that shit-eating grin.”

I yank my brother’s head back by his luscious hair. He tries to pull out of my grasp, mumbling pleas and whys and shaking his head left and right in disbelief at what is happening.

“Hold still,” I tell him.

But he doesn’t. He tries to pull away, and instead of striking his teeth, the hammer hits his eye. God damn it. I didn’t want to do anything to his eyes. I wanted him to see. Oh well. At least, he still has one good one.

More shrieking. And this time, I have unrestrained access to his teeth. Wham.

His wailing is cut short by the sudden sound of choking. It’s the funniest shit I heard in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever.

I let Archie’s hair go, and he coils and uncoils the back of his head over the coffee table like a cat that’s trying to spit out a furball. There’s more I could do: drill nails into him, cut off his tongue, remove bits of him just to see if he can still scream while choking on his own teeth… but I think I’m done. I’m not a violent person. And I’m not cruel either. It’s not like I’m enjoying this.

I cut Archie’s restraints. He rolls off the chair and drops with a heavy thud on the stone floor. I give him a moment to curl in on himself before I put him out of his misery. Grandpa’s shotgun is still perched up on the wall. To my knowledge, Dad never fired it, but he liked to keep it in pristine condition—and as with any firearm kept in pristine condition, the proper ammunition is in the drawer closest to it: I didn’t even have to open it all the way.

I load the shotgun. Archie is weeping with strangled moans on the stone floor. He is holding his less damaged hand against his ruined eye. There is less blood than I expected, but I don’t want to speak too soon. Archie’s good eye is facing away from me, so I guess there goes my wish for him to see me. At this point, I don’t even feel the need to be seen anymore. This feels gross. He’s too pathetic. I just want to get it over with.

I press the end of the shotgun barrel to his temple. Point-blank range. At first, I want to look, but then again, that might not be such a good idea if I still want to catch some shut-eye tonight. I’m tired.

“Just in case you were wondering, Archie, this is for stealing my fortune. I was supposed to attract wealth and abundance. You took that from me. But today is the day I’m taking it back.”

I pull the trigger, and the thing ricochets off my chest hard enough to leave a bruise. I hope it will heal by the time police show up to question me about tonight’s whereabouts. ‘Why, officers, I was at the Marianne Motel, of course. Did something happen? My brother? What about my brother? I last saw Archie at our mother’s funeral. Sure, he was fine, all things considered. No, I don’t know of anybody who wanted to harm him.’

I leave the shotgun on the coffee table. There are brains and fragments of scalp on my Wellingtons and jumpsuit. The sprinkles of red reach up to my sleeves. I hate that I haven’t thought of having clean clothes ready for after the deed is done.

It’s not that bad. I’ll manage. I’ll find some garden shears here somewhere to cut off the bloody bits of my outfit and burn them in the backyard or something. I still have the lighter from earlier. Better yet, I should burn off the whole suit. I’m pretty sure I saw a laundry line outside with some of Archie’s clothes set out to dry. I don’t want to risk going to his room to rummage through his wardrobe. The less area I cover, the higher my chances of getting away with this. It’s straight to the attic for me, to break the safe open.

I climb the stairs leading out of the basement and reach for the door handle.

This feels surreal. Like I’m home, in my bed, dreaming about doing this one forbidden thing that has been running through my head ever since I was a little kid. And just like in a dream, there are inconsistencies.

For one, this was too easy. Too perfect. This plan was madder than the stuff you read about in fiction books, and yet, it ran as smoothly as ghee, and I didn’t even break a sweat. Everything that had to go in my favor went in my favor—that never happens unless it’s destiny!

Second, my hands and sleeves are clean. No specks of red, anywhere. Would you look at that, my jumpsuit is clean too. And so are my Wellingtons. Where did the blood and brain matter go?

Chuck-Chuck. The action on Grandad’s shotgun gets pumped behind me.

This isn’t real. It can’t be. I’m dreaming. My alarm clock will ring any second now, to wake me up for work. And then, I hear it. Clear as day: the empty shell hits a wooden stair behind me.

The empty shell from the bullet I fired into my brother’s temple.

I turn around slowly and stare into Archie’s shit-eating grin. It’s regenerating alongside the rest of his mangled face.

“You sensed it, too, didn’t you?” he asks me. “Those fortune cookies we had in that Chinese restaurant thirty years ago. They were special, weren’t they?”

Archie’s ruined eye bleeds in reverse and opens slowly as his cells and tissue repair the damage I’ve caused.

“It’s a crying shame that you never realized, you’ve had wealth and abundance all along. I never wanted your fortune cookie, big brother. Mine was a million times better anyway. But, wait. I never told you what my fortune cookie said, did I?”

At first, Archie’s consonants were a gurgled lisp, but they were becoming clearer with every word. I found myself shaking my head. No, he never did tell me what his fortune cookie had said.

Archie kissed my third eye with the business end of our grandfather’s shotgun. He smiled wider. His front teeth had grown back.

“It said, ‘You will live a long, happy, and healthy life.’ Now, if that’s not the best omen in the world, I don’t know what is.”