The Half Brother I Kill

So, once upon a time, there was a dirty word,  an abhorrent marriage and  a soiled soul and  Drake Fabian.

Everyone knows a Drake Fabian.  He is the guy who would step on your head and kick your dog to ascend that ladder.  He was his mother's Christ.  On any rung he placed his foot, a sacred ground from beneath him, grew.  The child she shouldn't have had, or never should have kept, was Drake Fabian.  Her hair was always greasy, and she was beaten on the daily by her alcoholic husband.   Not pretty enough for her tiny man, and too Catholic to divorce, she took her frustration out on Drake, her dirty boy.   He was dirty because he was a boy.   He was dirty because his soiled his diaper, like clockwork, every three hours and a minute.   Her cross eyed spouse, her tiny man, would not, could not, stand the smell and for that, he would hurt her; hurt her for the stench of crap.  She made sure to tell him that, her son, whom she called out by his full name, Drake Fabian.  Simultaneously, she would chastise her baby, and lick his ego, like a sore,  or as a cow laps up placenta from a newborn calf.   She couldn't get him clean, because he couldn't ever be clean, enough.  Not in the area that he messed,  every three hours and a minute, nor in her eyes, for he was a make, like her cheating man.  Filling his diaper with green bile, he listened as she vomited verbs and nouns that no child should ever hear, but he listened too closely and he heard and he learned.   He knew when he soiled,  he was going to get beat on, and he grew frightened.  But his unformed mind, unconsciously kept a tally of every blow that struck him and every verb or adjective  of abuse thrown at him.  Over weeks, he knew it was wrong and bad to fill his pamper with green bile.  He came to hate that mess and smell that happened every three hours and a minute, he recognized it soon, as the smell angered his mother.  She beat his ass red and bloody, and wiped and scraped it clean, because it was bad, filthy bad.  He hated his soiled drawers, and his mother for hating him, for  being a dirty boy.  He remembered how it hurt to be dirty.   

As he grew up,  his mother doted on him as a golden child.  He was a perfect child now, and getting more ideal every year, because he was directly to thank,  fornhwr beatings only happened at night, and not every three hours and a minute.  Drake Fabian considered only his needs, and bullied anyone who tried to tweak with his power play.  

There was the time, I got sucker punched for not signing up for selective service on my 18th birthday.  The moment my life flashed before my eyes, when he told an Italian fisherman, that it was me, and not him, that stole his beer in Europe.  He routinely took more than he needed, and spent as close to nothing on anyone other than what was necessary to win friends and influence people.  His favorite hobby was watching his reflection, as a child predator would.  He made it a daily challenge to miserly pinch every penny:  telling St. Jude’s hospital to fuck off on the phone.  After years of listening to him bitch, and moan, and his daily rants of self serving propaganda,  it was time to kill Drake Fabian.

    Should I kill thee for the fourth grade misgivings and all the hype you put upon the rest of us, while you created a cult around Farrah, and made everyone else a pariah near thee?  Should I slaughter thee for the minutes you stole in highschool, taking my books or swiping your backhand against my face?  Perhaps I should slice your throat for the years of drug abuse you deny to your wife and children?  There are so many ways.

    Should I perhaps, take your skull and smash it with the hammer you threw at me, when we played near your mother’s pool, but you weren’t the center of attention?  Or maybe when you started throwing scissors at me when I interrupted your beating of your  girlfriend?  I could take out your knees, because you couldn't actually win on the football field, but had to find a way to make sure your privileged ass shined bright against the sun.

    I remember the year in college, when we both chose Western Civ as a sure pass, and I aced the same test you failed.  The night before studying your stolen test, while I skated through to the same C.  How you plotted against me, because I had learned  in high school what you blew the TA for.  When you were busy sticking your little wicket into some 13 year old, as I excused your bad behavior.   Or the same year, when I interuppted your rape,  that you used marijuana and cocaine to ply through; her tight Jordache jeans had her sucking your fat fingers, until I pulled her out by her dignity.   Why did you suck the peanut butter off a goat's goathood bought, to ensure friends at the biggest frat, while I drank and smoke my way into the same Dean's list?

    Your mother bought you edible underwear, because she thought it was sexy, meanwhile we all drank to forget the thought of it.  Your father asked you what that girl meant, when she asked to buy weed from you, albeit on parent’s weekend.  When your girlfriend, the only one you ever loved, called you out on your hypocrisy with the one word you couldn’t digest.  The one word that interrupted your little world, and made you feel like the little babyyou were, a full diaper of crap.  Did you tell your wife, Drake?  Did you tell her you married her only to breed?  Does your wife know the word that makes you shrink into a little red, white baby?  Can she sense your soft, white under belly? Because it’s dirty.  Because you can’t clean it up, like you clean up your life, at least in a whipped up rationalization.   You know your deepest fear.  It frightens you as hell shakes a minor, puny demon to IRA core.  You know, and no one else knows, that  dark, black, evacuation, if your nightmares.  It’s not the job you lied to get.  It’s not the car you wrecked and got fixed by filing a false claim.  It's not the exact measurement of your hair, ir the number of bug bites per summer and the weight of the pile of coals at the bottom of your grill, you can meet out.  In fact, even the weight of the pennies you throw at the homeless in your town, isn't within your domain.  But that dirty little back end of yours, you bad, dirty boy.  That, you cannot control.  You know that.  And only you, and I, know that.

    Do you tell your coworkers about how you would purposely kill anyone who fucked up your career, even your wife, the woman who bore you two children?  Did you announce to the world, as you would announce any bowel movement to the nearest drunkard, the beer you stole throughout your youth, or the bat you kept in your pathetic B210, to pummel anyone who didn’t agree with your self serving ding a ling?  The blackened eye you gave as a gift to any non worshipping lackey.

    Can you recall the rituals you went through, day in and day out?  Of walking a certain number of minutes per day, or eating a particular number of calories, or fucking every girl who entered your beer red pubic hair?  The way you showered for exactly 4 minutes each day and then took 13 steps back into the dormroom, to pull your towel off, left to right every time.  Then, taking your right hand and putting exactly two poofs of talcum powder in your left hand, to rim your asshole three times, never four, to make sure you “powdered up,” and then announce it to the whole floor.  Or when you got wet by accident and proceeded to attack poor, large Harvey; much larger than you, and someone you could not harm, put you down like a baby for a nap.

    I wonder if you can see why I must kill you?  Why everything you stand for and everyone you’ve harmed, call to my soul, begging for vengeance.  People you don’t remember, times you’ve put behind you, like a fat drunkard puts a handful of  tainted, browned single-ply toilet paper into his ass, and wipes, and wipes, and sandpapers and pulls out the hairs of his ass covered in boils.

    Now that you have attained this American dream, you created, nay, infested on everyone else.  All of us who dared stood near you, not even in your way.  The mother that blew little kisses on your naked behind.   So white, so privileged, your cheese droopy ass is, and soon, was.  I hated every word you uttered,  Every little lisp you tried to make sexy, every sneaker you stole from the Footlockers you worked at.  I despised every drop of every beer of every case you snuck out the back door of the IGA.  You made friendship a game.  Where love should have prevailed, you placed contempt and competition.  You tried so hard to be number one, and we all bowed in front of you, so as not  to be beaten when we weren’t looking.  But you were last, always last, never to win, fairly.  You stole the right to win, when you refused to play by the rules humanity wrote.

    So on this day, this your fiftieth birthday, I must end you.  I will not tell you about it.  I will ambush you, when all is right and blissful and calm in your world.  While you sip a Scotch, you don’t deserve, or smoke a fat black cigar, you never bought, I will walk up to you, as I have a hundred times before.  I will shake your hand, while pulling you into a hearty hug, and squeeze you, as the prodigal son greets his lost brother.  You will smile, because you will think you have a moment of safety.  And another unearned victory.   As I pull away from that embrace, and your eyes lock mine, as a comrade’s should, I will look down at my feet.  Your gaze will slowly turn to a blink, as you automatically follow my head down to where I want you to be staring.  Your wife will smile like the horse faced ass she is, your children, whom I have never met will be texting their boyfriends or BFFs, nearby, and someone else you’ve fucked over in the past, will be stealing one more beer from your ill gotten cooler gains, and then….just then.

    “Drake.”

    “What up, Fatness?”

    “Happy birthday.”

    “You're still smoking crack?

    “You still an ass hole?”

    “Uh. I hate that word.”

    “I know.”

    “Why do you use that word, when you know I hate it?”

    “Ah, Drake.  Ah, fucking, Drake.  May all your fears face you when you die."