(no subject)
Stop the scene. I’m shocked. How can this be happening to my family? We have been an overall joyous one in the past. What did we do to deserve this? A caring and loving family. I can’t believe this. Why? Here everyone is in the middle of a robbery during our annual February birthday party at my sister’s house. The one we have for my nephew, my niece, my other nephew, my sister, my other nephew, my twin brother (no we aren’t identical), and me.
“Don’t move! I swear to God, or whomever, don’t move or I’ll blow your brains out! I want each and every one of you to grab your purses and wallets from the table and empty them one at a time.”
Not exactly the way anyone wanted to spend a birthday party. At least it’ll be a bit more exciting this year. We, my family and I, stood around the kitchen table with presents scattered about, television blaring with the sounds of the Knicks game. Silence washed over like a tsunami, letting me finally rest my ears.
I looked at my twin, Pat. The person I shared a womb with. The person I’ve lived with my entire life. He slowly reached for his pocket, making sure the robber saw his hand the entire time. He puts his hands in his front pockets and emptied them out.
The robber looks at him puzzlingly. “Why the hell would I ever want the contents of your empty pockets? Empty your back pockets, god dammit.”
It happened in slow motion like in the movies or something. An elbow from the villain sliced through the air, splitting the space itself in half, as well as my twin brother’s head. A sharp cut trickled blood to the rhythm of a ticking clock, stopping for the briefest moment, seeming as if would stop, and then trickling again. Alarm filled the room, but no one dared to move. Pat stumbled back like a surrendering puppy after getting pummeled by his drunken owner. Our mother looked on, concern on her face, flustered with anxiety
I’d miss him if he died. He isn’t necessarily my best friend, but I’d like to think I could talk to him about anything if it all came down to it. I’d care if he died, but would he? I really can’t tell lately. It seems like he cares about the world; he wants a reason to live. I can see it in his eyes. Why doesn’t he care about anything then? Why doesn’t he tell me what he’s thinking? It’d be a shame if he died now. I never really got to know him. Nineteen years of being around him constantly and still, nothing. The submissiveness of his character summed his reaction up well. He doesn’t care that someone is taking his money. He doesn’t care that he’s putting everyone’s lives at risk. He doesn’t care that his life is at risk. I can see it in his eyes.
“Any slower and I’m gonna shoot myself. Jesus Christ.” The robber feverishly turns the gun towards my uncle, hazing the view of his face with a black blur. In an instant my uncle scowls and slams his wallet on the table. He clenched it like it, veins pulsating, fingers trembling. This is the one time, more than any other, that he should hide away his ill temper.
“I thought I made a point by throwing an elbow, but you seem like you could care less. Now, if you pull something like that again you’re gonna have to pick one of your kids to get shot.”
My mother motioned with her face for him to give in, grimacing at the thought of one of her kids getting shot. He retreated quickly thereafter. He loved his “kids” dearly. He, however, had no actual kids, but what he had were close enough; especially my twin and I. He had lived vicariously through us for years passed through the sport in which he taught how to play. I’m almost positive he never missed a baseball game. What else could we ask for right? I would have loved to have a real father. It’s not that my uncle didn’t care for us, and I’m definitely not saying my absentee father could have done any better, but I have always wished that there would be a male figure in my life who actually had some qualities I could look up to. My uncle isn’t exactly “established” by any means. He is a delivery pizza guy at the ripe age of 60. I enjoy talking to him periodically since I moved out of my house where he and my mother live, escaping from his asshole-ish behavior and only experiencing he nurturing side of his personality.
I don’t want him to get shot.
“Thanks old man. I hope that wasn’t all the money you had.”
It was.
Before the gun could continue its merry-go-round of scare tactics, he did what I thought he’d do. He ran. His feet grew wings and he floated towards the back door; not like a hummingbird, beautiful in flight, but in a hurry like a vulture flying away from its scavenged meal, hoping to leave the wreckage behind. He ran away from a problem that could ultimately hurt the people whom he loves. He always does this. He did it in high school when he chose to drop out before his father forced him back. He did it when he immaturely and sorely acted towards the mother of his two kids, eventually ending up in a court fight just to see them. And he’s doing it now. Good idea Mike.
“BANG!”
I love my brother, age 29, but sometimes you just deserve to be shot - or at least be taught a lesson. He started squirming on the floor, so I knew he was okay. It only skimmed his arm. It hardly left a mark. After all those days of adolescent aggressiveness, one would think he could take a measly bullet wound.
Mike drank a lot as a kid. He did drugs too. The stories I’ve heard from him are foolish. I always think to myself, how can he sit here and tell me those stories as if they are the highest achievement of his life. Very likely because they are, that’s why. He barely made it through high school and dropped out of college early. He now helps run a business he and my sister started, yet it’s hardly a life fulfillment. He once asked me why I asked so many questions. Why I over-analyze all the time. I asked him if he was happy for in his life, for the most part. He responded miserably with a no. I told him I’d rather be philosophically concerned than blissfully ignorant and the thing is, Mike, you’re neither. The conversation ended there.
“Yea. Good idea. Great idea. Run away from the people who need you. That’s the way to earn respect. Gamble with your own life.”
He has a gambling problem.
He lay astonished in a small pool of blood that rose to the top of the carpet, clumping at the tips like scarlet dew on a blade of grass, wondering what to say to this robber who thought he knew the kind of person he was. But Mike shut up. Like knowing how to run away, he knows how to lose a battle. My sister rushed to his side.
The robber kept the gun in the same direction. “You’re next blondie. Don’t run.”
My sister Carina looked up, tears glazing her eyes. She dried the remnants away with her blood-soaked hand, not noticing the trail she was leaving behind. The blood brought out her complexion in the light. She looked like a radiant angel, despite the fact that she gave birth just one week earlier.
I could tell she was dying inside because of the blood on the floor. All right, she’s not that much of a neat freak, but her obsessive compulsion conveyed to me by the way she took the scatters bills from her purse and lied them down, one by one, all with dead presidents smirking upward. If anyone could talk the family out of this, it’d be her. She has had ambition ever since I can remember, being the first of my immediate family to finish college. She wore a major in education like a forbidden tattoo. As much aspiration and charisma as the girl has, she wasn’t able to land a career that made her happy. She went to school for close to eight years, then tried her hand at teaching before abruptly quitting, and now runs the paperwork in an entrepreneurial business our shot brother and her husband started a few years back. I wanted to tell her to quit, to stop worrying about her brothers and get a job that’s fulfilling.
But I can’t right now.
The bills were quickly swiped up. The emptiness began to fill the room. It wasn’t because of the hole they now shared in their finance, but because of the tension the family could not seem to overcome. They can get through this. We all can get through this. My sister continued to cry, now smeared completely with blood, while my brother lay almost lifeless on the floor next to her.
I cannot wait until she tells this story in a few weeks, using the exact same voice she uses for every over-exaggerated story she tells. Actually, this may be the only one that’s not. Carina, don’t do anything to get shot before I can really talk to you. I can relate to you. You aren’t exactly the kind of person I am, but you get why I overanalyze everything; why I argue and obsess and emotionalize over every aspect of life. I can talk to you because you care. You care and you communicate. And you’re a beautiful woman, even after three kids. You’re too important to get shot.
“Thanks. You next big shot. Yea you. Get out your wad of bills and put it on the table. I see you standing there with a smirk on your face like you’re bigger than all of this. You’re not.”
But it’s exactly what he thought he was; above it all. Smarter than everyone else. An infinite fountain of wisdom. He tells me he knows about relationships. He knows about schooling and science and physics and quantums. He knew it all before anyone else even got the chance the talk. The robber throws him a bottle of vodka.
“Drink so I don’t have to deal with you.”
John wasn’t allowed. Carina forbade him from drinking when she caught him giving out their number to college kids in Mexico so he could start a cage fighting business. Facetious, yes. Funny as hell, yes. Thirty-five and still a child, yes.
Nevertheless, he drank some while the robber took the money from his wallet.
“Who’s the big shot now?”
The attention then turned towards Cali and Tine, the two older kids of my sister.
There was no bother with Cali, but concern surrounded Tine. Cali is by all means a normal young child. Only seven years old, she hasn’t yet adapted her mind to anything outside the realm of television and video games. My nephew Tine, though he spent much of his free time doing extracurricular activities and innocent child games, had something more to him. His psyche had started to develop in ways I felt were much like myself at his age. Cliché as it may sound, he was a miniature me, questioning the world around him, while knowing he needed to go with the flow before becoming his own person, something some people in our family had still not developed.
He stared blankly down the barrel of the gun. No sweat developed on his young brow. No twitch developed in his content face. He was different from the rest of his family. He took two steps closer to the gun while my niece cried hysterically and looked into the eyes of the villain.
I asked him what he thought about religion once and he asked me what I meant. I told him that I’m not telling him what to think, but rather asking him whether or not he believed in the religion he had been taught in years passed. What he said next led me to believe what I do about him to this day: I don’t believe it. It all seems like magic. I could not believe the words that came out of his mouth. A rational thinker at the age of nine!? Who would have guessed?
His eyes were piercing in a subtle way. He was like a soldier in the heat of a battle, both friends and enemies dead around him, while he stared at the gates of Hell, not quite with any expression on his face. He took one more step closer and the robber stayed put. He moved his hand towards the mask that covered the face of the frightening figure that stood in front of him and slowly started to pull it off. His head slid to the side of the now unmasked man and the shadow of a gun dropped, crashing to the floor and bringing an almost overwhelming wave of relief to the family around.
My mom trembled. She had always be the most paranoid person on the planet. She always told me something like this could happen. I would tell her not too worry so much. It’ll kill you.
She loves me so much. I know it. She loves all of her family. I just wish she had a better life. It’s been so hectic for her with my father leaving before we were born and her never being able to keep a steady job. A lady like her should never have to work until she’s seventy and dies of tuberculosis. A woman like her needs to relax, have some fun, and learn some things that she had never had the courage to approach in the past.
Finally, my nephew uncovered the image of the person who had separated himself from this family, trying to find a way to prove something to them. Tine whispered in his ear, “You’re eternal, I understand. I’m who you were and you’re who I will be. Your existence will thrive in me.”
My mother fell over in her chair, shocked at the revelation that had just occurred. She clutched her left arm and gasped for air as she began to see her light. I now sat, too heavy with emotion and unable to move from my detached position away from my family. Pat shies away, my uncle barks orders, Mike is nowhere to be found. Carina hurriedly runs for the phone, while John shifts out of her way. Cali whimpered and Tine drifts towards me. I looked again at my mom, lying on the floor, as she turned her head, smiling half-heartedly at my now unmasked face.
“Don’t move! I swear to God, or whomever, don’t move or I’ll blow your brains out! I want each and every one of you to grab your purses and wallets from the table and empty them one at a time.”
Not exactly the way anyone wanted to spend a birthday party. At least it’ll be a bit more exciting this year. We, my family and I, stood around the kitchen table with presents scattered about, television blaring with the sounds of the Knicks game. Silence washed over like a tsunami, letting me finally rest my ears.
I looked at my twin, Pat. The person I shared a womb with. The person I’ve lived with my entire life. He slowly reached for his pocket, making sure the robber saw his hand the entire time. He puts his hands in his front pockets and emptied them out.
The robber looks at him puzzlingly. “Why the hell would I ever want the contents of your empty pockets? Empty your back pockets, god dammit.”
It happened in slow motion like in the movies or something. An elbow from the villain sliced through the air, splitting the space itself in half, as well as my twin brother’s head. A sharp cut trickled blood to the rhythm of a ticking clock, stopping for the briefest moment, seeming as if would stop, and then trickling again. Alarm filled the room, but no one dared to move. Pat stumbled back like a surrendering puppy after getting pummeled by his drunken owner. Our mother looked on, concern on her face, flustered with anxiety
I’d miss him if he died. He isn’t necessarily my best friend, but I’d like to think I could talk to him about anything if it all came down to it. I’d care if he died, but would he? I really can’t tell lately. It seems like he cares about the world; he wants a reason to live. I can see it in his eyes. Why doesn’t he care about anything then? Why doesn’t he tell me what he’s thinking? It’d be a shame if he died now. I never really got to know him. Nineteen years of being around him constantly and still, nothing. The submissiveness of his character summed his reaction up well. He doesn’t care that someone is taking his money. He doesn’t care that he’s putting everyone’s lives at risk. He doesn’t care that his life is at risk. I can see it in his eyes.
“Any slower and I’m gonna shoot myself. Jesus Christ.” The robber feverishly turns the gun towards my uncle, hazing the view of his face with a black blur. In an instant my uncle scowls and slams his wallet on the table. He clenched it like it, veins pulsating, fingers trembling. This is the one time, more than any other, that he should hide away his ill temper.
“I thought I made a point by throwing an elbow, but you seem like you could care less. Now, if you pull something like that again you’re gonna have to pick one of your kids to get shot.”
My mother motioned with her face for him to give in, grimacing at the thought of one of her kids getting shot. He retreated quickly thereafter. He loved his “kids” dearly. He, however, had no actual kids, but what he had were close enough; especially my twin and I. He had lived vicariously through us for years passed through the sport in which he taught how to play. I’m almost positive he never missed a baseball game. What else could we ask for right? I would have loved to have a real father. It’s not that my uncle didn’t care for us, and I’m definitely not saying my absentee father could have done any better, but I have always wished that there would be a male figure in my life who actually had some qualities I could look up to. My uncle isn’t exactly “established” by any means. He is a delivery pizza guy at the ripe age of 60. I enjoy talking to him periodically since I moved out of my house where he and my mother live, escaping from his asshole-ish behavior and only experiencing he nurturing side of his personality.
I don’t want him to get shot.
“Thanks old man. I hope that wasn’t all the money you had.”
It was.
Before the gun could continue its merry-go-round of scare tactics, he did what I thought he’d do. He ran. His feet grew wings and he floated towards the back door; not like a hummingbird, beautiful in flight, but in a hurry like a vulture flying away from its scavenged meal, hoping to leave the wreckage behind. He ran away from a problem that could ultimately hurt the people whom he loves. He always does this. He did it in high school when he chose to drop out before his father forced him back. He did it when he immaturely and sorely acted towards the mother of his two kids, eventually ending up in a court fight just to see them. And he’s doing it now. Good idea Mike.
“BANG!”
I love my brother, age 29, but sometimes you just deserve to be shot - or at least be taught a lesson. He started squirming on the floor, so I knew he was okay. It only skimmed his arm. It hardly left a mark. After all those days of adolescent aggressiveness, one would think he could take a measly bullet wound.
Mike drank a lot as a kid. He did drugs too. The stories I’ve heard from him are foolish. I always think to myself, how can he sit here and tell me those stories as if they are the highest achievement of his life. Very likely because they are, that’s why. He barely made it through high school and dropped out of college early. He now helps run a business he and my sister started, yet it’s hardly a life fulfillment. He once asked me why I asked so many questions. Why I over-analyze all the time. I asked him if he was happy for in his life, for the most part. He responded miserably with a no. I told him I’d rather be philosophically concerned than blissfully ignorant and the thing is, Mike, you’re neither. The conversation ended there.
“Yea. Good idea. Great idea. Run away from the people who need you. That’s the way to earn respect. Gamble with your own life.”
He has a gambling problem.
He lay astonished in a small pool of blood that rose to the top of the carpet, clumping at the tips like scarlet dew on a blade of grass, wondering what to say to this robber who thought he knew the kind of person he was. But Mike shut up. Like knowing how to run away, he knows how to lose a battle. My sister rushed to his side.
The robber kept the gun in the same direction. “You’re next blondie. Don’t run.”
My sister Carina looked up, tears glazing her eyes. She dried the remnants away with her blood-soaked hand, not noticing the trail she was leaving behind. The blood brought out her complexion in the light. She looked like a radiant angel, despite the fact that she gave birth just one week earlier.
I could tell she was dying inside because of the blood on the floor. All right, she’s not that much of a neat freak, but her obsessive compulsion conveyed to me by the way she took the scatters bills from her purse and lied them down, one by one, all with dead presidents smirking upward. If anyone could talk the family out of this, it’d be her. She has had ambition ever since I can remember, being the first of my immediate family to finish college. She wore a major in education like a forbidden tattoo. As much aspiration and charisma as the girl has, she wasn’t able to land a career that made her happy. She went to school for close to eight years, then tried her hand at teaching before abruptly quitting, and now runs the paperwork in an entrepreneurial business our shot brother and her husband started a few years back. I wanted to tell her to quit, to stop worrying about her brothers and get a job that’s fulfilling.
But I can’t right now.
The bills were quickly swiped up. The emptiness began to fill the room. It wasn’t because of the hole they now shared in their finance, but because of the tension the family could not seem to overcome. They can get through this. We all can get through this. My sister continued to cry, now smeared completely with blood, while my brother lay almost lifeless on the floor next to her.
I cannot wait until she tells this story in a few weeks, using the exact same voice she uses for every over-exaggerated story she tells. Actually, this may be the only one that’s not. Carina, don’t do anything to get shot before I can really talk to you. I can relate to you. You aren’t exactly the kind of person I am, but you get why I overanalyze everything; why I argue and obsess and emotionalize over every aspect of life. I can talk to you because you care. You care and you communicate. And you’re a beautiful woman, even after three kids. You’re too important to get shot.
“Thanks. You next big shot. Yea you. Get out your wad of bills and put it on the table. I see you standing there with a smirk on your face like you’re bigger than all of this. You’re not.”
But it’s exactly what he thought he was; above it all. Smarter than everyone else. An infinite fountain of wisdom. He tells me he knows about relationships. He knows about schooling and science and physics and quantums. He knew it all before anyone else even got the chance the talk. The robber throws him a bottle of vodka.
“Drink so I don’t have to deal with you.”
John wasn’t allowed. Carina forbade him from drinking when she caught him giving out their number to college kids in Mexico so he could start a cage fighting business. Facetious, yes. Funny as hell, yes. Thirty-five and still a child, yes.
Nevertheless, he drank some while the robber took the money from his wallet.
“Who’s the big shot now?”
The attention then turned towards Cali and Tine, the two older kids of my sister.
There was no bother with Cali, but concern surrounded Tine. Cali is by all means a normal young child. Only seven years old, she hasn’t yet adapted her mind to anything outside the realm of television and video games. My nephew Tine, though he spent much of his free time doing extracurricular activities and innocent child games, had something more to him. His psyche had started to develop in ways I felt were much like myself at his age. Cliché as it may sound, he was a miniature me, questioning the world around him, while knowing he needed to go with the flow before becoming his own person, something some people in our family had still not developed.
He stared blankly down the barrel of the gun. No sweat developed on his young brow. No twitch developed in his content face. He was different from the rest of his family. He took two steps closer to the gun while my niece cried hysterically and looked into the eyes of the villain.
I asked him what he thought about religion once and he asked me what I meant. I told him that I’m not telling him what to think, but rather asking him whether or not he believed in the religion he had been taught in years passed. What he said next led me to believe what I do about him to this day: I don’t believe it. It all seems like magic. I could not believe the words that came out of his mouth. A rational thinker at the age of nine!? Who would have guessed?
His eyes were piercing in a subtle way. He was like a soldier in the heat of a battle, both friends and enemies dead around him, while he stared at the gates of Hell, not quite with any expression on his face. He took one more step closer and the robber stayed put. He moved his hand towards the mask that covered the face of the frightening figure that stood in front of him and slowly started to pull it off. His head slid to the side of the now unmasked man and the shadow of a gun dropped, crashing to the floor and bringing an almost overwhelming wave of relief to the family around.
My mom trembled. She had always be the most paranoid person on the planet. She always told me something like this could happen. I would tell her not too worry so much. It’ll kill you.
She loves me so much. I know it. She loves all of her family. I just wish she had a better life. It’s been so hectic for her with my father leaving before we were born and her never being able to keep a steady job. A lady like her should never have to work until she’s seventy and dies of tuberculosis. A woman like her needs to relax, have some fun, and learn some things that she had never had the courage to approach in the past.
Finally, my nephew uncovered the image of the person who had separated himself from this family, trying to find a way to prove something to them. Tine whispered in his ear, “You’re eternal, I understand. I’m who you were and you’re who I will be. Your existence will thrive in me.”
My mother fell over in her chair, shocked at the revelation that had just occurred. She clutched her left arm and gasped for air as she began to see her light. I now sat, too heavy with emotion and unable to move from my detached position away from my family. Pat shies away, my uncle barks orders, Mike is nowhere to be found. Carina hurriedly runs for the phone, while John shifts out of her way. Cali whimpered and Tine drifts towards me. I looked again at my mom, lying on the floor, as she turned her head, smiling half-heartedly at my now unmasked face.