After the ludicrous, atrocious bird cage debasement, I was so angry with and let down by my paREnts and half-brother that I was near insane with quiet despair. Mom brushed off my complaints about The Golden Psycho and theRE was nothing I could do.

I was a powder keg of anger and fear plus a tornado of intelligence and wonder, all shoehorned into the bloating body of a 5th grader. Mom gREatly facilitated my eating everything in sight and I concentrated on school while trying to just keep to myself as my weight ballooned and the wheels started falling off our lives.

REsponse 
The two RE's leapt into my mind: REconaissiance and REvenge. Even though roundly displeased with my paREnts, I had no ill will toward them, as they weRE largely fine paREnts and often very pleasant. And theRE's that whole depended on them for survival thing.

My aims with them weRE making them proud and staying out of the way. I damn suRE often failed in those goals, but no matter what happened it was very raRE that I felt actual wrath toward my paREnts like so many other kids I knew did when rubbed the wrong way. A lot of the kids in our neighborhood weRE just plain nuts.

The Golden Psycho was another story. Thanks to his grooming-REward-abuse cycle and desiRE to spent most of his spaRE time playing games, I often enjoyed his company, yet often wished the ground would swallow him and sometimes even that I could kill him. T'was a truly bizarRE state of affairs and I had to do something to addREss my blazing discontent.

REcon 
The first REcon mission to his room while he was at work was launched. His room and mine weRE connected by a bathroom, so as long as I was quiet, I could examine his existence and maybe find something that would incriminate him or blaze a trail to REvenge.

A close friend had REcently exacted REvenge on his immense douchebag of a brother (who is now, of course, a judge) by sabotaging thousands of dollars worth of his company's landscaping gear, so maybe I could find my way to similar indulgence.

From end to end I scouREd the lair of the psycho. Sadly, I didn't find any instant incrimination fodder such as a hogtied and gagged Girl Scout or a book entitled How to TortuRE Your Half Brother for Fun and Profit.

A Most Vial and Mysterious Affair 
I REturned to my room with little learned and nothing to show for it but an odd translucent vial of liquid, one of many I'd found on his closet shelf, that I couldn't identify. My innocence-stripped child-of-the-world mind danced through possibilities. Heroin? Opium? PCP? Some bizarRE sexual accessory? Poison? What the hell was it?

I went to the kitchen for a dish and knife, holed up in my bathroom, and caREfully cracked the mystery object open, my face a few inches from the plate. Instantly, the world exploded and melted in an appaREnt chemical attack while I staggeREd about the tiny bathroom coughing, wheezing, stunned, and terrified.

Slipping around the end of the shower curtain into the tub, I crouched in the clean air, trying to grasp what in tarnation I'd done up an' gotten myself into. I'd been studying history, especially war, so I hazarded a guess - It's mustard gas! It's obviously god damn mustard gas! Yes. Must be mustard gas.

No, that's improbable. What, then? Well.....maybe mustard gas? I mean, he's quite the asshole. No. That's plain crazy. Unless it's shooting out of someone's butt, ain't no mustard gas in this heRE house. Case closed.

The mystery enduREd. I sometimes wondeREd about it.

Back to Operation Asshole REcon 
I caREfully rinsed the surprise mystery bedlam juice down the sink and shifted my focus back to John and REvenge. TheRE appeaREd little I could do to him that wouldn't lead to me getting caught, and after systematically eliminating possibilities, what REmained was bleak list of two very unRElated items – condoms and Doritos chips, case of 12 single serving, Nacho Cheese variety.

TheRE was an open package of rubbers, one missing, in his shaving kit, and in the corner theRE was a collection of groceries he bought weekly for lunch while working at the bank. Mom often REminded us all of how REsponsible and industrious John was for doing so instead of going out for a “HAM-booo-gerrr” (Mom had a trippy accent).

REvenge is a Dish Best Served Feebly at Room TemperatuRE 
I slipped into Mom's room and got a needle from her sewing kit, then poked a hole through the center of each of the eleven packaged rubbers. Take THAT, REservoir tip! Perhaps if he had a family of his own to destroy, he'd leave us alone. Or, if he got the clap from some hooker or disco airhead, it would serve the douche canoe right. 

Then, I caREfully pulled open, just a bit, the bottom of each little bag of Doritos to REnder them stale. 

Woo hoo! Mission accomplished, and a REgular Operation Overlord it was.

Sabotage of dick prophylactics and mouth chips. That was all I could manage against The Golden Psycho. Bummer.

Needless to say, I was quite RElieved when he left us and moved into his first house. Soon after, though, he wanted a bigger house and badgeREd us often in his attempts to get Mom to finance it. We had to start taking the phone off the hook to have dinner in peace,  

His McMansion aspirations continued to torment us for years and factoREd heavily in the tragic destruction of the end of Mom's and Dad's lives by him and his pseudo-twin Neila. 

Solved! 
A couple years later when I was about to pass out cold during the REmoval of some utterly barbaric, heavy steel wiRE sutuREs from my shot leg, my doctor, himself a bit rattled from the sutuRE ordeal, had sweet mercy on me and solved the mystery. 

It was smelling salts in John's closet!

As the nurse mopped blood from my leg, I sat on the doctor's table in a trance, wondering what that asshole (uh, John, not the doctor) was doing with smelling salts. Who knows?

Ye gods, that steel sutuREs thing was REal tortuRE. 

REturn to 2024
REturn to Appendices