2025.11.03

Things were normal for a few months. As normal as it is to spend six hours a day chatting to your brother, especially when there are a thousand other things you'd rather do. As normal as it is for your brother to spend any of this time talking about his sexual experiences and preferences. By "experiences" I mean begging girls on Discord for pictures of their assholes and seething when they chose other men over him. By "preferences" I mean his latest Internet-induced fetishes and fantasies, including his plan to brainwash his future wife by fucking on LSD. First, though, he'd build a harem of "white bitches" he'd subject to loveless sex. That would hold him over while he waited for his true and honest, high-IQ, mulatto queen, who should be aged 18 to however old I was at the time.

"No offense," I said, "but that sounds like pure ass. I can't think of a more unfulfilling lifestyle."

It was New Year's Day, 2023, unseasonably warm. We were strolling through town, heading to the occult store to buy little gemstones for fun. My brother had partied with friends the night before and come home puffing a cigar, positively glowing. Looking back, I think he bought sex and the experience skyrocketed his confidence. I say "bought" instead of "scored" because my brother is fat, ugly, and obviously narcissistic. If he'd successfully wooed anyone, he would have bragged about it. Instead he just swaggered down the street like he was worth a million bucks, and I was happy to see him in a good mood.

"What do you mean?" He scoffed. "You don't want sex?"

"Uh, no. I want to be loved."

It was not the first time he got frustrated with me for failing to understand his sexuality. Because we were both exclusively into women, he assumed I'd also treat attractive human beings like objects. No, Brother, I cannot relate to "needing hole pics," especially not from someone who resembles my sibling. For years, he'd carried on a bizarre, codependent relationship with a girl the same age and build as me— just as mentally ill, too. During the stupid-sister-made-it-up era, she was the only person to whom he told the truth. She accepted him because she really is like me: weak to pathetic people.

He claimed that "because he couldn't save me when I was younger, he had to save her instead!" I wasn't sure how encouraging her eating disorder, hypersexuality, and addiction was "saving her." Alas, the only thing you gain from arguing with my brother is a headache. And if I thought too hard about any of the strange things my brother said and did, it scared me. Just like that first night seven years before, washing dishes in the kitchen, I ignored my discomfort. I did my best to contribute. I told him about my sex life, both real and imaginary, and told myself that we were mature enough to have adult conversations. He regretted coming onto me, he'd take it all back if he could, so this? Now this was just regular sibling talk!

But there's no such thing as regular sibling snuggles. I guess daily, full-body bear hugs weren't enough anymore, so one afternoon my brother remarked that it'd been "so long since he'd had a good cuddle." I laughed, suggested he ask mom, and scurried into my room. I chose not to wonder, had I accepted, what else he would have done.

One morning, over the sound of a gurgling coffee machine, my brother informed me he'd just had a lucid dream. Like anyone would, I asked what he dreamt about. He pointed directly in my face and said I would never know. I laughed, like, "uh, okay?" and ate my breakfast. With him, it was always a sex thing and, if it was a sex thing, I didn't want to know anyways.

I'm minding my business when one day, my brother has something incredible to show me. Usually his amazing creations— most often just amazing ideas— are portable, but this time I have to come down to his room. He flops into his desk chair, I perch on the edge of his bed, and together we watch the watercolour audio-visualiser he'd been tweaking to perfection all morning. It is undeniably cool. We take turns putting on our favourite songs.

"Can my laptop run this?" I ask.

"No way," he says, and reminds me that life is sunshine and rainbows with a custom-built desktop. For months, we've been planning to work on my setup, and finally I'm agreeing to get started. I smile at him. He stares at me. "Okay, get out," he says, shooing me off his bed and out of the basement. "Feels weird having you in my room."

The morning after, he has something important he wants to ask me. He stares at the floor. I wait. Finally he sighs and says never mind. I reassure him it's okay. I'm not going anywhere so he can take his time. For the rest of the day, he's obsessed with "being useful" to me, so I give him random chores to do. Cut out these stickers! Refill my water bottle! Take a look at this malfunction on my desk chair! While unscrewing the wheels and sanding down their imperfections, my brother says that he "needs to be a dad someday, so he'll have kids to help with random shit like this." I politely refrain from telling him he'd be a terrible father.

His final task: retrieve my new weighted blanket from the dryer after its very first wash. I laid in bed on my phone, catching up on all the notifications he distracted me from. When he draped it over me, it was so warm, so delightfully heavy— like a real hug! I sighed out pure gratitude... but felt self-conscious with him watching me. I rolled around and tugged on the blanket, trying to hide my body, but he just stood over me, staring, until I surrendered and sat up.

He said something like, "I should do this more often." He might have called me "cute," I don't know. Honestly, I wish I could erase the memory in its entirety. Laundering my weighted blanket— to this day, one of my most prized possessions— still makes me uneasy.

Useful Brother and I started ordering parts for my new PC the following afternoon. His gaming rig, built from scratch in high school, the infamous League machine, had served him so well it cost him his college degree. I was excited about the upgrade, glad to rely on his expertise, looking forward to the jokes we'd tell during the assembly. We listened to my new favourite band, Zutto Mayonaka de ii Noni, on the Sp*tify family plan he bought me and mom for Christmas. When the sun went down, I stir-fried some rice. We watched an UNDERTALE video while we ate. Brother and I have hung out for six or eight hours again today, and I'm exhausted. I retire to my room. He sits cross-legged on the floor just outside my door with his back to me, staring down the dark hallway.

After a long silence, he says, "this is a 'no' or 'why' question."

"Uh, yeah?" I'm slouching in my chair, feet up on my desk, suppressing a chuckle with my fingers flying as I text my friend.

Very nearly he gives up again. I wonder if I have to prompt him to finish, but my brother needs no help with hurting me. I hardly comprehend what I'm hearing because my first instinct is mumbling, what? when he asks, "can I please eat your pussy?"

My second instinct is to leap out of the chair, slam the door, lock the door, scream STAY AWAY FROM ME!

He sighs, "I guess that's a 'n— '"

"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" My throat is raw. My fists are clenched over my chest. It's an empty cavity, vacated by my racing heart, which thumps through my entire body, just under my skin. He's shuffling to his feet and I'm thinking, the dresser, I can drag it, push it, hurry, barricade the door. It's heavy. Fear makes me strong. He plods down the hall, down the creaky stairs, and I throw myself into bed, fumble for my phone, where did it go? I dropped it when he— when he said—

I doubt Rem is reading this, but I'm sure she remembers my frantic texts. "Are you there? Can I call you?" She knew what my brother did when I was young. She was the first to hear that I'd confronted him and he'd apologised. Our friendship suffered the most from him monopolosing my time. I'd often disappear mid-conversation and return hours later, complaining that my brother got his hooks in me again. So when she answered the phone, all I had to say was, "um, I can't believe this is happening, but he did it again." I'm not sure if I repeated his exact words. Typically, I try to spare myself the visceral disgust.

By now we know I have a billion reasons to hate my brother. This one sentence encapsulates it all: "can I please eat your pussy?" Emphasis on the please— literally begging me for sex! What the fuck?! Is that supposed to flatter me? Turn me on? Did he offer me oral because I don't have to do anything? Yeah, brother, I'd really love to lay there, frozen with fear, skin prickling with revulsion, while you fumble your way around my vulva to fulfill a fetish that I do not share.

Thank you for the haunting mental image. It fits nicely in the nightmares I never stopped having. I am so grateful for the phantom tickle of your uncombed afro on my private parts. Why wouldn't I want my thoughts interrupted by the sight of your ugly mug between my legs, smiling smugly, shiny with sweat, asking me something retarded like, did I cum yet. Clearly, you didn't hijack my sexuality enough! It's not enough to ruin my self-esteem, destroy my ability to trust, betray me again and again and again. You had to ruin fucking EVERYTHING for me!

"Flonne, why are you celibate? Why do you fall apart every January-February or October-November? Why are you so weird?"

This is why.

My worthless, evil, better-off-dead brother phrased this as a "no or why" question. My favourite part of the memory, as someone who rarely ever raises her voice, is screaming "no" in my own way, and screaming so automatically that I no longer have any doubts. It's not my fault. I never wanted this. I was right to be afraid. There is something broken inside of him, a defect predating my existence, something nobody can save him from him— apparently not even himself. I have to wonder, did he ever stop seeing me as a sexual prospect? With either the backwards apology or the one turned right-ways-around, was he still planning to rape me? When he went on and on about his "number zero" regret, was his real regret in failing to go all the way?

I will never know if he really believed in the myth of totally logical, mutually beneficial incest. To the very end, he was trying to appeal to my interests, to make it easy, coax me to agree. I wonder if that was part of the fantasy— the idiot sister, so stupidly coerced, slutty enough to enjoy taboo sex with someone who should repulse her. I abhor the view he has of me. He only asked because some part of him thought I might respond with, "why?" Or maybe even skip the persuasive arguments and, like a stupid porn script, jump straight to "yes!"

Well, FAT FUCKING CHANCE. Rem told me to tell my mom, and I did, and SHE KICKED HIS ASS TO THE CURB!

And then we all lived happily ever after, right? Haha, I wish... That night was the worst of my entire life. At some point, my brother sheepishly asked me if he should leave the house. I told him, "leave and come back tomorrow." (I wish I'd told him to kill himself because he really might have done it. But he might have also seen that as proof he had nothing to lose and take the opportunity to rape me at gunpoint. Did I mention he collects guns?) Once he'd gone, I called my mom, who was working late like she always did. My mouth didn't cooperate. I only asked when she was coming home and didn't rush her when she said it would be a while.

Writing this now, I feel exactly how I felt then. My arms, legs, and face are numb. I'm shaking because it's winter and I left my window cracked. I'm shaking because I'm afraid. I busied myself picking up the magnets that had flown off my interactive calendar when I slammed the door. For the "I Feel" section, I chose the red smiley face, angry-eyebrowed and yelling in outrage. I wrote a note in my phone for the police to find: "if I am murdered, my brother did it." About an hour later, the garage door rumbled open. I pushed my dresser aside just enough to get through. I made small talk with mom while she yanked off her boots, unwrapped her scarf. We were allowed to run the heat in this house, but the kitchen still felt so cold.

She paused on her way to the coat closet— could she see it in my expression? "What's wrong?"

My brother, I said with a shaky breath, "propositioned me for sex again."

Her face slackened with disbelief, twisted with anguish and pity. "Where is he now?" I rushed to tell her he's not in the house, he left, I don't know where he went but it's been a while since he left, he'll be back in the morning. We hugged. She said she was sorry, so sorry, and locked all the doors, including the one to the basement so he couldn't come upstairs. I did not tell her exactly what he said. Mom won't know most of what my brother said and did to me until she reads this. I want to thank her now for believing me, for protecting me, for declaring within seconds of hearing this sordid news, "he has got to go."

Mom picked at the stir fry I'd made. If we talked, it wasn't much and I don't remember what about. We both went to bed before my brother returned, and in the morning mom found out he'd spent the night in the garage. The idiot had left without his key. Pompous as ever, he railed at her: why hadn't anyone left a door open for him? Did she even care how cold he'd been, afraid he'd already been abandoned? I wasn't there to witness it, but I know mom's scolding tone. I can imagine with perfect clarity her hard mouth and unforgiving eyes, telling him he has three days to leave.

The first day, I carried my butterfly knife in my pajama pants pocket. I worried a weapon would only escalate the confrontation— what if he wrestled it away from me? What if I was too scared to use it? I offered my mom a box cutter, the only other sharp object I had, which she appreciated but declined. Both would be useless against one of his guns.

Please understand, this was not paranoia. We were in lethal danger. Alongside unasked-for sexual fantasies, my brother had regaled both me and mom with violent ones, too. Sometimes they were whimsical, like how he'd defend our home during a zombie apocalypse. Mostly they were disturbing. Whenever he left the house, he brought one of his pistols with him, and wherever he went, he'd imagine shooting the strangers he encountered.

"I'll walk into a pharmacy," he told me, "and ask myself how I could kill everyone inside. Like, every single person without anyone escaping." He pantomimed firing his pistol, "picking each target off one by one," explaining how the situation might change if he started from the back or front of the store. I was uncomfortable. He smiled to reassure me, he only thought about stuff like that when he listened too much gangsta rap!

Mom and I made plans. While he stewed in his basement, we shrugged on coats and walked out the front door. If he attacks, which way should I run? Which neighbours should I beg for help? Mom told me to get in the car and just drive, go down this street, turn there, towards the police station. But I didn't have my license, I was out of practice, I could barely see over the steering wheel of her giant SUV. I imagined myself trapped inside a vehicle I was too panicked to turn on, staring down the barrel of my brother's shotgun. Would he kill us on a whim? That is, without torturing us first? I collapsed into her arms, sobbing.

Mom checked us into a hotel. During a lull in the conversation, as the receptionist typed up our booking, she claimed, unprompted, that we called because of some unexpected construction work being done on our house.

In three days time, my brother was gone. He packed up his computer, his guns, and his drugs, and went to freeload off his friends. None of them will ever know the real reason he became so suddenly dependent upon their generosity. He took our cat because it was, direct quote, "the only family he had left." Mom retorted, "and whose fault is that?" He proceeded to abandon the cat with someone else.

Mom kept in touch with him even when he didn't want her to. At first, he rewrote the story so the evil bitch betrayed and abandoned him. He texted her drunken diatribes wherein she was the sole cause of suffering in his life. After about a year and a half, he warmed up enough to ask for money and advice. To this day, mom is just his therapist-ATM. He forces her talk him out of murder plots like the pharmacy-shootup, though lately he's more interested in killing people in hospitals and shopping malls. What can she do besides beg him to kill only himself? "Please, don't take anyone down with you." He puts her in this double-bind, then treats it as proof she doesn't love him. The truth is that my mother is the only person on the planet who gives a fuck about him.

But you know what? She gives infinitely more fucks about ME! She chose me. She continues to choose me. For my safety and peace of mind, we moved far, far away, somewhere my brother would never guess and could never get to. She loves him because she always will, she helps him because she has to, but she repeatedly reminds me that she will never let him near me again. The last time I saw his face, he was turning around to sit on the floor outside my door, gearing up to utter the words that would officially ruin his life and have, thus far, ruined mine, too.

But I'm tired of being ruined. I'm tired of feeling ashamed. I'm tired his voice echoing in my head. I'm tired of seeing his face in the mirror. I'm tired of dreaming about him, about the things he did and didn't do, things he could and would have done, and all the ways I'd like to hurt him in return.

Between the two of us, if there's someone who would be better off dead, it's him. If there's someone who would spare others trouble with his suicide, it's him. If there's someone who should not have been born at all, it's him. If he was not defective from birth, then surely his actions— all the harm he's done to me and my family, to his friends and peers, to perfect strangers... Even the harm he's done to himself! It's his own choices that brought him to this point of complete and total worthlessness.

I'm done orienting my existence around words spoken by a repulsive, pathetic, soulless creature. I'm grateful for the life I've scrounged together in the aftermath of his abuse. I am blessed by the twists of fate and steadfast protectors who spared me pain I could not survive. I am proud of my past self, who chose at every turn to live another day, who learned to tell herself stories to stay sane. I'm sorry about all those nights I cried alone, in terror, fearing the worst from circumstances both delusional and real. I'm sorry for bad choices I made when I knew better, traps I fell into when I didn't. I'm sorry that I'm still looking for "the thing that fixes me," when really there's nothing broken at all.

There's nothing wrong with me.

It's not my fault.

I did nothing but be born.

Despite the circumstances, my birth was a miracle.

My life is a gift.

I have an inexorable right to cherish and celebrate it, to fill it up with love, live it as I please.

Vivarism— that's my choice. And for me, there's nothing livelier or lovelier, more comforting, more revitalising, more effectively steadying and stabilising than art, writing, fun and games, and— most importantly!— a happy daydream. Enter: Sans Undertale.

(TO BE CONTINUED)