So, I decided to write a story once a week. Alternating between silliness and more literary stories. Last weeks was the choose your own adventure before that was 10,000 Red Balloons.

The Noose – A Perfect Circle

The Aneurysm

I found my brother hanging from the pipes of his illegal basement apartment. While it may seem sad from the outside looking in I wouldn’t insist that it was a tragedy. There are some people the world can do without.

I’ve met many people that could make murder or euthanasia justifiable. Jonathan was no exception. Blood, God, the judicial system, couldn’t change my opinion on the matter, so I suggest you don’t try.

Johnny was an asshole as far as I could remember.

“Come here,” he told Jessica the neighbor girl, when he was ten. “Let me see that.” He snatched her Baby Alive doll, with all the real life bodily functions that are somehow fun and he opened the nozzle in the back where you’d fill it with water. We were standing in the playground across the street from our apartment complex in front of the red monkey bars.

“Give me that back!” She screamed and he palmed her face and shoved Jessica to the ground as he pissed inside the rubber doll. He pulled the plastic baby’s underwear off then squished its tummy and a stream of piss squirted out a tiny fake, vagina hole at the bottom like a water gun and onto Jessica. She cried and ran away. He laughed. I watched all of this happen at eight years old, knowing my brother was a dick. I chased after Jessica, took her to the water fountain and cleaned her off.

There was never any excuse for his failures, we had both parents, we weren’t exceptionally poor or exceptionally rich. We were loved, we were hugged, we were disciplined. At sixteen Johnny started smoking cigarettes, one time we stopped at the grocery store before school, he put a pack into my book-bag when I wasn’t looking and when the security guard asked to see my bag, he said, “See you later, little bro!”

There was no remorse, only smugness in his tone, See you later, little bro and he dashed out the store on his way to cut school. So, I had to be better and I was and I am, because you only know who you are by who you’re not and I was not Johnny. I was good.

After trying to get his GED three times he’d finally quit and it was becoming clear that he was falling into some kind of addiction.

I would hear him crying in the shower, I could see the skin on his face breaking, his fingernails dirty, losing weight, jittery and the fake awkward smiles that suggested everything was OK when it wasn’t. I had just graduated high school, I had gotten into Columbia and he was sneaking crack in our bathroom at dinnertime.

I was so fed up, comforting our mother when he wouldn’t come home, telling my Dad not to send him away, that those “private school kids are always way more fucked up.”

I went into his room one day.

“Why are you such an unbelievable fuck up?” I asked him. He was lying on his twin-sized bed and Superman sheets, with a cigarette between his index and middle finger. After giving him a lecture on how he was better than this, how he was hurting himself, how he could do so much more.

He sat up on his bed, resting his arms on his legs. I was sitting across from him on a desk chair. He leaned into me, grabbed the chair by the arm and swiveled me closer saying, “Do you really want to know?”

I said, “Yeah, I really want to know, Johnny.” He gave me a smirk then he took a palm to my nose and I felt it crunch. I held my nose and he pulled me off the chair and he pinned me down and he beat the shit out of me. I had never been in a fight and I wouldn’t have guessed that my first one would be with my brother.

Hearing all the yelling, my parents rushed in, my dad pulled him off of me. My mom eyes glazed over kept saying “Why? Why? Why? ”

“Boys will be boys,” Johnny said. The next day he left with a duffel bag and never came back.

Last week and five years later I get a call from him.

“I’m gonna kill myself,” Johnny says, his voice shaking.
“What? How’d you get this number? What do you want?” We hadn’t spoken since he broke my nose.
“I’m gonna do it, David,” I could tell he was crying.
“You’re not going to do anything, we haven’t spoken in ages and now you call? If you were going to kill yourself you would have done it. You just want attention, just like always, you always want attention… Relax, tell me where you are.” I say.
“You’re right David, I’m not going to do anything, you’re always right, that’s why you’re the favorite.”
“What?” I asked then there was nothing but dial tone.

I had gotten the call today from his landlord who let him live in the basement of his building on the condition that Johnny would help with maintenance every once and again. The landlord found him after having noticed a rancid smell. He went in Johnny’s back pocket and pulled out the only number in his wallet, which was mine.

The ambulance was on its way. I didn’t feel much loss in his death, I had lost him years ago, even before he had left home, he was always gone. But in looking around his apartment at the pictures of us together, family outings, me holding trophies at little league, golden medals from debate, at National Honor Society inductions all of which he never missed.

One couldn’t help notice that he was always off to the side, no matter how far back in time, he was always the odd man out. Even in this one picture, I was just a baby and my parents are cradling me in their arms with smiles. Sitting on the sofa, while Johnny at two years old stared blankly into the camera.

I was always the favorite and we only know who we are by who we aren’t and Johnny was not me. I was good.

Watching his body hang, pale, swollen, yellow and blue, I felt no loss as I scanned my brain, searching for the lie I would tell my parents.

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