My brother Gregor invented a fish with hands on the bottom
for finger-walking across the ocean floor. He dropped in for dinner and shared
his success like he was at a familial investors meeting. I sensed from a young
age that the entirety of my family took the off-ramp before hitting the freeway
to normal. The station wagon of our family spent years driving to little
visited towns like Freakshowberg, Self-mutalationville, Mutation City. The
effect being an actual trailer located in places that don’t have official
names, only what the people living there have decided to call it for the time
being. When this fish finger proclamation was made, we lived in Beyond Blue
Bin, named for the road out here being marked only by the impressive trashcan
behind a fast-food joint.
-That’s nice Gregor.
Mom gestured to an open chair. Gregor’s glee over his idea
gave him a joy that manifested in rubbing his hands together, giving him an
aura of anxious malevolent exuberance. He had to physically fight himself to
get into the chair, but knew better than to defy our mother. He wanted, nay
needed, to get immediately to work on this new project, but knew the least
resisted path would be his best shot, and set about helping to serve the
makeshift mash potatoes to himself and the younger siblings. As he expedited
diner I took the moment to peruse his drawings. Their crudeness belied the fact
that he had the talent to create such a monstrosity, as the past had proven.
Yet I didn’t worry. He would definitely abandon this project. Often with these
things, he would invariably grow bored and distract himself with terrorizing
ordinary people for sport. And this time I had an idea, one that he would even
defy mother to finish.
