My Evil Brother

Goodbye Keanu my multiple myeloma story

My three siblings and I were competitive as children. That was our parents’ fault. They were always comparing us to each other and comparing our accomplishments to those of the other children we knew. I remember my parents yelling, chastising and beating us. I don’t remember them ever saying they were proud of us.

      We didn’t like each other as a result and we fought like wild animals all through our younger years. Verbal threats, physical violence and bullying were dished out daily and made my time at home unbearable. My need to spend every afternoon at school playing sports was more avoidance than attraction. When I was incompetent at a sport, like basketball, I volunteered to manage or carry the balls to keep me from arriving home too early. My older brother Lewis was the chief assassin. He was extremely intelligent, so homework only took up a small amount of his time. The rest he devoted to creating terror and distrust among his siblings. Part of the terror was his unpredictability. He lured my sister into the kitchen under some false pretence then poured a litre of milk over her head. If my mother made him give me a lift in the car he would turn the radio up so loud my ears would bleed. These tactics were to establish his superiority. They worked. I was really afraid of him. I spent years trying not to be alone in a room with him. He didn’t care who got hurt. He left pans heating on the stove, in danger of starting a fire, and then denied it was him. My father would fly into a rage, send us each to our bedrooms and systematically hit us all with the back of his hand until someone confessed. I heard the screams from my sister’s and younger brother’s bedrooms as my father worked his way down the hall. But Lewis stayed stony cold throughout and wouldn’t confess that he was the culprit. If there had been school shootings in those days, I wouldn’t put it past him.

      He came into my room late one night when I was 13 years old. He was 17.  I was scared to death he was going to kill me. He lay on the floor next to my bed and pulled my leg from under the warm covers. Holding my ankle, he put my foot on his face. I can still feel the oily, pimply skin and his hot breath. I lay still because he was six feet tall and a sadist. He didn’t try anything else. When he came to my room a second night I kicked my legs up and down and yelled out. My parents slept in the next room and my half-awake father was standing in my doorway within a few seconds. Lewis made up a story, saying I had been lurking in the hallway, even though I was still lying in my bed. My father never questioned him. I guess he didn’t want to know. But thankfully Lewis never returned to my room. Twenty-five years later I tried searching on the internet to find any information on this weird foot on face fetish. But nothing ever quite fit. I don’t know what it was all about. I only know that Lewis was frightening, weird and dangerous.