“In each family a story is playing itself out, and each family’s story embodies its hope and despair.” –Auguste Napier

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” -George Bernard Shaw

“For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.” – Jean Dubuffet

                        Thicker

Than Water

I’m smoking a cigarette in my Cayman in the parking lot of a trendy but cheap looking vegan restaurant with a girl I met at the Platinum Sphere last week; I think her name is Sheryl or something, she’s like twenty-three. We’re awaiting the arrival of my brother Max and his soon to be wife Lauren, he has invited us to dinner and this was his venue of choice. Quite typical of the miserly bastard, actually. Lauren is a sort-of-pasty brunette with a voluptuous body complemented by a silicon boosted pair of 36D’s, and it so happens that she is very fond of me. In fact we have had sex on several occasions unbeknownst to Max. They met at New York Presbyterian, the hospital Max works for, Lauren came in looking for a prescription for Valium and Max couldn’t help but to fill it for her, it’s truly too bad he can’t fill what she needs most. The first time we fucked she had come over looking for a way to score some coke, luckily for her I had just enough for the both of us, we finished the gram and a half of cocaine and she began to give me head as I continued to gaze upon Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in a bemused darangement, one of my favorite films, occasionally looking down at her sucking and stroking vigorously. I took her as Dr. Harford entered the infamous “party.”

Max and Lauren arrive and we are seated, Lauren shoots an extremely lascivious stare my way that instantly falters as Sheryl (Sharon?) comes into her view. Stacy is what her name turns out to be as she introduces herself to my brother and his fiancée. Max orders roast duck with Tikka Masala and brown rice and Lauren orders the filet mignon and lobster tail after I do so, so much for subtlety, Stacy orders salmon with asparagus spears and rice.

“My best friend is getting married!” Stacy shrieks, finally breaking the ice after a perturbing moment of silence.

“Oh, yeah? Max and I are getting married on the 2nd.” Lauren sighs, feigning interest. “Guy or girl?”

“He’s a guy, David, and he’s getting married out in California to his fiancée of three years. Julian.”

“Another, guy?” Max questions, and I can see the repulsion in his eyes. I enjoy seeing my brother in discomfort so I decide to delve further into the conversation.

“You have a problem with gay marriage, dude?” I prod.

“No…No. look, I don’t care if the fags marry, I think everyone should be able to reap the benefits of marriage, so long as they don’t try to hit on me.” He whispers as if he were worried someone might overhear his opinion.

“They don’t like to be called fags.” Stacy interjects. And half of me wants to put her in her place, but somehow I realize that it would’ve been very inappropriate.

Our plates arrive and we begin to eat, no one seeming to note the rarity of my filet mignon.

“Barely cooked.” I had whispered to the waiter after ordering. No one seems to notice when I wipe the dripping blood from my chin with my thumb instead of a napkin, nor the grin on my face when I savor licking it off. They continue talking but I’m no longer aware of their conversation, I am no longer there. My brother is trying to take me out of our father’s will, I know he’s been talking to my father about it after his treatments, saying I don’t deserve any of his money. The occasional glances I get from him are sharp and pestilent, delusive, as if he’s harboring something sinister in his head that only comes to light when his gaze falls upon me. The greedy fucker wants six million to himself, I know it, as if we aren’t both already set financially. I’m ready for you Max. I’m two steps ahead of you.

The bathroom is too crowded to do coke in so I slip away into my Cayman to do the gram I bought from my dealer, Patrick. Patrick helped to introduce me to my new sense of taste, over four years ago I visited his house to score some powder and as soon as we got into the living room I caught a whiff of something really foul smelling. I followed the scent past his kitchen to find it was coming from behind the door leading, presumably, into his basement. When I turned around to ask about it he had his Desert Eagle pointed right in the middle of my forehead.

“Don’t fucking go through my shit, man.” He said quietly, patiently. “This is MY house, my shit. Get it?”

“Yeah man, I get it…” I had managed, pretty freaked out at that point. “But what the fuck is that smell dude?”

He gave me a real austere look, as if deciding whether or not to blow a hole through my face right then and there, then he whispers: “He’s not dead yet, dude.”

“Dead? What… Who?” I let out.

“I don’t fucking know dude, some homeless guy?” For some reason this significantly lessened my concern.

“What’d you-what’d you do to him?” I asked.

“I’m bleeding him.” He replied in such a cold and calm way that it showed his carnassial smirk. It would forever resonate.

“Why?”

“Because, man. Who needs bums?” He shrugged. “I’m going to drink it.” Again the depraved grin.

“Do you have anything to drink?” Stacy asks, almost as soon as we walk through my door. This annoys me because she must have had at least six drinks during dinner.

“Sure. What do you want?” I ask through gritted teeth.

“Do you have any champagne?”

“Krug Brut or Ace of Spades?”

“Spades.”

I pour her glass of champagne and bring it to her, she asks if I have any coke and I tell her that she can have some when we’re finished. With what exactly, I do not tell her. I bring her into my guest bedroom and begin to put on a condom. She asks me not to put it on and I tell her that she doesn’t need my evil inside of her, then she tells me that she’s on birth control, obviously drunk. I’m really high and I barely even notice when she climbs on top of me, I let her ride me for a while and then I get bored so I turn her over and begin to fuck her really hard. We’re looking right at each other while I’m coming and my hand which is around her neck and was once erotic is now becoming increasingly vehement. As I draw nearer she notices my saliently incisive teeth through a monstrously repulsive grin and my cold black eyes looking down on her. Her face instantly contorts into that of sick apprehension making me come in pure excitement, and as I do I realize that I had choked her so hard that she is no longer breathing.

My phone rings as I’m cleaning myself and I see that it is Lauren, probably looking for a late night hook-up and a little coke. I tell her to come over and after I do I move Stacy’s body into my basement and begin to bleed her by piercing her carotid with my sharpened incisors. I pour some of my last victim’s blood over ice and enjoy it thoroughly as I await Lauren’s arrival, and after I finish two glasses I go into the guest bedroom and set up a camcorder in the corner right above my flatscreen. I want to videotape myself fucking Lauren so I can send it to Max, I want him to know, I want him to come looking for me. If he wants my share of the will he’s going to need to do a lot more than he has been. I go into the basement and watch Stacy’s body swaying about very lightly, her breasts large enough to hang right above her chin and her hair tied up as to not pollute my supply, I drink some of her fresh blood and as I do the idea of Max watching me fuck his fiancée gives me a slight erection.

Lauren arrives and doesn’t waste any time pouring herself a drink, or lining herself up a few servings of yayo. She asks me what happened to my girlfriend, I quickly tell her that we broke up after dinner and when she asks why I tell her that I ate her.

“Why do you hate her?” She asks, tilting her head back from the bump.

“I ate her, Lauren.”

“Yeah -sniffle- but, why?”

“We didn’t really have the same, taste.” I tell her.

“Oh, I see” She says benightedly. “Well at least you still have me, right?”

“You’re my brother’s fiancée.”

“That only means I’ll always be around.”

While having sex with Lauren I make a very special effort to be as lewd with her as possible, leaving the lights on and often flexing and checking myself out in the vanity behind the camera as she screams and moans and scratches and bites. She wraps her legs around my neck as I bring her to her first vociferous climax. I come inside of her as she reaches her second orgasm.

I burn a copy of the video onto a disk and package it, I will put it right on his doorstep in the morning. Also, I need to score some more coke from Patrick tomorrow. Maybe I will go visit my father while I’m out and find out what kind of bullshit Max has been feeding to him. For now though, I sit on my couch and sip on a fresh glass of blood while watching Altered States, starring William Hurt as a scientist whose quest for a religious experience through the use of different psychedelic substances turns him into an obsessed animal. I hear my phone vibrate as I’m smoking a joint and watching credits scroll the screen, but when I go into my room to answer it I discover that it was Stacy’s phone that rang. I pick it up and check the missed calls, my jaw dropping in shock and terror, She had just missed a call from someone named Patrick. I click the name to see the contact picture and my fear is confirmed when I come across a photo of Patrick, my dealer, and Stacy sharing a kiss on the Brooklyn Bridge.

In the morning around eleven thirty the sunlight burning through the curtains awake me to realize I had fallen asleep in my living room, Stacy’s phone still clutched so tightly in my hand that I had to rub out the ache. On the flatscreen television some reporter on VH1 is going on about another teen star way past their prime on some type of drug doing something “outrageous and degrading.” Man will always reject anything that discards their boundaries. Man will always reject what they cannot create, define, or control. I take two Xanax and follow them with a slightly over-toasted bagel and a “Stacy’s Tongue” omelet, topped off by two mimosas. Calling Patrick to let him know I’m going to be picking up three grams provides a prodding sense of unbalanced tension, especially when he tells me that he is ten minutes away and plans on selling me my yay here. I am however able to abrogate this feeling enough for me to follow through as if I hadn’t strung his woman upside down and bled her in my basement, as if I hadn’t just made an omelet out of slivers of her tongue with green onions and cheese. I run into my room and make sure any evidence of Stacy ever being here has been omitted, and as I am looking for somewhere to stash Stacy’s cell Patrick’s voice crackles over the intercom, “Hey Captain Crazy! Let me the fuck in, dude!”, so I toss it under the cushion of my couch and make it look as if I hadn’t.

“What took you so long dude?” Patrick mumbles while walking past me once I open the door. I can see that he’s been breaking Frank and Elvira’s second lesson, “I fuckin’ have places to be, man.”

“Sorry dude, I was… Just relax, go sit down and I’ll get the cash.” I tell him.

“My man, right to business!” He gets up and heads toward the kitchen, “What do you have to drink? I need to mellow the fuck out.”

“I’ll grab you something, dude.” Blocking him before he walks past the door leading into the basement “Brew?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I grab his beer and set it down on my coffee table on a coaster aside the cash for the coke. Patrick reaches under his shirt and pulls out his Desert Eagle and sets it on the table, he then reaches back under his shirt and pulls out three ovular sandwich bags filled with pure joy. “This is good shit, way better than the last shit man. WAY BETTER.” He assures me, handing over the three bags. He takes out a little baggy and chuckles, “Sampler”, then lines us both up and we both do our lines.

Between snorting and sniffling Patrick manages to tell me “This bitch hasn’t answered any of my calls, dude. None of them. I’m starting to get pissed off.”

“Who?” I pretend not to know.

“This chick Stacy, man. She better not be fucking around on me, that’d be a bad-bad thing for everyone involved.” His eyebrows rise as he lets out a sigh, “I’m high as hell dude, I’ll catch you later.”

“Alright. Later.”

I do half of a gram more and order the newer version of my hookah pen online, I then spend two whole hours trying to find an original Basquiat for sale to no avail. Lauren calls but I let it go to voicemail, she calls five more times before she finally fucking realizes the advantages of voicemail and leaves one.

“Um, hey… Answer your phone idiot! If you want some, that is.” *Beep*

Even though that message had irritated me more than the fact that it had taken her six calls to leave one, I decide her performance was good enough last night and that I could use a good screw, so I call her back and invite her over. After the phone call I sit down on my couch and I notice that Patrick has left his desert eagle on my coffee table, I pass it off and begin to wonder if I should watch me and Lauren’s video to get myself up, then decide not to since it’s already been packaged. I stare down at my coffee table and glare at its content, a gun, a video of me fucking my brother’s fiancée that I haven’t sent, a joint roller and all associated paraphernalia, ashtray, the Blu-ray disc of the movie Crash (Cronenberg, not Haggis), a razorblade, and three grams of cocaine. I do a couple of lines and make a coco puff out of a joint, paranoia about my brother and my money settles in and the very idea enrages me.

When Lauren gets to my condo she is already high on Valium, but wastes no time getting her hands on my cocaine. I notice she’s been losing weight, can’t have much of an appetite when you’re always trashed. She sits on the couch and before we can say anything a phone starts vibrating, Lauren lifts the cushion and picks up the phone to see the same picture of Stacy and Patrick on the Brooklyn bridge.

“I thought you left her?” She says pretty aggressively.

I killed her, Lauren, I had her for breakfast. “I did, I guess she left her phone here.”

“You’re just a piece of shit, you know that?”

“What? Say that again.”

“You. Are. A. Piece. Of. SHIT!” she yells. “You’re worthless! That’s why your father left you property and left all of the money for your brother, so you don’t fuck up and blow it all on blow and hookers!”

I wouldn’t let any woman talk to me this way, not even if she was my woman, which isn’t the case because she’s engaged to my brother. I ignore her and do a line.

“Hey! Hey! You don’t have anything to say?” she pauses. “Of course not, the little bitch never has anything to say.”

Infuriated now, I grab her arm and lead her to the basement. I think she’s asking me where I’m taking her, but I’m too pissed off to be able to tell for sure. I throw her down the stairs leading into the basement and I lock it, and when I turn on the lights for her I count the seconds before she sees Stacy’s body and screams. It takes five.

“Max’s girlfriend told me something about you leaving all the money to Max and only leaving me property.” I tell my father.

“Jesus, only leaving you property?” he replies. “What the hell is wrong with you, son? Where did I go wrong with you? A smart man would know that property is far more valuable than just money. A wise man would appreciate any gift he receives. And a respectable man would not contest his father’s dying wishes.”

“That’s bullshit Steven. She told me you think I’m going to spend it all on hookers and blow.”

“You know what, son. You showing up here only to bitch about the will when your father is on his death bed, and disrespecting him to his face has caused you to lose your place in the will. Period.” This causes my jaw to drop in disbelief. “I’ve been weary of you and your lifestyle for a while now, and this… this just shows me that you aren’t ready for the responsibility that would have been yours.”

“Un-fucking-believable, dude. Fuck you.” I leave.

When I get home I see a Mercedes in my driveway, it’s my brother’s. The door is locked when I try it, but when I get inside I can see the television is on and it’s playing the video of Lauren and me and the Desert Eagle is gone from the coffee table. I run toward the basement and my heart jumps into my throat as I realize that it’s been opened, I can hear tiny whimpers coming from in there. I look down into the basement and Max looks up toward me baring an excruciating grimace , he then turns back around and lifts Patrick’s Desert Eagle in line with Lauren and fires. Her body drops with a lifeless thump and before I can even react Max is running toward me screaming that I’m a fucker. I turn around to run and find my gun but as I’m turning I feel Max’s hand reach for my neck and miss, then he catches my collar with the following attempt and pulls me so hard that I fall down the stairs. Nothing is said. I suppose nothing needs to be. I get up and look at Laurens lifeless body, and when I turn around I see another figure slumped off to the side of the stairway.

“Your friend Patrick came in looking for this.” He holds up the Desert Eagle. “He heard me in here screaming at Lauren and thought I was the one who killed that fag loving bitch over there.” Pointing toward Stacy. “You fucked up, brother. You fucked up real nice. You fucked Lauren, my fiancée, and videotaped it… then threw her in the basement like some fucking mutt! To think dad was leaving all that property to you, now he’ll have no choice but to leave it all to me.”

“M-Max, I-“

“Save it.” He then shoots me in my thigh and I squawk in complete and utter agony. “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to call the cops, you can have this” He uses a rag to clean Patrick’s gun and then tosses it to me. “Either spend the rest of your life in prison for this sick shit you’ve been doing, or use the escape I gave you.” He gives me that look, and walks out of the basement, closing the door behind him.

For forty-five minutes I sit there, bleeding, contemplating my options. Obviously running isn’t one of them. I hear the police walk into the house, one of them shouts something toward the others about the drugs on the coffee table, and I can only imagine how many of them are watching my tape. They find their way to the basement as I’m trying to stand up, and them bursting through the door causes me to react by dropping the desert eagle. They yell for me to kick it toward them, but I just stand there. They continue yelling and I continue standing until they start moving toward me, that’s when I reach toward the pistol and they fire.