Why I Had To Kill My Brother Read online

  Why I had to Kill My Brother

  by

  B. Regan Asher

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2011 B. Regan Asher. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  Preface

  He was shaking as he sat, with his legs out in front of him on the floor in the corner of the room, his eyes wide but twitching and darting everywhere. I had never seen him like this. He was normally so self-assured and confident to the point of distraction, never worrying about what was going on in the world around him. I smiled down at him from my perch at the edge of the chair.

  “What’s the matter Emory?” I asked, my voice impassive, my eyes cold. “Worried about something?”

  My brother said nothing but simply stared back at me. He then resumed his haphazard survey of the room with the same twitching of the eyes. I continued to watch him. I was enjoying this. I shouldn’t have enjoyed it, I knew. But I did.

  I raised my right hand and pointed it at him. He stared at the hand, mesmerized by it. The twitching and darting about with his eyes had stopped. What I saw in his eyes was pure terror and I drank it in like champagne. It was something to celebrate. It was finally my time.

  “Bang!”

  The sound did not surprise me. But as I looked at my brother his expression had changed. The terror was still there but not as animated as it had been. And it was frozen on his face along with the red hole in the center of his forehead. I knew I had in my hand a gun and I knew I had pulled the trigger but, somehow, it was not really me who had done it. It had been pulled and I had willed it to be pulled but it had happened as if by remote control. I was not really responsible.

  I sat there a long time looking at my brother, the dead brother whom I had killed in cold blood and whom I had, in a quiet and reasonable way, tortured over the last several hours. And I felt nothing. Despite my family upbringing and the fact that I would have done anything for my brother or any of my immediate family just over a year ago, I felt nothing. The world was not as it was supposed to be. Family was supposed to look after family. Non-family was an unknown, but family was sacred. Until just over a year ago.

  When I woke up I was in a cold sweat. The pillow was wet and I was shaking. My wife lay beside me and, though she normally woke up with my shouts from the nightmares, she did not this time. I thought back to the dream, the same dream I had had for months. I smiled. It was cathartic. I needed to have these dreams, to execute revenge upon my brother for what he had done to me. I knew it was wrong but I could no longer help myself. I racked my brain every day for the reason why my world had fallen apart, for why someone like me, raised in a good family setting with parents who always did the right thing, should want to kill my brother.

  I knew the reason but I had been struggling to admit it to myself. The reason was that I had been deeply hurt by the actions of a brother who cared not for anyone but himself, including me and including his own immediate family. I was deeply hurt by a brother who put money before family even though we two had derided cousins and uncles who had done something similar. I was deeply hurt that my brother had shattered my view of the world, a world view that held that family members shared an inviolate bond that could not be broken. I did not want to believe it but the evidence was overwhelming.

  I had these thoughts following the same dream almost every night for the last six months. I knew I could not live with this recurring nightmare for much longer. Something would have to change. I would have to make a change.

  This book is the story of what I did and why I was compelled to do it.

  Chapter 1 - The Deed

  I sat in the house, waiting. I was in the living room, sitting on a settee with my eyes looking over the furniture, the paintings on the walls and the oriental carpet on the floor. I was so distressed that I was actually burning with anger, certain that if I had looked into a mirror I would see tufts of smoke escaping from the smouldering in my eyes. I was no longer disappointed in my brother as I had originally been after the momentous occurrence last year. Instead, I was hopping mad and my body shook every once in a while from a quaking deep inside me where there was a volcano near to eruption.

  The room was dark. The weather outside was hot and sticky, typical for summer in Greensboro, but it was overcast with black clouds blocking out the bright blue that I knew lay behind them. Though dark in the room, it was not pitch black, but the kind of shadowless, eerie grey which covers the interior of a house when there are dark, thick, black clouds outside at midday. At least it was not humid inside, the air conditioning keeping the house cool and dry. And it was mostly quiet. I could hear the wind beyond the windows so I knew the storm was coming. And, except for the ticking of the clock, all I could hear was the howling of the wind outside. Tick. Tick. My brother would be home very soon I knew.

  The gun felt heavy, resting as it was in my open hand on the arm of the settee. I had never held a gun, let alone shot one. My youngest son had shot guns with his Scout troop but I had never had the opportunity. Perhaps I had the desire but never the opportunity. But, thanks to my brother, the acquisition of the gun was so simple. The purchase of a handgun in Canada would have been a horrendous ordeal though I knew that it was but a trifle in many US states. But it didn’t matter because I didn’t need to purchase a gun. My brother himself had provided me with the weapon. I knew where he kept it in his bedside table, a sensible precaution against the dangers of modern America. So, on my arrival at his house, I had first gone to his bedroom and pulled it out of the drawer of the bedside table and stared at the gun for a long time before I removed it and held it in my hand. Then I had gone to the settee to wait for my brother.

  And there I sat thinking. Initially I thought and simmered and brooded about what could have been but what would no longer be possible. And I thought about my childhood and my parents and my wife and my children. And I felt betrayed by my personal history. But I was most upset about what my brother had done to me, how he had shattered my view of the world, how he had forced me into a position where I had to do what I was about to do. Shit. If there was a plan for me in this world, I did not like the way it had unfolded.

  The house was huge, 9000 square feet if I remember correctly. That was 2250 square feet for each of my brother, his wife, my niece and my nephew. Our last house was 2200 square feet for four of us and, though I felt that his extravagance was unnecessary, I never begrudged my brother his luxury until that fateful day.

  Here I was in the middle of the main floor, looking out at the front door from the living room and waiting until my brother in name only (not of my heart and of my thoughts, but my ex-brother in every way other than blood) should return from wherever he was. I knew already that my sister-in-law, niece and nephew were visiting family in Philadephia so the only one to come into this house today would be my ex-brother. As for my sister-in-law, whom I had gotten to know well last year, I truly did like her and di
d not want to see her hurt. And I did not worry about finances for her or for my niece and nephew for I knew my brother had provided well for them. So I had no guilt about what I was about to do. And I knew what I had to do. And it would be done very soon.

  Thinking back over what happened last year I did feel some regret, though not guilt, that it had to happen this way. But when I think over what happened I knew that it could not have happened any other way. My brother had shattered my world, had ruined the beautiful illusion that was my life, and because of the way he was there was never an opportunity to discuss the problem with him. He was blind to the rest of the world and cared not one iota for anyone but himself, and I suspect not even his own immediate family. Certainly he looked after each of them but his concern for his wife or his children was more like one might look after a dog or a cat; he looked after each member of his family like a master after a pet. And he did portray the illusion of caring for others but I now knew that it was only a matter of convenience for him and not something that would be high on his list. No, my brother did not truly care for anyone but himself and there was a long litany of things more important to him than other people.

  Tick. Tick. The clock kept ticking slowly over the sound of the wind outside but then, oddly, the ticking changed. Or did it change or was it another sound that was added to the ticking of the clock? Yes, it was another sound, a ticking which was out of sync with the clock. Then I knew what it was. It was the sound of rain beginning to pick at the windows. I looked out the window and saw the rain hitting it hard and saw the water running down the window. It was now all but impossible to see outside. I flashed back to my childhood to a day like this one in a classroom where I would watch the rain instead of listening to the teacher. But today I did not care about the weather. So I looked back at the clock and began to wonder if he would ever come home. And, if not, would I have the opportunity or the ability to do this again tomorrow? I was not a patient person and I wanted this to be over. Tick. Tick.

  I continued to wait as the ticking continued, wondering if I would have to abort today’s attempt and return tomorrow. But, then, finally, I heard it. Even from the center of the house I could hear the sound of the garage door rolling up. It was a rolling and a whining sound merged together, unmistakable for anyone who had ever heard an electric garage door. Then I heard a car door slam and I heard the garage door close and I knew that destiny was soon at hand.

  My heart started to beat stronger and I could feel the pressure of each beat in my chest, in my head and in my ears. But I sat there calmly, having planned this confrontation in my mind many times. I needed him to come to me unaware, to be shocked at my presence in his house, to be completely dumbstruck by what I was about to say and to go wild with panic when he understood what I was about to do. I needed these reactions in order to balance the disappointment, sadness and despair that he had caused me over the last year.

  I heard the door from the garage open and then footsteps in the mudroom and then the in kitchen. I expected, from my experience with him in this house, that he would probably head first for the bedroom. That had been his modus operandi last year when we worked together and he had still been my true brother, my blood. But today I was wrong. Instead I heard the refrigerator door open in the kitchen and I waited calmly. I could see it all in my mind’s eye. I heard the faucet turn on and I knew he was getting a glass of water. Still, I was not going to get up. He would have to come to me. He would have to be surprised by my presence and my unfaltering calm.

  A glass clinked in the sink and then I heard his footfalls move across the hall towards me ultimately heading to the bedroom, a destination they would never reach. My heart pounded incessantly like a steel drum in my chest. When I had imagined this day all those thousands of times, I had sat here calmly but I had not been deafened by the beating of this idiotic heart which I could not control. But it did not matter. My heart beats would not change destiny. I was here and everything would progress as per the plan.

  I watched him as he walked across the hall in front of the living room but he did not stop. He did not see me. I thought he might hear my heart beating with its clamorous thudding but then I realized that the noise was all inside my head. In the house there was no sound to be heard other than the clock, the rain and the wind. Despite the cacophony inside me, it was very quiet in the house. He would walk right past the living room if I did not do something. As I needed the scenario to play out as it had so many times in my mind, with him stopping at the living room, I had to say something. True, I had wanted him to notice me on his own. In my mind that would have been the perfect version of this encounter. But I could live with saying something. It wasn’t a big change to the script. And that would be the beginning of the end of my nightmare.

  So I interrupted the silence and spoke. “Good afternoon,” I said in a quiet, calm voice, trying to sound authoritative but not quite sure if I had pulled it off.

  My brother stopped in his tracks and looked towards the chair. He looked at me and I could see that calculations were going on through his mind. Then it registered who I was even in the dark, shadowless room. But it seemed that he did not see the gun. He just stared at me.

  “Joe?” he asked, puzzled. “Joe, what are you doing here?”

  I found his question funny. He called me “Joe” as if we were old pals and lifelong buddies. But we were not pals and now we were not even brothers and I had wished he had called me “Joseph” as a sign of acknowledgement that we were really strangers. But he didn’t and that upset me. But I was determined not to show anger. I was determined to remain passive and detached.

  “Have a seat,” I said in a matter of fact way.

  My brother frowned, not knowing what this could be about. I had never spoken to him so coolly and certainly had never shown up in his house uninvited after a hiatus that had lasted about a year. He was confused and he had no idea what was going on. He still did not see the gun and so he perched himself at the end of the sofa closest to my settee which sat at a 90 degree angle to me, meaning that we sat just a few feet from each other.

  He sat down and looked at me squarely in the eyes, quizzical and confused but not worried and he asked, “What’s this all about?”

  I smiled and stared straight back into his eyes, unfazed by his question, looking forward to this little chat. But I said nothing. Instead, I looked down at my right hand which now held the gun upright and was pointed directly at his chest.

  My brother’s eyes went wide when he saw the gun. “What the f-?” he began to say but I interrupted him.

  “Sit back Emory,” I said, deliberately avoiding the use of the word “brother”, the word with which we had once used to refer to one another. “We’re going to have a little chat and, unlike our previous chats, I am going to do most of the talking and you’re going to do most of the listening. And I have to warn you that if you make a sudden movement toward me or try to leave the room, I will shoot you. Are we clear?”

  I was very pleased with the way these instructions had come out. I said the words slowly and meticulously and I sounded in control. But my heart was still throbbing in my chest and banging on my ears. My chest seemed to drop suddenly out of my body, as it does when an airplane drops suddenly in a turbulent patch of air. But on the outside I was cool, in control. It was a good feeling to have power over this person, this animal. He had always exercised power over me but his power had only been financial. My power today was total.

  My brother, who had been perched on the edge of the seat, began to sit back as I had requested, moving slowly away from me until his back was against the back of the sofa. He was no longer wide-eyed but very confused. His eyebrows furrowed and he appeared deep in thought. He clearly wanted to say something but thought the better of it and waited for my cue. He did not answer my question but neither did he make a move toward or away from me.

  “Good,” I said. “Good.”

  I paused and looked at him, a pitiful excuse for a relativ
e, a disaster as a brother. Here sat someone who had gone to great lengths to say that family was important but in fact paid no attention to the struggles of his own brother. Here was someone who said he always abided by his agreements but had broken several with me. Here was someone who never considered anyone else but himself. His immediate family would be better off without him I knew. Oh, they would surely be upset initially. But after some time, when the scars healed, they would be better off. Of that I was certain.

  I looked at him and prepared to begin my diatribe, the lecture I had been preparing to give for months. He was still in shock but I could also see he was angry. Typical, I thought. He was always angry at someone, but never himself. But for now he kept himself in control and I was going to get my twenty minutes. I would be able to tell him what I had not been able to tell him over this last year.

  I took a deep breath and sighed. “You have no clue why I’m here do you Emery?”

  He shook his head.

  I took a deep breath. “Well, I am here to set the record straight. I have been silent for too long. You have to know what you did.”

  “What I did?” he asked, genuinely confused.

  “Yes, brother,” I said, although I cursed under my breath for calling him “brother”. We had always called one another “brother” but now it had a hollow ring to it. I no longer had a brother. But I didn’t want to correct myself. I was doing so well. “What you did,” I repeated. “Now sit back and I will explain it to you.”

  I spoke for almost twenty minutes, a speech which I had prepared in my mind for a year, one which I had wanted to make since we had parted company. And when I was done, he sat there with a sallow expression, not knowing whether to be distraught or angry. He was just confused and perhaps a little sad. But I do not believe he was really angry any longer.”

  Finally he spoke. “Is that it?” he asked quietly while looking at the gun. “Is that all you meant to do?”