I decided to go back to the drawing board from Crocodiles (if anyone who read that reads this), so I decided to try something else. What do you think? Second draft. Added extra details. More fixes sure to come.
--Read on.--
My little brother Thomas was deathly horrified by rats. When he saw them around the farm he near had a heart attack right on the spot, and if they popped up on television his eyes grew wide and he screamed. I didn’t like them either, sure, but my reactions to rats never reached such outlandish terror as his. Our parents had tried to console him for years, but, even after the age of five, he still dropped anything he was doing when the vermin came in his sights.
I got great old fun out of teasing him, no, torturing is more like it. Often I’d take him somewhere I knew groups of them waited: squeaking and gnashing their teeth; I placed a flattened one I’d found in the cow pasture on his bed one night, stood with an ear to the wall, then laughed maniacally like the bratty shit I was when he flicked on the light switch and howled; “Super-Rats” flew through the air more than enough times, landing on him and gripping tightly onto his hair and clothes.
Needless to say, though I will anyhow, I was almost-always grounded or punished in some way.
Hell, you can’t blame me. Thomas did his fair share of bullying, too.
I spent hours trying to watch him, having to take “extra good care of him” when our folks were out since he was my “precious younger brother.” Those days concluded with us beating and thrashing around. When the car roared up the driveway later our house was usually the Wreck of Mercedes, and I ended up on the short end of a fake straw getting blunted with repercussions.
Thomas laughed when our parents weren’t looking. Every single goddamn time he’d make that nasily noise with his face, and I’d just want to choke him. Thank the Lord that getting revenge on the kid was easy.
One particular day he took it too far: I was 14, he was 12. Happened to be chatting with my girlfriend of two weeks over the phone during summer vacation, he poked his rat-fearing nose where it didn’t belong. Inevitably, he picked up on our conversation and ran to the kitchen to whine about it.
Now, we lived in a house with very strict rules as to what ages one could date without getting in trouble. Thus, I wound up unable to call anyone for the rest of the break, with one last dial I was to terminate my relationship. He’d crossed a line that nobody should ever cross under any foreseeable circumstances. That evening I would turn to rats for what had to have been the billionth time.
I discovered Thomas out in the barn’s henhouse with a little metal bucket collecting eggs, a daily chore of his. My plan went into action when he left this bucket to go grab a carton: I pulled the old switcheroo, setting in its place an identical pail with two tiny rats instead. What a scare, was the thought that came to mind, but he deserves it.
My little brother didn’t deserve anything near what he got. Standing in a hidden corner, I winced as he screamed and flailed around akin to a headless madman with rabies. Upon squinting I noticed one of the rats had sunk its teeth into his hand, not letting go for any one thing in the world. I was worried but foolishly decided to stand a bit longer.
He sped from one end of the barn to the other over and over, shaking it furiously, yet it still stayed hooked. Blood now trailed down his arm. I decided I’d had good fun with tormenting him, running out to pull it off. He was so freaked out that he didn’t seem to notice me. Keeping up his wild sprint, he raced right past me even as I told him to stop.
“Get it off! Get it off of me!”
I reached out my hand to catch him, missing him by a mile. With one final burst of speed, he threw himself right out a large window. The vile creature finally unlatched as Thomas screeched, plummeting to the grassy ground a dozen feet below. I peered down only to see them both lying motionless.
When I brought Mom and Dad to him, I was frantic, shaking, and sobbing. We all shared a collective scream upon seeing that dozens of famished rodents were having their fill of my sibling, and hastily began prying the bloodthirsty things off. It hurt like the devil. Some decided they liked us better. None would eat again.
The way he appeared, the lack of movement, he had to be a corpse. Mom relied on a beam for support as Dad had passed out.
Then, Thomas gasped.
My brother is blind and unable to use the fingers of his right hand as they're missing down to the first joint: his writing would be poor anyway without sight, and he refuses to learn braille. A wheelchair is what he gets around with these days, not having a toe to his name. He lives in a home where other people are required to take care of him, and, apparently, the angriest man who any of his caretakers have ever met.
I would know that, considering I visit him weekly. He curses at me, threatens me when I come to sit beside him. One should think that he has a cap to his anger, but he's a spiteful bastard. He's ornery, unkempt, spends all his time in the dark, overall a real rat.
I made him the very thing he once feared. God forgive me.