Page 6 of Frank

If I didn’t know any better, the chickenshit was about to faint.

Yeah. My brother Eugene wasn’t good with confrontation with the parents. He reverted back to his childhood, quickly saying shit like, ‘Sure thing, Mom’, ‘Right away, Mom’, ‘I promise, Mom’, but when our mom cornered him on the subject of kids, my brother, the fucking pussy, panicked like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

A recent development that started when he hit puberty at age thirty-five. My idiot brother would panic while breathing heavily, before the shithead broke out in hives.

While I firmly believed he totally self-actualized his ailment, my brother had the uncanny ability to manifest hives to get him out of any uncomfortable situation he didn’t want to be in.

It was his only gift.

Other than that, he was a pain in the ass like any other male on the planet, but he was my brother and I loved him.

“And you call yourself a biker,” I scoffed, reaching for my cellphone on the coffee table. “I’m going to tell King your stupid trick. I hope he beats it out of you.”

My brother smiled and shrugged his shoulders, happy he got out of calling our parents.

One of these days, I would get him back.

Until then, I guessed it was my turn to be the adult.

Chapter Three

Frank

New Year’s Eve...

“Frank?”

“Yeah, little man?”

“Where do bad rainbows go?”

“Is there such a thing as bad rainbows?”

“Oh yeah, loads of them.”

“Okay.” I pondered Cameron’s question as I poured my latest creation into a small test tube, only to stop and frown when I considered all the possibilities for Cameron’s question. My little buddy liked to give me brain teasers, simple jokes, funny sayings, anything that he believed would help me communicate better, because let’s face it, I may be the smartest brother in the club, but my social skills were those of a toddler.

Coming up with nothing, I sighed.

“No clue, little dude. Where do bad rainbows go?”

Cameron grinned. “Prism. It’s a light sentence and gives them time to reflect.”

Laughing, I high fived the kid. “Good one.”

Returning to my beakers, glass tubes, and bubbling concoctions, I thought it funny how my lab looked more like a mad-scientist’s laboratory than a clean room for the distillery. Even Cameron, who sat semi quietly in the corner, looked weird, dressed in a clean suit while he pecked away on his iPad.

Looking at the small wooden box on my table, with three samples of my latest creation of Hell’s Breath, I grinned.

It was done.

I did it.

This damn formula had been driving me mad for months. I couldn’t get the ingredients right. Every formula I tried didn’t work. Now, it looked like I had the right ingredients. The color was perfect. The dark, rich amber shimmered when the light hit it. I could smell the fragrances of spices and other secret ingredients mixed together. But the ultimate test was the taste test. And only King, Scribe, and Priest were ever daring enough for that.

The others were wimps.

I couldn’t wait for King to try it and tell me what he thought.

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