--THERE'S A SHATTERED MIRROR IN MY BLOOD

…I’m going to have a blast this weekend and I hope you do, too.

…Here are some funnies from Facebook friends in the last few days:

-While looking for books at the library, my daughter found a copy of "The Stupids Die." We didn't get it. It looked stupid.

-Yesterday my little brother became a dad. I got a Jiffy Lube coupon in the mail. We're all winners!!

-Chris: That guy in the movie totally looks like...
Me: A huge dweeb?
Chris: I was going to say me, in college.
Me: Oh, yeah! He totally does!

-I should have called-in “old” today.

-Just realized the person who emailed me this morning and queried, "Sex?" was not asking IF I WAS HAVING IT.

-will slash your boss's tires for a buck.

-I am still having a hard time believing that there is a new show called Vanilla Ice Goes Amish.

-Sometimes the Universe makes decisions for us and I'm okay with that. Less to think about.

…Here’s a story I had published in Burrow Press Review a while ago that I forgot about until I saw it yesterday:

                                                                      Collateral

            My brother is home now, and I’m a little more than nervous.

            Because Mom and Dad are at an awards dinner, it’s just Jess and me sitting in the dim basement with the TV turned down so low I have to read the actors’ lips to know what’s happening.

            Jess cradles a bottle of Scotch in his lap, taking swigs every minute or so.  I wonder how long it will take him to polish the whole thing off, and, when he does, if he’ll start another.  Jess wobbles the bottle at me, topaz liquid sloshing out, streaking down his tattooed forearms.  After I tell him I don’t want any, he calls me “Pussy,” not even feigning a grin.

            Jess’s haircut is so short it’s just bristles.  Before he left, it was long and wavy and he looked like a gangly surfer.  Now he’s hard in every place, especially his eyes.

            I want to ask if he killed anyone over there or, if not, did he see anyone killed, but Jess has come back a new fuse, irritable and angry, so I say as little as possible. 

            Two weeks before he left, Jess killed the neighbor’s dog with my dad’s car, claiming it was an accident, though I knew how much he hated the animal.  A month before that, after his girlfriend dumped him, Jess rammed a railroad tie through her windshield in the middle of the night, but no one could prove it.  There were other collisions and incidents, all collateral damage from our older brother’s death in a boating accident.  As far as I know, Benny had been Jess’s only friend and ally.  Me, I was the young one, separated from my siblings by years and character differences, things I counted as good luck. 

            I keep counting minutes, thinking I’ll go to my room after an hour’s through.  My parents parting words were, “You two can spend the night catching up,” as if that was actually something either of us wanted to do.  Dad arranged Scotch bottles on the kitchen counter, aligned like bowling pins, and said, “For the hero,” patting my brother’s shoulder cautiously, as if it might be electrified.

            I don’t know how he’s done it, but after half an hour, the bottle’s empty.  He tosses it at me without warning.  “Suck on that.”  When he laughs, I can see his three broken teeth, his purple tongue, a black pool of saliva.

            After he opens the next bottle, Jess lights up a cigarette, taking a long drag.

            I say, “You can’t smoke in the house.”

            He stares at me so hard my eyes water and I look down at the shag carpet.  He lights a match and flicks it at me.  He keeps doing that, little torches scorching my arms.

            I know what he wants, but I’m not going to give it to him.  In the past I always fought back.  Now I’ll let someone else be his next collision.