I (F23) grew up with a lot of siblings. Our mother was a cruel woman who would often mistreat and exploit us all. A rarity among us was sharing a father. This was something my brother (M24) and I had in common. That and we actually knew our father who wanted nothing to do with us.
Our mother was a high class call girl that used her children for financial gain. Most of the Dad’s paid her hush money or child support. My father was a rare breed I guess he showed no interest until we were older and even then he’d take us to a house he owned outside of town. There we’d exercise and work out non stop as well as practice survivalist training. My brother excelled I on the other hand was a failure and no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t keep up with my brother he was simply as my father would say a superior being.
Even as he progressed in school he continued to excel. In time he became obsessed with testing himself finding new challenges and this brought him to his one true love hunting. He mastered conventional methods rather quickly becoming a firearms expert in almost no time. Well I called him that not sure if he could be considered an expert but his skills were quite remarkable. So much so that they terrified me.
He’d hunt animals of all kinds obsessively. Sometimes he’d ghost the family and be gone for weeks. One time he dragged a dead wolf into the house and mom screamed. I could not tell if it was rage or terror but blood came out of both nostrils. I tried to at least fake being interested and would often fall asleep listening to him recount each hunt.
He and father grew closer and eventually he moved in with him I regrettably was left behind for being weak. I was wrecked by this I had lost my protector and my closest friend. The two of us were quite codependent so losing him for me was akin to losing a limb. We shared literally everything to the point where were considered creepy by our peers.
My stepfather assaulted me soon after he left not long after that I was thrown out on to the streets and had to do what I needed to do to survive. While I was on the street learned I was pregnant and could only pray that my stepdad was the father which shows just how fucked up my childhood was. I didn’t see my brother again until last year and he’s done well for himself.
At first things were nice and we danced around the issue of my daughter not really talking about it. He told me he still hunted but it was hard now to find prey worth his time. He assured me if it were up to him, we’d have never been separated. When he left the room to attend to some business, I looked at his trophies from animal heads, skins, to even bones. It was when I saw his fireplace, I got a chill down my spine. I saw jewelry, a watch, and other trinkets that seemed eerily familiar I took my phone out and went through my news feed.
After finding a few articles regarding some disappearances I felt absolute dread. Each article was about a missing person from athletes to ex-military. The kind of people my brother would find a challenge. What sealed the case for me was that in a few of the photos the missing people had some of the same objects that my brother had displayed in his trophy room.
When he came back, he asked why I looked so startled, and I made up a fake excuse. We continued to talk, and I told him how hard it was to find a real job. I told him about how I was fired once for standing up to a guy that grabbed my ass. The manager was a jerk to me told me I was a nobody and that I should know my place. He told me that was absurd that the two of us were the peak of what it means to be human.
He told me he respected me as his only equal which surprised me. Then he told me that most would die if they went through half of what the two of us have had to endure. He told me he could only hope to find a woman close to my “strength” we parted on good terms but still I think about what I saw in his trophy room. I sometimes wonder if he began hunting the most dangerous game.