I don’t like my brother. He is a cruel man, and I don’t know why my parents raised him like that.
I know why he is cruel. My parents raised him like that. They raised me and my sister correctly though. I am the youngest. The Youngest brother. And my parents never once raised me or my sister wrong. It was always right. They were loving and great parents with us. Always right.
They taught us lessons, when we messed up, but they would never punish us too severely. You know, the good old stand in the corner and wait. That type of stuff. But they never slapped us. None of that. But my older brother… he was always treated… I don’t even know what they were trying to achieve with him. Somedays they were so unbelievably kind to him. Unfairly say. But others they were so mean. So cruel. It was like an experiment they were running. Something to make him just the way he is. This… this person, who is just so vile. It’s sad. Says he doesn’t care much about anybody. I think he means it. Not some coping mechanism either. Maybe at one time it was just a coping mechanism though, but it’s not anymore. He just does what he wants.
Just a very cruel man. A very cruel man.
He works in an investment bank. Not much more I can say there, or should. Not much more worth mentioning too. All these people cross paths so much. Jump from one thing to another. Me and my sister we… we both dedicated our lives to medicine. That’s- that’s our path. That’s what we chose. And obviously there’s not much wiggle room there. The doors keep closing you know. But my brother, he just jumps. Goes from one business to another. And… he’s not smarter than us. He’s not smarter. We are all pretty smart, but we are all pretty equal. He’s just… that’s just how it “is” you know. That’s how his world is. They are all asshats there. So he fits there. But let me not get too full of myself either here. Some doctors have a propensity to be assholes as well but… he is a special breed. He is a special breed. And he exudes it. Very much.
It’s our parents’ anniversary, and he had invited us. Usually we take turns, and… So he invited us. And so we went there. Me and my sister and our families you know… we all went there. We got kids of our own, and that’s what you do, and so we did so.
My brother’s kids, uh, they are… they are duplicates. Duplicates. But I’ll be honest though, I am not the perfect father either. My kids… I know they are just waiting for the day they end up tearing me apart over “why weren’t you there with us”, but I digressed here.
So here we all are. We are all having dinner, remembering the two of them and all the pleasantries and I just… I don’t know why but I felt this urge to go into his basement. And I asked “can I go into your basement?” and he was confused. He said “sure” and I- I still remember my wife’s face, and she was so confused as well. Kids didn’t give a shit but… my kids were always used to me leaving, so…
So I went down to the basement. The unfinished part. I went down to the basement and… got to this door. Saw a door there. It was a green door. The whole place was beige with white doors but this door was green. I was in the unfinished area, so I shouldn’t say beige there but… actually you know, it was- what am I even saying, it was beige. I… tired form this, I… Everything was unfinished but that wall. It was beige. And it had a green door with a gold knob. At first, I thought it was one of those painted things, but it seemed a bit too good to be painted. I went up close and I, I just, I just felt the heft when I began to turn it. When I began to turn it, and the feeling that this… this wasn’t painted. This… this is gold. He used actual gold for it.
Slowly I turned the thing. Turned the emerald door… and opened it.
And I saw a red hallway. The type of red like those red lightbulbs people use, like my grandma did. My-my grandma, she used to not live in the states, and she had a room with a red lightbulb in it. See the red, it doesn’t, doesn’t take that much energy. It’s a lower frequency so it’s just more energy conservative. Sometimes where my grandma lived the lights would go out. Used to. So, she had this backup generator and there she had this red lightbulb for a room we often slept in. And the red lightbulb, it has this very eerie glow to it. And the hallway was the same. An eerier red. A very… pure red. In the hallway. It was like a thousand times more than my grandma’s room. But I could still see the outlines of the hallway. It’s a hallway.
I stepped into it. And I walked, and I walked and I walked… something was just not right within me. I could feel it. And… I would say halfway through, I turned around… and I saw my brother, say five hundred feet away, in the doorway. See the door had been kept open. I couldn’t hear his footsteps. Nobody else was there with him. It was just him… put up his hand to say high, and came into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
He walked. I could see him the whole way, or when I could finally see him in a better way… him smiling. It was a very pure smile. It was a slightly cocky smile but, nonetheless pure smile… and he came up to me and said… “How did you feel this?” And I told him “I don’t know. I didn’t think it was-” I had the slight notion to lie but I didn’t- I-I didn’t feel it was too wise, so I did tell him the truth “I don’t know. I don’t know. I felt it. I felt it. I felt the door.”
My brother, he… he looked at me in that red hallway, stared me down, he is a little taller than me… and then asked again “how did you feel it?”
And I said “you want me to explain what I felt?” He chuckled a bit and said “sure. What did you feel?” I-I definitely wasn’t going to lie to him, and I was nervous of my own brother. I- at this point you just expect the worst. I was just fully ready to- it’s so strange how… willing we can be. Willing to accept the worst. I should be a person of science. I am a doctor and all that and… I was so ready to believe that he was a, he was a demon, or… or he was part of an evil organization, or anything like that. Just the worst possibilities. My brother in front of me. An absolute, utter, evil monster. The worst of worst things… He had slaves. He had been brutal. He was a butcher. Whatever you could think… he had dinosaurs- like funny stuff like that cause you are just so willing… And this was already so strange. And I was just- I was just prepared. I was just prepared. I was trying to prepare and so, I looked at him, I looked at him, and I told him… cause I was going to tell him the truth… “I felt something’s really wrong here. So I checked.”
And he said “you are right…” so… we both began to walk down the hallway. Some more. We were only halfway through it, and he gestured me to go forth. So we both began walking. At the end you could only turn left. And then we turned left. It was more red hallway. We kept going. It was a very… plain hallway. I, I-I imagine if you had white lights it would be, it would be gray walls, gray concrete walls, with white floor tiles. Very nice white floor tiles. And… the top would be also white tiles, weirdly enough. Or something like that.
Clearly the red light was from the top though, maybe even the bot- no it was the top. I was the top… So we walked down this other part of the hallway, and at the end there was a right turn, and so we walked down the right… and there was a door at the end… Saw another door at the end. It wasn’t emerald, it was red. With a red knob. It was very plain.
Stopped at it, and uh, my heart was racing… I, I didn’t know what to expect… I, I looked at, I looked at my older brother, and he was smiling at the door, and then turned to me. He… he gestured me to open it- I… I hesitated and he said “what do you think is beyond that?”
And I told him the truth again- “I-I expected every possibility. Or tried to-“ I was… just trying to prepare myself. I was… trying to prepare myself. And so, once I told him that… he opened it and inside was a red room, and in that room, in the very center of it… a tarantula was resting.
I am not afraid of any tarantulas. I am not afraid of them. They can be good pets. They can be good pets. Nobody’s- I wouldn’t say nobody’s arachnophobia. My daughter hates spiders actually, and I would assume tarantulas as well, but even she wouldn’t be worried of it.
In this room, in this room, in this red beautiful room there was this tarantula, and it was resting. It was just resting. And that was it. It was just resting. The room had nothing else in it, besides carpeting now, and I think the walls were beige again. But besides these things there was nothing else to it. It was fifty by fifty feet say, and the walls went up to ten feet say, and the top was the same red lighting. Like the hallway had been.
And so we walked in, and my brother told me to stop. Told me to stop, and he walked forwards, and he went down to the tarantula. “I just built this to see what I could build… see what I can get away with. Nobody’s figured this out. Nobody has. See nobody else could open it… there is absolutely nothing supernatural about this. Until you came along, and now there is… My wife doesn’t give a shit. She doesn’t- when has she ever, disobeyed me? And my kids, they tried to open it- they just couldn’t. Eventually they gave up. But you came down here and you opened it… That is special. I had… I had learned that… somebody in our family would have such gifts. I learned that. And now I see it’s you and I… hate you for it.”
He took this tarantula in his hands and he squeezed it. Killing it. The poor thing just… it just… he released his grasp and… fell. I am looking at him now. He was terrifying. He was grinning. He wasn’t smiling. He was grinning. His eyes were wide. I told him “I don’t know, I just felt it” and he, he, he couldn’t buy that. Couldn’t but it. And he said “don’t worry, right now I got no secret trap. In fact I am pretty sure if I try to hurt you, you would end up killing me. I don’t know if I should encourage that possibility. I don’t know if I should encourage it.”
“I didn’t feel anything special about me- I never have felt anything special about me. I have never opened doors in the past that I wasn’t supposed to open, at least as far as I can think- I have never had that. Doors have only closed for me-“ as I said “they have only closed. I haven’t opened it.” I can… I can see why he hates me. I can see why he would love something like me. “Sorry I have it- I just have it-“ I told him. “I don’t even know if I have it” I told him. And he looked at me, came up to me, placed his hands on my shoulders and he said “I will… take it from you. Even if I need to kill you. I just don’t know how to take it from you right now, and I also don’t know how to kill you if I try to take it. So, how about we both just leave this place, go up, and pretend like it never happened in the first place?”
I told him “what are you gonna do with this room?” … and he said “I am gonna leave the tarantula as it is. I am just going to leave it there. As is. And uh, when I finally kill you, I will place your body here. In this room I have. That’s what I will do with it. When I kill you finally. Eventually. Now… I maybe too eager in my statement- you could kill me, you could. Or you could stop me, which will be even worse, but… but I don’t know. I feel I can kill you.”
… We just left his home. I just left his home and I… he didn’t do anything illegal or he can’t get away with. At least as far as I know about. I came home with my family. We just left, we all just left, and… I typed this out.