Yes, there was a time when my family could be categorised as normal. Unfortunately, I was not here for those times. I’m actually in severe doubt of their existence as it’s more likely my parents were just biding time before revealing their true nature. The set up before the emergence of divine evil. But that doesn’t really matter. What is important is that they did appear normal. These were the showing off the son days. The getting excited about how fast he was growing considering how weak he was at birth. And of course the ‘isn’t God good to give us such a blessing’ days.
These days were full of first-time parent stuff. Trip to the park stuff. The occasional throw-up on the shoulder and pee in the face during a diaper change. It was normal sleepless and hectic, and they loved every single minute of it. Mostly because they were dying to practice all the shit they preached in their books. There’s no doubt in my mind that they saw raising a child as another experiment. Yet they somehow convinced themselves they were madly in love with my brother. And not only themselves, the whole world. No one, not even themselves, was aware of the misguidedness of the situation. How could they be? It looked just the same as any other parents that would be enamoured with their first born.
My brother didn’t help things. Formulating ridiculously coherent sentences before he was three. Learning to read before kindergarten. Signs of becoming a math genius. He was what two super-humans like my parents would create. An epically enhanced super child. And they never hesitated to tout how their superior skills in the child mind lead to such a prodigy. Which of course garnered more TV interviews, more books, and another surge in sales of their previous works. And more money. And more ego-trips that they expertly hid under a faux modesty.
By the time my brother was five he had fame and a bankroll most people wouldn’t have in ten lifetimes. And he had no idea about just how special he was. My parents wasted no time speeding him through school. They self-schooled him up to the capacity of his brain which had him a whole three years ahead of the crowd. And oddly enough, he seemed to not only just be intellectually smarter than children his age, but also behaved as if he were three years ahead as if he had somehow developed biologically and intellectually at the same rate. This was an unfortunate side effect for him because my parents decided to study this phenomenon and see if they could somehow find a way to reproduce it.
Maybe all of this son as a lab rat stuff helped make my brother into the brother I know. Or maybe it was me that changed things. I don’t know. All I know is that my brother had as normal a life as any rich boy with famous parents who used him as a guinea pig and called it love could have had. But, as the saying goes, all good things… or all things that appear to be good must come to an end.
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