chapter 3

After a long day of sociology lectures, Liz wanted nothing more than to turn her brain off, kicking off her sandals and lying down on the comfy leather couch in front of the living room TV. She’d switched on the latest episode of Ghost Adventures, something mindless and right up her alley with her current level of attention. Feet up, lying her head upon the couch’s armrest, making sure to drape her hair over it to avoid it being crushed, the blonde green eyed coed started to relax. Liz had spent enough time that morning getting it shimmery, bouncy that she didn’t want all her work to go to waste, she wanted to put her best foot forward even when bumming it a bit today wearing a sports bra, white tank top and forest green yoga pants with her cheap sandals.

Eliza’s hair grew all the way to the base of her shoulder blades; a natural, pristine golden blonde, just like her mother. Annoyingly her brother shared the same hair even if his was much shorter. It wasn’t the only similarity she had with her little brother, Zeek had been blessed or cursed with a similar build standing at her same height of five foot eight, green eyes, pale skin and a slim figure, though her healthy weight was maintained by strict dieting and exercise.

While the world saw Zeek as a pest, her peers saw Liz as a delight to be around, her confident, take-no-guff personality, quick wit had quickly elevated her into the echelons of the more popular kids at school, and now at college, where she would enter her Junior year far as credits went after the summer break was over thanks to her intense schedule.

She’d been focussing on her academics to the point that she’d even broken up with her latest boyfriend last semester to do so. He was fun to be around, but was too clingy and she needed the space to focus on her future. Liz had always been popular with the guys, and a while a boyfriend could be a whole heap of fun, they were often annoying and distracting far as she was concerned. Besides, if she had intimate needs that required fulfilling, a one night stand or a fuck-buddy was easy enough to come by. Her best friend Theadora often referred to them as first world white bitch problems, though it was said with love.

Liz lost herself to the spooky goings-on of her show, completely oblivious to the assassin sneaking up behind her till it was too late.

The sound of a snip altered her senses to someone using scissors. It took a few heart beats for her mind to raise the alarm bells, like a sixth sense telling her something was deadly wrong. She brought her hand up to her head and brought it back to her; in her grasp was her own severed locks. She bolted upright in her seat, her other hand discovering more hair despicably cleaved from her.

Her lips quivered, eyes watered, and she began stammering, “Wha-wha-wha-wha…” Guttural sounds, whimpers, and short sobs crawled out of her throat. She was staring at her tarnished locks for a good minute till she became aware of a presence behind her.

“BAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

Recognizing that laughter Eliza slowly turned around and saw that creep who was always thirsting after her, always joined at the hip to her little brother. Calvin stood near the stairs, just out of the living room with his back to the wall, cackling away like he had just heard the world’s funniest joke. He hadn’t meant to burst out laughing, that hadn’t been part of the plan but as Zeek cut the hair and cucked behind the sofa he held up a lock of the golden hair and made a shrugging motion mouthing the word “Oops.” Like it hasn’t been his intention at all and it just had been too much for the mischievous youth.

Behind the sofa stood the culprit, her own flesh and blood, brandishing the scissors like a knight brandishing the blade he had just felled a dragon with.

“Don’t look so perfect now, do you?” Zeek mocked, holding a weft of her hair in his other hand as he stood up from his kneeling position.

Finally, a look of abject horror on her face, Liz let out a bloodcurdling scream. Calvin just laughed even harder, doubling over, while Zeek just stood there chuckling a little, a smug smirk of victory upon his punchable face. From upstairs, the sound of pounding footsteps vaulting across the landing, and then down the stairs erupted.

“What’s happening?! What’s going on?!” Mr, Downings shouted, thinking somebody had gotten hurt or had broken in.

“My-my hair! Look what they did to my hair, Daddy!”, Liz cried, breaking out into tears, presenting her cut strands.

“What?! How-” Edward caught the culprit red, or rather-blonde handed, both hair and scissors still within his grasp. Calvin was still belly-laughing, but that soon petered out as Mr. Downings yelled, “CALVIN ROMANOVA. OUT OF MY HOUSE. RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW”.

Cal could see that his friend’s father was out for blood, his own blood turning icy as he quickly turned tail and ran, not even acknowledging Zeek as he swiftly headed for the exit. While Zeek gave his friend an incredulous look and shook his head at his cowardness, before turning to see his family’s eyes burning with fury.

“Go to your room, right now”, Edward ordered.

“You can’t make me go to my room, I’m an adult”, Zeek cockily argued.

“You get your ass up there or so help me God I will throw your ass out onto the street!” He was beyond furious at what his child had done, no at the act of destruction his adult son had committed against his own sister.

Zeek could tell his father was stone-cold, soberly serious with that threat. Knowing he’d never make it on the street, Zeek scoffed, dropping the hair and scissors to the floor before slowly slogging back up to his room and slamming the door. Thinking little about what he had done other than a light justification. ‘Serves her right.’

Sitting in on his bed the young man punched his mattress a few times as he sulked while telling himself that wasn’t what he was doing. Zeek didn’t feel any better after pulling his latest prank; no sense of vindication. It had been there for just a few seconds as his perfect sister cried but that was the same for all of his pranks. That feeling had quickly fallen away, sympathy seeping in as he saw her tears. Now it just seemed like Instead, it had been mere cruelty for cruelty’s sake. His pranks skirted the line of being legal, if not going over the line altogether. As a youth, he’d done whoopie cushions, thumbtacks on chairs, “Kick Me” signs, putting bugs in people’s hair, setting off fireworks; all the classics.

But as he grew, his pranks became harsher and harsher; pouring sugar into the gas tank of somebody’s car, stealing underwear from locker rooms and throwing them about the school halls, filling a person’s musical instrument full of glue, and pulling the fire alarm just to name a few.

All of this might have been forgivable by society were it that he were exceptional in some other way, and his pranks were just a ‘character flaw’; he was just completely the opposite. His school grades were average at best, he never brought home any trophies or extracurricular achievements, and he didn’t really have any hobbies apart from gaming and watching TV. Zeek refused to join his school's sports teams or clubs. By the time he was in his senior year, even his own father was completely frustrated with his antics.

This complete lack of motivation carried into now after, graduating from high school; he’d elected not to go to college, or so he told everyone, instead choosing to have a gap year, which he claimed was to feel the world or whatever, before college and a job and whatever turn him into a work **** zombie. Now all he felt was frustration as he sat there remembering an argument with his old man.

Edward motioned toward Zeek with an open hand when he had said he is taking a gap year before even applying to colleges. “You don’t know what the world is; you barely leave the house! If you at least got a job, you may actually experience some real life, but instead you’re just being a layabout, eating me out of house and home while your sister is taking extra classes to stay ahead of the curve. Maybe you should take some inspiration from her, huh?” his father had derided him, his chastisements falling on deaf ears.

“Liz doesn’t have a job! You pay for everything for her!”, Zeek retorted.

“Yes, but she’s going to school, even during her break. I don’t care that she doesn’t have a job, and I wouldn’t care if you didn’t either so long as you were studying. She’s trying to improve herself; you should too”, his father has rebutted. “Son… You have so much potential, you are so clever, if you applied half the effort you use to get out of doing things to actually doing them you would shine like a star when you did them.”

Glossing over the positive words Zeek only focused on the dressing down and even then he had continued to be a complete waste of space, partially out of spite even while he questioned himself but not enough to try and find any answers. With this latest prank, Zeek hadn’t so much as broken the last straw, as crumpled it to dust.

Hours passed and the urge to wait for his father to come barging in and argue with him dulled and soon he felt boredom. So to distract himself he turned on an old gaming system for a mindless and cathartic game, Burnout: **** on the Playstation 2. The game was doing its job helping the nineteen year old get his built up aggression, when his father came into his room, immediately pulling the power cord out from its socket.

“Hey, I was halfway through-”

“You don’t get to play games anymore. Now what you did was beyond the fucking pale, I mean what were you thinking, Ezekiel?” Edward’s voice started as something stern, words with steel in them but by the end his voice was pleading. He needed an answer, he needed to know how to help his son.

Taking in a large breath, Zeek let it out in a drawn out sight like he was the one being bothered as he put down his game controller. “Aw, c’mon it was just a harmless joke! It’s only hair; it’s no big deal.”

“Harmless?” Edward swallowed. “You really don’t know how much hair means to a girl.” He ran his hand across his bald head, his own insecurities showing. “Your mother would be ashamed of you if she were here right now.”

“I wish she was, then I would have had a parent that was actually around!” Zeek snapped back.

The words hit Edward like a physical blow, he himself had thought more than once how his children would have been better off if it had been him that had died, but he really had done the best he could and even that he knew was flawed. Things had been so much easier with Eliza and Ezekiel and he had always butted heads. It had been so much easier to just let him do his own thing, it was a miracle his boy was around at all, but seeing where that had led his son he knew it had been wrong, his child needed real responsibility and real consequences. “You’re going to make this right. Whatever your sister needs, be it a haircut, or an entire course of them, or even a goddamn wig, it’s coming out of your allowance”.

The Downings siblings' allowance came from inheritance from their mother’s side of the family. As per agreement with the late Marcie prior to her demise, a little was released to both of them each month to help pay for whatever they needed. It wasn’t an incredible amount of money but it would keep coming for the next twenty years to help them find security and stability.

“Aw, c’mon, that’s not fair!” Zeek cried out, still not bothering to get up from his seated position, making his taller father feel much larger.

“Not fair?! What you did to Eliza was not fair.” The fifty year old man let out a short sigh, wishing Marcie had been there just so he could hold her hand. Edward didn’t want to be the bad guy, but he also felt partially to blame for what happened here today, if he had been willing to be sterner, set boundaries then maybe things would have been better. He didn’t know, the world was full of what ifs. “I don’t know how I went so wrong with you Zeek; I should have done a lot of things. I should have been better so that you could be better. I just…” He paused, eyes tearing up slightly. “How can you be so cruel? You act as if what you did was nothing. How can you not understand what your sister is going through right now?”

Edward closed his eyes, looking up to the ceiling and whispered to himself as a few tears run down his cheeks. “Marcie, how did our son become such a person?”

His fathers words were whispered but Zeek could still easily hear them. Getting to his feet, but not having any real fight in him Zeek responded. “I’m not a bad person, I just like to have a laugh. And maybe the joke gets out of hand sometimes. Like maybe this time.” As he spoke Zeek thought back to that feeling he had when he saw his sister crying, when that fleeting feeling of vindication, his victory had been washed away like a sand castle to the oceans tide.

“I… I guess the prank wasn’t that funny…”

Taking a step back Edward mentally kicked himself for saying that out loud. Even twelve years later he still spoke out to his long gone wife, his brother said it wasn’t healthy and he knew it to be true, but Edward just wasn’t ready to let her go and wasn’t sure if he ever would. “Well that’s something. I can’t keep you in your room; you’re an adult. But I’ll be taking away your TV and laptop and game stuff till you’ve fully paid Eliza back”.

“Oh that’s getting off way too easy.” Liz spoke, leaning into her brother’s bedroom doorway, makeup a mess, and an old ball cap covering her mutilated hair. “You are just horrible. Do you know what goes into a girl’s hair? How much time and effort and money we put in to get it looking and feeling right?” She said one hand on the door jam the other on her hip.

“Well, no, I’m not a girl”, Zeek responded, belligerent. The progress his father had made almost instantly vanishing when he heard his sisters belittling remarks.

“Well I.” Liz said, moving her hand from the door frame to hold one finger in the air vaguely in her own direction. “think it’s only fair that you have to learn how it feels to have to care for your hair. Call it an empathy exercise. What do you think, Daddy?”

“Err, well I’m not one hundred percent sure what you’re asking, but yeah, he should learn to be more empathetic. You know what, I think I’ll leave it up to you, Eliza. Just so long as you don’t do anything stupid or illegal.” It felt cheap, like he was bunting in baseball but when Eliza offered him a life raft on how to handle his son he took it. “Ezekiel, you do whatever your sister tells you to do. To. The. Letter. Got it?” Edward ordered.

Moving his head to look his sister in the eye seeing her self righteous smirk only infuriated Zeek more than he had when he first came up with the idea to begin with, before he looked back to his father. “C’mon, seriously? Do whatever she says? This is some bullshit! There’s no way I’m letting Miss Pretend Goody Two Shoes Perfect Princess there boss me around!” Zeek motioned with his hand at his nemesis.

“You will. Or you will be out on the street. Once again, need I remind you that you are an adult, living here off of my charity? I know you have some money tucked away in a savings account you can easily use along with the monthly payments, so I wouldn’t feel a shred of remorse tossing you out on your ass.” Edward lied, not knowing what he would do if his son called his bluff.

That money his father was talking about Zeek had been saving for his dream holiday. A trip to Vegas. Casino’s, shows, booze, and lots of and lots of women he could buy the attention of; it would be a dream come true for him. Maybe he’d even hire a prostitute to finally turn in his V card. Or at least that was the plan for when he turned twenty one, hoping he would luck out enough to find a girlfriend long before then.

Clenching his jaw, Zeek stood there silently looking between his father and sister. He wouldn’t be living on the street, but at the same time he didn’t have a job or any work history so finding a landlord would be a major pain, not that he actually wanted to move out. “Okay, fine! How long do I have to go along with whatever dumb thing she asks of me?”

“Till I say you can. Is that okay, daddy?”Eliza's voice lilted up as she spoke to her father, fluttering her lashes and giving him a puppy dog look.

“Of course, pumpkin. Just don’t you go abusing your power.” He wanted to add that she shouldn’t do anything to embarrass him, but he was a teen boy having to do what his sister said, that and he knew his son could use some humility. “Nothing illegal, nothing that can leave any scars. Okay?” her father confirmed.

“Of course, daddy. I’ll treat him as gently as you’d treat a precious little doll”, Eliza promised, an evil smirk upon her face.

‘Oh God, this is going to be hell’ Zeek mentally consoled himself as he let out an exaggerated groan.