NOTE: This is a longish story, and not a happy one. It contains a fair amount of despair and a little death. There is sex between brother and sister, though the story is not loaded with it. Everyone is an adult and the whole thing is entirely fictional.
*****
"Barry! Let me in there! I have to use the bathroom!" Mike heard his sister scream. His older half-brother sure knew how to take his time when it came to primping himself for a date. Barry and his half-sister Sunday were constantly fighting with one another. Mike had grown mostly immune to the sounds of their bickering, so it didn't surprise him to hear his sister screaming.
Barry and Sunday were both the same age and about to start their third year of college. Mike was about to start his first. Barry was the son of Mike's mother. Sunday was the daughter of his father. Mike had come along a couple of years after his parents married. As far as he could remember, there was never a point where his two siblings had ever gotten along, much to the irritation of his parents. He didn't really know why, there just seemed to be some sort of a deep-seated hatred there. Mike never really liked Barry all that much, but remained on peaceful terms with him most of the time. He and Sunday got along just fine.
"Let me in there, Goddammit!" she shouted, pounding on the door.
The door opened and Barry barged out, pointing a finger in Sunday's face.
"You knew that I had to get ready for my date, why do you have to pick this exact second to have to be in the bathroom? For fuck's sake you're just trying to get in here to make me late. Can't you just give me ten minutes without me having to listen to you bitch at me?" he roared, then retreated back in the bathroom, slamming the door.
Sunday wasn't prepared for such an onslaught of hostility, and remained silent for a moment. She knocked on the door this time and tried begging.
"Please Barry, I'm not trying to make you late, I just need to pee. Give me like two minutes, please."
"I said I have a date and I have to get ready! A date!, you probably don't know what one is, you fucking blimp. Go piss in the bushes like a fucking dog," Barry growled through the door.
That was harsh, even for him. Sunday's hands flew up to her face and she ran off down the hall into her room. Mike didn't think that his sister was a blimp, she may have been a few pounds overweight and a little curvy, but not morbidly obese or anything. Perhaps she had done something earlier on that Mike didn't get a chance to see in order to invoke such anger from his brother. He thought that it was mildly entertaining for the most part, just as long as he wasn't involved in it. He didn't like seeing Sunday cry, though.
Mike himself was sitting in the living room waiting for his own date. Lisa, his girlfriend, was going to drop by and they were going to make plans from there. He was flipping through the channels on the TV, killing time, when Barry came into view.
"How do I look, bro?" he asked.
To Mike, he looked kind of like the villain from a bad movie. Black hair slicked back, black goatee, black dress shirt, black pants, black shoes. He just needed some dark glasses and maybe a time-bomb or a canister of nerve gas.
"Looking pretty sharp. Gettin' laid tonight, huh?" Mike responded.
"Fucking 'A' I am," Barry laughed. "Catch ya later."
"Later," Mike said, watching him leave.
He wondered what it took to build up an ego like that. It would be nice to know so that he would be able to avoid it. He walked down the hall and knocked on Sunday's door.
"Sunday, Barry's gone if have to use the bathroom," he called out.
As he walked back to the living room, he heard his sister open her door and presumably head to the bathroom. She came and sat with him once she was finished, it was apparent that she had been crying. It was unusual that Barry could get to her enough to break her resolve.
"You gonna be OK?" he asked. "I wouldn't pay attention to Barry. He lives in his own little world."
"I'm OK, I just really had to use the bathroom. He's such an asshole, I can't believe that he always has a date," she replied.
"Yeah, can't argue with that. It does make me wonder," Mike said.
"So what are you doing tonight? Wanna watch a movie or something?" she asked.
"Sorry, Sunday, Lisa's gonna be here any second. We're going to figure out something to do," he replied.
Mike could see the disappointment in her face. His brother was right about one thing, he couldn't remember the last time that she was out on a date. It must have been quite a while if she was upset that she couldn't hang out with her own brother on a Friday night.
"Oh, OK," she said, resigning herself to another night alone. Even her parents were out to a party.
"But hey, maybe we could do something together. Lisa and I don't have any plans or anything. Maybe we could go bowling or something," he suggested.
"Really? I figured you would want to be alone with Lisa."
"I'm not a lady's man like Barry, I don't get lucky every time that I leave the house," he teased. Sunday smiled, she knew better. Maybe not every time, but his chances were pretty good.
"I'm glad you're not like Barry. I don't know what I would do if there were two of him," she giggled.
"Oh you'd be fine, you're tough."
There came a knocking on the door and Lisa peaked her head in. It was not unusual for her to let herself in if she knew that she was expected.
"Hello?" she called.
"Hey Lisa, come on in," Mike replied.
Lisa came into the living room and sat beside Mike, giving Sunday a little wave.
"So, what kind of romantic evening do you have planned for me?" she asked, putting her arms around Mike's neck. Sunday shifted uneasily in her seat at the display of affection. For some reason, it bothered her.
"Well, um, Sunday and I were talking and we thought that maybe we could go bowling or something," he said.
"Bowling? Really?" Lisa asked, obviously not keen on the idea. She had something else in mind.
"Yeah, that way all three of us could go," he said.
"That's fine, I guess," Lisa said, glancing at Sunday.
"I don't want to be in the way," Sunday said defensively.
"It's fine, it will be fun with the three of us" Lisa said, barely concealing her disappointment.
"OK, I'll go get ready, I'll only be a few minutes," Sunday replied, getting up and heading to her room.
"Thanks for letting Sunday hang out with us, I think she's kind of feeling down," Mike whispered.
"She's always kind of down, Mike. She wierds me out. I don't think that she likes me much either," Lisa whispered back.
"What do you mean?" Mike asked. He honestly didn't know what she was talking about. He never paid much attention as to how the two interacted.
"She's always moping around and whenever she looks at me I get the feeling that she wants to cut my heart out," Lisa replied.
"Don't be silly, why would she want to do that?" he asked.
"I don't know, maybe she's jealous of me or something," she replied.
"Well, she ought to be, you're beautiful, and sexy, and you're dating the best looking guy in the room," he said with a smile. Lisa seemed satisfied with the answer because she kissed him and began to laugh.
*****
Even though there were only three of them, they broke into two teams. Lisa and Sunday vs. Mike. They gave Mike fifty pins a game, they would bowl two games. The loser had to buy dinner.
"That's not fair. There's two of you, so when I win you get to split the bill. If somehow I lose, I have to get the whole thing," Mike pointed out.
"Sometimes life isn't fair," Sunday replied.
Lisa came bouncing back from the approach after picking up a spare. She gave a high-five to Sunday. Apparently she was able to accept her as a teammate without any problems. Especially when it began to look like they were going to win the bet.
"Where do you want to eat tonight, Sunday? I'm thinking about lobster," Lisa asked. Sunday laughed, Mike gave them the evil-eye.
Mike was doomed right from the start. Though he was confident in his abilities and was fairly certain that the girls were terrible, they somehow got lucky time after time. Their combined score was 576 to his 404 after the second game. The girls had howled with laughter and teased him every time he had an open frame, which was often.
"All this bowling has really made me hungry. I might need two lobsters," Sunday said.
"Yeah, I know I want lobster, but I think I want something else, too. Have to look on the menu, I guess," Lisa agreed.
"You know, we never said who won would get to pick where we eat at. I'm thinking the vending machine. You guys can have Milk Duds and pretzels," Mike said with a frown.
Sunday raised her eyebrows, having remembered things differently.
"I seem to recall that the winner DOES pick where we eat. A certain 'it doesn't matter, you girls are going down' must have been too busy adjusting his smarty-pants to pay attention to what he was betting on," she said.