Feeding Regis

"Did you eat my taco," she stated more than asked in a monotonous tone. She knew the answer before her brother responded. He barely glanced over his right shoulder, which was chipped, before hypnotically staring back at his violent computer screen.
"Yeah," he hissed, almost smiling with his back facing her.
Figures, she thought, rolling her eyes. "Thanks for asking as usual," she snapped more to herself than to him. Glaring long and hard with her deeply naïve brown eyes, she burned two holes into the back of his dark neck. "You gonna be long on there?" she whimpered gently, referring to the computer. Explaining herself, she continued, "Cuz' I gotta do some homework."
"Yea?" he hissed again, questioning her reasoning. "Well," he dragged on in a sarcastic tone, "I gotta stay on here… cuz', if I don't keep busy, I'm going to become very angry."
"You're always angry," she mumbled under her breath.
"Homework should always come first," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. "All my homework is done, you know." He grinned proudly while he spoke the words. He glowed for himself.
"But you only have one class on Saturdays." She presented the point softly and gently to him as a proposition for him to consider.
"Yeah, well, I work full time!" His voice grew louder with each word ushering from his unstable mouth. He turned to face her, and she trembled.
"So do I," her voice quivered as she stated the fact to him.
"Well, aren't you just a goddamn god," he snapped resentfully, as if the words were true.
"I never said I was," she said in a sweet and honest tone.
"You work full time," he grumbled to himself. "Yeah, well, who takes you to work and picks you up?" He was shouting sharply now, barking like a dog.
The same person who gripes and complains about it, she thought, shaking her head."Aren't you just a goddamn god," she cracked, for only her ears to hear. Awaiting the consequences, she anxiously stumbled backwards.
"Yes, I am," he hissed boldly, sneering and convincing.
She squinted her eyes at him, pushing her brows together. Her face tightened, pulling her ears back and her nose twitched. The space between the brother and sister grew thick and heavy, like choking smoke. He plucked at his shirt, in consistency with the ticking of the clock, pulling it away from his skin.
"Ugh," he sighed routinely. Giving in against his own will, he retreated from a mind-numbing session of technical war games to his own personal hell.
He lived at the corner of the third floor in a radioactive cell that glowed green from the ceiling, seeping like chemical waste down the graffiti walls, to the dirty green-carpeted floor where he took advantage of weaker creatures. He abandoned his position as protector secretly upon the disgusting floor. Not a speck of dust could be found in his room. He constantly moved the furniture around, like the cycle of the moon, to cover over the stains collecting on the landfill. Gargoyles and dragons perched over his manifestation on shelves at each corner of the cell, guarding his landmine. His wasteland was a war-zone in itself, and the gate was always closed. Heavy metal music screamed through the walls, competing with loud phone conversations to disturb his little sister.
After knocking only once, he barged through her unlocked door. "You got twenty bucks I could borrow?" he pleaded softly, like a begging puppy. "I, uh, gotta feed Regis." Regis was his three-foot black and tan ball python. Her brother loved his snake. He frequently paraded Regis throughout the house around his neck, bragging like a prized accomplishment, as she had once bragged about her brother. He loved the snake as if he were a real person, often stroking and kissing the reptile to have some means of affection in his life. His sister never saw him so compassionate towards another living, breathing organism in the time she spent residing with him.
She hated feeding Regis. She knew her brother would also use the money for another disgusting habit: smoking. A stale stench protruded from his clothing. She despised the foul odor that churned her stomach when he opened his gate in the morning, only to stumble down to the kitchen to drown his self-pity in a cup of Folger's coffee.
"You know I'm good for it," he said in reference to the twenty dollars. "I'll pay you when I get my check Friday."
He did always pay me back, she thought. Without paying it any more mind, she reached into her beat up pink purse and grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of the leopard wallet inside.
He brought home the innocent snake food in a pathetic brown paper bag. When he called for her, she couldn't say no to feeding Regis. Guilt-free, her brother carelessly tossed the furry white creature into the twenty-gallon tank. Four walls. No exit. No one spoke while Regis ate. The predator slowly snuck out of his hiding cell, slithered around his prey smiling routinely, almost licking his lips while he hissed. He sat silent, perched like a lion waiting to pounce. Swift and sudden, he attacked and the snake launched his poisonous jaws like missiles into the quivering victim. Regis coiled his body, strangling the mouse until his body lay limp. Then, he devoured it.
She wandered wearily down to the kitchen after witnessing the slaughter, like so many nightmares before, and opened the freezer to find a milk chocolate covered Dove ice cream bar. Mmmm, she thought. "Whose ice cream bar?" she pleaded to her mother sitting at the kitchen table. "Your brother's," she informed her. She continued, "But I'm sure we can find justification if you ate it." She winked reassuringly at her daughter.
Licking her lips, her mouth drooled. She looked at the ice cream bar, glanced at her mother, than back at the freezer. She smiled to herself and closed the door. She skipped to her room satisfied from hunger, and a lonely Dove bar lay dormant in the freezer, waiting to be eaten.
She lay in a fetal position upstairs in her bed, hiding, as she had on many nights before, nights when her brother had bent his elbows a few too many times and drove home unable to see straight. She curled herself into a ball. He clumsily tumbled into things loudly on those nights and occasionally rolled off his bed. She prayed Regis wouldn't escape out of the hell he had created for himself and invade her room as tears burned her innocent cheeks and melted her pillow. She heard a knock and someone entering, unannounced. Softly the voice asked, "Hey, could I borrow a couple more bucks?"
She rolled over and sat straight to face her brother and those maliciously dark eyes pressing down upon her, almost hypnotizing. She possessed the same dark eyes, with different intentions. It's a shame, she thought, beautiful eyes wasted hiding an ugly soul. Well, I'd rather have a beautiful soul. Glaring at him intently, she decided.
"No," she said. "I don't have it."
He stood dumbfounded for a moment, and then carrying another sorry brown paper bag behind him, he retreated to his cell.
She waited. After a few minutes, she heard a gasp. She opened her door to find her brother, with tears in his eyes, holding a limp life in his hands.
"Regis is dead," he yelped, fighting back tears.
"Yeah," his sister said, almost smiling. "I know," she added strongly.
As she stood strong and bold before him, a newly freed white mouse scurried out of the green room, and a lonely brown paper bag lay empty on the dirty floor.

--Rachel McClain