Margie, my one and only sister who was two years younger than me, was always a bit of a brat so she became the object of my teasing. When she was in kindergarten, she was always loud and started running to Mommy at the least provocation. However, after I helped her rescue her friend’s cat from a tree when she was about 12, she turned a leaf, and we established an unspoken truce.
So I laid off the teasing, and she stopped being so bratty, and, at times, was even nice to me. One morning at breakfast, while mom was still upstairs, I knocked over my Cheerios, scattering O’s everywhere. As I was picking them up and wondering if I would ever make it to school, Margie grabbed a broom. After that, I even stuck up for her. Sometimes my friends and her friends from the neighborhood started playing softball and kick the can.
In the winter, we all started playing inside. After the 10th game of crazy eights, I suggested an idea that I had recently searched on the Internet: “How to hypnotize your friends.” The incantation for a trance-like state is actually quite simple.
There were seven of us in our basement that evening, and everyone thought it would be fun. Before I started, I made everyone swear that whatever happened would forever remain secret. I reminded them that not everyone was susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, but if they would just relax and listen to the sound of my voice, we would find out who was most likely.
“Hypnotize me,” they all said. My best friend Robbie became my first guinea pig. He was known to shy away from danger, so I turned him into a chicken. He squawked around the room and pecked at the floor while everyone went into hysterics. I thought it best if he not remember the experience.
Not everyone could be hypnotized – it’s really a surrender of the will – but Abbie was next to go under. She was a redhead with curly hair, freckles and green eyes that could look right through you. I dubbed her Cinderella and asked her to sit in a club chair. She dutifully crossed her legs and kicked off a shoe.
Macho Mark played the Prince and even kissed her foot before replacing her sneaker, which he found quite fragrant. The room erupted in laughter, and then it got even funnier. Abbie arose and kissed him on the lips. He took her by the arm, and they marched around the room. Finally, I sat them next to each other on the couch, erased their memories, and brought them to with a snap of my fingers. They seemed confused that they were sitting next to each other, but neither one moved.
Now it was Margie’s turn, and I wanted to make it good. She had been so angelic of late, I turned her into a sanitation worker. She ran around the room, emptied the trash can upstairs, then pulled out the vacuum and made everyone raise their feet to vacuum underneath.
It was hilarious, but she is my sister, so I couldn’t let her off so easily. Next, I told her that she was one of the seven Dwarfs – Grumpy. She opened her eyes and ran up to everyone in the room snarling. Then she ran up to me and growled. Despite her long pigtails, she looked deranged. She said I had halitosis and smelled like a dog. She stuck her nose in my face and screamed: “You bastard!”
I tried to snap her out of it but couldn’t. Everyone thought this fact was even more uproarious, but 15 minutes later, when she was still growling and starting to foam at the mouth, they grabbed their coats. My buddy Robbie, who was last to exit, patted me on the back with a snigger. “I hope you figure it out, man. I kinda like your sister.”
The next morning at breakfast, I snapped my fingers several times before Mom asked what I was doing. “Just trying to catch a beat,” I said. Marge could have just given me the silent treatment, but with her back to my mother she bared her teeth and hissed. The abrupt gesture unnerved me.
I couldn’t concentrate at school. What had I done? My sister was slowly losing her grip on reality. She was just supposed to be Grumpy, but she was sliding into something fiendish. At dinner, she answered my parents only in brief sentences and said nothing at all to me. I asked her if she had received any texts from Robbie, and she completely ignored me. I said, “I think he likes you.” Again, nothing, not a flicker of recognition.
Then, when no one else could see, she turned my way. Her neck seemed to rotate 360 degrees. Her face was contorted, twisted sour. The left side of her lip curled downward; her eyes squinted. She did everything but cackle, though Mom and Dad seemed not to notice. Then with her plate clean, she grunted and pushed herself from the table holding her stomach.
“Not feeling well dear?” Mom said.
Margie grunted again.
“I understand,” Mom said. ”It was bad for me, too.”
I wasn’t quite sure what my mother meant, but the next day was worse. Margie started going Goth with black eye makeup and weird jewelry. Frizzies flew everywhere. If she was interested in boys, it was hard to tell. She gobbled her cereal like a pit bull then snatched her leather jacket and a clove of garlic on her way out. As she stepped aboard the school bus, she turned on the first step and barked at me: “You, brother, are Hor-rrr-irible.”
I snapped my fingers in her face, but nothing happened. All I could do was blurt, “Same to you, sister.” She pushed to the back of the bus and sat with her girlfriends.
But now it was my stomach that hurt. My sister was undergoing a demonic metamorphosis. Last week she was all charm and light; now she was the daughter of Darkness. A sea of guilt overwhelmed me. My heart pounded in my head so I could hardly see. In every class, the teachers droned on, but I could not absorb a word.
When I got home, my nerves were jangling, so I went to grab my bike. But both tires were completely flat even though I had just ridden it yesterday. Maybe it was just coincidence that they both went flat at the same time. But then I went to my room to play “Gears of War,” and I noticed my stuffed Georgia Bulldog was not on my pillow. At 10 p.m., I found the remains in my pajama drawer. The body was cut to shreds, with stuffing everywhere. The disembodied head was still intact and staring up at me. Margie had not even attempted to conceal the pair of scissors she left on my dresser.
This was deliberate, and I needed to tell my parents. Margie was clearly becoming unhinged. I had made everyone promise not to tell that night, and I wanted to keep that promise too. My sister though was losing touch with reality. What else could she do with a pair of scissors?
I figured it was always best to take serious things to Mom. But I decided not to tell her about the hypnosis. I asked her to come to my room and showed her the evidence.
She couldn’t believe that the mascot my father had given me for Christmas was in tatters and demanded to know what was happening with me. When I told her it was Margie, she didn’t want to believe it.
“Why are you trying to blame Margie? Aren’t we giving you enough attention.”
“OMG, Mom! Don’t you see? Margie’s changing. She’s getting nastier by the day. I came to you because I think she’s getting dangerous.”
Mom insists I calm down so she can speak. She grabs my arms and tells me that there’s something I need to know: “Girls mature faster than boys. At this age, their hormones start pumping through their bloodstream and their bodies start changing. Someday, Margie will be a mother, too,” she says.
But I’m not buying it. “A mother of monsters, you mean. She’s acting crazy. She needs help. That’s why I’m telling you this!”
Mom simply wrote it off as a bad combination of hormones and sibling rivalry and ordered me a new stuffed mascot on Amazon. When it came, I put it away in the closet. Instead I started sleeping with a nightlight and a paperweight on my night table. –Margie could sneak in at any time and stab me.
I’ve lived in fear for months. My sister’s body did begin to manifest changes and her attitude is evil. She rapidly advanced in bra size, and Mom bought her tight-fitting jeans to show off her shape-changing. I was living in Hell, but it got worse.
My friend Robbie took notice. He bought a black leather jacket and started dating Margie, frizzed hair and all. They started going out to stupid movies like “Barbie” that real guys would never pay to see. Last week, when I tried to warn Robbie to beware of any sharp objects around her, he just scoffed.
My 14th birthday was yesterday. My friends who I hypnotized that winter night were all there.
After I blew out the candles, Robbie clapped me on the back and whispered in my ear: “Margie really got you good, didn’t she?”
Daniel G Neizmik • Feb 3, 2025 at 8:14 am
Well done, Charles! One of your best!