Red Nemesis

By Evan

It taunted him, sitting there on the table, tucked safely away within its transparent fortress. It seemed to say, "Nyah Nyah You can't get me!!!" Well, he would show it and he would show everyone that he was much more able to do things than they seemed to believe. He wanted to contribute to his family, but they didn't think he could help them without making a mess of things and told him so.

First there was his dad who had said condescendingly as he walked to the car to go to work, "No son, you can't come help me with my work, nuclear fission power plants are not a good place for four-year olds to be running around. Why don't you try starting smaller? Or maybe just play with your Legos, you are still a little boy after all, you don't want to rush into doing work, before you know it you'll miss the ample amount of playtime you had when you were little."

He was not going to accept that he couldn't help everyone now, especially after his father had called him a little boy. He therefore went for his mother, since admittedly his father had been right about nuclear fishing, even if Dad was completely wrong about his being a little boy.. He didn't understand what the nuclear part meant, but he always pricked himself if he tried to bait his own hook while fishing. His mom was in the kitchen, trying to get a minute stain off of the counter, despite the fact that just about anyone other her would need a magnifying glass to even catch the briefest glimpse of the miniscule smudge.

"Mom can I please help you clean the kitchen?"

The mother turned upon her son and regarded him in much the same way an owl would regard a small rodent after having gorged herself, a strange mixture of hunger and stomach ache. While she could well do with some assistance to aid her with making the room spic and span, she realized that she would most likely have to do over anything he did. He might even, horror of horrors, she shuddered to think, leave streak marks upon the surfaces! Still, if she didn?t suggest something he would most likely eventually try to help on his own and would no doubt stir a mote of dust that would eventually float and land on something, which she would have to dust again.

"No Hugh, I'm pretty much done here, why don?t you ask Adrean if you can help her with whatever it is she's doing."

This filled Hugh with trepidation, his sister had always been fairly reclusive but lately she'd been downright hostile. She was apparently suffering from something called puberty, which he hoped he never got. It seemed to involve being dark and moody, and thinking that everybody else can't understand what the pubescent person is going through. However, Hugh really wanted to prove that he was a big kid now since despite the claims of the pull-ups training pants commercials his family didn't take him seriously. He was fairly certain that Adrean wouldn't hurt him no matter how moody she was, since bloodstains would drive their mom ballistic so he marched valiantly towards her room.

Adrean was writing in her diary as Hugh peaked into her room. This was a very puzzling activity to him. He had read the diary when she wasn't around but it didn't make a whole lot of sense, something about having some squishiness on some guy and how warm he was. He decided to leave and come back later but just as he was about to depart, she noticed his eye at the crack in the door. "What do you want?!" She asked him truculently.

The first three things to pop into his head were to run, hide or play dead. Fortunately, he quickly realized that those were not viable options and would no doubt fuel her ire.

"I just wanted to know if you needed any help with anything," Hugh told her, as he tried to prevent his knees from shaking and his teeth from chattering.

"What could you help me with?! You're a completely incompetent four year old!" Adrean bellowed.

Hugh bristled at this and for a moment forgot his terror, "I'm not incompetent, and I haven't wet myself or the bed in over a year.'

"That's incontinent you cabbage brain! Being incompetent means you can't do things right. Something as simple as opening a ketchup bottle is beyond your extremely limited brainpower and manual dexterity!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

After about twenty more is nots and is toos Hugh runs off whimpering, "I'll show you. I'm not incontinent!"

Adrean debated whether to follow him to once again correct his misapprehension but instead decided to return to her brooding about boys and how no one understood her. Hugh waited patiently for his mom's soap opera to start, at which time she would take a break from her perfectionist house cleaning. He could not attempt to open the ketchup bottle with the possibility of her seeing him because she would insist upon opening it due to her fear that he might spill. He could not have any assistance; he would stand up proudly on his own, prove his sister wrong, and show that he was not incompetent (actually he thought he would prove he was not incontinent as he still had the words confused). Everything in the kitchen cabinets was arranged in alphabetical order so Hugh knew the ketchup was right between the jelly and the kiwi fruits as soon as he sang the ABC song. The problem was that the cabinets were significantly higher than he could reach. Luckily a quick jump from his chair to the table to the counter allowed him to reach the cabinet. He took a quick look around to see if his springing from the table had attracted notice from his mother or Adrean but everything still looked clear. He opened up the appropriate cabinet and grabbed the ketchup bottle in his two tiny hands. He now faced a dilemma he was unsure how to get down with the ketchup. He could probably climb down but then he wouldn't be able to take the ketchup bottle with him. The only way down was to go back the way he came. So he leapt upon the table and slid down the freshly polished surface onto the sparkling tile floor. He managed to hold onto the ketchup bottle at the cost of landing on his behind and getting some fairly nasty bruises. At least the ketchup bottle had made it through intact. Hugh was now so completely focused on his tasks that failure to open the ketchup bottle would mean that he was a complete failure in life. He sat in his chair and put the ketchup bottle on the table where it began to become to him the very embodiment of failure. To allow the ketchup bottle to remain closed would mean that no matter how much he wanted something he could never achieve it. He grew angry about what he thought the ketchup bottle was saying to him and began to work to open it. He attempted to turn the lid clockwise, and then counter-clockwise but to no avail. The ketchup bottle was too tightly closed for his meager strength. The bottle seemed to grow more menacing and to chant, "You're a loser Hugh, completely incontinent!" Hugh grappled with the tomato-based condiment repository once again and once again was defeated. He went to a drawer in the kitchen and got a knife, a fork, and a spoon. He then attempted to use each of the utensils to pry the lid off but the lid remained immobile. He then remembered that his father had used WD-40 to fix a stiff doorknob that had refused to turn and perhaps that was what was called for here. Returning with the WD-40 (thank goodness his dad didn?t store it out of reach) Hugh began to spray it along the inside of the lid. Unfortunately he got some on the outside of the lid and his fingers slid much more than the lid. As he was returning the WD-40 to the appropriate drawer, he came up with the perfect plan. His father had a set of vice grips attached to his workbench that were low enough for Hugh to reach. By using the vice grips to hold the ketchup bottle and a small wrench from the tool chest to turn the lid, he might finally open the ketchup bottle. He placed the ketchup bottle into the vice grips and began to turn it, using his own body wait to pull it once it became too difficult for him. Once he was satisfied that the bottle would not fall out he clamped the wrench tightly onto the ketchup lid and began to pull the wrench by grabbing it and lifting his legs up. The wrench would turn the lid a little and then he would loosen the wrench put it back into position and tighten it for another go. After about five reattachments of the wrench, the lid popped off and the ketchup was open. "YAY!" Hugh shouted in extreme jubilation. He loosened the vice grips, took the ketchup bottle out and began to dance happily around his dad?s workshop occasionally spilling ketchup upon various tools lying around. His dance ended when he realized that simply opening the ketchup would not be enough, they would laugh at him for opening a ketchup bottle for no tangible reason. He wasn?t hungry so putting it on some food was out. Then in a burst of revelation it came to him, the perfect thing to do with the ketchup. He poured what was left of the ketchup after his merry jig onto his hair. He ran to go show his mom what a big and not incontinent boy he had become. There was a scream and a plop as his mother passed out in horror from the ketchup that was oozing from his hair. Her body twitched occasionally in mild seizures on the carpet of her bedroom, like an electrocuted sparrow.

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