Dangerous Games II

My oldest sister is amazing; even I am forced to admit that. While most of us use at least a little cunning in our tactics, not so with Isabelle, who uses pure brute force and intimidation. If there is anyone who I am really scared about going up against it would be her. She offers threat of true bodily harm to anyone stupid enough to mess with her, which I’m not. I was talking before about pawns, well I guess I’m one of hers, but so are the rest so I don’t care. Okay, so I do care a little, I don’t like being used, but no one can figure out a way to beat her enough that she would stay down. You would think that with things as they are we would focus our energy to beating her I suppose, but we don’t. Instead we fight between ourselves and listen to her when she tells us to do something, pathetic right?

Then there’s my cousin, Ben, he’s more of the cunning sort, all cold calculation. I don’t like him much either, well I guess I don’t really like any of them. Ben is a little crueler then the rest of us are when it comes to manipulating people’s emotions though. He’s the sort who’d remind you of the fact that you’re family so that you’d start feeling bad for him, and then stab you in the back once you’d relaxed.

Then there’s my younger brother, he’s a lot younger then me so usually I have a hard time taking him seriously, but recently I have noticed he’s getting dangerous. He takes all of this way more seriously then anyone else, that Dan. There’s something mighty unsettling about the way he’s been looking at me recently, like he’s hunting me. I don’t like that at all.

That would be everyone of consequence out of my family, well other then Mother who I’ve already told you about. The rest of the older generation doesn’t interfere, we make them nervous and they can’t keep up with us. Mother does though; mother is a master at all of this. As I said before Mother was angry with me at the moment. That’s because I had forced Al out of the house and into the wilderness I should remind you. You don’t have to remember Al, Al isn’t important at all. It only had taken Luke and I a couple of days to make him into a mental wreck, Al had no business in this sort of house if that’s all it took.

In the nature of family politics I had just made a very bold step, in that Al is important. Al was my Dan’s most loyal follower, which is why I had decided to get rid of him. If Dan is going to start looking at me as a stepping stone to gain power then I will do something about him. Including getting Al out of the picture, I don’t think Al will return. Mother will probably send him somewhere peaceful out in the real world with an allowance to live. That’s what she did with my cousin Mary, who was shoved out of her house by Ben when we were a little younger. No one talks about Mary much, but she is in our minds, about what happens when you are weak. Mary only wanted to be a big happy family, always wanted to think the best of us. In other words she was stupid and easy prey. Ben became a major player when he got rid of her, and I had just become a major player for getting rid of Al, that was a good feeling. I had just become the person to watch. It was a bad feeling to have Mother look at me like that though, so I made an excuse and went to my room.

Luke was waiting for me when I entered my room. It had once been one of my younger sister’s rooms but since it was larger then mine had been, I had made her switch with me. She wasn’t happy about it but there was nothing she could do about it either. At least she was still in the game, the subservient lackey to Isabelle, but still in the game.

To be continued...