Beyond Evolution

When it came to harassing his sister, getting his revenge, and generally just keeping himself entertained, Hendrix had always been the sneaky type. He had to be, when his own sister was fully capable of beating him up. Sadie might think it was hilarious to wake him up by putting a pillow over his head and watching him flail around, but if he tried to do the same thing to her odds were he'd find himself getting punched in the face very, very quickly. So he'd gotten good at finding ways of getting back at her that didn't involve face-to-face confrontation, that wouldn't be spoiled when she inevitably proved she was tougher than he was and made him shriek like a little girl - telling lies about her, posting her poetry on the internet, stealing her stuff. Damage that was already done by the time she started pounding on him, and couldn't be undone by a wedgie or a black eye. That way, even when he lost the inevitable bitchfight, he still won.

Which was why, at this very moment, he was sitting up on the island in the center of the kitchen, a pile of cereal boxes on one side of him and a stack of DVDs on the other. Every DVD in that stack was part of Sadie's precious, precious Lucio Fulci collection, one he'd been forced to sit through and watch through his fingers at least twelve times; every one of them had been stolen from her room while she was out being social, and would be safely hidden away before she realized they were gone. Zombie, with its disgusting worm-eyed zombie cover - she'd made him watch that every night for a week, sometimes he still had nightmares about it - went into a box of Cap'n Crunch, shoved down under piles of crunchberries. The Beyond went into a box of Frosted Flakes; City of the Living Dead went into a newly-opened box of Trix. The House by the Cemetery, another one she'd pinned him in front of for days in a row, went into a box of Frosted Mini Wheats. And Voices From Beyond went into a box of Muesli, which Hendrix couldn't actually imagine anybody eating, and which seemed like the best possible hiding place.

Once the boxes were all closed up, shaken to make sure the DVD cases were down at the bottom and covered in cereal, he hopped down off the island and put them back on the shelf where they belonged, as if they'd never been touched. It was a pretty good hiding place, if Hendrix did say so himself. And even if Sadie pinned him down and tickled him til he peed - which she probably would, if he wasn't on her rug when she caught him - she'd never get it out of him.

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