Greetings reader, my name is Epimetheus. Please just call me Theo. Why my parents decided to give me such a strange name I will never know since they died a year after my birth, but I digress. Anyways this is my story, it is not a happy one. I am NOT a hero in any sense of the word. I am merely a fool, a colossal idiot who can only speculate after the fact. The only reason I am writing this down is that I hope someone will be able to learn from my mistakes. Know this is not a heartwarming story about how the “nerd gets the girl” this is a recounting of strife, pain and crippling failure. Ok, that's enough self-pity for now.

 Let's get to some background, my full name is Epimetheus Summers, again just call me Theo. I am 14 years old and currently live in Ravencrest, New Jersey. I grew up in New Hampshire living with my Aunt, Uncle, and older cousins. After my parent's demise via a drunk hot air balloon hijacking attempt, I came to live with them. Now you, dear reader, should be able to tell I am far from a normal person, but you still do not know the oddest thing about me yet - I am unable to feel fear. It’s not that I am extremely brave or anything, it's just that biologically I am unable to fear anything. I’ve been seen by many specialists and as far as they can tell my brain has dysfunctional amygdalae. So, while I do feel pain, my amygdalae cannot send signals thus I don’t fear pain and since all fear stems from pain in some way, growing up I had no understanding of fear in the first place. Thus, I had a very strange childhood. I was homeschooled for a very long time because of my weirdness. My Aunt and Uncle were both what you might call workaholics, so I hardly ever saw them. They had some high paying jobs that I really didn’t know the first thing about. You’ll notice that I have not mentioned their names, that is because they didn’t play a large enough role in my life to get that much mention in this accounting. I was raised primarily by my cousin, Jeff and a plethora of different maids that usually got fired on the rare occasions that my so-called “guardians'' came home. My cousin, Jeff, was another story entirely. He was a great guy. He was the one who always taught me the important things, like how to read, use a computer, and survive in the wilderness. When I needed him, he was always there for me. He was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father despite only being 8 years older than me. Anyway, he always worked really hard. When he turned 18, he got into Harvard and 4 years later he returned to New Hampshire, had a 30-minute conversation with my uncle and after that me and my other cousin Brad moved with him to Ravencrest. We haven’t looked back since. 

Now I guess I should talk about Brad. Brad is my other cousin and is only older than me by a few months, not that he would ever let me forget about it. To put it simply Brad is a bully, it's just his nature. Growing up he actually used to go to normal school, but he got in so much trouble that his parents pulled him out and he began to learn from the same tutors that I did. He has always hated me for a multitude of reasons, but the core of his reasoning is that despite years and years of torment he has never once scared me. This has created an impasse and instead of giving up he has decided that it is his life goal to make my life miserable. Lucky for me while he may be bigger and stronger than me, he is also an idiot. I’m not saying this to be mean, I am in no way a genius, but his IQ is only slightly higher than that of pond scum. Alright, you get the idea I hate him, he hates me, and we're one big happy family. While he might hate me that doesn't mean he likes most other people either. Remember how I said the maids kept getting fired as we grew up. That for the most part was Brad's fault. If the maid had slighted him in any way, he would try his best to get them fired, and while his methods were crude, I can't say he wasn’t successful. The most memorable being the time that he set off a crude pipe bomb in the current maid's room. You may ask how this was successful, well it was a combination of dumb luck and the fact that his parents on gave the most cursory of investigations. In the end it was discovered that the maid had been a person of interest in some other arson related crimes. Now some of you are now thinking that Brad is some kind of evil genius, he isn’t. He had no clue about the prior crimes and while he was running outside the room he even got hurt in the explosion. He did such a bad job of it on whole that I was astounded when he got off scott free, but incessance that was Brad crude, stupid, and above all lucky

In fact, the only person I knew that he actually liked was Jeff, which was interesting. That is because Jeff was his half-brother. Jeff was from my uncle's first marriage and Brad was from his second. Jeff’s mom divorced my uncle a long time ago which I really can’t blame her for. The thing is that she also abandoned Jeff in the aftermath of the divorce and didn't even try for custody. This turn of events also estranged Jeff from my uncle, and he was left to his own devices. Then two years later he remarried Brad’s mom and they promptly had Brad. Now I never cared enough to get the whole story but the reason they got married in the first place was to cement power in some kind of mutual business. From what limited interaction I had with them and my admitted very small understanding of relationships, my aunt and uncle seemed to have a working relationship. No romance or even the illusion of romance was demonstrated in any way, and they even slept in different rooms. In fact, when I was younger after seeing one of the first Terminator movies, I was convinced that both of them were robots due to how little emotion they put into everything they did and how the only thing they talked about was their business ventures. It sends shivers down my spine thinking about what went on between those two when they spawned Brad. I think the only reason they had him was to have biological proof of their business union and possibly an heir to carry on their legacy.

So maybe Brad has a reason to hate everyone around him. Ok, I guess that's not fair, he always seemed to have one or two minions around who he tolerated as long as they did what he said. If they didn’t, well, you did notice I only referred to them as minions not friends. None of them seemed to hang around all that long, but somehow, he kept on finding new ones to fill in the spot of Thing 1 and Thing 2. Apart from that he didn’t like other people except for Jeff. Why that is I’m wasn’t really sure, but whenever Jeff was involved, he was always less of a monster.

Probably the most ironic thing about our strange family situation is that while we may all have had very different mothers, we all looked like brothers. Each of us had the same shade of light brown hair with blue eyes and very similar facial features. Our differences were really only in our body types. I was lean, not typical nerd skin and bones, but more like a runner's build. It wasn't entirely like a runner though because I, on general principle, hated running. I also hated lifting weights for that matter and pretty much any other mindless workout activity you could think of. In fact, the only reason I wasn't the skinny nerd stereotype my kind is known for (and for those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I am a major nerd .... Shame on you) was that growing up Jeff constantly kept taking me on long hikes in the wilderness, and even after he left for college, I kept going on them simply to get away from everything (especially Brad). Brad on the other hand hated the woods but loved pumping iron. In fact, except for pummeling other kids and breaking whatever was most expensive, pumping iron was his favorite thing to do. Thus, he was your typical mindless gym rat, while parts of his body where pure muscle other parts were not. So, the final product, as it were, was extremely powerful, but not particularly fast nor have even the smallest semblance of grace. Jeff is what you may call a perfect all-rounder. Picture Michelangelo's David and then give it a bunch of scars from a black bear. 

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Now that I’ve said it I guess I have to tell it, and that is of course how my cousin got those scars. It was a long time ago, I was only seven years old, and Jeff thought it would be a good idea to take me and Brad camping for the first time. It went about as well as you can expect. Brad complained the entire way and I got blisters all over my feet. When we finally got to the campsite, we were all exhausted mentally and physically, so after eating a meal and setting up our tent, we went to bed. The next morning it just so happened that Brad was the first one up. After getting up he took a stroll around the campsite. On his stroll he found a baby black bear nuzzling through some of the trash he had been too lazy to pick up last night. Now there are several things that could have happened if this had been pretty much anyone except for Brad. A smart person would have backed slowly away from the creature. A stupid person would have tried to pet the beast. A normal person may have simply enjoyed the sight of a rare woodland's creature. Brad on the other hand chose none of the above and promptly kicked the creature firmly in its posterior.

 Now had Brad been given more time he would have probably done much worse to this innocent little bear, but after he kicked it, the bear let out a squeal of surprise and fear. This squeal alerted mama bear and drove her into a rage. The anger of a mama bear defending her cub from an aggressor is literally the stuff of legends. So, when she saw Brad kick her cub she let loose with a primordial roar. Lucky for him that roar woke me and Jeff up instantly. Within seconds we were both out of the tent and ready for almost anything. Note the almost, we were certainly not ready for the sight of a screaming Brad running away from a huge bear. At that moment I had a brain wave and immediately dove right back into the tent. Jeff stood there for a moment stock still, held in placed by fear and indecision on whether fight or flight was the best option in this scenario. Before he could decide, Brad tripped suddenly making the decision for Jeff. When he saw that Brad was on the ground Jeff immediately ran forward and threw himself on Brad. Soon after mama bears claws raked up and down his back and he let out a scream of pain. After that my idea came to fruition. 

Now as stated before I can’t experience fear, so the mama bear in all her vicious rage didn’t scare me one iota. Thus, I came up with a plan, the basics of my thought process was this: bears are strong, stronger than full grown humans, much stronger than me. People kill stronger beasts than this with weapons. I needed a weapon! Then I remembered something, I had a weapon in the tent. Thus, I dove back into the tent to find my weapon. The weapon I am referring to in this situation is my trusty flare gun. You may ask why I have a trusty flare gun, my question to you is why don't you have a trusty flare gun? All jokes aside, the reason I had a flare gun was before we went on this trip, I had watched the Fist Full of Dollars western movie. Which had made me decide on a cowboy motif for the hike, including a 10-gallon hat that definitely couldn’t hold 10 gallons, cowboy boots that gave me all those blisters I mentioned earlier, and my trusty flare gun which was the closest thing I could find to a revolver at my aunt and uncle's house. Basically, this idea that on paper sounded cool ended up being something Brad could razz me about when he got tired of complaining. That being said in this situation my idiotic fashion choices ended up being a lifesaver, literally. So just as mama bear was rearing back to slash Jeff for a second time, I came flying out of the tent and blasted her in the face with my trusty flare gun. I got her right in her left eye, and the fare was actually logged in her face for several seconds. By the time she got it out the left side of her face was severely burned, and she quickly turned around and ran for the hills. Her son trailed after her whimpering, and we never saw either of them again. After shooting mama bear, I ran over to Jeff and started applying pressure to his wounds as soon as I could. I told Brad to call the cops, but he just sat there dazed. So, after I finished making a bandage out of my shirt, I called the cops. Due to some good foresight from Jeff, we were not very far out into the wilderness. There was a road to our campsite, and we even had cell service. So, I called an ambulance and at the end of the day everything was ok. There were several lasting things that came to affect us after the events of that day, and here they are, starting with me - after seeing the value of my flare gun, it fully became my trusty flare gun and became almost an extension of my being. I never left the house without it and almost always had it either on my person or within easy reach. Jeff after spending a brief time in the hospital was perfectly fine and was actually proud of the scars on his back. After this the two of us became a lot closer and he started to teach me everything he knew. 

The one who really changed the most was Brad. First of all, he forever after hated and was not so secretly terrified of the woods and bears. He never went hiking again no matter how hard Jeff tried to get him to. That being said he also started truly respecting Jeff. Part of it was definitely Jeff risking his life to save Brad and part of it was that Brad thought the scars looked badass. Now that was all well and good, the thing is that the person we I’m talking about here is Brad. As I have always said many times Brad is not a normal person. The ordeal left Brad with a lot of feelings with inadequacy and self-loathing. These were not emotions that his psyche could handle directly so he projected them on someone else. Someone who had not wet themselves in the face of adversary. Someone who actually saved the day. Someone who was even smaller and younger than him. Yes, that someone was me.