Real Hector on Mystery Morning
By Matt Payne
Copyright 2013 Matt Payne
Real Hector on Mystery Morning
Our brother Hector abandoned us on Mystery Day, preferring the company of his European gay lover. So we made a new Hector.
We're a pagan-atheist family. We're atheists, but religion is crazy fun, so we decided to half-jokingly believe in all kinds of crazy gods. Also we love Christmas, but we're too cool for Christianity so we made up our own special holiday. It's called Mystery Day to glorify the mysteries of this wondrous and beautiful universe, and it happens on September 25th because autumn is pretty.
As kids we always looked forward to Mystery Day and the stories our parents would tell and the strange electronic music Dad would play. Mom and Dad would buy us Mystery Presents and give them to us on Mystery Morning. Of course they would always pretend that they didn't buy the presents. Instead, they would say, “I don't know who put these presents under the Mystery tree! I guess it was the Mystery Man!”Our Mystery tree looked exactly like a Christmas tree.
After we all graduated from high school and moved out, we still got together every year to celebrate Mystery Day. Nothing could keep us apart! There are six of us: three brothers, one sister, plus Mom and Dad. It's difficult sometimes because Hector lives in Poland now, Dixie's an anti-social grump (though I love my big sis), and Dad's constantly in and out of the psych ward. Still, we always manage to get together for our special holiday.
Except this year. This year Hector promised his new Polish boyfriend (Laszlo) that he'd spend Mystery Day with Laszlo's family. We all chatted angrily about it on Fingerbook. Dixie ranted, “Why the Hell does Laszlo's stupid family care about Mystery Day? That's our holiday! They're really annoying me.”
My twin brother, Stan, was angry at first, but then he finally posted, “We're challenging traditions with our made-up Mystery Day, so why can't our gay big brother challenge our own traditions by spreading Mystery among the people of Poland?”
“Whatever!” Dixie ranted. “He's not even gay. He just likes Laszlo because of his oil tycoon parents! Hector's such a fake! With his stupid business and his stupid Polish friends!”
Mom and Dad didn't get in on the internet conversation because Mom doesn't want to be tracked by the government and Dad is nearly comatose with his undiagnosable mental condition and hourly intake of “stabilizing” pills (some prescribed, others illicit). But on the phone Mom said, “As long as he's celebrating Mystery Day and not just brushing us off then I'm okay with it. But next year Laszlo has to come and spend Mystery Day with Hector's family. It's a fair deal.”
Still, I couldn't imagine a Mystery Day without Hector. Everybody was coming to my house this year for our holiday, and I felt a growing depression at the prospect of a Hector-less family event. Stan lives in the same city as me, and when we met up once for beer he had a great suggestion: “Let's just print off a picture of his face and stick it on a basketball.”
“I hate basketball,” I said.
“Whatever, a soccer ball,” he said. “Dixie and Mom and Dad will think it's hilarious. We can put sunglasses on it.”
So we got a picture of Hector's face from my digital camera from last year's Mystery Day, printed it off, and taped it on a soccer ball. The ball rolled around too much so Stan said, “Let's get one of those mannequin heads from the liquidation store instead.” So we went to the liquidation store and got a styrofoam mannequin head. I saw a broomstick there too and I bought it. When we got home, I filled an old rubber boot with sand and stuck the broomstick in it. Then I tacked Hector's face onto the mannequin head and stuck it on top of the broomstick. Finally we beheld our stand-in brother: his pixelated red hair perfectly parted in his characteristic vanity, a vanity which was strongly challenged by his goofy smile and cheesy raised eyebrow (every redhead is goofy anyway). We stared at it and laughed.
“I can't wait till Mom and Dad and Dixie get here and see Hector,” I said. Mystery Day was one week away.
Hector's stand-in was a fixture in my living room throughout the next week. I had friends over to play video games and they were creeped out by the mannequin. “I miss my brother,” I explained, but refused to give a further explanation because I like when people think I'm even weirder than I am. Quiet and weird, for effect.
Everybody arrived on Mystery Eve, which is the day when we get drunk and snort some of Dad's pills…as a family. Dixie clambered in out of the windy day, saying, “Aah! It's so cold already!”
Mom came in behind her—composed, serene and severe—with her deep eyes noticing every superficial detail while also seeming to stare into the soul of the world. “This place is a mess. Do you have a job, Greg?” Her black hair was up in a bun like a totalitarian school teacher.
“No,” I said, “I'm mooching off the government under an assumed identity and selling computer viruses to different governments.”
She smiled with huge pride. “Good boy!” Then her gaze jolted to Hector's pretend face and she frowned. “That's creepy.”
I picked up some sunglasses and put them on the head, where they sat awkwardly. Mom smiled. “That's better. That's hilarious.”
Dixie walked over to it and made a comically disgusted face. “That's weird, Greg. Why do you always have weird ideas?”
“Actually it was Stan's idea,” I said.
Stan had been making hot chocolate in the kitchen, and now he came out with a tray of steaming hot drinks full of booze, cocoa and sugar. “Yup, my idea, guys! Drink up! Where's Dad?”
Dad was outside looking at dead flowers in the garden. I could see him through the window. His red hair and freckles were exactly like Hector's. We always thought they looked eerily similar. “Let's bring him in and have some pills,” I said.
We brought Dad inside and started drinking rum and snorting Dad's crushed up pills. Dad lay under the Mystery tree to smell the fresh needle-scent and mumble nonsense to himself while the rest of us played Scrabble and caught up on our lives. As we got more and more intoxicated, Mom and Dixie liked Hector's replacement more and more. They chatted with him and then pretended to speak for him in response—silly things like that.
When we played Monopoly, Mom said, “Give Fake Hector a piece too! I'll roll for him!” Hilariously, Hector won the game.
Then Dixie said, “I don't like that he doesn't have arms. Give him arms, Greg!”
So I dismantled my mop and used wires and finishing nails to stick his arms on. Then I put leather gloves at the ends of the mop handle so he looked like he had fingers. When we ate a snack later, Mom said, “Give Fake Hector a snack too!”
Stan laughed and said, “Mom, you're getting way too into this!” But we all laughed drunkenly together and gave Fake Hector a plate full of cookies and giggled like morons while pretending to feed him.
To be honest, Dad's pills were giving a borderline psychotic edge to our thoughts and behaviour and we were treating Hector's stand-in way too much like a real person. By midnight we had completely given up on games and we were completely and hysterically dedicated to rebuilding Fake Hector into as much of a realistic person as possible. We didn't even call him “Fake Hector” anymore. We just called him Hector, and we called the real Hector “Real Hector.”
We kept adding body parts and clothes to him and started taking “family pictures” with Hector, and it was truly a merry Mystery Eve. Hector had filled the void that Real Hector's absence created.
We played hide-and-seek with Hector, and I played a waltz on the record player while Mom foolishly danced with him, and Dad hugged Hector and cried and said, “I'm so glad you came here.” Nobody knew if Dad could tell the difference between Hector and
Real Hector. Everybody laughed and laughed.
Then Mom said, “Greg, you're a computer programmer. And Stan, you're a mechanic.”
We both nodded.
“Well, Greg, you should make a computer program for Hector! An artificial intelligence! And Stan, you should rig his limbs up to the AI so he can move around!” Mom's foolishness was always as extreme as her seriousness.
Normally I would have said, “It's not that simple, Mom!” But I was really high and kind of drunk, so instead I said, “I don't know. I'm feeling kind of groggy...”
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic baggy. “I was saving these for Mystery Morning, but it's already three o'clock so what the hell? Who wants ecstasy?”
“I do!” we all cried in unison.
“Patience, children,” Mom said, her severity kicking in. “Remember the tradition?”
Dixie rolled her eyes. “Mom, you're really strict about tradition for an atheist.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mom snapped. “I suppose you'd rather go celebrate Christmas with some Catholic psychos?”
We didn't want to get Mom into a religious rant so I started our Mystery Prayer. “In the name of the mysterious and incomprehensible forces which push the universe forward through time and manifest itself in all our imaginary and beautiful gods, I commit this