“I once found a magic lamp” said Brian “and a genie popped out of it.”

“Oh yeah?” Susie replied in her nasally croak “Was it a big burly man, naked from the waist up or was it a beautiful lady calling you master or some up?”

“It wasn’t like anything you could imagine,” Brian snorted “Didn’t look remotely human.”

“Was it pink?” yawned Susie “Did it have tentacles.”

“Way off,” said Brian recalling the pink aura and tentacle like limbs “Anyway, it asked for my heart’s desire.”

“Let me guess,” said Susie “you’d never have to go to school again? You’d have a million pounds. You’d finally get that Meccano set for Christmas.”

“Listen,” replied Brian coldly “you may not understand it. You being an only child but I’ve got an older brother.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t”

“Do.”

“Don’t”

“Five years older than me,” said Brian “He was born dead.”

“Never mentioned him before.”

“Mother and Father never spoke about him. Only found out when I found those old photographs in my father’s wardrobe.”

“They photographed a dead body?”

“Course,” said Brian with an air of importance “my family photographs a lot of things. We use cameras all the time. Anyhow when mother and father tell me they’re going shopping it turns out they’re visiting his grave.”

“Right, right,” said Susie, who found she couldn’t quite disbelief Brian.

“I guessed they must miss him terribly because I slunk over to the cemetery one time when they were visiting his grave. Mother was tabbing her eyes with a hanky and father kissed the tombstone. So anyhow I found that magic lamp, summoned the genie and asked him to make it that my brother never died.”

“And?” asked Susie

“Well the genie mentioned that there was this undo spell if the wish didn’t turn out like what I hoped. And he snapped his fingers or whatever genies have instead of fingers. But when I got home mother hadn’t the foggiest who I was. And all of a sudden, this big obnoxious bully shoves me aside telling me to get lost and it turns out this brute is my late brother back from the dead. Only that he’s not so nice, he’s rather ugly, a lot ugly actually, and dumb, plenty dumb. He cares only about himself too. Golly shove him in a room with all kinds of people with all kinds of problems and he’ll only talk about himself for hours. Huh, if I could be related to somebody like that.”

Susie bit her lip because this line described Brian to a tee.

“Well anyway,” said Brian “history had changed, Mother and Father only wanted one child, one was enough they said, so I was never born, and this pig was living in my bedroom. Since I didn’t have a home anymore, I used the undo wish. I mean mother and father may be miserable but I’m not giving up my room for that brute.”

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