I watched helplessly as another baby tooth leaped furiously from my mouth. A tail of blood marked the distance of the dental comet as my sister's fists continued to rain down on me.

"You ugly little troll!" she boomed. "You're pathetic! I told you not to snoop around my things and what did you do? You went through my room! I can tell you did! Lousy little pest!"

I tried to defend myself but my open mouth only caught another hit from my sister's fist. I wanted to tell her it wasn't me. I wanted to tell her it was our father who'd been in her room. He'd been looking for his slippers which she always borrows. I wanted to tell her if she'd just go ask him he'd tell her but I didn't have the chance. I never had the chance. In all my previous beatings she never let me explain anything.

The year was 1986. I was only eight years old and my sister Deanna was sixteen. For the better part of my youth with my parents Deanna reminded me almost daily she'd had a good thing until I arrived. That's when she said the attention shifted focus and she stopped being our parents sacred treasure. In her eyes she'd become a cast aside bauble and I was the new diamond. All diamonds are formed with great amounts of pressure, though, and my sister was more than pleased to provide that by any means available.

My vision grew murky with tears and swelling. "Are you going to go through my room again you little jerk? I knew you were a mistake from the moment Mom told me she was pregnant! If she weren't our mother I'd think you were some crack baby because you're so stupid!" The words lived on in my mind not because they were hurtful. I'd grown used to the abuse. The fact she emphasized each point with a knuckle embedded the speech in my mind.

Deanna finally rose from atop my crumpled formed and offered a swift kick to my side to make sure I understood what had just happened. She closed our little conference with the words, "And if you tell Mom and Dad I'll, deny everything and kick your ass again!" Those were her favorite words. I swore she repeated them in her sleep and practiced new ways to inflect "everything" in front of a mirror.

Deanna was bigger and reminded me of it daily. I think her bullying first really started when I was four. I don't recall the reason. I just recall she hung me in her closet when she was supposed to be babysitting me and shortly before my parents returned and took me out. I was bawling and wailing like a pig who'd been led through a bacon factory. Her only words to me were to the effect of, "If you tell Mom and Dad, I'll deny everything and kick your ass." Dutifully I followed her orders and spent the next four years living in fear of her ominous form. Maybe it was the changes a young woman's body goes through that made her into heinous seething cauldron of hate she was.

I picked myself up and rambled to where my little white refugee lay. Bits of tender pink gum clung to the tooth and dripped my once precious blood. I scooped the tooth up and went to the bathroom to clean it. At least I'd be visited by the tooth fairy that night.

I passed my uncle Bill's room on the way to the cubbyhole loosely termed as my room. His hoarse voice called out, "Hooey? Come here and keep me company, big guy."

Uncle Bill was what every little boy needed. He had a story for every slight occurrence, a wild glint of adventure in his eyes and a big Buddha belly which was perfect for little boys to lean their heads on as they watched television. He'd moved in with us when he learned he had lung cancer a year prior and spent half his time in the hospital. When he was home, though, he was my best friend and the only adult in the house who demonstrated some remote interest in me. He was also the only person who called me Hooey anymore. The rest of the family called me Bert or Hubert if I was in particularly hot water.

I shambled into his room expectantly. His rosy cheeks were propped with his sturdy grin. "What happened to you? You've got a little blood there. You're not turning into a vampire on me are ya?"

I giggled lightly at the thought. I should be so lucky. Then I could swoop down in the night and drain my sibling of her fluids. However, I rationalized in my mind Deanna probably slept with a stake or was probably some cretinous demon who didn't really have blood but some poison churning and pumping through the ironworks of her innards.

"I tripped on the stairs," I answered. "I lost a tooth. It was loose already."

Uncle Bill nodded at me but I think he knew the truth. There wasn't much to be hidden from him. He was my father's older brother and I recalled the tales of sheer torment he'd unleashed upon my father. The only thing he'd not tried was a razor sharp pendulum.

"Teeth do that. Come here, Hooey. Keep your uncle company." When I situated myself in my proper place he asked me, "You going to play baseball this year?"

"I hope not," I answered. "I don't like it. Dad makes me play. I guess it makes him happy."

"It doesn't make you happy though," he said in his matter of fact tone. "What would you rather do?"

"I dunno," I replied in the typical little boy fashion.

"Do you want to play basketball?" When I shook my head he continued. "I know. You'd be a good swimmer. Maybe you wanna play street hockey. Am I right?"

"No. I'm no good in sports," I said. "I always get picked last cause I'm so slow and all."

"Sports just aren't your style," Uncle Bill said. Slyly he said in a soft mutter, "I know what you wanna do. You wanna be -- Darth Vader!" His momentous paws zoomed towards me and wrapped around my shoulders. I squealed and spasmed with laughter anticipating what came next. He tossed me onto the couch and began prodding and tickling my soft ribs. "Look out Vader! Rebel space ships shooting at the Death Star! They've got tickle guns!"

I fell helpless to my uncle's assault of amusement and frivolity, overtaken with the sheer silliness he exuded on a daily basis. He was the only person who was able to get me riled but knew just how long to tickle without giving me an asthma attack. When the pleasing limit was reached he settled back in his couch. He gave a slight moan as his bones popped and settled.

"Whatcha watching?" I propped up next to him and studied his small television.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre," he answered. "Great movie."

"What's it about?"

His tired finger motioned to the Chain saw wielding maniac. "See him? He was told if he lived a good life he'd become a real little boy and he and his toy maker father would be happy but it turned out the fairy godmother was just teasing him so now he's going to take out Goldilocks and her family."

"Nuh-uh!" I protested.

"Honest injun," Uncle Bill proclaimed with a smile.

I watched the killer tease a potential victim and my thought turned to my sister and her constant assaults. "Uncle Bill, what do you do when you've got a problem but don't know how to take care of it?"

"Sit down and look at the situation. Think of everything you could possibly do and think of how it could go wrong."

I studied him. "Does that work?"

"Usually," my uncle said. "Nothing works all the time, Hooey."

"Are you ever scared?" I asked.

His jellybean eyes looked down at me. "Yes, Hooey. I get scared a lot."

I scooted closer. "What do you do when you're scared?"

He didn't answer. He only smiled and brushed his paw through my moppy blond hair.

"What do you do?"

"Think of all the reasons I have to be brave, Hooey."

We finished the movie and I scooted into my room. I buried the tooth beneath my pillow and readied myself for bed. Posters of Darth Vader beckoned to me from above my bed. Aside from Uncle Bill, Darth Vader was the one I looked up to the most. He was everything I wasn't. He was brave, strong and willing to take things. I was an underweight asthmatic suffering from nearsightedness. I considered what he would do in my situation.

Deanna was pushing me to the edge. I knew the Dark Lord of Sith would simply use the Dark Side to cave her pimpled head in but I couldn't do that.

Maybe I could.

I couldn't use the force but who's to say I couldn't use other means? I shook the idea out of my head. I told myself I was simply being angry and going through my usual revenge fantasies. The more I pondered it, though, the more delicious the idea became. I envisioned my sister's casket lowered into the ground with an orgy of brimstone and demons clawing for it. I heard them chanting, "What's ours is ours!" and my sister's frightened cried echoing from the coffin. My father would turn to me and say, "Son, I'm so sorry we gave you such a mean sister but she's gone now. I promise her replacement will be better."

Stupid and improbable but still my dream, I relished the idea of my sister bathed in the fires of Hell. Somehow I convinced myself there was nothing really to lose. My mother might mourn her for a while but I didn't foresee anyone else getting to unhappy. My father hardly ever noticed us as it was. The most I could ever get him to say to me as he lounged on the living room sofa was, "Where's Mommy? Go find Mommy?" Uncle Bill never really talked to her much and the rest of the family would have to admit the house was more quiet without the phone ringing every ten minutes.

I looked at other options but each had the same drawback: Deanna was evil and would never change. By the time I drifted to sleep I knew I made up my mind. I would murder my sister and make the family, especially myself, happier because of it.

When planning my sister's demise I took into consideration the fact her passing had to either look natural or like an accident so no blame would fall back on me. Although this ruled out hours of possible fun to be had with my father's assorted power tools I knew I enjoyed the idea of spending my life outside some form of correctional institution. Despite this my young mind failed to grasp what a logical accident was. While a power saw mysteriously slicing my sister's legs off seemed highly unlikely a baseball bat placed precariously over her bedroom door in a fashion so to slam directly into her skull seemed totally perfect to me. She did, after all, play a lot of sports and I could simply say I was watching her try to practice some form of stunt. I'd well up a few tears and everyone would believe me. What worked well on paper or in a Bugs Bunny cartoon failed in reality when my sister pushed her door open and the carefully balanced baseball bat simply fell behind the door. From my hiding place in the hallway clothes' hamper I saw her befuddledly looking up at the door's top and back at the bat repeatedly. I wondered if she thought one of them were going to explain what had just happened.

My next attempt took off from my original idea. Instead I propped a bowling bowl in Deanna's closet in a way to fall square on her head when she opened it. The plan fell short when she walked in the room as I was setting it up and bestowed upon me one of her famous heart-to-heart "talks."

I was becoming desperate. I tried everything I could think of. I placed bricks and strings in her usual paths to trip her. I put needles and tacks in her bed and car seat. I even replaced her acne gel with airplane model glue. Not only did my plans not give my sister her desired meeting with a particular skeletal monk holding a scythe but they made her more irritated and violent.

Spring irked by and so did my hopes of killing my sister. I busied myself with other details of childhood life to take my mind off her impossible murder. Shortly before school ended I received word Darth Vader would be making an appearance at the shopping mall only a few blocks from our house. I begged and pleaded my parents to take me to see him but both were too busy to fulfill my childhood wants. Dad worked during the day and Mom was taking Uncle Bill to his treatments. My hope was slowly dying when my mother spoke up on the matter at the dinner table on night.

"Sweetie, I've got the perfect idea."

My heart raced with her words.

"Deanna can take you."

My heart melted with disappointment.

Deanna's disappointment apparently mirrored my own as she fought for her right to not be strapped to me for a day. Our father held tight to the reasoning he'd paid for her to have her car and he'd be damned if he didn't get anything out of his $250. A student of the "I'll give you something to cry about" school of thought, my father stubbornly held his ground all throughout her wailing and gnashing. She finally submitted to Dad's whims.

I knew this meant I'd be submitting to many beatings.

The day finally arrived. I remember climbing out of bed at six in the morning and swallowing a bowl of Corn Flakes. I could barely keep from harassing Deanna from her sleep. No assault from her could keep me from meeting my hero and Dad's mandate assured me she could in no way welch on the deal.

When she finally rose from sleep and dressed we drove to the mall. Deanna found the line to meet Darth Vader and assigned me my orders.

"Don't even think of leaving this line," she warned. "I'm going to go shopping. If I come back and you're missing you'd better have been kidnaped and raped by cultists or I'll make you wish you had. Got that?"

I nodded fearfully and wished her away. The gods were not so kind, however, because a young man about her age and apparently rather attractive caught her eye. Deanna knew him from school and put on the sweetest face I'd ever seen her wear.

The line stretching ahead of us was a two hour wait. In typical little boy fashion I paced, shifted weight from foot to foot, murmured and muttered and bellyached my way through the time. Deanna never left but instead maintained a steady level of flirting with the guy in front of us. I noted he treated his younger sister with a considerably larger level or respect and tolerance than my sister.

Perhaps my impatience silently gnawed at Deanna's soul because she continued shooting me angry glances. In annoyance she finally shoved her purse into my chest.

"Get some candy, squirt," she demanded.

They were the nicest words to escape my sister's brace ladened maw. I hungrily sifted through the purse for anything that looked sweet. A circular box with round compartment greeted me. The buried treasure had pink doubloons waiting for me. I'd never seen these candies before but they reminded me of M&M's. I popped the lids open and sucked them all up and returned the empty container to its sunken depths. My sister never paid attention to the whole matter.

Two and a half hours later we were finally near the front of the line. My stomach was tight with anxiety. I thought it was tight with anxiety. I felt my guts begging to purge as I saw the black helmet of the one man I felt to be the greatest, most powerful being ever near me.

After the girl ahead of me left, Darth Vader looked at me. He sat in a styrophoam throne spraypainted to look metallic. The whole setting was like a demented visit to Santa.

His gloved hand raised and motioned for me to come to him. Painfully I walked towards my hero. "H--hello," I whimpered.

"Hello there, little boy," he said.

That's when I realized something was wrong with my hero.

"Mr. Vader, why do you have a girl's voice?"

The feminine voice behind the mask paused. "Look kid, just shut up, sit in my lap and let's get your stupid picture taken."

My lower jaw shook at what I heard. My hero was a woman? How could this be? I'd seen Return of the Jedi so many times I knew he was a male. What stood before me was a charlatan. A callous female voice like my sister's barked again.

"Hurry up kid. I don't have all day."

A well placed slap sounded against the back of my head and I heard Deanna add to the conversation. "Get moving, dumb ass. I've got shopping to do."

I stepped closer to the dark lord and reached up a hand as if I was prepared to give a Jimmy Stewart speech complete with hand motions.

Darth Vader leaned forward. "You okay, kid?"

As if on key, I vomitted.

I vomitted hard and long. A putrid pale green spray shot from my depths and splashed violently against Vader's ceramic helmet. Deanna screeched with humility and slapped her hand over my mouth but I continued to heave and push. Another gust of vomit pushed out and through Deanna's fingers. Deanna said obscene words I'd seldom heard as a backlash of my fluids splashed in her face.

The room begun spinning and I felt myself stumbling. I could hear groans of displeasure and horror from behind me but it didn't matter. For some odd reason Deanna grabbed me by my shoulders and glared me straight in the eye.

"You idiot!" she yelled. "What the Hell's wrong with you?"

I wanted to reply but instead smiled. I smiled as if I had a secret she wanted to know but I wasn't going to tell her.

"What's wrong with you?" she screamed again.

I opened my mouth to explain. My explination came in the form of one more watery burst which slapped her in the face. The last thing I saw before blacking out was my sister reeling and writhing in total humiliation. The last thing I heard her say was, "Oh God! I wish I were dead!"

I couldn't stop the smile.

It felt like a few minutes later when I came to. That's when I realized I was in a hospital. My mother leaned over me in a doting fashion and chanted, "My baby! My baby" like a crazed monk.

My father leaned down and, with an abnormal amount of care, asked, "You okay, big guy?"

"I yuked on Darth Vader," I moaned miserably.

"It's okay, baby," my mom said. "You didn't mean to. I'm sure he knew that."

I noticed Uncle Bill behind my parents. He was snickering to himself. "So did ya teach him not to mess with you? Show him a force stronger than any light saber?"

"Gross, Uncle Bill," Deanna squawked. Her face grew red when she looked back at me. "I hope you're happy. You totally humiliated me in front of the cutest guy in the sophomore class."

"I didn't mean to," I said sheepishly. "I got sick."

"What happened, baby?" Mom asked in a demeaning babyish voice. "The doctors had to go into your tummy. Did you eat something you shouldn't have?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Are you sure? You didn't get into any rat poison or anything?" Deanna viscously snapped. "Hate to think we ruined a suicide attempt."

"Stuff it, Deanna," my father growled.

I remembered then. "Candy. I ate some of Deanna's candy."

"What candy did you eat?" my sister asked. "You're not going diabetic or something are you?"

"I ate the pink candy," I said. "In the round box."

My sister's eyes trained on me. "What in the --" She didn't finish her sentence. The red flushed from her face as if she'd been caught.

"The box had days on it," I added. "Days of the week."

My mother turned to Deanna. "What's he talking about?"

Deanna looked back at my mother but didn't answer. Her eyes widened with panic as she searched my mother's face.

"Deanna, what's he talking about?" my dad repeated.

"They were in her purse," I reminded. Despite the amount of pain I was in I suddenly felt very excited about the new developments.

My dad yanked the purse from Deanna's arms and ignored her protests. He yanked all the contents from her purse until he found the familiar box. He didn't react. He only stared.

My mom spoke up. "Deanna, what is that?"

My sister mumbled something inaudible.

"What is it?" my mom repeated louder.

"Birth -- birth control pills."

Hell broke loose.

Doctors asked my parents to remember where they were and remain quiet. The next thirty minutes or so blurred for me. I remember my parents leaving to talk to Deanna in the parking lot. My sister had broken into mammoth sobs of misery at her impending doom. Uncle Bill sat by my bed.

"What happened, Hooey?"

"I threw up on Darth Vader, but it wasn't really him," I said.

"How do you know that wasn't the real Darth Vader?" Uncle Bill asked.

"Darth Vader wasn't a girl," I explained. "That Darth Vader had a girl's voice."

"Well, I'm sure he's a pretty busy guy. He's got a lot of places to be. He probably sent her as a stand in." My uncle leaned closer and whispered excitedly. "Besides if it were the real one someone might try and kill him."

"Or maybe someone threw up on him once," I laughed.

"Maybe." Uncle Bill sat in the chair next to me. "Why don't you write him a letter explaining your situation."

I shifted in my bed. "Think he'd read it?"

A familiar paw rubbed my blond mop. "Sure he would. Tell you what. You tell me the whole story and later I'll write it down and send it to him, okay?"

I pushed up. "You know Darth Vader's address?"

"We're like that," Uncle Bill said. "Will that make you feel better?"

"Better? I feel great already."

He laughed. "Why do you feel great?"

"I killed Deanna," I replied.

"You have no idea," he laughed.