On the evening before Good Friday, April 18th, 2025, Brody woke up to find himself on a park bench. He'd spent the afternoon reading Dante's Inferno, but found its poetry difficult to read. It was dense, and so was Brody. He knew how he'd gotten there: he was avoiding his family. Brody was a Wumpovski, and a distant branch-hanger from the Wumpet lineage. More accurately, Wumpovski was the original name – Baltic, Russian, and Roman, they originally were. While the Wumpovskis had always been poor, one of them had struck it rich, changed his name, and never looked back. He had a reputation for shorting his business partners, mistreating his employees, and running with the local mafia. And, he ran a famous amusement park. Then, one day he died, and left it all to his surviving son. The one who had died was a victim of his own grip on the bottle, but he had endured much of what Brody knew to be his daily life: familial abuse. The other son, one who would one day grow from famous, to infamous, to infedilous, was Aurson Wumpet Jr., better known as 'Don Wumpet'. Aurson was a boy every bit like his father was, and then some; a man of golden renown who could do no wrong. Now, that man was the president of the United States of America, and he'd done plenty of wrong – yet somehow, the grease off his back had let him slip free, every time. Aurson was Brody's great uncle, four times removed, but Aurson didn't know or care that Brody existed at all. Though the Wumpets denied any association to the Wumpovskis, to Brody, it was obvious – he had the family's eaglish eyebrows, the square jaw, and the wide, pearlike frame. Just like Brody himself, though Brody was somewhat thin. And Aurson's face had that droopy-eyed look and lazy mouth, just like Brody's great grandmother, Baltica – whose name was proof from whence they came. More than anything, Aurson had the family gut: that big, distended belly, which hung like a sack of flour. It wasn't just his appearance, either, which bore a resemblance – it was also his country charm, his easygoing nature, and his dumbfounding stupidity. More than a simple bully, the man known as Don Wumpet was brutish, cocky, self-entitled, criminal, and profoundly demeaning. But most of all, he was stupid. Everything else he did, and everything else he was, only served as a barbecue's cover for that one, overcooked, smoldering fact – which did not, in fact, choke the flame. And so was every other Wumpet and Wumpovski, blessed with looks, and a shit-eating grin of gleam, but rarely ever with smarts. And he knew that shit-eating grin too well, for it belonged on the face of nearly every relative he had, and sometimes even his own face – for when Brody looked in the mirror, he could dismay at the resemblance. His lower lip, when puckered upward, looked exactly the same. Brody also struggled in school, unable to make his head feel 'clear' when he needed it most – and he knew this was something that affected all of them. From Brody's grandmother Bedishi, who preferred to shit with the bathroom door open, to his aunt Beelza, who would argue her own way out of breathing air if it threatened her. Beelza was the same age as Brody, but despite her shorter size appeared older, and acted like a spoiled infant: the great 'I am'. He'd spent two years now, having been abandoned by the foster system by parents who couldn't understand him, to the lacking care of Bedishi and Beelza. Brody's troubles cost him all that he once had, in faith and friends, and now only two remained – but were nowhere to be seen, when he needed them most. Brody tolerated his family by himself, as they shouted and fought, hotboxed the apartment with cannabis smoke, and looked for fights wherever fights weren't. For people who couldn't function without weed, they were the least chill folk he'd ever met in his life. They would tell Brody he was useless, narcissistic, manipulative, and horrid, as if they were talking to a mirror and didn't understand the illusion. They would blame him for whatever was wrong, demand of him his time and effort when he had none to give, and cause their own problems for complaining's sake alone. For two years, Brody tried to find another couch to crash on, for a couch was exactly where he slept. Though he was lucky to have the second bedroom, Beelza had the spare bed in the living room. She'd spend all day lounging around, in awful-looking, uncomfortable-seeming polyester-nylon onesies, of various pale, grey, pukeable greens. They were tight to her lumpy frame, and whenever Brody walked by, she would check to see if he was looking. Then she, on her bed in the center of the living room with TV distracting, would roll onto her belly and ensure that her bulbous behind was in plain sight. Brody was not looking, and was in fact, trying to evade her gravitous ego, much to her chagrin – he wasn't the type. Nor was he for his grandmother's nearly identical, but taller, huskier frame. Bedishi was, much like her daughter, a canvas for adorable make-up; and without it, a gruesome sight to behold. She had wracked her body with drink and smoke, and not even her bounty of rolls could shield her from the damage of her own bad habits. Bedishi was, however, often dressed quite respectably in suits, which Brody found interesting and complimentary to her, especially after her hair had been done – which was, as of yet, still not fully grey. Bedishi was the reasoning mind of her household, next to Beelza's irrational grudge against everything that wasn't her own appetite – which was the one thing she should have held to scrutiny, in her entire life. She would claim to be distraught with worry over her diet, and then reward herself with dessert for the effort and stress of it. She had, after all, put in the worry. Brody counted on Bedishi to keep Beelza in check, but at times, Bedishi was no more reliable than her – in fact, she had begun to see Brody in a light which made him uncomfortable, and would fail to apologize when her skintight pants were swallowed before him by her grievous buttocks. He was surprised she was ever able to remove them, after her ass had taken a bite.
He'd put a hand in front of his face, "Auwgh! I did not need to see that today."
And she would scowl. "It's my apartment, I'll wear whatever I want." Then she would smile at him, with a strange glint in her eyes, as if waiting for something. But then she'd look down, see no change in his groin, and sigh. Brody was unaffected by her charms, because they belonged to men of a much older age than he. And Brody was not, for all his flaws, desperate. At least, not for her, nor her daughter. The very thought made him shudder, and cry.
Brody knew that, open-secretly, cosanguinity had become 'all the rage', and was hinted at indelicately by a sweeping craze in the porn industry: step-family sex, then actual familial sex, until it was so brazen it could barely be said to be secret at all. And while Brody was no prude, he was simply uninterested. The bodies of those he lived with just didn't excite him. Instead, he tried to celebrate their personality, and find their humanity within... if not from a distance, across the room. Beelza, however, had little of one to be spoken for. She was just bossy, and demanding, much like their great uncle Aurson. She would have been welcomed in his home, in fact, as an understudy of sorts – she was equally if not more misempirical, and useless to her own plans and designs. She would decide to do three great things with her life, and then fail to accomplish even one, then blame the world for several failures more. She'd had her mother pay entirely for her bracelet-making business, which had yet to take off, and most likely never would. She'd also once said, about the building across the street from them: "I'd tear it all down, kick out all the ni&@%$, and put up my own hotel."
Bedishi, on the other hand, was someone Brody could look up to, when she was of sober mind. Despite her age, she worked hard at her job in tax accounting, and she was devoted to those who shared her field. She encouraged Brody to find work, of which he could find none – he suspected this was because he'd been blacklisted by the owners of his previous place of work, La Café Corrento. They'd fired him for asking for a share of tips, and replaced him with a street urchin, whom he was expected to train in his last week. When the little guy lost his nerve and left, they were both let go regardless. It was a shame, because he'd enjoyed learning to french-press Italian coffee. He just didn't enjoy watching the gelato spoons be licked between serves. But for the city of Crackstove, Wisconsin, this, and much like it, was far too commonly the norm.