The Infertile Brother

Hubert met his sister, Jackie, for lunch the other day. It was going fine: a fancy restaurant, a bottle of wine, a bowl of spaghetti, a rack of lamb, an Italian singer regaling them with songs of the old country, and the feeling of filial love unique to all siblings.

Hubert drew deep from the air in which he breathed. Something was troubling him, which was immediately evident to his dear sister. He took a long sip of wine and then began: "Jackie, as you know, I'm your only brother and, as such, am the only person that can thusly sow seeds of familial lineage. Without offspring to my name, we are but a period, ending the sentence of our generational name; it is only if I have children of my own that this won't be a death sentence, but a never-ending one of life"

Jackie patted Hubert lightly on the arm and gazed deep into her brother's eyes. "Hubert, this is true. It is a burden of brothers throughout the land. The pressure: high. The stress: immense. Those fears of our glorious family name being blown out like an eternal candle," she then blows out a table candle for dramatic effect, "make me shiver in the wind, the same wind that blows out another candle," she blows out another candle, "and creates discord through bringing this ancient tremor to the forefront where all we want is to banish this exigence to the other nightmares of old: snakes, goblins, dragons, vampires, but instead it comes crawling back like the aforementioned snake on its belly crawling through fertile grass, or what we hope to be fertile, but instead perhaps a barren wasteland where snake flops like worm and burns out our family name like the Sun extinguishing its eternal flame," she blows out yet another candle, "thereby creating a black hole where we once burned brightly, like butterflies in the terribly lonesome night sky with no stars to light the paths to the North, the eternal North, now dead and gone like the candles of our dreams," she blows the last candle out.

Hubert grasps in the darkness. "I can't see you anymore. I feel like the first caveman in his first night in eternal darkness! Will the Sun ever rise again! Will I have a son to raise ever! Ah, my sister, I am barren as the wasteland you so poetically described with your beautiful words in the deadest of air, or shall I say dead heirs, for we will have none to carry the light of our name into perdition. I'm infertile and an ill-planter of seeds of creation. Forgive me!"

The singer finishes her song, gives them a frightened look and runs away to get away from this carrier of blackness. Her brother is fertile as the great plains, so she cannot emphasize with this sibling dust bowl.