This Story Will Haunt You Forever

(One year while my husband’s younger brother, a big guy in his 30s, is down visiting us in Florida, he expresses an interest in going to the Halloween event at a big theme park. Leading up to it, he jeers and laughs and rolls his eyes at how corny all the advertising is and brags about how he’s not scared of anything. We all get along very well and like to joke with and tease one another in a friendly way. I can’t help but notice as we walk up to the first haunted house of the event that he seems a little less braggy that evening. He’s right behind me in line, and, sure enough, he has my shoulders in a death-grip the entire time. This repeats through every house for the night. He never makes a sound, but I can feel him flinching and jumping, even though whenever we come out of a house, he rolls his eyes and laughs at it. The next day, we’re at the hotel bar on resort property and he’s flirting with a woman who seems pretty into him.)

Woman: “So did you go to the Halloween event last night?”

Brother-In-Law: “Yeah. It was fun, but it wasn’t even scary.”

Husband: “You seemed pretty freaked out to me, dude.”

Brother-In-Law: *scoff* “How would you know? I was behind [My Name] all night. I was fine.”

(Wordlessly, I roll up the sleeves of my t-shirt to show my shoulders… where each one has five matching, tiny, fingertip bruises from where he was clinging to me.)

Me: “These are not the marks of a fearless man, sweetheart.”

(He blushed red right up to his hairline, and we all shared a good-natured laugh. I guess the woman he was flirting with thought that was cute, too, so he still got her number. Hopefully, she can protect him from all those ghosties and zombies out there!)

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