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A very OYT thanksgiving
| SneakersSO | 11/28/25 |
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Date: November 28th, 2025 8:29 AM Author: SneakersSO He came to Thanksgiving like a man walking into weather he already knew. The house was warm but not kind. Oh You Travel stood in the doorway, bald head shining under the cheap bulbs, five-nine and carrying the small shame of it the way a man carries a stone in his shoe. His brother was already at the table, tall as a fence post at six-two, face hollowed by nights that had gone on too long. The brother smiled at him with the grin of a man who had thought about death too often and found that mockery was cheaper than medicine. OYT set down the Switch 2 on the counter. A small machine. A child’s hope. No one cared for it. The family talked around him with the lazy contempt of people who have grown used to treating the same man as furniture. The brother watched him, measuring him like prey. The room smelled of turkey and quiet cruelty. The laughter was brittle. The air was thin. OYT stood there and let the evening bruise him in small ways. “Look at that,” the brother said. “This shit again?” “It’s a Switch 2,” OYT said. “Thought we could play something later.” “No one wants to play that, champ,” the brother said. OYT picked up the Switch 2, brushing a thumb over the screen. “I just thought it’d be fun.” The brother laughed, soft and mean. “Fun. That’s a word. You bring this thing every year. You waiting for someone to care?” “You don’t have to talk like that,” OYT said. “I do,” the brother said. “Otherwise I start thinking. And I don’t like where that takes me.”
“Life’s fundamentally meaningless,” the Bald man said. His voice was low and steady, the way wind is steady just before a storm. “Ligotti wrote whole books on it. Lasch too. Ruste Cohle said it plain — we’re one bad story repeating itself. If you squint, you can almost see the joke.” The brother snorted, not out of humor. “You didn’t need books to tell you that. I’ve lived it.” “You’ve lived the pain,” OYT said. “That’s not the same as understanding the structure. The machinery underneath everything grinds us down because it has no purpose. It just moves. A blind thing. And we’re the cogs.” “You sound like a college freshman,” the brother muttered. “You sound like someone who keeps mistaking suffering for philosophy,” OYT replied. The brother’s jaw tightened. “You’re liberal as hell. You think the world can be rearranged like furniture. You think systems matter. I’m telling you none of that fixes anything.” “I think we owe people decency,” OYT said. “Meaningless or not. Otherwise we just turn inward and rot.”
The brother lifted his head slowly, eyes narrowing at the little rectangle on the counter. “That Switch 2 you brought,” he said. “You didn’t bring any games.” OYT frowned. “It’s… it’s hardware. I have digital—” The brother cut him off with a laugh that wasn’t laughter at all, just a sharp bark of contempt and pain welded together. “Digital,” he said. “Christ. Only you would bring a console with no games to Thanksgiving. A monument to potential. Like your whole life. Empty storage. No saves. No progress. Nothing loaded.” OYT’s jaw twitched. “That’s not—” “And another thing,” the brother said, leaning back, stretching out all six-foot-two of himself like a man preparing to deliver a killing blow. “Where’s your First Girlfriend Ever, champ?” OYT froze. The words hit him clean and square. “I don’t—” “Because I’ve been waiting,” the brother said, grinning with that thin suicidal smile. “Year after year. You show up with a new gadget, new theory, new writer, new doom philosophy. But not once have you walked through that door with a girl. Not once. Bald head shining like a lighthouse on a dead coast and not a single ship steering toward you.” “That’s not fair,” OYT murmured. “You know why—” “Oh, I know,” the brother said. “You’re liberal. Sensitive. You ‘care.’ You read books. Women love that, don’t they? They write whole thinkpieces about it. But you? You’re alone. Always alone. And I’m supposed to believe you’ve got meaning figured out? I’ve at least loved. I’ve at least lost something. You? You’ve got a Switch 2 with no games, champ.” OYT swallowed hard, staring at the table. The words were meant as a joke, but they carried the weight of a lifetime — two boys raised in the same house, one too tall for the world, the other too small, both misshapen in different directions. “You don’t have to go there,” OYT said quietly. “I do,” the brother said, voice cracking just a little, the suicidal tremor leaking through. “Because if I don’t keep swinging, I’ll stop moving entirely.” For a long moment they just breathed, two injured men sitting across from each other in the glow of a kitchen light that didn’t care. The Switch 2 stayed on the counter, mute, unplayed — a perfect emblem of an unfinished life.
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