I think about how their lives are so strangely their own, how we can never really meet and know a person, not even our brother.

“How do you know someone didn’t dream you up? A child, maybe, asleep right now in”—he waves his hand—“China. And when that someone wakes up, you’ll cease to exist.”

WHEN THE RED KING AWAKES BY JOSEPH GUYER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 14

“I’m not crazy, you know.” My brother Rob slouches in the passenger seat as we head down the highway toward his apartment. It’s near eight in the evening and I’ve just posted his bail. I’m startled to see his wiry black hair sticking in all directions and a week’s worth of stubble peppering his jaw and neck. Barefooted, he wears a pair of rumpled jeans and a thin flannel shirt unbuttoned halfway, revealing his ribcage that stretches his skin taut whenever he breathes.

Frankly, I was a little surprised to get the call—surprised not so much to hear that he’d been arrested for breaking and entering a professor’s house but that he’d chosen me to post his bail. Rob and I have never been close. Even as a kid, I knew that he was a different breed of person. Wher…