Family Guy: a psychological study of the residents of Quahog
a Backpack, backpack attack

In the case of Brian Griffin

Brian fumbles with his keys on the stoop of the Griffin family home. He eyeballs the keys, squinting one eye closed to offset his double vision. Most of the keys on his ring he never used anymore, once useful for one thing or another but now just served to weight the chain in his pocket and warrant carrying around the ring instead of just a key. Keys that give him the illusion of having something more to his life than there really is.
He stops and looks at his old car key, singling it out and turning it over with his fingertips fluently. He can remember a time he had a license back before he totaled his car into a family of four. One adult, two seniors and a small child, no older than six. All dead, and his license gone. So now he had to walk home from the bar. Just the same, he got off light on that one, at least in terms of legal repercussions. Emotionally, he didn't fare so well.

This was worse than that time he was outed as a fraud on Oprah for plagiarism in regards to the only successful thing he'd ever written.

Of all his failures, this is obviously the one that haunted him the most. Sometimes, in his drunken "epiphanies", he liked to imagine he did them all a favor by indirectly removing them from this world full of horror in sadness, but he always knew, he always knew in the back of his mind that those people weren't trash like he was, had probably found happiness unlike him, and he snatched it away from them. Snatched life out from under them like a muslim on a prayer rug, tumbling, disenchanted. Into a world of nothingness. God is dead, indeed.

He sighs and shifts the keys again, wondering if he should throw that one out but knowing he can't. It's a scar and he must wear it. The jingling keys fall from his weak, uncoordinated grasp and onto the welcome mat beneath his feet.
Welcome. He wasn't sure how to feel about that. Though on paper, his last name was Griffin, he was legally adopted and inaugurated into this family of lunatics, but he spent more of the time than he was willing to admit thinking about whether or not he was truly 'welcome'. Maybe welcome wasn't the right word. They loved him more than he loved them, he'd never admit, maybe with the exception of Lois. But even with Lois he grew to hate her as much as he cared for her. Resenting her for not reciprocating his feelings, resenting her for choosing that fat worthless idiot over him. Him! A scholar of Brown University. Peter couldn't even fucking spell college. As much as he told himself he shouldn't be bitter, he was. As much as he felt like he was above them he knew he wasn't. He knew he deserved such a life, he knew he deserved the atrocious shenanigans of this household he faced, day in and day out.

Picking up the keys, shuffling them again. Finding the right one under the flickering porch light. The key finds its place in the lock and turns, the satisfying click of the deadbolt retreating into the door.

The door creaks open to the illuminated living room, opposite of him Peter is drinking beer on the couch with that distant look of content in his eyes. Faded. If there was a real person in there, Brian thinks to himself, he must have died a long time ago. Faded away under an avalanche of willful ignorance. Nothing left to that man but a veil of stupidity. A blanket of dick and fart jokes heavily coated the harsh realities of the world around him. His wife cheats on him? He lets out a "wicked fart". His only son repeating a grade three times? He pops a "wicked boner". Brian wonders what wicked things will come in the event of his own death.

"Heyyyyy, Brian. Drinkin' hard at the Clam?"

"Yeah. Long night."

"Awesome. Hey, I'm supposed to tell you there's leftovers in the fridge but I got wicked bored and ate 'em all."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"Eheheheheheheheh," that god awful laugh is a thing Brian's nightmares. "Wanna watch the game? It's the Chungus Packers vs. the Old English Knobbs. Eheheheheheheheheheh. Knob."

"I'll have to take a rain check on that, Peter," he says hanging his keys on the hanger at the bottom of the stairs. "Say, have you seen Meg around lately? Seems like she's been gone for days."

"Eh, we sent her off to boarding school," Peter says, sipping his beer.

Meg hammers the nail into the board three last times before wiping her brow and looking back over to her instructor, eyes hopeful.
The instructor scratches his chin and examines Meg's boarding job.

"UNACCEPTABLE!" he screams at Meg, as her whole body tenses up. "F MINUS."

Brian could hear muffled screaming through the entirety of the flashback. His ears perking up, his eyes widening.

"Peter, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Peter drains his beer and tosses it to the side, where it lands in the pile of beers in the corner, clanking and shattering, soaking the carpet with sticky alcohol and saliva. Lois will pick it up in the morning.

"The screaming," Brian says. "During the flashback."

"What flashback? You losin' it, buddy?"

Brian blinks and looks at his hands. He looks back up at Peter. "I'm tired. I need to go to bed. You want this light on or off?"

"Do whatever you want, buddy," Peter says, his dumb grinning face glued to the flatscreen Tv opposite of the couch. Brian casually flicks the switch upward, cutting the lights off. More financially conscious of many things in this house than the chucklehead supposedly running it.
He stops to look at Peter for a minute. The glow of the television flickering light across his fat, vacant face through the shadows of the room. That smile, always there. His default facial expression.

Brian goes upstairs to his room. He closes the door behind him and plops down in his desk chair, scooting himself home. He slides a fresh sheet of paper from the stack on the left of his desk and stuffs it into the wanton mouth of the typewriter, cranking it into place. He picks up the sheet at the top of the right stack and examines the final sentence, finding his place. He puts the last page of his manuscript in progress back on the stack and he stares at the keys of his typewriter, his fingertips instinctively placed, even in his drunken state. He closes his eyes. Tries to envision the words.

But nothing comes.

There's a quiet moment before the side of his face is resting in his hand, elbow propped up against the flat surface of his writing desk. He finds his half empty bottle of whiskey and pours himself a half a tumbler. He takes two sips of it before he's gone to open the window and stuff a towel under the cracks of his door. Lois had said she wanted smoking out of her house so she could get Peter to stop smoking. Well, fuck her, it's the ashes and butts that make a room smell like shit, not the smoking itself. Peter didn't know that. He knew that. Maybe Lois chose wisely, he scoffs to himself.

Brian lights a cigarette. Brian takes a drink. Brian tries to focus on his pain, to accelerate on it.
Brian types some words, his fingers click-clacking away across the keys.
Brian hates what he writes.
Brian throws it away.
Brian finishes his glass and pours another, deeper this time. He gulps and regrets it.
Brian burps into his hand softly until the sickening feeling leaves his throat.
Brian replaces the failure with a fresh sheet of paper.
Brian writes some words. He gets personal.
Brian thinks about the screams during the flashback.
Brian wonders if they were that of the screaming child or the screaming grandmother.
Brian wonders how long they were screaming before they finally died.
Brian wonders if Brian is okay.
Brian thinks about a nice fluffy cloud where the dead rest their heads and
Brian laughs out loud at the fantastical idea.
Brian finishes his glass and the bottle is empty.
Brian curses, thinking he had way more than he had.
Brian buries his face in his palms in defeat.
Brian's ears perk up.
Brian remembers his safe. His beloved safe, right next to his feet. Four numbers away from whiskey.
Brian remembers the gun. He thinks about the gun. He worries about the gun.
Brian weighs his options. He thinks about whether or not the whole principal meant a lot to him to begin with.
Brian kneels on the carpeted floor and struggles with the combination lock.
Brian was never the best at combination locks, even when he was sober. It takes him two or three attempts.
Brian hasn't kept count, struggling most with the back and forth of it all. Maybe it was four.
Brian opens the safe and grabs the unopened bottle of whiskey before reaching up to set it on the desk.
Brian looks up. The insane carvings on the underside of his desk bring him to a bad place.
Brian doesn't want to be in this place.
Brian bumps his head on the desk's underside trying to stand up. This offsets his vision.
Brian looks at the open safe.
Brian grabs the gun by the barrel and scoots back, making sure he's clear for standing.
Brian stands and sits in his chair.
Brian sets his gun on the desk in front of him.
Brian tries to dump the building ash at the end of his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk but it lands on his desk.
Brian blows it off. He thinks of the irony.
Brian tears the seal off the top of his aged whiskey and pours himself a drink. He whines to himself.
Brian takes another drink.
Brian picks up his revolver. He presses the cylinder release forward and out it pops.
Brian wasn't sure if he loaded it. But he did.
Brian snaps the cylinder shut into the frame of the gun with the flick of the wrist and he knows he shouldn't do that, but he knows he doesn't handle this revolver enough to break it.
Brian holds the gun is his hands and looks down the sights. He laughs to himself and sets the gun down.
Brian drains his glass and picks up the weapon again. He feels the weight in his hand.
Brian waves the gun around in his limp wrist, giggling to himself. Keeping his finger on the guard.
Brian presses the barrel of the gun against his temple. He doesn't know why, it's almost like he wants to test himself.
Brian feels his aura screaming out in its own sense of danger. He knows what he's doing is dangerous and laughs.
Brian feels a tear release from his closing eyes before he even knows he's crying.
Brian feels the barrel digging against his temple.
Brian didn't anticipate killing himself when he removed the gun from the safe.
Brian doesn't anticipate killing himself when his finger leaves the guard and wraps itself around the trigger.
Brian pulls the trigger without thinking about it.
Brian doesn't register the loud noise the gun makes as it goes off and his body falls limply to the floor.

Brian Griffin is dead.