Lincoln Loud was chill.

Maybe a little too chill.

Growing up in a family of eleven sisters (with half of them being older and stronger, and the other half being younger and stronger), Lincoln had come to loathe confrontation of any kind. He hadn't always been that way, when he was younger, he was as much of a scrapper as Lana or Lola. He fondly compared his family to pigs. Have you ever seen baby pigs fighting one another to the death for one of their mother's limited teets? That was the Loud clan. You had to fight your way out of the womb and never stop swinging. Ever. You had to fight for attention from Mom and Dad, fight for the best spot in the van or on the couch, fight for the TV and the loose change at the bottom of the dryer. Mom and Dad had limited time and resources, and if you didn't lie, cheat, and steal to get to the front of the line, brother, you were going to miss out.

Putting it that way made his family sound colder and harder than it really was. He and his sisters weren't engaged in a slobbering love affair, kissing one another's butts and holding hands as they tip-toed through the tulips, but they weren't constantly trying to kill one another either. His sisters did have a habit of ganging up on him, as he was the only boy, but once he was out of the way, they always turned on each other, so he tried not to take it too personally. It was hard, though, since he could never fully shake the feeling of being an outsider in his own home. Everything was geared toward girls, from the communal body wash to the food. He had had to eat princess shaped waffles and Kid Cuisine meals from pink boxes more times than he could count. That might sound petty to someone on the outside looking in, but it messed with your head after a while. He felt emasculated, disregarded, and just…weird.

He imagined that what he felt wasn't far off from what transpeople feel. It was a certain,...discomfort in his own skin. A sense of not belonging and being something you're not supposed to be. That wasn't exactly the best way to describe it, but it was close enough. To be sure, he wasn't uncomfortable with being a boy or anything, he just had this nagging feeling that something wasn't right, that his life was a lie. He had carried that with him from his earliest years, and as time wore on, it only got worse.

Anyway, for years, he fought his sisters just as hard as they fought each other. Life was a metaphorical (and sometimes literal) boxing match, and he waded it head first. His sisters would conspire against him, but he was very good at strategizing and coming up with plans, so he bested them at about the same rate they bested him. See, he was small and couldn't put much power behind a physical punch so he was forced to use his brain. For him, it was either develop cunning or lose. His sisters were animals, all teeth and claws, while he was a regular old human. In a one on one fight (or, more likely, a ten on one fight), they would rip him to shreds, but who's at the top of the food chain? Huh? Regular old average human beings. They might not have talons and venomous stingers, but their cunning more than made up for it. He employed logic and strategy to defeat his sisters on numerous occasions, and he took great pleasure in doing so.

That began to change around the time he turned eleven. The fighting spirit that had characterized his earlier years slowly bled away until he was chill. It wasn't until later that he realized why.

He was tired.

Tired of fighting, tired of stressing, tired of being mad, tired of the constant drama. He was physically and emotionally exhausted and he didn't want it anymore. Not to sound sexist or anything, but girls go all in for that shit and it gets really freaking old after a while. He didn't know about other people, but he could only maintain a high level of emotion for so long before he just stopped caring. Fighting, yelling, arguing, being mad at people, having them be mad at him - he was over it. He wanted a quiet and peaceful existence, nothing more, nothing less. He wanted to play his video games, read his comics, and watch his long, epic fantasy movies in peace. Was that so much to ask?

Apparently, yes. His sisters took him trying to get away from their melodramatic b.s. as a personal insult and did their level best to screw up his me time. Once, he bought a pair of noise canceling earbuds in an attempt to drown out their whining and fighting so that he could read in peace, and they made a huge deal out of it. Oh, wow, Linc, you don't want to listen to us fight and bicker? What a jerk. You need to be a better brother. Another time, he put a hammock up in the backyard so he could lay out in the sun and watch TV on his phone without being disturbed. It didn't last five minutes before his sister swarmed it. He had to just stand there while they all piled in until it snapped. He almost snapped himself, but he took a deep breath. It wasn't that big a deal, and it wasn't worth fighting over. He'd just go somewhere else.

That was easier said than done, because they always seemed to find a way to screw him over. Were they testing him? It felt like they were testing him. He was reminded of the story of Job from Sunday School. Job was God's BFF and lived a super blessed life. One day, Satan told God that Job only liked him because he gave Job nice things. To prove the loyalty of his friend, God spent the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights trashing his life from top to bottom. It felt like his sisters were doing that to him, only their motivations weren't as clear as God's. He thought long and hard about it and figured that they were pushing him to see how much they could get away with. Fine. Whatever. Let them. He legit didn't care. It wasn't worth getting upset about.

Despite his fight or die mentality, he had always been kind and helpful to his sisters. He would do anything for them. That might sound like a contradiction, but Lincoln didn't worry about it. His sisters helped him when he really needed it (even if they were jerks a lot of the time) so he was happy to pay them back. It was only fair, and the older Lincoln got, the more he liked the concept of fairness. Plus, if you do nice things for somebody, they'd be more inclined to do nice things for you in return. That was something he figured out a long time ago. It didn't always work, but you could whip out the "But I helped you" card to guilt them. They did it to him and it worked like a charm, because he would feel guilty knowing that he accepted their help but wouldn't give any back.

There was also the fact that he literally couldn't say no to his sisters. Even when he was young and into fighting back (not for its own sake, you understand, but because he had to), it was easier to just cave into their demands than it was to bother fighting them. Take Lynn, for instance. Lynn was a wild animal, remember? As cunning as he was, he stood little chance against her toe to toe. Sometimes he could outsmart her or evade her (he was smaller and could therefore slip into tiny cracks where she couldn't reach him), but do you know how tiring that is? Do you have any idea how flipping exhausting always worrying about someone being mad at you can get? Better to just go into the back yard and play catch with her. At least she wouldn't still be mad at him two hours later.

Oh, and then there was Lori. Lori was the only Loud kid with a license and if you didn't do exactly what she said, she wouldn't drive you anywhere. There was always public transport, but ever since the mayor and the city council had defunded the police department, the buses were dangerous to ride. Just the other day, a bunch of black dudes in red do rags slashed a bunch of people with razor blades and before that, a group of people who carried out a flash rob swarmed the bus with their stolen loot, which led to an hours long standoff with Department of Public Safety officials armed with clipboards and walkie talkies. Lincoln would be eaten alive if he took one of those buses, so it was either be Lori's slave

Lincoln used to resent the fact that his sisters forced him into going out of his way for them, but he had grown to accept it. It wasn't a big deal at all.

That became his mantra and he repeated it to himself time and again. Pretty soon, he even came to believe it himself. When you got right down to it, his sisters weren't all that bad. Sure, they were rough to deal with, but that's just how they were. He couldn't take it personally. Were they testing him? No, he decided, they weren't. They were just being their dumb ol' normal selves. The problem lay with him, he reckoned. He was too paranoid for his own good. You know…maybe he was wrong about the whole eat or be eaten approach he'd taken. That was kind of a sick way to look at things, wasn't it?

Confusion filled him, and for a while, he grappled with it like Jacob with his angelic adversary. His whole life, he'd had that feeling of not belonging, and now that he really examined it, he realized that the problem really was with him. He had thought that it came about because his sisters treated him as an outsider, but did they really? No, they didn't. He thought that it spun off of the fact that the house and its culture was so girl-centric, but again, was it? It's not like the freaking wallpaper was pink and there were frilly flowers everywhere. Walk through the front door and you'd see a normal house. Normal paint, normal carpets; there was nothing that really screamed THIS SPACE IS FEMALE, COPE, CIS-MAN. As for the shampoo and the cereal and all that other junk…so what if it came out of pink bottles and boxes or blue bottles and boxes? It was all the same crap anyway. Ooooh, this marshmallow is shaped like a fairy princess wand. Who cares? It's just as stale and tasteless as the ones shaped like dirt bikes or whatever else boys ate.

Did he had deep-seated emotional issues or something? No, he didn't, but he thought his view of things was skewered. It's perfectly normal and happens very easily when you're a minority somewhere. For instance, if you're black and you see nothing but white people hair care products on the shelves, with only a few for your kind, you'll feel left out, ignored, and hated. In actuality, I mean, 76 percent of the people in the US are white. That's a hell of a majority. Of course you're going to see more white people stuff. That's just what it is. You see way more right-handed stuff than left-handed, right? That's because most people are right-handed, and things are usually mass-produced to a standard that fits and benefits the most people. Having more customers means having more money, after all. Go into the hood (or into a white trash trailer park, for that matter) and open a restaurant that serves snails and caviar. The majority of people there aren't going to eat it if they can even afford it. It's all about knowing your demographic.

And here, in the house of Loud, Lincoln was in a super-minority. He and Dad represented like 1 percent of the demographic here. Yes, there was going to be girly pink soap and princess puffs instead of boy stuff.

That didn't mean that Lincoln had to go without, of course. It just meant that Mom and Dad couldn't provide him with special amenities on their limited resources. He could always buy his own things instead of video games.

Going back to the feeling like an outsider thing…that wasn't as easily written off. Was it the fault of his upbringing? His surroundings? Or was it just him? He didn't know, and after a while, he finally decided to get it off his chest.

He chose Lori to hear him out.

Lori was the oldest Loud kid and served as the General Manager of Siblings, a role that would one day pass down the line as each oldest child left the house to start their own lives. She used her position to boss everyone around and -

Wait, no, that's how the old Lincoln would look at it.

Anyway, Lori had given him good advice on girls and life in general, so he figured she'd be the best candidate to help him work through his shit. He came into her room one day and sat on the edge of her bed while she was busy texting; her thumbs flew across the screen with a rapid fire click click click that sounded suspiciously like machine gun fire. "I'm busy," she said nastily, "you have to come back later. Or not at all. Preferably the latter."

"I need some help," he said, barely noticing what she had just said to him.

"I said I'm busy," she snapped.

Lincoln ignored her. "Please? This is serious."

Lori let out a nasty sigh. "Five bucks," she said.

Reaching into his back pocket, Lincoln took out his wallet and removed a five dollar bill. Lori snatched it rudely from his hand, She shoved it into her pocket and sat her phone aside. "Alright, twep, what's your problem"

It took Lincoln a second to collect his thoughts. In a halting manner, he told her everything that had been on his mind, and as he spoke, a dark weight seemed to lift from his chest. He didn't see Lori scrunching her lips in thought or stroking her chin, didn't see the beginnings of a devious plot in her icy blue eyes. "I'm trying to be more, you know, lenient, I guess," he concluded. "I just don't think it's healthy always being mad or stressed. I feel like most of this is in my head but I'm not sure, you know? What do you think?"

He turned to her and her face instantly softened in faux concern. Her tone was not genuine when she replied, but maybe Lincoln really needed it to be; either way, he overlooked it. "Of course we don't do that on purpose. You're our only brother. You're very, uh, kind and junk. We love you very much."

She pulled him into a cold, boney hug, and Lincoln squeezed her tightly, so desperate for his sisters' love, acceptrence, and affection that he ignored the tension in the air. She let him go, ruffled his hair, and said, "Get at me soon and I'll take you to the comic book store. My treat."

Lincoln grinned. "Sure thing."

Feeling good, Lincoln got up and drifted out of Lori's room on a cloud. Lori watched him go with a wide, cannibalistic smile, and when she heard his door close, she jumped off of the bed and ran into Luna and Luan's room. "Get everyone together," she said, "but leave Linc out of it."

Luan nodded and Luna ripped a chord on her guitar.

The comedian and the rock star spread the word like twin Paul Reveres on a midnight ride, and in fifteen minutes, all of the girls were gathered in Lori's room. There were so many that they covered every imaginable empty space. Standing in the middle of the room, Lori clapped her hands, calling for silence, and the din of curious chatter slowly faded out until you could hear a mouse pissing on cotton. "I just talked to Lincoln," she said. "He said some interesting things."

She glossed over what Lincoln had told her. "He says he's trying to be more lenient with us."

The others looked at each other, not knowing where Lori was going with this or how they should feel. Leni raised her hand like this was third period English, and Lori rolled her eyes. "Put your hand down. What?"

"What does lenient mean?"

Lori sighed. "It means he'll let us get away with anything."

"Okay," Luna said, "and?"

A sharky grin spread across Lori's face. "That means we can get away with murder."

Her words hung in the air like a dark cloud. Again, everyone looked at each other in confusion. What did she mean by that?

Seeing that her words were lost on her younger sisters, Lori sighed deeply. "If he's going to be more lenient with us, we can take him to the cleaners. He'll let us get away with anything."

Finally, at last, it clicked, and the others realized what she was getting at, "Lynn, you hate scrubbing toilets, right?"

Scrubbing the toilet and cleaning the bathroom was Lynn's job and she bellyached constantly about it. "Yeah," Lynn said.

"Just make Lincoln do it," Lori said. "He won't fight back, he won't tell Mom and Dad…he'll just do it."

Lynn considered for a moment, then her face lit up. "Yeah?"

Lori nodded. "We can do basically whatever we want and get away with it. Just as long as we don't get stupid about it. Like literally using him as a punching bag, Lynn."

"I wouldn't do that," Lynn said. There was a defensive edge in her voice that suggested she might very well do just that.

"This is a blank check," Lori said. "If you want out of your chores, make Lincoln do it. If you need someone to model your outfits or listen to your comedy routine, get Lincoln. And don't worry about keeping him too long. Oh, I have a video game tournament, can we cut it short? No. What are going to do about it? You'll sit your butt right there until I'm done."

If anyone had walked in just then, or if they peered into Lori's bedroom window (after growing wings, of course, since it was on the second floor), they would have been able to see the cogs and wheels turning in the heads of nine girls, each one of them thinking the same thing. Lori was right, this was a unique opportunity to get what they wanted, when they wanted, and not have to battle for it. Lincoln was basically waving the white flag of surrender and declaring open season on himself. Each one of them would probably have felt the same way if Lisa or Luan had given up, but it wasn't Lisa or Luan, it was Lincoln.

Visions of what they could get out of their brother danced through the heads of each girl and Lori smiled at what she had caused. For one, she looked forward to conning Lincoln into doing stuff for her without paying him back, but for another, it would be a good lesson for him. The world can be a cruel place and if you advertise to it that you're essentially a doormat, it will use you as a doormat. It will rub its dirty, nasty, muddy feet all over you and then move on, because who respects a doormat? No one, that's who. If you asked Lori, the lessons that stick with you the most are the ones you had to learn the hard way. Lincoln would benefit from this just as much as she and her sisters did. You know…she was such a good person.

Luna hummed. "What if he finds out? Will it ruin our relationship with him?"

Everyone pondered that question for a moment, then, in unison, "Nah."

At worst, Lincoln would get mad about it, stomp around a little, and then get over it like he always had in the past. There was no way something this small and innocent would ruin their relationship with him. His trust and tolerance were weeds; no matter how hard or how often you stepped on them, they would spring back good as new.

"When can we start?" Lucy asked.

Lori shrugged one shoulder. "Right now."

Everyone cheered and jumped to their feet, but Lori called out, stopping them. "You can't all mob him at once, though. If you do, you're gonna blow our cover." She stroked her chin, trying to think of a way to make this work. Her sisters were a bunch of dumb kids and if you didn't hold them by the hand and lead them patiently around, they would go off the chain and ruined everything. "Alright, sit back down."

Groans, moans, and slumped shoulders abounded. Everyone took their seat and Lori fetched a notepad from her drawer. "We're gonna have to do it in shifrs." She tapped the business end of a pencil against the pad, then inspiration struck. "We go from oldest to youngest."

More groans. Of course they were going oldest to youngest, they always went oldest to youngest. That way, Lori got first dibs. "Each one of you gets a whole day to use Lincoln. However, you can't make any crazy or super dangerous requests, and, really, you can't make more than three requests per shift."

That elicited still more groans, but they were muted because in their hearts, everyone knew Lori was right. If they bounded recklessly into this, they would wind up shooting themselves in the foot. They had to be careful. After all, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Lori jotted down the rules and a rough shift schedule. She considered handing out copies that her sisters could take with them, but she was certain that at least one of them would screw up and leave it out, jeopardizing what they had, so she decided against it. Instead, she passed it around the room and let everyone get a good, long look at it. "It's simple," Lori said. "We start tomorrow. I go first, then the next day Leni, and so on. Even you guys couldn't mess this up." She took the page back, went over to her nightstand, and shoved it into the top drawer. "Every time your shift starts, you need to come see me first."

"Why?" Lisa asked,

"So I know you're not messing this up for the rest of us," Lori replied.

Lana opened her mouth but Lori cut her off. "Just check in with me on the morning of your day. Got it?"

Everyone grumbled that they did, in fact, got it.

"Good," Lori said, "now get out of my room."

The others filed out and Lori dropped onto her bed. She kicked her shoes off and rubbed her bare feet crisply together as she grabbed her phone from the bedside table. She had five missed texts from Bobby in just the short amount of time she and her sisters had been meeting. She threw her head back and hugged the phone to her chest. "It's good to be loved," she said.

Feeling warm and fuzzy all over, she went back to texting with her boyfriend. The whole time, however, her mind was distant and far away. She was already beginning to plot all the things she was going to use Lincoln for. There was so much she needed done that if she offered things in return, she would be in debt to him for, like, ever. Doing it this way would be the most bang for her buck.

She was really pleased with herself. Move over, Lisa, there's a new genius in the family. She finally gave up on texting, telling Bobby that she had to help Mom and Dad clean the attic, and started to pace back and forth. So much to do here. The most pressing thing was laundry. Her hamper was overfull and really needed to be emptied. There was also a hole in the wall that needed to be patched and painted. Her tennis shoes needed to be cleaned, the room had to be vacuumed…jeez, she couldn't even keep track of it all.

Tomorrow, she would begin to take care of it.

Well, Lincoln would begin to take care of it.

Later on, Mom called up the stairs to say that dinner was ready, and Lori stepped into her shoes. She went out into the hall just as Lincoln came out of his room. He was wearing the same orange shirt that he'd worn to school, but had switched out his jeans for a pair of gray sweatpants. He saw her and gave a slight, knowing nod, as though they shared a super special secret. She grinned and nodded back to him. She almost felt bad for the kid. He had no idea what was coming his way over the next week or so. How long would it be before he blew up and stopped being so lenient? It would happen eventually and she really wouldn't be able to blame him. Everyone's gotta put their foot down at some point. She bet he'd made it a week, maybe two if he was really committed. After that, he would wise up and stop letting them use him as a doormat.

For that reason, she had to get as much out of this as possible. She was like the Devil her Sunday School used to teach her about. He comes with great wrath because he knows his time is short. She would likewise would come with great fury because her time was short as well. She didn't want to do it all at once, though. She wanted to stretch this out for as long as she could. If the others weren't involved, she would string him along for weeks, even months; she had the tact to do it.

Oh well, it'd be fun while it lasted.

In the dining room, Lori sat in her usual spot at Dad's left. Lori had always sat here, but over time, it had become less "her place" and more "The Throne of the Eldest." For ever more, it would be the seat of honor reserved only for the oldest child. Leni would sit here after Lori left for college, then Luna, then Luan. Lincoln would have a turn here, and so would Lucy, Lana, even little baby Lily, as strange as it seemed. Yep, one day Lily would be a teenager. That seemed impossibly far in the future, though, a destination way on the other side of a heap of calendar pages.

Dinner tonight was On-Cor salisbury steak and instant mashed potatoes. Lori hated Salisbury steak, but it was ironically one of Dad's better dishes. Poor Dad, he loved cooking so much but he wasn't very good at it. A few years back, he bought a restaurant in town, called it Lynn's Table, and opened to all the fanfare of a prison. That's to say, no one came in unless you dragged them kicking and screaming. The place became a local meme and punchline on the local drive time radio show. One time, the DJ gave out coupons to Lynn's Table as a joke, and everyone who won them declined. Another time, the DJ was playing truth or dare and dared someone to have lunch there.

They lost the challenge.

Eventually, Dad was forced to sell the place at a loss, and the sport ended for all involved.

It was Lucy's turn to say grace. Everyone folded their hands and bowed their heads. For a moment, Lucy was silent, as if mentally arranging her thoughts, then she began to pray. "Thank you for this bountiful meal, O Shub-Niggurath, Goat With a Thousand Young. We pledge ourselves to do your bidding and the bidding of the other Old Ones in thanksgiving."

"Lucy," Mom said admonishingly.

"Take our solemn vow and keep us forever in your good graces. We remain faithfully yours."

Lori looked at her sister and shook her head. "You're so weird."

Ignoring her, Lucy picked up a dinner roll, opened her mouth wide, like a vampire zeroing in on the neck of a hapless victim, and took a giant, defiant bite. Lori rolled her eyes, grabbed her own roll, and tore it into smaller pieces that she then dipped into the gravy, As she ate, she stole furtive lances at Lincoln.

Tomorrow, Linc,.

You're in for it.

Tomorrow.

T