They gathered on a rainy afternoon, two dozen downcast people clad in black, the men in suits and the women in dresses. Overhead, the dark sky churned, and a wet wind stirred the skeletal trees dotting the rolling plain. Gray headstones, some of them as old as the town of Royal Woods itself, thrust up from the sodden ground, many of the dates and names worn smooth and illegible by time and the elements.
A casket decked in flowers hovered over an empty hole, and a priest in a white frock read from the Bible, his voice droning and carefully measured. Aside from that and the hiss of rain, silence held sway over the burial ground, broken here and there by sobs, sniffles, and the occasional stifled cough.
A framed photograph stared out over the congregation, the smiling, white haired boy it depicted happy and carefree, so totally unlike the miserable wretch he had been in his final days. No one there had the heart to look upon that picture, so they all kept their heads down or found something else to do with their eyes.
The priest went on and on talking about Lincoln's life and how much joy he brought to the people around him. His sisters all wept and his mother clutched his father as if to keep herself from falling over in misery.
Standing next to Clyde and clutching an umbrella in her hand, Stella stared blankly at the too green astroturf laid out around the grave, her mind swirling with questions. She had heard what happened to Lincoln - everyone had - but she still didn't feel like she fully knew and understood. She wanted answers and as much as she didn't want to badger his family at such a dark and terrible time, she planned to do just that when the funeral was over.
A lone peal of thunder rolled across the sky, and a cold gust of wind sprayed freezing rain over the mourners. Stella could imagine Lincoln's spirit watching over them and controlling the weather just enough to get his sisters wet in hopes of giving them pneumonia. One last fuck you from beyond the grave. The last time Stella had seen him, he had been bitter, paranoid, and filled with hate, smoking like a chimney in an attempt to calm his nerves and accusing her and Clyde of being against him. He had let his anger toward his sisters - which had built up over years and then come out after they used and manipulated him one two many times - consume him.
She and Clyde, his two best friends, had warned him of that and begged him to let go of his anger, but he couldn't. It had gotten into him like a hook into the mouth of a fish and there was nothing anyone could do to dislodge it, not even him. At one time, Stella really liked Lincoln - like-liked him - but toward the end, looking at him and the state he had allowed himself to devolve to only made her sad. He was such a great, kind, and caring person, and watching him self-destruct disturbed her to no end.
Finally, the priest wrapped up and everyone scattered, most of them going to the Loud house for the wake. There, they gathered around to talk, eat, and drink in memory of Lincoln. Stella found Lincoln's sisters all sitting on the couch and looking worn out. She sat on the arm of the couch and took a deep breath. "What happened?" she asked.
"Lincy died," Leni quivered. "Didn't you hear?"
"Yes," Stella said patiently, "I mean…what happened?"
"It's our fault," Lynn said and blinked back tears.
"It's my fault," Lori corrected. "If it wasn't for me, none of this would have happened."
"What exactly happened?"
Taking a deep breath, the sisters began their story.
Lincoln Loud was furious.
Being mad, upset, offended, sad, depressed, or otherwise entertaining negative feelings was not like Lincoln at all. He tried his best not to give into such feelings because it took way too much time and energy. Have you ever heard that old saying that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile? Lincoln didn't know if that was a true biological fact or not, but he did know that it felt much better to smile than to frown.
That didn't mean that he was some perfect and flawless Jesus Christ wanna be or anything. He got pissed off just like anyone else. That was unavoidable. No amount of breathing exercises or squeezing a stress ball keeps you from getting angry from time to time. It's a natural human emotion that one cannot fully escape. His thing was that he didn't dwell. If he got mad at something, he strove to let it go as quickly as he could. He was assisted by this in that he was naturally not one to hold grudges. Not because he was a superior human or anything, but because he just…couldn't. He'd get mad but once he was away from the situation that caused that anger in the first place, it would slowly drain away like liquid from a cracked mug.
And that wasn't always a good thing. Sometimes you have to hold onto anger. It's harder to be hurt or screwed over by someone again when you're mad at them. It's kind of like how pain is your body's natural way of telling you that something is wrong and needs to be addressed. There are people out there (only a comparatively few, admittedly) who literally don't feel pain. Something wrong with their brain or nervous system or something. Feeling no physical pain whatsoever sounds pretty cool, huh? Well, it's not, because these people can hurt themselves and never know, which can lead to everything from deformed bones, nasty infections, permanent damage to muscles, tendons, and nerves, and even death. Imagine being hurt and needing to rest or take it easy, but you never know that you need to rest or take it easy because hey, I can't feel that my bone is broken and needs to heal. You can really hurt yourself doing that.
Likewise, if you can't hold onto negative emotions, you're likely to forget what made you mad in the first place and fall victim to it again.
At least that's how Lincoln saw things. Maybe he was wrong but that was just how he felt.
Feeling that way had led him to stop stressing over his sisters, which wound up being a bad idea.
See, Lincoln had grown up in a house absolutely bursting at the seams with sisters. God, sometimes it felt like he met a new one every day. There was Lori, Leni, Luna, Luan, Lynn, Lucy, Lana, Lola, Lisa, Lily, Lunesta, Lyric, Lye, Lo, Lu, Le, Lm, Lamb, Lot, Leap, Lope, Loop, Leap, Lop, and a thousand more. In the Loud house, you could open a cupboard and there'd be a random blonde chilling inside. "Hey, Linc, looking for the oatmeal? Lighthouse finished it, have a packet of stale crackers instead."
Of course that was a slight exaggeration but it didn't seem far off at times. Lincoln was outnumbered by his sisters and thus, they controlled everything. Mob rules, you know. It was only natural that because they were the super majority, the entire house and most things in it would reflect their tastes and desires. For instance, the family shampoo that Mom bought was always some girly shit with a feminine scent that left Lincoln smelling like a pretty cheerleader. Everything in the house was girl oriented and he sometimes felt like an outcast.
Being such a large family, the Louds had a way of fighting over resources, such as their parents' time and pocket change found deep down in the couch cushions, where toys and five year old McDonald's French fries also dwelt. He always compared his family to pigs. Just like baby pigs fight each other tooth and nail for one of their mother's few teets, the Louds fought each other for the metaphorical teet, whatever form that might take. For instance, when Dad ordered pizza, he usually got an extra large which came with enough slices for everyone to have one. If you weren't there when that pizza hit the kitchen table, someone was bound to sneak an extra slice and leave you with nothing. It had happened to pretty much everyone. To be honest, he'd done it himself. Lynn or Lori would come down from their rooms to find a cold, empty box splattered in grease and melted cheese. Meanwhile, Lincoln would have sucked down their slice like a vacuum before anyone else could realize what happened.
One of the biggest commodities that the Loud kids warred over was attention, from both their parents and others. The Loud crowd was deep and dense and it was easy to get lost in it. No, literally, you could get lost in the middle of the pack and no one would see you. Where are Lincoln and Lola? Oh, there they are, surrounded by everyone else lol. In the Loud family standing out from the others was pretty much required. Each one of his sisters had adopted, perhaps subconsciously, an exaggerated personality that ensured that they would be noticed by anyone and everyone. Lola was the pretty pink princess with a spoiled attitude. Lynn was the sportsball fanatic who played every game one could think of. Luan was the class clown, Lucy was the goth, Lana was the redneck, and Lisa was the Professor - she could make anything from a couple coconuts and palm leaves but she couldn't fix the hole in the boat.
Now, Lincoln didn't think his sisters literally sat there and crafted their personalities for maximum effect or anything - Luan wasn't faking her love for awful puns, for instance, and Lisa really was a genius, not just fronting as one - but he still got the sense that they turned the dial up to ten, so to speak. They were, pardon the pun, very Loud. Lincoln often times wondered if he didn't do the same thing, but had come to the conclusion that he didn't, not really. He didn't wear his interests or his personality on his sleeve the way they did. If he did that, he'd…idk…wear video game shirts and dress like a superhero.
Okay, he did the last part, but only to go to conventions and on Halloween. He didn't wear capes and Spandex tights in his normal, day to day life. That would be a little extra. He wouldn't lie, though; before Chris Chan went to jail, he thought about commissioning him to do an Ace Savvy medallion. He'd totally wear that thing around, but only ironically. Look, he was a white boy from the suburbs. He'd been conditioned by society to see his own flaws, and therefore he could make fun of himself until the cows came home. But he could also make fun of others. Like…you want me to see my flaws? Sure. But I can see everyone else's too. If it's funny to say I dip my bread in water to kill the spice for my lily white taste buds (which it is, I love that meme), then I have no qualms about joking around with Clyde about him eating fried chicken.
Lincoln was a gamer nerd and comic geek. He knew that and he was comfortable with that. You have to be comfortable with who and what you are in order to make fun of yourself. It's only insecure people who can't. Like Lola. Jesus, that little girl could not take a joke. In fact, most of his sisters were pretty insecure. Take Luna, for instance. She was the kind of person who'd tard rage if you didn't like her music. He told her once that Led Zeppelin was "really overplayed for a mediocre rock band" and she went into screaming, frothing hysterics. She called him every name in the book, insulted his intelligence, penis size, and appearance, and stormed out of the room with her middle thrust into the air. "Fuck you, Lincoln. Just…fuck you."
Damn, you'd have thought he personally attacked her and everything she stood for. The others were pretty much the same way. Lori wasn't, but being the First and Oldest, she didn't suffer from the same sense of insecurity as the others. She didn't have to adopt a crazy, over the top personality to stand out. She stood out all on her own. Just like Lily did, since Lily was the baby of the family. Everyone else was kind of shoved together in the middle and had to jostle for position. Lori and Lily didn't. Lucky them.
Lincoln, as well, stood out, at least compared to the others, for the simple fact that he was the only boy in the family. Dad was a girl shooter if there ever was one, but he managed to produce a single boy, and Lincoln was that boy. His status as Brother put him in a different category than everyone else. He was different by his very biological nature and, like Lily and Lori, really didn't have to do anything to attain or maintain it. That made the others jealous.
Or so he thought.
See, they had a habit of ganging up on him. Rat packing, so to speak. They would get together and make fun of him, or tease him, or otherwise screw with him. That time he wore his Ace Savvy costume, they spent the entire day clowning on him. He wasn't innocent, he'd make fun of them too, but he often didn't have anyone in his corner. They all had each other but he had no one. Sometimes he'd ally with one of his sisters against another one, but usually, it was them vs him, with him greatly outnumbered and outflanked.
Did they do it because they were jealous? Did they do it because they hated him? Did they do it because he was a boy? Or did they do it just because it would get him out of the way, leaving one less person fighting for the same resources? He didn't know. At various different times he thought that it might be each of these. Maybe they singled him out for being a boy, or maybe they just wanted to blow him out so that they could fight each other in peace. Whatever the reason, Lincoln had to fight ten times harder than the rest of them for the same little crumbs and scraps of bread, and by the time he hit the big 1-1, he was jaded and burned out on the whole mess. He was tired of fighting, tired of stressing out, tired of everything being some big, melodramatic todo. He was tired of fighting back and he was tired of having to fight back in the first place. In fact, he was more than just tired, he was downright exhausted, literally exhausted, to the point where he felt like climbing into bed, burying his face in the pillow, and conking out like a little kid after an energetic day at the playground. All of this crap is meaningless. Holding onto grudges and anger and all that…there was just no point to it. Why waste what little time you have on earth being mad and having a chip on your shoulder? And that's exactly what Lincoln believed, that he had a chip on his shoulder. He had believed that he was not insecure like some - or all - of his sisters, but he realized that he kind of was. His sisters weren't man hating monsters conspiring to emasculate him or anything. They were just dickish kids who bickered, teased, and fought. A lot of kids were like that. He needed to stop being so goddamn sensitive all the time.
That was what inspired him to become more "lenient" with his sisters. He was a bit confused and didn't know what to do or how to go about achieving his newfound goal, so he did the most sensible thing that he could think of.
He went to his sister, Lori.
Lori could be a bitch on wheels to everyone (except for Bobby and their parents) but she was the oldest and wisest Loud. If you wanted someone with life experience, you couldn't do much better than Lori. She wasn't an adult or anything but she was old enough that she had been around the block. She was old enough to be fairly street smart but still young enough that she could more easily relate to her siblings than an adult could. If he needed answers, he went to her, even if he did have to put up with her shitty teenage girl attitude.
As the oldest Loud kid, Lori 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."
Unbeknownst to him, that's when it began. You see, he made a fatal mistake by telling Lori of his plans, for while he thought that she would help him, she actually wound up hurting him. She called a meeting of all the sisters and they gathered in her room like witches at a black mass. There, led by Lori, they hatched a devious plot to use, manipulate, and take advantage of Lincoln. Who knew what their frame of mind was. Here he was trying to be a good dude, and they instantly pounced on him like big cats smelling blood in the wild. Lori relayed his message to the others as, basically, "he's going to let us get away with everything."
"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. Life's a bitch. It'll screw you over every chance it gets. The best life lessons, the ones that really stick with you, are the ones you have to learn the hard way, and Lincoln was about to learn the hard way that if you stick your butt up in the air, you're going to get fucked.
When you got right down to it, she was doing a public service. Lincoln was going to benefit from this just as much as his sisters, if not more, because he'd carry this lesson with him into the future. Having someone do your chores or give you a free mani pedi was temporary, learning a valuable lesson was forever.
She actually felt really good about herself.
Lincoln would thank her one day.
At least, that's what she thought.
Lola was the first one to give voice to the possible negative impact this whole operation could have on things. "What if he finds out?" she asks. "It might ruin our relationships with him."
Everyone looked around at each other for a moment.
"Nah," they all said."
If he found out what they were doing, he'd get pissy and swish around the house like an angry woman for a while, but they'd all eventually apologize and he'd forgive them. Everything would go back to normal like nothing had ever happened in the first place.
That's how it had always gone in the past and the Loud girls took it for granted that that was how it would always go.
To that end, they put their dastardly plan into action. Lori had Lincoln empty the trash in her bedroom, Lynn made him was her dirty, nasty ass jockstraps, and Lola forced him to arrange and categorize all of her various make ups and perfumes. Like the Devil on earth, they knew that their time was short, so they came with great wrath, milking every precious second they had before Lincoln could grow wise to them. They really ran him through the ringer. They ate up all the cereal on multiple occasions, left nothing for him, cut in line at the bathroom, and generally pushed as far and as hard as they could. Lincoln weathered all of this with his famous dignity and grace, but inside he was beginning to seethe. In the very back of his mind, where shadows and cobwebs reigned supreme, he kind of suspected what was going on, but he dismissed it because there was a little kernel of doubt. What if he was being paranoid here? What if he was projecting or something? He had a nasty habit of assuming the worst about people and their intentions (nevermind the fact that his suspicions were usually well-informed and proved to be right). He was trying to be lenient here and that meant that he couldn't go off half cocked on some random assumption. As time passed, however, it started to look more and more like he was right.
Even so, he put up with it. He was serious about letting go of his stress and anger, so the last thing he wanted to do right now was to entertain either of those emotions.
But then something happened.
Something that changed the whole game, so to speak.
Lincoln had been crushing on his friend, Stella, for quite some time. Even since she had moved to Royal Woods from Canada or somewhere, really. She was tall and Asian with short black hair and almond eyes that sparkled like twin gems when the afternoon sun hit them. She was, put simply, one of the most beautiful girls that Lincoln had ever seen in his entire life, and not only that, she had a great personality too. Maybe it was the zoomer in him, or maybe it was something else, but he wasn't concerned with looks as much as who someone was. The idea of "free love" from the sixties and of hookup culture, just banging to bang, didn't sit well with him. Not because of any moral feelings, but because he didn't think he could do that with just anyone. Like, if the girl was a giant bitch but smoking hot…sorry, your shitty attitude cancels out everything else about you. There's no way you're getting Linc'd tonight. Just go home. It's over there.
Stella didn't have that problem. She was chill, nice, and liked a lot of the same things he did, namely video games. She loved a good video game, and you already know Lincoln did too. At school, they ate lunch together, and they would talk the whole time about what video games they played. Sometimes they even played Steal That Car 5 Online together. She liked to drive around the city of Los Sanyo, but the other players were psychos who always tried to kill her, so Lincoln would ride shotgun and shoot out the window. He had become very good at getting headshots at 100 MPH. Stella also helped him with his homework when he needed it. She was patient, kind, and understanding.
He really liked her.
One day, they planned to go out on a date together, but his sisters intervened by forcing him to stay home and do chores for them. They knew how important this was to him but they didn't give half a shit. Stella texted him hurt and upset that he had stood her up, and he felt like the biggest pile of crap the world had ever known.
That was the day that Lincoln finally snapped. He'd had enough of their shit. When he came out of his room the next morning, he was cold and bitter. He told Lynn to fuck off, and when Lori tried to make him take her laundry to the basement, he gave her the "up yours" sign. "Blow it out your ass, bitch," he said.
Lori blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
Seething with hatred, he went through his morning routine, then went off to school. At lunch, he sat with his friends, namely Stella and Clyde. "What's up with you, Linc?" Clyde asked. "You've been in a bad mood all day."
"Did I do something?" Stella asked.
The hint of worry in her voice - or at least that he perceived in her voice - made Lincoln feel bad. "It's my sisters," he admitted.
Taking a deep breath, he told them what his sisters had been doing. "I tried to be lenient, you know?" he said. "But they took advantage of it. They used me." He told them everything his sisters had done to him over the past couple of days - how long had it been since he had decided to be lentiant with them? It alternately felt like just a few days and a few months. "That's why I'm upset."
Stella and Clyde were both appalled and taken aback, gaping at him with slack jaws and wide eyes. Lincoln started to chafe under their gaze and fought the urge to rub the back of his neck. "I can't believe they did that," Stella said after recovering her composure. "I mean, my big sister can be a piece of work, but wow."
"That's…messed up," Clyde said at length, sounding disgusted. "Lori wouldn't do that, though. It had to be the others."
"Lori was the one who started it all," Lincoln said. "She was the one I talked to. I guarantee you she called a sister meeting and hatched this whole plan herself. I know you're in love with her, but she's a devious bitch."
Clyde looked like he was going to be sick. "I just…I can't believe it."
Of course he couldn't. He was in love with Lori and would do anything to get her to be his girlfriend, even if it meant denying what he saw with his own two eyes to be true. Lincoln should have known that Clyde would take his sisters' side.
"Are you going to do anything about it?" Stella asked worriedly.
I should, he thought, but from your tone, you don't want me to. You want me to let the bitches get away with it, don't you? "Probably not," Lincoln lied. "I wouldn't want you guys to get upset."
He meant that as a jab at their sister supporting attitudes but neither one took it that way. "You should keep a journal," Clyde suggested, "where you can vent all your emotions. Dr. Lopez says it's a great way to help work through your emotions. I do it all the time."
Lincoln rolled his eyes.
The bell rang and everyone made their way back to class. All that day, Lincoln's mind wandered back to his sisters, and the hatred in his chest grew and grew until he felt like he was going to burst. The more he thought about it, the madder he became. A very big part of him wanted to let it go and move on with his life; they weren't worth the time and trouble, fuck them. Another part of him, however, a very small but very rotten part, wanted to make them pay, wanted to teach them a lesson, to show them that they couldn't kick him around and just get away with it. If he didn't do this now, they would only continue using and abusing him, because why wouldn't they? It's not like he was ever going to do anything about it.
At the end of the day, he shoved his crap into his locker and left, not caring about his homework or anything else. Stella caught up with him a little ways down the street and they walked in silence for a while. "How are you holding up?" she asked tentatively, handling him with the care and hesitancy of one working with a highly unstable substance. He felt a little bad but he didn't try to put on a calm front, couldn't have even if he wanted to.
"Not well," he confessed. He let out a deep breath. "I'm just so…mad, you know? I've always gone out of my way to be a good person to them, and this is how they treat me. I'm not perfect and I've messed up along the way, but they're always ganging up on me, always going out of their way to use and hurt me."
Stella sighed. "Yeah, it's pretty bad. I can't believe that they did that to you."
"They're assholes," Lincoln said acidically. "They always have been and they always will be."
"Yeah," Stella said, "Some people are. I hate that you have to deal with that."
Yeah, so did he.
And you know what?
He didn't think he was going to. Not anymore. They had used and abused him enough and he wasn't going to stand for it anymore. He didn't know how, where, or when, but he was suddenly sure that some way, he was going to have his revenge.
Stella must have noticed an evil twinkle in his eye because she frowned. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" she asked.
"No," Lincoln said and waved his hand. "Fuck them, they're not worth it."
Only they were. He didn't want them to be, but he couldn't quell the anger in his chest. They had fucked him over one time too many and he was finally going to do something about it, what, he didn't know yet.
Something.
That was all.
Something.
Still sitting on the arm of the couch, Stella sighed.
"When he found out," Luan said, "and got mad, I tried to talk to him. I asked him how long he was going to hold a grudge." She sniffed back tears. "I said you can't hold it forever."
She dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex. "He said: Until the day I die, or at least until you admit that deep down you hate me."
Lola sobbed into her hands and Lori looked like she was going to be sick.
"I told him we didn't," Luan said, "then he brought up the sister fight protocol and asked if we were going to beat him within an inch of his life. I said if he hated us, okay, but don't take it out on Lily because she was innocent. He stopped, thought about that for a moment, then said, "She's gonna grow up to be a cunt like the rest of you. Fuck you and fuck her too."
Lincoln took his time plotting. For days and weeks, he nurtured his anger, cultivating it the way a farmer might his crop. Watering it, feeding it, coaxing it to grow and grow until it consumed him. He didn't speak to his sisters during this time, only shot them dirty looks. A few of them tried to approach him, but he snapped on them and sent them away, calling them every horrible name he could think of even if it didn't fit, the curses coming from him in a black stream. Doo doo fart sniffing shit head. Dumb butt licking bastard. Spergnigger fucking hick commie crack lick. The words themselves didn't matter. As in the story Master of the Hounds, only the tone and intent meant something. In it, a man trained his dog to attack when he said kiss because the dog didn't hear the word only the tone. Likewise, Lincoln made damn sure that his tone dripped with hate and menace no matter what he said. Even first grade insults were cutting and hurtful coming from him.
When he got home from school in the afternoon, he would lock himself in his room and not come out until it was time to eat, and even then, just sitting at the same table with those bitches was too much for him. You only sit at tables and break bread with people you like, and Lincoln did not like his sisters one little bit. In fact, he hated their stupid guts and just looking at them made him want to throw up. A few times he played sick so that he wouldn't have to sit with them and pretend that he didn't want to super kick their heads off. Sometimes he would stop in at Flip's on the way home and pick up some snacks so that he would have something to munch on, but other times he just went hungry. He'd rather starve to death than to be around his sisters.
All through this, Lincoln planned his revenge. At first, he had no idea what he could do, and was stumped for a way forward. He would day dream and think about it in the back of his mind, coming up with various adolescent scenarios where his sisters begged his forgiveness and he withheld it from them. That would be the only way, he thought, for justice to be done and for balance to be restored to the universe.
The first plan that he came up with involved him "forgiving" his sisters and then using them the way they had used him. It would be kind of like that time half wanted to go to the beach and the other half wanted to go to Dairyland, and Lincoln was the tie breaking vote. Both teams wanted to butter him up so that he would pick their preferred destination. In his fantasy, his sisters wanted him to forgive them so badly that they became his slaves, and he ran them ragged. He made Lori and Lynn wait on him hand and foot. He forbid Luan from doing comedy and forced Luna to write songs about what an awful fucking human being she was, then post them to YouTube. Ha, he even made her upload a video of her in blackface using the N-word. Her account was instantly banned and everyone thought she was a hateful, racist bitch, so she lost all of her friends and fans. LOL that's what you get, shit ass. He didn't go too much into what he did to the others, but suffice it to say, he found a way to ruin their lives and to make them miserable as well.
He eventually rejected that idea. For one thing, he didn't trust himself to be able to play nice with his sisters long enough to put that plan into action. Sure, dangling his forgiveness in front of their faces and then snatching it away again would be satisfying, but he was so disgusted with them that he didn't think he could do it. He would simply have to come up with other options. He built up elaborate scenarios where he pulled convoluted pranks on them in public, but while he considered himself solidly above average in the intelligence department, he didn't have what it took to plan and carry out the mechanics of such pranks. He could see the end results vividly in his head but he didn't know how to go about getting to those results. He supposed if he really focused and applied himself he could do it easily, but with a tempest of fury raging inside of him, focus and concentration were both hard.
Around this time, Lincoln started avoiding his friends, Stella and Clyde. He had come to suspect that they were secretly against him and in league with his sisters, even if only in spirit. Clyde still lusted after Lori, even knowing what she had done to his best friend, and Stella constantly urged him to get over his anger, which was barely concealed. She saw it, Clyde saw it, everyone saw it. Lincoln's personality had changed drastically since his sisters had done what they did and it was so obvious that even Stevie Wonder could have picked up on it. At first, Lincoln tried to tell himself that Stella was just looking out for him and sincerely wanted him to be happy. He wanted to be happy too, and a small, perhaps rational, part of him wanted to let go of all the hate and anger. He rejected that idea because it would only mean - in effect - that his sisters got to get off scot free after causing him so much harm. He was sick with anger and hurt, he lost sleep, he had lost weight - what they did had a real, tangible impact on him and his day to day life.
And they get to walk?
No, fuck that. He had to hold onto this because letting it go would be basically lying down and advertising his services as a doormat. Come wipe your feet on me, guys, it's okay, I promise, I won't do a fucking thing about it. I'm a weak, white-haired wimp with a limp handshake. Do whatever you want to me.
No, he wouldn't allow that to happen. Not this time. He'd done that same exact thing a million times in the past and look where it had gotten him. If he folded this time, what would they do to him next time? They'd probably outright kill him or something. And why not? Nothing would happen to them over it. They'd get to skate and go about their stupid little lives as though literally nothing had happened.
He would rather die than let that happen. Again. He wouldn't lay down for them anymore. He wouldn't go out of his way to help them when they would just turn around and repay him by going out of their way to hurt him. He wouldn't do anything nice for them ever again. In fact, he would do bad things for them. What, he hadn't decided yet, but the storm was definitely coming, little did they know. They were going to pay for all the shit they had done to him over the years. They had this coming, and it had been a long time in coming.
The first thing that Lincoln wound up doing was spitting in Lola's food. She left a plate of nachos with salsa sitting on the table while she went into the kitchen. He walked by, hocked a fucking fat one into it, and stirred it up with a chip. Bone apple tea, bitch. He took only a little satisfaction in it because she didn't know that she ate his phlegm. He wanted them to know that they were being punished. What good was doing something to someone if they didn't even know you did it? He needed to go bigger; he needed to do things that his sisters would actually feel.
To that end, he met up with a girl from the high school who didn't like Lori. Her name was Kylie and she was a cheerleader who…idk, liked Bobby or something, Lincoln had never bothered to learn why they hated each other, but they did. Lincoln told her a bunch of lies about Lori, Leni, and Luna, and in a matter of hours, nasty rumors about them spread through school. People believed that Luna sucked some promoter's dick to get a gig at a bar in town, that Leni had autism and played with toys like Chris Chan, and that Lori was cheating on Bobby with her "first cousin Will." Of course, there was no Will, but the kids at school didn't know that, they accepted it and ran with it, calling her every kind of incest slut and cousin fucker in the book.
Lincoln decided that since she was the one who put this whole thing into motion, he would stick with Lori for a bit. Using skills he had learned from Lisa (and with the aid of Lori's dumb ass keeping a list of her passwords on her nightstand), Lincoln hacked into her computer and found a bunch of racy pictures she had sent Bobby. Some of them were full nudes. He added the caption "To my favorite cousin, Will 3", printed them out, and passed them along to Kylie.
The school had a fucking field day with those pics. Lori came home in tears and sobbed into her pillow like her world was crashing down around her. From what Lincoln heard on the grapevine, the other kids had taken to calling her Whori.
Lori had always been fairly popular with her classmates, and this sudden turn of fortune both surprised and saddened her. She had no idea how those pictures leaked or what all of this "Will" shit was about. She didn't know anybody named Will and barely even knew any of her cousins, let alone wanted to sleep with any of them (gag). Luckily for her, Principal Rivers stepped in and put an end to as much of the bullying as possible. Principal Rivers sympathized with her, saying that she was a "maturing girl" who just made an error in judgment and didn't deserve the bullying she was getting over it.
Lori greatly appreciated that, but she was still mad as hell about all of this. The first suspect to come to mind was Bobby, but he wouldn't do this sort of thing.
That left only one person.
Lincoln.
She wasn't sure that he would do it either, but he was certainly pissed enough. He hadn't spoken to her or the others in weeks and every time he looked at them, she could see murder in his eyes.
Later that day, she confronted Lincoln in his room and accused him of doing it. Sitting smugly on his bed, he grinned evilly and crossed his arms over his chest. "You have no proof it was me," he said. "But you're going to blame me and sic your little attack dog sisters on me anyway, so go ahead."
He was right, she had no proof.
But she knew.
For his part, Lincoln tried again and again to pull himself out of the hate and bitterness that was taking him over. What he'd done to Lori should be enough, but it wasn't, not by far. He wasn't just angry, he was hurt and sad. Why did his sisters treat him like dirt? Why were they always like this to him? He tried so hard to be a good brother to them and they constantly hurt and abused him. What was wrong with him?
He asked himself that question a lot. While he tried to deny it, he was deeply hurt by what they had done and this was just him lashing out. He wanted to stop it, he wanted to be happy, but they had taken all of his happiness away from him.
The stress and anger was beginning to get to him. He could hardly sleep, barely ate. He tried to pray for relief, but that didn't work. One day he was walking past Flip's when he saw a cigarette delivery truck. A box of Newports had fallen off, along with a random box of matches. Huh, a sign from heaven. Maybe smoking will chill me out a little.
He grabbed the cigarettes and took them home. The first one went down harsh, but each successive one became easier and easier.
They didn't help his anger tho.
So he continued to lash out. He told Lola that he hoped she fell off the stage at her pageant. She won, but her normal smiley, bubbly personality was nowhere to be seen. Spectators said that she looked "sad" and when she smiled, it was weak and insincere.
None of the girls had ever seen Lincoln this upset and for this long. At first they thought that this was just a passing storm, but it had settled in and showed no signs of blowing away again. They each tried to apologize in their own way and in their own time, but Lincoln categorically rejected their overtures. One day, Lisa approached him. Please male sibling, what on earth are you going to accomplish by holding this grudge of yours? We've tried to tell you how sorry we are."
" Well, I don't know what you're going to accomplish feeling sorry, so there.." He crossed his arms over his chest and favored her with a challenging look.
Changing gears, Lisa went onto preach about the dangers of smoking and carcinogens. "It's also not healthy to hold grudges."
Lighting up, Lincoln laughed bitterly. "So it's okay for you guys to hold grudges but not me?" He spitefully blew smoke into her face and walked off.
Later on, Leni tried to get him to forgive her. He blew smoke into her face and told her to get bent, but she pulled him into a hug and squeezed him tight. "I'm not letting you go until you forgive me, Lincy."
"Are you serious?"
"Yep," Leni said.
Sighing, Lincoln said. "Okay. I guess I can't be too mad at you. I mean, you are Leni."
Leni smiled. "Yep, I -"
Her words turned into a high pitched yelp when searing hot pain shot up her arm. She looked down to see a blister where Lincoln had poked her with the business end of his cigarette. Tears welled in her eyes and her bottom lip started to quiver. "Y-Y-YOU'RE MEAN!"
"Yes I am," Lincoln stated.
Leni ran off crying but told no one about the incident because she didn't want them to be mad at Lincy. Even though he was mean, he was still her brother and she still loved him.
Shortly thereafter, Lincoln had a falling out with his friends after admitting to them that he pushed Lana down the stairs. They were still trying to get him to get over his hatred and let go of his grudge.
"Figures that you're siding with Lori and the others," he told Clyde,"...how do I know you're not just to get Lori?
"What? No! Lincoln, you got this all wrong, this isn't for their sake but yours."
"Clyde's right," Stella said. "You're not the type to hold grudges. I know you're angry at them for missing our date, but we're worried for you is all. This is going too far and too long…"
"Lincoln, do you even enjoy what you're doing to your sisters?"
Lincoln opened his mouth but closed it again. No, he didn't. He didn't enjoy it and he wasn't happy. Clyde, seeing this, offered to get him in to see Dr. Lopez. "Just to talk." Lincoln sighed and said that he would think about it. Doubting himself, he walked home that day with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Yes, he wanted to be rid of this hate and pain, but goddamn it, it was so hard to even begin doing so. His entire life, on some level, he had felt different, like an outcast, and he was tired of it. He was tired of feeling like a stranger in his own home, an unwelcome invader in his own life. Had his sisters ever stopped to think how they were making him feel? Did they even care about him?
No, he decided, they didn't and they never had.
That night, Luan came to him again. He sent the brace faced bitch packing the last time and told her to shove her little sister Lily up her ass. Now she was back for more. She had sad puppy dog eyes and Lincoln hated her for it. Hated that she was fake, hated that now she felt some kind of remorse after he rubbed her nose in it. She and the others didn't feel anything before, but they did now? They must not have thought very highly of him before. Did they just now realize that he was a human being with feelings and emotions. No, but here they were with their emotions on their sleeves, expecting their white girl tears to move him.
God, he hated their guts.
"Lincoln, can you let this go?" she asked.
"I don't know," Lincoln shot back, "can I? Remember all those cruel April Fools pranks you pulled on me? Want me to let go of those too?"
Luan sighed. "I did that to everyone, not just you."
"I got the worst of it."
"No you didn't."
Luan stormed off, mad at how selfish and self pitying he was being. He thought that she had singled him out when she treated him just the same as she treated everyone else. He had such a chip on his shoulder.
They continued trying to talk to Lincoln but he simply blew smoke in their faces. This became so common that they called it a "Lincoln response." If they saw it in a movie, they would all roll their eyes and say "The ole Lincoln response."
A few nights later, Lori came into Lincoln's room with tears in her eyes and begged him to forgive her. She even got down on her knees and balled her hands. "It's all my fault. I was selfish and stupid. I didn't mean for it to hurt you like this. I was just…retarded, okay?"
Lincoln looked at her. "That's nice," he said and flicked his cigarette at her. "Now leave." The sight of her crying on her knees infuriated him. She was the font from which all his troubles stemmed. She was the one who led their sisters around. Her apology was way too little, far too late. She only cared about herself. She didn't care if he was hurt or upset, she just didn't want to deal with it. She was too good for that. As she left the room, he muttered, "She probably doesn't even love Bobby."
He was wrong there. Lori did love Bobby. He and Ronnie Anne had come in for the funeral and were currently in the kitchen trying to console Rita and Lynn Sr. Ronnie Anne knew some of what had happened from her Facetime conversations with Lincoln but she wanted answers just like Stella and would come in to get them at some point.
Lisa picked up the story here, talking about how Lincoln had destroyed her computer and cost her two years of hard work. That was in the early days of his grudge and Lisa was furious with him. "I screamed at him," Lisa said. "I even used curse words. I told him that he was acting childish and that if he couldn't cope with his emotions, he belonged in a zoo with the other gorillas."
She shook her head. "I wish I had held my tongue."
The girls got together and pondered why Lincoln was so angry at them. They understood that they had messed up and hurt him, but his response seemed excessive. Was he having a breakdown? Was he using drugs? They decided to interrogate his friends.
In the now, Stella nodded. She remembered them coming to her, Clyde, Zach, and Liam about Lincoln. Clyde let slip that Lincoln admitted pushing Lana down the stairs and the sisters were shocked. "Why didn't you tell us?" Lori demanded.
"Maybe she deserved it," Liam said.
Zach shook his head. "Nah, she didn't deserve all that. She could have died. I get Lincoln being mad but that was going too far. I didn't say anything because it's not really my business. And to be honest, you guys really hurt him. You don't deserve to die but you deserve something at least."
At that point, Ronnie Anne finally came in. She sat next to Stella and asked what had happened, just as Stella herself had. The sisters didn't want to go through all of it again so Stella gave her an abridged version of events. "What about the actual…accident?" Ronnie Anne asked. She made a sour face as the words left her mouth. What she really wanted to know - and what she did not want to come right out and ask - was how Lincoln had died. They knew that the sisters had planned a party for him to show how sorry they were, that they had gotten him tons of presents, but they didn't know beat by beat how the situation had played out. All they knew was that Lincoln burned to death. Stella, being closer to Lincoln than most people, also knew one vital piece of information that wasn't public knowledge: As he died, Lincoln cursed his sisters. He held onto the pain and hate that he felt for them and even carried it into death with him.
Ronnie Anne, as it turned out, was able to provide a piece of the puzzle that no one knew was missing.
That fateful day, Lincoln was sitting at his computer and filling his new lighter with fluid. It was a nice silver Zippo that he picked up from an antique store downtown. The shop owner sold it to him because it supposedly "didn't work" and was little more than a decorative piece. Lincoln, however, had studied Zippos and had taken great pains to get it functional again. He flicked the wheel and the lighter sparked with a grating sound but did not light. Damn it. He flicked it again, and a weak, blue flame whumped out. Ahhh, there you are, you beautiful bastard. Hope you're ready to light some cigarettes.
Just then, his computer dinged with a video call. Ronnie Anne appeared on the screen, sitting in her distant room in Great Lakes City. "Hey, lame-o," she said.
The two of them used to be really close, but then Ronnie Anne moved away. They kept in contact but weren't so close anymore, as their lives had taken different paths and they rarely ever got to see each other anymore. "Hey," Lincoln said.
"I got a question for you."
"Shoot," Lincoln said.
"What's up with Bobby and Lori? They've been arguing a lot lately."
Lincoln smiled to himself. Bobby, like the others, believed the rumors about Whori cheating on him. He had heard her talking on the phone with him a few times, crying and begging him to believe her. LOL Lincoln loved seeing and hearing the blonde slit sucker suffer. "Good," he said. "She doesn't love him anyway."
"What are you talking about?"
He smirked evilly. "She's just like you. She doesn't care about him."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Remember all those times you bullied me? Remember how you punched me in the face? REMEMBER?"
Ronnie Anne opened her mouth to reply, to tell him that she only punched him because he tried to grab her butt and stick his tongue down her throat, but stopped when he lit a cigarette. She then noticed the frenzied look in his eyes. The bags. The wrinkles. He looked like crap. "Are you okay?" she asked, softening her voice.
"Never better," Lincoln said bitterly. "It's all clear to me now. None of you people ever liked me. Well, I don't like you people either. Get bent and suck a dick, bitch."
Before she could respond, he ended the call. Just then, his sisters called out for him, saying they had a surprise and that they wanted him to hear them out. If he did, they would leave him alone forever if he wanted.
Tucking the lighter fluid under his shirt, where it would soon ignite and consume him like the physical manifestation of his rage and hatred, Lincoln got up and went downstairs.
He had only minutes left to live.
It was late when Stella left the Loud house. She felt even worse knowing what had happened than she had before, and wished that she hadn't asked. She walked home through the rain soaked darkness, feeling worse and worse.
At home, she curled up under the blankets and hugged a pillow to her chest.
She hadn't cried at the funeral, but she did now. She cried for Lincoln and for his family. She cried for herself. She missed him but to her, the boy she had known died long before the fire.
Was it better this way?
She didn't know.
And that disturbed her.
It took her a long time to fall asleep that night, and when she finally did, she dreamed of fire, flames, and Lincoln.