This Is What You Win When You Lose Against Yourself – Maximiliano Guzmán

October 13, 2025

Oh… I must confess it somehow. It’s not right to keep it any longer.
        My brother Ray was a tough guy, incredibly tough, unstable, and with my father’s inherited habit of gambling.
        He had no clear future. He was a construction worker. He worked under the hot sun, sweating oceans in summer, freezing in winter. And always, during his lunch breaks, he gambled away his little money on online casinos. Invisible chips with invisible coins. Colorful drawings designed to bankrupt anyone who dared to play.
        I can’t say he was a good man. He wasn’t stingy like my father, nor envious like my mother. He was, at first glance, the better of the two brothers. The one who didn’t devote himself to art, the one without dreams of glory or transcendence, who dirtied his routine with monotony, physical effort, and the normality of surviving day by day. But Ray—though no one wanted to admit it—was lost on a journey to nowhere. A journey only he knew.
        Money slipped through his fingers, out of his pockets, and every month he barely managed to pay some of his debts, lamenting his luck. Ray wasn’t born under the aura of a four-leaf clover. Sometimes he won more than he lost. Other times he simply lost.
        I tried to help him. My parents could barely afford the nursing home in California. I had to take responsibility for his bills when they burned. Three mouths in my family, plus my ex-wife and her little Neil, her out-of-wedlock son she carried in a stroller when I first met her, and to whom I had to give my last name when his biological father jumped off a bridge during a mental crisis. And her husband—her first husband—decided to throw her out of the house where they pretended to be a happy couple. I paid them a studio apartment a few blocks from my place. It was all I could do for them.
And there are so few alternatives in this life, I just hoped things would settle down.

Ray needed a hug. A strong, long, sincere, crushing hug.
        He called Dad first at the nursing home.
        “I want to invite you to dinner on Saturday,” my brother said.
        Dad went silent.
        “All right, son,” Dad said seconds later.
        Ray didn’t care about Dad and Mom. For him, it was a relief to have them far away, in the nursing home outside the city. But if Ray needed them, Dad and Mom were there for him.
        Ray was the prodigal son who never left. He lived in the house my parents abandoned when they moved to the home. The family house was my brother’s. Our only inheritance belonged to him with papers and signed documents. I couldn’t refuse; I was married and still hold a steady job as a comic book artist for a small publisher. Ray deserved the house more than I did. I could pay rent, Ray couldn’t.
        And it was while I was drawing a multicolored-skinned mutant, a character for a new saga of independent superheroes, that Ray called me.
        With a taciturn, tired voice he said:
        “I want to see you, brother. Come Saturday. The old folks will dine with us.”
        “Did you call our parents?” I asked, worried.
        “Don’t make a fuss, brother. Just spaghetti with sauce. I’ll pay their cab fare both ways.”
        I sighed… What could I have answered?
        In my innocence, I thought Ray missed us.
        Ray took my sigh as a yes and hung up.

Saturday, with a pack of beers, I rang the bell of my old house.
        I waited, impatient.
        Ray would be setting the table, the cloth, the plates, the glasses, and dinner.
        I rang again.
        I waited.
        What if Ray had forgotten everything?
        What if he’d gone to the bar to watch soccer with his friends?
        And in a blink, Ray opened the door.
        He was sweaty.
        He smelled bad.
        His Kiss T-shirt was torn and dirty.
        His face showed nerves.
        “Hey, brother,” I said, showing the beers with a gesture.
        “You here… it’s like a thousand years have passed, man,” Ray said and hugged me.
        “You need a shower, dog,” I said, forcing a cheerful voice.
        “Come in, brother. Dad and Mom are in the dining room,” he said.
        “They’re already here?” I asked, surprised.

When I entered the house, I no longer remembered it as in my childhood.
        Ray had turned it into a minimalist bachelor’s place.
        Almost no furniture, lit by a depressing white light.
        A white plastic table, plastic chairs, a small cabinet with a two-burner electric stove, a mini-fridge, and a sad smile, Ray exclaimed loudly:
        “Batman’s here.” It wasn’t a casual joke or a private inside phrase. “Where’s Robin and Batgirl?” he added.
        “I don’t know what you’re talking about…” I said and greeted my parents, escaping their uncomfortable questions.
        My parents hadn’t recovered from their illnesses. Dad had prostate cancer and Mom serious respiratory problems. They greeted me without emotion and returned to their chairs, their plates full of clumped spaghetti with a cheap, awful-looking sauce.
        I sat across from Ray, with my parents together on the left side of the table.
        “Good to see you, brother,” I said, grabbing a fork for the spaghetti.
        “It’s a beautiful night…” Ray said.
        “What do you want, son?” my mother asked.
        Ray suggested we eat a little, open some beers, and then, when dinner was over, talk as a family.
        “What do you need, Ray?” my father asked when his plate was empty and his beer glass full and warm.
        “Do you need money?” I asked, and my mother stabbed me with her eyes. Ray made a grave, intense gesture.
        “Don’t be mistaken…” Ray said in a low voice, sipping his beer. “I organized this dinner to tell you something very important…”
        “What do you want?” Dad asked, visibly worried and distrustful.
        Ray inhaled and exhaled.
        “It’s…” he said, and fell silent.
        “Son, we must go back to the home…” my mother said, urging Ray to just say what he wanted to say.
        Ray looked me in the eyes, looked into Mom’s and Dad’s eyes. He cleared his throat, stood up.
        “I’m going to kill myself…” he said.
        “What?” Dad jumped from his chair. “What, son?” he stammered.
        “What the hell are you saying, you stupid idiot?” I replied, standing up. “You made us come here for this nonsense…” I added, offended, throwing my napkin on the table.
        “I’m going to kill myself but I don’t want to die alone. And that’s why…” Ray began to mumble, his voice breaking.
        “Stop playing, man, you’re an adult…” I told him.
        Mom covered her face, sobbing.
        Ray walked to the kitchen cabinet. He pulled out a timer.
        “I put poison in the food,” he declared, absurdly serious.
        “For God’s sake, Ray… Are you joking?” I asked, furious.
        “You’d better sit down, brother. The poison will take effect in a few minutes,” he said and sat back in his chair.
        Dad and Mom cried.
        “Why are you doing this to us?” they begged for explanations.
        “I love you…” Ray said, emotional, his voice breaking.
        “You’re going to kill us because you don’t want to die alone?” I asked. “You’re so selfish…”
        Ray swallowed hard.
        He turned on the timer.
        Mom began to suffer a respiratory attack.
        Dad started screaming, first trying to stick his fingers in Mom’s mouth to make her vomit, then sticking his fingers in his own.
        “Call an ambulance!”
        But Ray stayed there, seated, without saying another word.
        “Ray…” I said, watching Dad’s desperation and Mom’s drama.
        “Just a few more minutes…” my brother replied.
        “Ray…” I repeated, standing up, walking toward him.
        “Wait a few minutes, brother. Please…” he said.
        And clenching my fists, without thinking, I went to him and hit him, knocking him off the chair. Again and again, under my parents’ gaze, I beat Ray, maybe remembering some old high school bully.
        “No!” Dad shouted.
        “I’m dying!” Mom screamed.
        And I smashed Ray’s ugly face with my fists.
        Blood on my knuckles.
        Blood on Ray’s face.
        And the timer hit zero with a sharp beep.
        Mom collapsed.
        Dad held her body, preventing it from hitting the floor, screaming for us to call an ambulance.
        And Ray unconscious… unaware of his acts, unaware of his humiliation and our humiliation.
        After beating him nearly to death, I sat down and cried.
        And on Ray’s phone, “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” by Kiss rang with a notification.
        I grabbed the phone and read.

YOU HAVE WON $50.

        Fifty dollars.
        He won fifty dollars!
        I started laughing out loud. Dad was crying over Mom’s body, who lay on the floor gasping for air, barely able to get any into her lungs.
        Ray had done it.