Needs More Salt

Today I learned that anything is eaten with enough salt. It started this morning when my little brother Todd bit into a cardboard pocket to find pieces of sugar marshmallow coated with sugar inside.

"Spit that out," I told her. "You can't eat cardboard."

"I can do it again," he said, swallowing.

"Well then it's possible," I agreed, as he bit the box again. "But you shouldn't. And yet, you can't eat everything."

"Beat you I can," he said, and that's when the problem started.

I decided to start small.

"Here, try this," I said as I handed her a bottle of hot sauce.

"Really?" he asked taking me.

"Really," I even smiled. "Everything."

He opened the bottle and put it back, and drank it all with a short nose. He looked victorious for a moment and then smiled at her lips. I laughed as she ran into the sink which turned on the water full, drinking the spit rather than bothering with the glass.

He wiped his mouth on his arm when he was done. "That was nothing," he said, collecting the shadow he had left. "What's next?"

"You're not done yet," I said with a smile. "I said all this."

He looked confused. "But I drank it all."

"And a bottle."

Todd glared at me as he straightened up and returned to the table. He picked up a glass bottle, turned it over several times, and put it back on the floor.

"How?" I asked.

"No," he said sharply. He picked up a pinch of salt and shook it over an empty bottle. He then picked up a bottle of hot sauce and held it high, around his neck. He blinked as pieces of salt came out of his face.

“That won't help,” I told her.

"Shut up and focus," he said, tilting his chin to keep his mouth and throat down. He then put the bottle cap in his mouth and pushed it with his finger until the whole bottle disappeared from his mouth and down his throat.

"You look like a goat," I said in disgust.

Todd smiled and patted his lips emphatically. "What else do you have?" he said.

Over the next hour, Todd continued to eat everything I could throw at him. He ate my sister's teddy bear with a knife and fork and then proceeded to swallow the silver objects to get the encore. Cables were decorated like spaghetti. Packing peanuts and pens was a picnic. He ate his watch, my left shoe, my mother's lipstick, my dad's toolbox, three books, and a mop before I realized I had to go upstairs.

"House," I finally said. "There's no way you can eat the whole house."

My brother insulted me. "But if I eat the house where are we going to stay?"

I shrugged, annoyed that he was more concerned about what would happen when he won than he lost.

"All right," he finally said. "But I will need more salt."

It was dark when my mother came home from work. He pulled the car over to our old Subaru until it came to a pile of rubble where the house once stood. "What. Hell. It's going on?" he said as he got out of the car. He said very slowly and softly, in the kind of voice he used only when we were in real trouble.

I stood in front of the yard, shaking my head as my brother swallowed the last nail in the house.

He walked into the yard with long stairs, grabbed my arm, and walked around looking at me. "Where. The house?" He asked, shaking his teeth.

I waved at my brother. "Todd is a scary goat," I told him.

He looked at her miserably as he walked around the yard to us. "You too, young man," he said. "What do you say?"

Todd shrugged. "We have run out of salt."