Brothers and sisters can be very mean to each other sometimes, but usually it is no big deal.

What would you do if your brother ruined your prom dress and refused to buy you a new one?

That is what happened to the sister in this story, so she destroyed his relationship with their family for the rest of his life in an insane act of revenge.

You’re going to want all of the details on this one.

Never. Ruin. Your. Sister’s. Prom. Dress.

So, this takes place when I was 16, wide-eyed, full of wonder and (much to a lot of judges displeasures) unable to be tried as an adult.

I had myself a big brother we’ll call Elio.

And like many big brothers at the time, he was coming to terms with his flowering ‘adulthood’ (among other things that went shooting up from otherwise flat surfaces whenever Robin appeared onscreen in Batman Forever).

He did his best to keep it a secret, plastering playboy centerfolds over his Ariana Grande posters, and stoically sitting through the game with my dad during Superbowl parties.

(albeit through gritted teeth probably wishing he could watch a Britney Spears music video instead).

But much like a Nintendo switch under the tree on Christmas Eve, you can’t keep something this major under wraps for long where nosy kids are involved.

The nosy kid in this case being me.

Like many guys who came before him upon discovering an alternative lifestyle from the rigid confines of toxic heterosexual masculinity, Elio took it upon himself to explore his feminine side with all the zeal and passion of a prophet with a message.

(Mount Hira in this scenario being a nightclub bathroom while the Angel Jibril was a 6’6 YMCA trainer who spelled his name Johnni with an i).

Ironically this eagerness to play up the girly shtick was how he came to succumb to the worst sin you can commit as a brother- stealing your sister’s clothes.

(A message to all the gay men reading this. Her wardrobe is not your experimental laboratory, and you ain’t Dr. Frankenstein).

Now in my defense if Elio had the decency to just ask me to borrow my stuff, under the guise of shopping for some made up girlfriend with the same shoe size/colors/height as myself, I’d have happily obliged.

Heck, if he had just offered himself up as a sacrificial lamb modeling for my startup “clothing line” (sixteen year old me considered herself a fashionista with a penchant for designing outfits and recycling her wardrobe to bring them to life) I’d have been all to eager to be his guide into the world of women’s fashion.

But the two-faced jerk opted to sneak into my closet and try on my stuff without permission.

He thought he was being slick putting them back when he was done, but I was a petite women’s zero and he was a men’s medium.

Now had he simply owned up to being incompatible with my measurements and admitted his crime to me the first time, I might have restrained from the retribution I’d go onto unleash.

Why not go to the parents?

But instead, he continued to indulge in his deluded fantasy that we were the same size and for weeks, I’d try on my clothes only to find them grotesquely stretched out of shape, with no explanation.

I tried hiding my clothes in parts of the closet i didn’t think the thief would check, only for him to find them.

I began sleeping with my favorite clothes like a stuffed animal, but even my embrace couldn’t protect them from being warped beyond wearability.

I started hiding my junior prom dress under the bed.

At one point I was lowkey starting to consider the possibility that I was beginning to shrink.

And had I not come home early from a cancelled SAT prep session one afternoon (my tutor got wind of a family emergency halfway through), this story might have otherwise ended with me in a straight jacked begging some burned out shrink to save me before I went microscopic.

But fate had other plans.

I made a beeline for my room to find sounds coming from behind the door.

Upon realizing that I was bearing witness to the dastardly clothing deformer, I hid in the bathroom in the corridor and peeked through a crack in the door for the culprit to leave my room.

Imagine my shock when I discovered it was Elio.

To my horror, I watched him go under my bed to place something there and upon his departure my worst fears were confirmed- he had tried on my beloved prom dress!

(Earlier in the week I had bragged to him about the lengths I had gone to hide it from the “closet ghost” thinking it would go through one ear and out the other with him, and just wanting an excuse to flex on how smart I was to take extra precautions).

I storm in, demanding to know why he was wearing my clothes.

He condescendingly tells me that he looks better in them than I do.

That really is upsetting, he should pay for it.

I was heartbroken to find that the zipper had broken and the fit was horribly mangled!

I went down in tears begging for my mom to tell me it could be salvaged, only for her to tell me what I prayed she wouldn’t.

She wasn’t particularly sympathetic, thinking i had done the damage myself, and refused to buy me another one.

I demanded that Elio pay me back for the dress so I could buy another but he gave me less than half of what it cost.

He refused to believe that it cost more than what I said it did, and unfortunately, my mom didn’t have the receipt to prove it on account of being a bit scatterbrained when It comes to keeping track of payments.

When I threatened to tell her that he was the one who ruined the dress, he laughed and said they’d never believe me.

In spite of my rage and fury sending me into a frenzy of hysterics, I still knew he was right (the two faced jerk deserved an Oscar for his straight facade.

Even if he was prancing around in a rainbow unitard singing born this way by Lady Gaga, my folks were the type who would deny his gayness right up until the moment they came home to find him getting hugged on the kitchen table by a Puerto Rican bodybuilder).

I realized that if I wanted to get even, I needed my own plan or action.

And that was to hit him where it hurt.

But where exactly is the weak spot on your brother?

The answers lay in his phone.

After several weeks of casually walking behind the couch every time Elio whipped out his phone on it, I finally figured out his phone pin.

He always locked his room, but thanks to some you tube tutorials on how to pick a basic door lock with a Bobby pin, that problem quickly resolved itself.

Every time Elio went to shower, I’d sneak in and hack his phone, giving myself a fifteen minute crash course on all things valued by your typical bottom.

It turns out he fancied himself the next biggest thing in the drag scene.

He was using my outfits to cement his status as “the rising star of the social media drag scene”.

I thought about deleting his account but I didn’t want him suspecting me of it and tattling to my folks.

Besides, he could always just create a new one and start over again.

He liked drag race, Kpop and iced coffee, but i couldn’t exactly ruin his chances of getting on the show, and in the digital age, he had no cds to smash or switch out.

Of course there was always the option of spiking his coffee with something nasty but I wanted him to feel the pain I did.

And that pain simply wasn’t comparable to a wasted $5.99 plus tax.

I was about to concede defeat after about 2 weeks of trying to find something, when I discovered he downloaded grindr.

After my initial revulsion to the app (no not because of I was a homophobe. But because his profile and was full of his pictures).

Regardless of what he was into, I didn’t find my brothers body appealing. I doubt any sister does).

Elio wasn’t really into hookups, but apparently he did like sending pictures to whoever asked for them.

Its important to note that he always blurred or blacked out his face for privacy, and he appeared to color in the background of all his pictures with the image editing on his phone post production, and he always kept his location on “Never”.

I suddenly understood why he had taken to hogging the bathroom for up to 20 minutes over the weekend.

I just assumed that he was just paying the price for going to Chipotle every Friday with friends but now I knew.

He was basically trying to find the best angles for his customers.

And just like that I finally had a plan.

What I did next was not something I’m proud of but I was bitter, hurting, and desperate for payback.

Not making excuses just telling it like it is.

I downloaded grindr onto my own phone, and created a fake account.

I used some stock photo of a six pack for my profile and punched in a bunch of fake info including a spoof GPS location (shoutout to the internet for walking me through the process!).

I knew it would really make a difference to my brother.

He didn’t really seem to care who was getting his naughty pics so much as how “cute” he looked in them.

The boy fancied himself a bit of a male model and I guess he decided grindr was the best place to get a feel for the industry.

Anyways, over the course of several weeks I became one of his regulars, routinely asking him for pics (all of which I promptly deleted upon receiving).

I messaged him so frequently and stroked his ego the way I knew he liked it to be stroked.

(I had gone through enough of the chats backed up on his phone to know what kind of compliments made him more likely to keep sending stuff instead of just getting bored and blocking someone after the second or third time he sent them pics, before moving on to someone else).

I boiled what made him tick down to a science and it wasn’t long before I had him eating out of the palm of my hand.

Eventually I had earned a spot in his heart as one of his “exclusives”.

At my suggestion, we’d start having “sessions” where we’d schedule times for him to “flood my basement,” sending me caches of pics he’d taken over the course of the week while I would live chat my reaction as to the effect they had on me.

It was gross and I always felt nauseous afterwards, but I wasn’t going to let squeamish scruples stand between my revenge.

Not after how far I’d come.

The next phase of my plan involved my search on websites for a model who sounded similar to my dad, with a nice loud “battle cry.”

What is wrong with this girl?

Eventually after several fruitless searches ending with me crying in a fetal position asking myself how much longer I could keep this up, and if it was worth it followed by the world’s most twisted pep talk about how “I was a fighter who could do it.”

(basically think that scene from Joker where Arthur puts on his clown makeup crying and you’ve got something of an allegory for my struggle), I finally found a guy who sounded similar enough to my dad.

I downloaded several videos featuring him roughhousing with some anorexic twenty somethings onto my laptop, strung them together with some crude online video editing app, converted it to audio, and separated my leading man’s climactic hollers from the soft whimpers.

I saved the file on my computer under the codename “Brand new Take on Oedipus”.

Last but not least, I approach my dad under the guise of needing his help for a school project, while my brother is off with his friends.

I tell him I’m acting out a one woman play for my drama midterm and I need him to be the voice of my protagonist’s off screen father.

I ask him to recite a series of lines for me to record on my phone, all the while encouraging him to “say them naturally”.

These lines include but aren’t limited to “I told you not to disturb me. What is it?” “Is everything alright?”, “now isn’t a good time to talk”, and most importantly “I finished my work so I think I’ll head out to join the rest of the family at the movie theatre. See you later”.

I move the audio files onto my laptop and eagerly anticipate approaching the turning point of my master plan.

One Saturday morning, I had arranged for a “session” in which my folks would be out of the house and I’d be with them.

Or so Elio thought.

You see, my mom, dad, and younger brother were all going to the park near my house on a typical family outing.

We’d go to the park, then take a walk around the local lake, and maybe catch a movie if we felt like it.

We usually go around 4-5 ish and come back at night.

I know that today will be a movie day because my baby brother has been nagging my folks to go see some kids movie for a while (which he learned was out this weekend courtesy of yours truly 😉

Before I left the house, I made sure my bedroom door was wide open (important for later).

While at the park, I asked to play on my dads phone, citing a low battery on mine to explain why I couldn’t use it.

Then I sent Elio a text telling him that “dad” had just received a call from his boss telling him he had some extra work he needed to finish.

“I” was going to be in my office across the hall from his room, and could not under any circumstance be disturbed as I had a lot of stuff to do and very little time to finish it before the deadline.

I waited to make sure he had read the text and sent me a thumbs up emoji in response before I told my folks that I wanted to head back home on account of me getting an early visit from the “lady in red”.

Not one to stand between a lass and her time of the month, my dad let me go home.

Feeling like a ninja, I returned to the house, all the while sending Elio my reactions to what we’ll call his “cute little peach” (we had technically already started the “session” fifteen minutes ago).

I crept into the house, snuck into my room on tiptoes.

Thanks to my open door, I didn’t have to worry about Elio hearing the creak of it from inside his room (they were next to each other), praying he didn’t come out for any reason in time to find me.

I retrieved my laptop and the Bluetooth speaker I used to listen to music in the shower, and tiptoed into my dads office, now making sure to close the door and lock it with enough force for him to hear from inside his room where I knew he was sending me the pics.

I then send Elio a text apologizing for “being stuck doing something stupid. But now you’ve got my undivided attention baby”.

Now its time for the grand finale (in more ways than one).

First I connect my currently muted laptop to my Bluetooth speaker (which I’ve put at maximum volume in advance).

Then, I open the Oedipus file and start to run it, while I text more and more raunchy and unhinged reactions to the incoming pictures.

This is just gross.

Just as we’re approaching the end of the video containing the loudest yell (I saved the best for last), I text Elio that I’m almost done just in time to turn up the volume to the loudest setting on my laptop, riiiight before the Tarzan like whoop of passion I know is around the corner.

The scream played loudly enough to break the sound barrier.

Calling it merely loud was the understatement of the century.

It was enough so for me to have to cover my own ears despite putting on earplugs in advance.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if the neighbors heard.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people in Siberia heard.

But one thing was certain.

There was no way my brother didn’t.

I shut off the Oedipus file, lower the volume, and keep my finger on the recordings of my dads voice.

At first nothing happens.

All is silent not unlike the universe before the big bang.

The mounting tension would have been enough to send me into a heart attack had I implemented this scheme in my 50s.

It takes every ounce of my will not to scream from the suspense.

The agony is pure torture.

I feel paralyzed in anticipation but I force myself to turn my attention to the grindr chat…

I will myself to repeatedly punch in questions asking why Elio stopped sending pics all of a sudden, while keeping my ears alert for any hint of a noise from beyond the door.

Time crawls to a standstill.

Then…. just when I begin to wonder if the lack of results stems from me losing my grip on reality from the stress of waiting….

I hear the creak of a door turning on its hinges.

The sound is faint enough to make me question its existence.

By now I’m almost painfully adjusted to the waiting period.

Enough to the point where part of me almost wants to deny hearing it out of fear of whether or not I’ll react subtly enough not to blow my cover if its real but it can’t possibly have been real and then I hear something else.

Footsteps across the room.

Its soft, timid and hesitant, but very much present.

knock knock knock.

I take a deep breath and prepare to play one of the tapes.

The following conversation ensues:

She is a monster.

Elio- Elio on the other side of the door

Dad- Dad’s prerecorded voice

Elio: Dad… are you in there?

Dad: I told you not to disturb me. What is it?

Elio: … How long have you been in there?

Dad: I’ve been in here for a while.

Elio: I um… I heard a scream. Is everything ok?

Dad: Oh yeah… I screamed because I dropped something on my foot. (I specifically encouraged my dad to say this line like he was hiding something). I’m ok now though. Don’t worry about me.

Elio:…. Ok… if you say so…

Dad: I love you

Elio: Yeah me too I guess?

I hear Elio go back into his room and within seconds I hear a notification for the grindr chat.

He apologizes for the delay and like the putty in my hands I know he is, says exactly what I was banking on him to.

Elio: You’re not gonna believe this but my dad is in the next room and I heard him screaming at the same time you told me you were finishing lol.

And now commences what I believe the French refer to as the pies de resistance.

I leave him on read and tiptoe downstairs with my apparatus while he waits for a response.

Quiet. As. A. Mouse.

Then I set up my laptop and speaker for one last audio blast.

I put on my shoes and chill out for a few minutes watching his texts get more and more hysterical, begging me to respond with “lol that’s so weird” and to assure him it was all a coincidence.

A merciful sister would have realized that avenging her dress shouldn’t come at the cost of her brothers peace of mind, and come clean about the prank.

I sent the following text to him. “Elio we are never going to speak of this. Not to your mom, not to your siblings, not to me. If you attempt to bring it up, you will no longer be allowed to stay in this house. We are going to put this incident behind us and go about as if nothing happened. I want you to delete your account on this website and every single picture that you posted on it. If you know what’s good for you, never go back on the app again while living under my roof”

Then I blocked him before the final phase of my plan.

From downstairs, I blast up both volume settings and fire up the last line I asked my dad to record; “I finished my work so I think I’ll head out to join the rest of the family at the movie theatre. See you later”.

This time I hear Elio respond “Wait, what?”

From upstairs, I can hear him coming down.

Now its time to kick it into high gear.

I shove my laptop and speaker under into a cabinet under the sink, jam my feet into my shoes, and sneak out through the back door and hide behind the shed.

After a few hours, my folks appear in the driveway and I rush out to welcome them back and come inside, as though I was with them the whole time.

I can imagine, she ruined it for him and dad.

His relationship with my dad was never quite the same afterwards and many a night for years to come i overheard father bemoan his nonexistent relationship with his little slugger.

Elio ended up moving out less than a year after the prom dress incident.

He finally came out via a Facebook post a week after settling in to his new apartment.

He blocked my parents on every social media platform and went completely NC.

Any attempts on my dads part to reignite their father son bond was met with cold apathy and indifference when Elio wasn’t flat out refusing to talk to him.

For years the only time they ever met in person was at extended family get togethers.

I felt a bit bad for my dad but it worked out in the end.

Elios determination to distance himself from my dad resulted in him growing closer to me as a result.

I think he didn’t want to risk losing his other kids the way he did his oldest.

In all honesty, I’d have been happy to let Elio fester in guilt and shame for the rest of his life (we were never really close growing up and the prom dress incident was nothing more than the tiniest of tips on the largest of icebergs).

But over the years our relationship slowly mended and perhaps it could have evolved into something that roughly resembled a healthy sibling relationship had he not tried to take over my wedding planning and revealed his own plans to get a free engagement ceremony/coming out party by hijacking my reception with a proposal to his then boyfriend.

I tried to reason with him but his unyielding stubbornness forced me to pull the uno reverse card I hoped I’d never have to use.

I sent him a text revealing that all this time dad had no idea he was gay, and that I was the one talking to him on grindr.

She really hates her family.

I concluded my message with a warning if he showed up, I’d have security escort him out and afterwards I’d tell the whole family that he sexted his sister in high school and I had the pictures to prove it (I never kept any but he didn’t know that) .

He might have been able to reveal I was a liar had he not deleted his old grindr from back then.

I then blocked him on all platforms before he had a chance to reply.

He didn’t come to the wedding, I never saw him again, and my quality of life greatly improved as a result of his absence in it.

This is way over the top, and if true, the sister is a horrible person.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

Yes, she is a terrible human.

Me too, he is the real victim.

I hope this is not true.

She really is the worst.

Yes, it is awful.

This girl is insane.

Not all revenge is appropriate.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.