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 It’s one thing to play cowboy and go out all night XXXX and wake up the next morning with a hangover. It’s another thing to wake up with a hangover and see some weird guy in a creepy XXXX mask. The creep in the mask looked like he was on half-cock so I didn't even think about giving him any trouble.

“I don’t have very much, just take what you want,” I told him hoping that he would just rob me and go away before somebody got hurt. But he didn't say anything. 

“Let’s see now,” he muttered to himself. “Maybe something in a nice blue to go with your eyes.” He picked up a blue bandanna, shook it out, and then ran it through his fingers. “I don’t have to tell you to be a good boy, do I?”

He tapped me lightly on the head just to make sure that I got the point then he moved around behind me. There was something strangely familiar about his voice and I was trying to remember where I heard it before while he drew that folded bandanna tightly across my lips and tied it behind my neck.

Then he stepped back, looked me up and down, and laughed in my face. And then he pulled off that creepy mask and I almost fell down in shock.

The laughing face was an exact duplicate of my own!

“Mmmyuo!”

“Hello Harry,” he sneered at me.

It was my twin brother George. I hadn't seen him in five years and I wished that it had been a whole lot longer. Every time George showed up he always brought trouble with him.

“Have a seat Harry.” Not too gently he buckled my knees and pushed me down to the floor with a heavy thump that came from XXXX too many beers and eating too many pig’s feet. “You need some more rope. Remember when we were in the Scouts together?”

How could I forget? My maniac twin brother almost burned down our summer camp and then arranged it so that I got blamed for it. Just thinking about it made me angry all over again and so I hardly paid any attention while he roped up my thighs and my ankles really tight.

“There, that’s better. Now you won't be too quick to run to the cops.”

What did he want? My brother George might be crazy, but he always had an angle. And then I saw him pawing through my wallet.

“I heard that you had a good night at the tables,” he smiled at me.

How did he know that? It wasn't a good night; it was my best night ever. I won more than twenty-thousand dollars. And then it dawned on me that George was dressed up in cowboy clothes just like I was, and my suitcases were all packed up and ready to go. Then I watched him smiling down at me while he tied a burXXXXdy bandanna loosely around his throat and brushed his hair back under my old Stetson.

“Now, just one more piece of rope.” George dumped me onto my belly and drew my booted feet up toward my butt. “Remember the year I won the calf roping event?”

Yea, I did remember. George had been almost human that year and everyone in the family had loved him. But then something happened, I don’t know what, and George had been rotten ever since. He quickly lashed my booted ankles to my tied wrists so tight that it was hard for me to breathe.

“Now brother dear, all you have to do is to lie there quietly. Before you know it I'll have you all checked out of this hotel and that twenty grand will be transferred to my little island account. You can consider it a loan because who knows? I might pay you back some time.”

Then George laughed and laughed while he collected up my suitcases and went out the door and there was nothing I could do to stop him.

I pulled and strained against the ropes, but that didn't do me any good. George had always been good with knots and he had always been good at impersonating me. That was something we had done just for fun when we were kids, but later George had turned it into a business.

Even while I sweated and strained against the ropes and sweated into the folded rag tied over my mouth I could hear George politely paying his bill and asking the nice hotel people to transfer my winnings to his account. And what could I do? Even if I could wiggle free from these ropes, what could I do? Call the police and tell them to start looking for me? No, George had beaten me again.

THE END

Harry Played by Lyle

Photography by Caitiff