Broken Man

This story is about what happened to my older brother. I was very young, about 8 or 9, he was about 10 or 11, our mom was big on yard sales, practically everything we had came from one.

One day our mom came home with a painting of an old, sad looking Indian man, my mother said that she loved his eyes and hung it up in the living room. It wasn't very long afterwards that my brother had a new imaginary friend named "Broken Man". Broken Man stayed in my brothers room and played with him at night. About a week or two later my brother would talk about Broken Man being mean and rude, when mom would get on to him about his room being such a mess, he would blame it on Broken Man. Soon after that my brother would come up with scratches and bruises on his arms and legs and even got to the point where he refused to sleep in his room. Our mom about went crazy trying to figure out where the bruises were coming from.

I remember sitting on the floor, watching TV, when my mom, sitting on the couch, said "Oh my god, the painting!" she then got up took it down and tossed it in a dumpster down the street.

That night Broken Man was gone.