by M. Billiter
“Diabetes is a disease, and schizoaffective disorder is a mental illness. You have no more control over that than someone with diabetes.”
Branson’s hair, always so much shaggier than mine, flowed back and forth like a surfer as he shook his head. “Mom, it’s not the same. A diabetic doesn’t hide their symptoms or hurt the people they love.”
My mom was the most unstoppable woman I knew. She didn’t take shit from anyone, and God help the poor bastard who pointed out a flaw in her kids—even if it was one of her kids doing the pointing.
“Branson—” Her voice cracked and her lip trembled. “Please.” She quickly wiped away a tear and straightened her posture as if the gesture would realign her emotions. “You’re not that person. He’s gone.”
Trevor. Fuckin’ Trevor. If I never heard that name again, it’d be too soon.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Branson said. “I’m not Trevor, but sometimes….”
“What?” I jumped in.
Branson shrugged. “Listen, you guys know that Trevor was part of my break from reality, but other people don’t realize that and aren’t as understanding.” He waved his hand like it was nothing, but I knew from the way he wouldn’t look at me that it meant something.
“Like who?” Carson stepped into the conversation.
“Oh, just this girl I met at the Albany campus fundraiser,” he said.
“Albany Community College?” I asked. “Where we used to play club soccer?”
Branson nodded.
“What’d this girl do?”
“I went to this sorority fundraiser, and she was in charge.” He shrugged. “This girl remembered me from high school, that party….” He briefly made eye contact with me.
There was only one party in high school where Trevor directed Branson.
“With Dakota?” I said, and again he nodded. “Yeah, that wasn’t your best night, but Trevor was commanding the conversation. You can’t let one person’s opinion of you get to you.”
“Dick.” My twin brother looked at me.
“Exactly my point.” I laughed.
“Fuck you,” Branson said with a grin.
“Okay, enough of the fucking dick,” Mom chimed in.
“That’s what she said,” Carson said, which caused us all to burst out laughing.
The sound was such a welcome relief to the heaviness that hung in the room. By its very definition, cancer was a disease that divided, from cells in the body to the families it affected. For a brief moment, our collective laughter stopped that division.
But only briefly.
When the laughter died down, Branson nodded toward the rocking chair in the front room. “I did get the shirts I wanted. You see the ones I got for me and Mom?”
“The neon pink? Bro, couldn’t miss it,” I said, matching his grin.
He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Hey, I put up with a real skank in a shitty wannabe college bar to get those shirts.”
“I bet” was all I said. My own run-in with the VP of Hannah’s sorority was enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t want to revisit. I didn’t know if I’d ever forget her “buggy boy” dig.
“Bran, want me to fight her?” Carson dropped a plate of reheated potato skins in the center of the table and wiped her hands on the towel draped over her shoulder. “I could take her, right?”
I thought of that sorority girl in Ohio who made fun of me, and suddenly I saw the humor in the moment. I raised an eyebrow toward my sister. “Shit, Carson, with those buggy-whip arms, you couldn’t swat a fly. Hell, we might as well send little Jack.”
If laughter actually was the best medicine, my mom wouldn’t need another surgery. But she did. And nothing I could say or do would cure her.
I wanted to act as if nothing was wrong, so I smiled. But despite what I showed my family, I felt myself sinking, and I couldn’t find my way out of the darkness.
13
David and Me
You’ve heard the stories. When someone has a choice between good or bad, they talk about the angel and devil sitting on their shoulders or leaning over to whisper in their ear.
The angel is always very clear.
“Johnny, if you take the last cookie, then your sister, Sally, who hasn’t had one, won’t get one.”
The devil is a little more persuasive.
“Johnny, what’s the harm in one cookie? Your sister’s trying to lose weight. She’ll thank you.”
The line seems obvious. Take the cookie and you’re a bastard; don’t take the cookie and be the hero.
I was never one to be the hero in my own story.
“How dull is that?”
Agreed. Heroes were overrated.
On Breaking Bad, everyone rooted for Walter White, the chem teacher with cancer who was just trying to take care of his family. He turned to making meth to pay the bills.
“Was it really his fault that he became the main drug lord? Sure, some of his actions were questionable, like letting his partner’s girlfriend OD, but the ends always justified the means.”
Hundred percent.
Everyone wanted to be the antihero. It was cool. No one wanted to be the boring guy who got killed.
Besides, when it came down to it, the angel in my head fell a long time ago.
It was why I moved so easily between sanity and whacked. I had a sense of purpose. There was no angel or devil in my ear, only David.
And because I allowed David and myself brief periods of pure madness, I fortified my mind against the inner darkness that was a constant threat.
And tonight the darkness was real.
But through trial and error, I found that the key to living with schizophrenia was not voicing any troubles to the world—and certainly not to family. With everything they’d already been through and were going through, they would never understand. And they certainly wouldn’t forgive. There was only so much forgiveness to go around, and schizophrenia made sure my portion was depleted. Schizophrenia was an equal opportunity offender—it fucked with the mind as much as it fucked with the family.
It was actually better that way. Everyone knew weakness was born in disclosure. Confessing was commonplace; the true test was keeping the darkness hidden, and so far, I’d passed the test brilliantly. In fact, I didn’t think anyone else could’ve kept their symptoms hidden better than me. The key was not giving in to temptation.
It was way too simple in our modern, tech-driven, social media–heavy, me-saturated world to lose control to one’s inner thoughts. Drinking made it even easier. And how many times did drunk texting ever work out?
“Uh, never.”
Agreed.
I was smart. I had to be. I had to be smarter than my illness. Smarter than David. I already knew the downside to letting the voices take control—utter chaos. And worse, hurting loved ones. I wouldn’t do that.
“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”
Understood.
Still, it was why I quietly made my exit from the basement and the Harry Potter movie marathon that Carson and my mom were engrossed in. My twin brother had already left to go check on some girl, which was what I needed to do as well.
Snagging a sweatshirt from the pile of clothes that my twin and I shared whenever we were home, I grabbed my backpack and loaded it with supplies. Everything I needed was within reach. I took a set of car keys off the hook and headed toward the car that beeped when I aimed the remote in its direction.
I slid into the driver seat, opened my laptop, and plugged the flash drive into the side. The only copy of my journal was stored on this drive. I didn’t need to know what I typed when David spoke to me. Nor did I need anyone else to know. As soon as the journal entries were written and saved to the drive, I deleted the file from my laptop.
I didn’t have any desire to discuss the entries with anyone because they only brought pain and sorrow. I was a great writer because I could fully express myself when I was at my weakest and most vulnerable. And that was wh
en I allowed David to speak.
I sat in the car outside our house. Even with a new sweatshirt on, my mom’s perfume clung to me like a distant memory. I inhaled deeply, and on the exhale, David spoke and I typed.
* * *
A Killer’s Journal
* * *
Certain temptations and thoughts become stronger based on certain emotions that I feel through my life. When I’m angry, my mind instantly goes to cutting someone’s jugular or strangling them with my hands.
When I’m sad, I think of more sadistic tendencies, like how to hurt someone for such a long period of time that they beg for their life to end. Excitement is more directed to the action of murder and watching the life drain out of a person’s eyes. These emotions are what drove me throughout my adolescence. The idea of hurting or killing someone occupied my every thought.
As I got older, the reality that I could actually do it distracted me. Why should I have to work for money when I could just simply kill someone and take their wallet? Why do people try so hard to get by when the alternative is so much easier? I began to lose regard for human life and thought I was above everyone else. Anyone who wasn’t me was simply a nuisance. That thought process disconnected me from everyone, and I no longer felt emotions like pity or jealousy. The only emotion that drove me was desire.
One thing I never disconnected from was my family. For some reason, hurting the ones closest to me crossed a line. Even the thought of hurting them made me sick. To this day, I have no idea why that was my line, but it was.
* * *
I was tired of typing, or rather transcribing David’s thoughts as they bounced around my head like a stray bullet. It was time for action. I saved the file to the flash drive, shut my laptop, and set my sights on the fundraiser at Albany Community College.
* * *
Spiking her drink was so easy, it almost dulled me. And it came as no surprise that the sorority sister in charge of the event would still be by the bar manning the table while the rest of her pack played pool.
“Uh, I don’t think you’re supposed to wear those letters here.” She pointed at my Greek sweatshirt.
“Bitch.”
Yup.
I slid into the empty seat beside her. “It was all I could find that was clean.” I sold the lie with a devil-may-care smile that seemed to do the trick.
“Well, as long as you know that your house isn’t represented on our campus, I guess it’s not that big a deal.” She bumped her shoulder against mine.
“Is she flirting?”
Dunno. Don’t care.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to go and break the rules,” I said.
“But you are a rule breaker, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
I swallowed the laughter at the base of my throat and instead headed to the bar and ordered her another drink.
The more Fireballs she downed, the more I plied her cinnamon whiskey with the powder from crushed-up over-the-counter sleeping pills. I actually had my mom to thank for my ingenious idea. During one of our calls, I mentioned that my sleep cycles were off. Who knew she’d suggest a remedy that didn’t require a prescription? Better yet, for less than five bucks, I could buy enough diphenhydramine to knock out a linebacker.
It was the best-kept secret on the drugstore shelf. I’d discovered that there were many over-the-counter sleeping pills that contained diphenhydramine, a powerful sedative that caused even the most stubborn insomniac like me to surrender to sleep. It was 100 percent legal and carried a bolded warning on the side of the box not to mix with alcohol.
“Oops.”
I shrugged. Apparently too much of a good thing could cause innumerable problems, like liver or brain damage, alcohol poisoning, or even the risk of overdose. I didn’t want to kill the skank, and I certainly didn’t want to rape her. Oh no, she deserved so much more. I just had to ensure she didn’t wake up prematurely. I had plans for her that required complete compliance.
Sprinkling the crushed tablets into her drink also safeguarded me against her remembering anything. The happy downside to diphenhydramine was that too much made a person foggy the next day. I’d learned that the hard way. It was like amnesia; I could barely remember my name, let alone what I’d done the previous night.
So while I knew she wouldn’t need as much as I took when sleep evaded me, I had to balance it just right so she also wouldn’t remember me or what I was about to do. After the third heavily laced shot, her face flushed and her eyelids began to droop. I swooped in.
“Hey, hey, looks like someone may have had one too many Fireballs,” I said.
“Nah.” She waved me away with her pink nails. “Gish me anover one.”
I nodded. “No, I think you’ve had your quota.” I glanced toward her sorority sisters, who were playing pool in the corner of the bar. From the way they kept scratching, it was clear they were too hammered to notice anyone leave, least of all this one. They hadn’t paid attention to her since I showed up. The timing couldn’t be better.
I swung her arm around my neck and tucked mine around her waist. When we stood, I balanced her to keep her from stumbling and led her to the door without a care in the world. Most people didn’t see what was right in front of them.
“Refrigerator blindness at its best.”
Agreed.
As I tucked her into the car, I held a bottled water with the last of the sleeping aid toward her before she passed out.
“Hey, you look dehydrated. Maybe some water?” I said.
She grabbed the water bottle like I had just offered her the fountain of youth. And maybe I had. One more sip would wash away her memory of tonight.
* * *
A full harvest moon hung low in the sky, providing the light I needed. I shifted her body over my shoulder and walked toward the end zone. Her head bounced against my back, which was kind of annoying. I tightened my hold on her legs, not wanting the girl to break her neck or anything. Not on my watch.
The football field was empty. It was a bye week, so there weren’t any lights or cheering crowds. For a moment, I paused and glanced in the direction of the stands. It didn’t matter what stadium or where it was located, my mom always sat in the same section—close to the fifty-yard line and roughly between rows ten and twenty. It was her thing, which was funny. She knew nothing about track or any field events, but she researched which were the best seats in a stadium. She didn’t specify what sport, so I was sure it was for football, not track.
I would’ve laughed, but it just didn’t seem right with this woman draped over my shoulder like the bag of trash she was. Still, for my mom’s lack of understanding of track, she came to nearly every meet.
I imagined her long auburn hair split into two ponytails that were each tied with two different-colored ribbons—red and blue, one for me and one for my brother. I was red; he was blue. It was how she’d dressed us when we were little to tell us apart. Red and blue and together we were the purplest. My chest hurt at the memory. Or maybe it was the heels pressed against me.
“What happened? The mom you knew is all but gone.”
You’re probably right. She’s going to let cancer win, isn’t she?
Why? Why won’t she fight? Mom, why won’t you fight? We need you. I choked down the hurt. I need you.
“It’s better she’s not here.” His voice grew stronger, a command to shut out the pain and look forward. “This is the only way you’ll be free. You need this.”
And just like that, I resigned myself to David’s plan—whatever that was.
Her limp body grew heavy as I walked toward the tall, dark grove of hearty oaks surrounding the north end of the stadium. Thankfully the leaves hadn’t fallen. I needed the coverage, the shelter.
What I was about to do wasn’t for prying eyes.
* * *
When I finished, I stood back and surveyed our work.
“Not bad.”
I probably went a bit too heavy on the eyes, but it was ha
rd adding blue tempera paint to drooping eyelids with a foam paintbrush. But the bright pink paint that I used on her lips glided on much more smoothly and allowed me to extend her smile. She looked demented like the Joker, which wasn’t the look I was going for, but this was a first for both of us.
Her inability to sit was really proving to be problematic. I couldn’t carry her again because I’d get tempura paint all over me, and I’d worked too hard within the confines of the plastic gloves so I didn’t leave any trace behind. I grabbed her arms and dragged her from the bushes and across the grass to the goalpost.
The post was covered in thick white vinyl foam padding. I knew this firsthand when I collided with the damn thing trying to protect the goal during our days playing club soccer. The thick padding was meant to reduce head injuries, but fuck if my cranium didn’t hurt like hell afterward.
Still, it would give her something somewhat soft to lean against. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I did want to humiliate her the way she liked to humiliate others.
“Something’s missing.”
I pulled her hair into two ponytails that I tied with yellow yarn. Now with the smeared paint and blonde ponytails, she looked like Harley Quinn.
“Fuck.”
David’s voice surfaced in my head.
“Why make her look good?”
His influence grew stronger, louder.
“Cut that shit off.”
I rummaged through my backpack for my little brother’s blunt-tipped scissors. They could barely cut construction paper, let alone hair.
“Cut.”
David’s voice was a command that shut out my ability to reason.
“Cut. Cut it off.”
Too tired to fight, I put my thinking on autopilot and let David drive this train. I lifted one of her side ponytails and began to cut it with the scissors. I cut, and cut, and cut and then moved to the other side of her head. I cut until all that was left were two little stubs of white-blonde hair wrapped in yarn, poking out on the sides of her head.
