I was taken to my room and helped into bed. The nurse told me they would be running further tests to find out why I had blacked out and to get some rest. I could not relax. I was so happy for some reason. I felt alive. I was going home, home to my loved ones at last.
Eventually the lanky male nurse brought me my supper. I looked at it expecting the quality I had enjoyed since I’d arrived but to my dismay it was just a clear, watery vegetable soup with a glass of water; despicable. It made me angry again.
“This is just till tomorrow, Mr Slater, as your stomach needs to be light in case something shows up on the lab tests and they need to operate,” he informed me. He turned to go and left me alone in my room.
The soup lacked salt and didn’t really have much flavour. I lay down to relax on my bed thinking, just thinking for a long time.
What had happened to me? Why did I black out? While I lay on my sweat-soaked bed I began to get hot, a memory was making me angry. All I could remember was that fake smile, the kind of smile which patronises the core of your humanity in a way that stirs your soul. I fell into an uneasy sleep. Just like every face did in that white hell …
It was all misty, clouded. I was in the garden surrounded by the fruits of Mother Nature, shaded by a large oak tree which stood tall behind the bench. As I looked around me everything proceeded in slow motion. Then I saw her; the nurse sat on the bench beside me. She was smiling, except that the smile started disintegrating into something horrid. Her lips started flaking into a scaly ring around her mouth. Her teeth turned a shade of yellow. Just when I thought the image was horrid enough she started laughing at me, pointing her bony finger at me, laughing this loony, cackling laugh, ‘you’re crazy, you’re mad, you are a killer, look what you did to me!’ I stayed confused and bewildered about what she was saying and her appearance. It all made me feel sick.
The pictures in my mind would not switch off. I saw myself look away for a moment to regain my mental strength but when I returned my gaze to her she was bleeding from her head and in front of me a shady figure of a man was walking away into the distance.
I started to scream and in the end I managed to wake myself from this nightmare, only to find myself biting on the pillow and sweating profusely. I was stunned, awake, but still traumatised by the dream. Was I that man? Was I the killer?
I remember before my brother left that there was an incident which happened in my home town Dawn Vines, an incident that very rarely occurs in such a small place. Her name was Sunny Brown, a delightful girl, always laughing and smiling but who found it hard to be with my brother as he was so wild. They had been together for a year before things started to get weird. She gradually came less and less frequently to the house. On some occasions when she was there, she and my brother would simply sit and ignore each other.
One night I heard my brother on the phone having a heated argument; he was telling her that if he couldn’t have her no one else could. I confronted my brother, even though we as a rule left each other alone. I asked him if they were over but he answered that it would never be over.
A couple of weeks later outside the shopping mall, I overheard a couple of girls our age talking. One was going on about how Sunny had found another, better boyfriend a while ago but was too afraid to tell her current one, my brother. I ran back to the house not sure of how he would react if I told him. I felt embarrassed for him about what she had done and how unfaithful she had turned out to be.
My brother was in his room listening to heavy metal music, preparing a new crazy escapade. I entered and I told him all I knew. He did not reply for a couple of minutes but eventually he told me that she would pay for what she had done. He stopped talking, changed character completely and then said that he never wished to see her again, it was over!
I felt like comforting my brother but I knew his tough front would never allow me to. Even though he was never there for me and we had no relationship, seeing him like that was like seeing myself in that situation. It made me angry.
Chapter 13
Get Mad Or Get Even?
A week had passed since my brother had found out about what his girlfriend had really been up to. I decided to call her but I needed to get her number. While my brother was in the shower getting ready to play Saturday football with his friends, I checked his phone and there it was, it hadn’t been deleted yet. I wondered why he had kept it as I copied it down. I returned to the living room and read a book on invasive medical procedures while I waited for my brother to leave the house.
I was alone at last. Mum was out shopping and Dad was round his friend Harry’s house. I called her up and she answered in a suspicious tone of voice.
“What do you want looser?” she asked defensively.
“It’s me, Khedlar. I wanted to talk to you about Demetrius,” I said. There was a long silence.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea Khedlar. It might piss him off. To be honest I don’t want anything to do with your brother.”
“I only want to talk and make sure you’re okay? I know we have never really talked before but there is something I would like to ask you in person. Please don’t worry, anything you tell me stays between us. I won’t tell a soul.”
I heard a loud defeated sigh on the other end of the line and she agreed to meet me at the Pete’s burger place just down the road from my house.
Although I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to say, I got dressed and left to meet her. When I got there I could see her standing outside glancing around, she looked unhinged, scared almost. I found this funny, it was only me meeting her for a chat.
We talked for an hour. She explained that they had just drifted apart, he had too many secrets and she’d had enough of his lies. When I asked her why she’d never told my brother, she started crying telling me that he would never have let her go unless she found someone else to protect her from his mind games, as well as someone who could defend himself. She called him crazy. As the conversation heated up so did my temperature. I felt hot all over and the heat eventually overcame my body and I blacked out.
I woke up in a hospital with my parents by me and my brother standing at the foot of the bed. Why did I faint whenever I was seriously upset?
The doctors said they had no idea why I had blacked out so I was sent home. Nobody ever knew I had met up with Sunny; I kept that secret to myself, especially after the news said she had gone missing that day. I wondered what had happened to her.
I remember they eventually found her body. She had been suffocated to death. The news announced that no evidence had been found as to who had murdered her but they were convinced it was the work of a professional, someone who knew how to cover his or her tracks extremely well. I never found out who did that to Sunny Brown. So young, so sad.
The abuse that took place in my home was slowly creating beasts inside of my brother as well as myself. Mother had no idea that with every burn and every cut she mutilated our bodies with, she was also mutilating our minds.
Demetrius possessed certain qualities that mirrored mothers. The art of manipulation, always getting what he wanted whenever he wanted it, was a perfected skill for him. I on the other hand just wanted to be left alone and honestly I didn’t care what my brother got up to as long as it didn’t interfere with my life. I was a loner, anti-social and a socially awkward teenager who wanted the world I was so cruelly born into to be covered up and sweetened by books and knowledge.
We’d had several phone calls from the mothers’ of the girls Demetrius had previously dated, complaining about how he had treated them badly. They would be shouting at mother and demanding to know what sort of a child she had raised. They made mother very aware of the manipulative ways my brother had treated them. Mother would just agree with everything they said superficially while smiling to herself as if she loved the monster she had created.
Sam was the one who had been victimised the most. In fact she nearly died from my brother’s selfish attitude. He had only
gone out with her because he knew her family came from money. Money was something that was rarely given out in our house as any spare change from my parents was used for family dinners and other boring stuff like that. He had stolen money several times from her father’s wallet and told her she needed to take the blame for it because if he got caught her parents would have had no problem calling the police on him.
This was bad enough for poor Sam and her grades started slipping as my brother wouldn’t allow her time alone to study. Her parents made her go to counselling as they thought it was due to a problem with her self-confidence. Her style of clothes changed, even I had noticed that. She had gone from flowery printed clothes to dark baggy outfits. Her hair seemed like it hadn’t been washed for weeks.
What happened next was worse. My brother had all this cash and had no idea how to spend it, so in a downward spiral of fate he got into drugs. Over a period of several months he got Sam into drugs too. The drugs got harsher and Sam withered away into a defensive shell of the person she used to be. Social services got involved as her parents asked them for help, they just couldn’t deal with her any more. They abandoned her emotionally and sent her off to live at the children’s home. They did this all with their signatures and in one emotionless stroke of the pen rejected their daughter for good with that damning piece of paper.
Demetrius just couldn’t stay away from her. He had used her to the point that the connection she had to her families’ money was gone. He decided to “save” her from the home one night while he was high on drugs. The roads were wet and his reaction was slow. They ended up crashing into an old oak tree and Sam nearly died.
My brother had gone too far, even in mother’s eyes and that was saying something. Mother had had an argument with father in the kitchen after they thought we were both sound asleep in bed but I was by the stairs listening to every word they were saying. Father told mother that his escapades had gone quite far enough and that he would be kept at home for a month. He needed time to allow the drugs to pass out of his body and for him to catch up on all the homework he had been ignoring.
Mother agreed and Demetrius became more aggressive than I had ever seen him before. Mother in the beginning would even tie his hands with a rope and make it just long enough so he could reach his bedroom, the kitchen and toilet. Over time the drugs left his system and he never touched them again but his attitude towards girls never changed. I think he harboured so much anger towards mother it tainted any chance of him having a normal relationship.
After Demetrius “died” an after effect I never saw coming, took place, I became the sole focus of my parents. Whereas before Demetrius had kept them occupied to the point I was practically irrelevant, now they didn’t leave me alone. Now more than ever my anti-social behaviour became the constant topic of conversation at dinner. My parents couldn’t understand my lack of interest and it was viewed in their eyes as an issue that needed to be fixed.
The night of the school dance was pending and mother was even asking the teachers if she could help out in any way. This was just another ploy that she used to manipulate image to make her seem to the outside world as if she was a doting mother.
The last night before the school dance father sat me down and opened up to me. He told me how his school dance had gone and explained how he had met mother. All I could think at the back of my mind was that they had been together for so many years and yet he never really knew what her ugly heart truly looked like. I was feeling bored and I just wanted the conversation to end when he asked me who I was going with. I shrugged and tried my best to explain to this romantically warm hearted man that I had no interest in any sort of relationship or socialising. Father insisted that at the very least I should go to the dance to make an appearance. I painfully agreed and went to my room.
The next morning mother had bought me a smart suit and father gave me pointers on how to gel my hair. My hair was by far the wildest thing anyone could try to tame but I accepted father’s kind words and did exactly as he said. I guess I wanted to make my father proud of me.
I looked at myself in the mirror when I was all dressed up and ready to go. Mother gave me a hug as I left the house, I stood there in disbelief. I had noticed a drastic change in mother since Demetrius “died.” The abuse had stopped apart from the odd occasional burn and she seemed genuinely interested in what was going on in my life. I don’t really know what made mother suddenly so loving and somewhat able to ascertain emotional warmth. To be honest it was the strangest feeling I had ever felt when mother hugged me. It gave me the creeps. She made my stomach turn just by being physically close to her.
The walk to the dance made me feel like I couldn’t breathe as my chest tightened up and the suit collar seemed to strangle me with every step I took. The night was cool and yet the heat my body radiated was like an inferno. It did cross my mind to ditch the dance and just wait in the woods by the house but I had given father my word and my word was all I had. The feeling in my gut was screaming that something very bad was about to happen. It made my stomach sink as the school slowly came into focus. I was here.
The sports hall was decorated with stupid banners and silly silver stars. The people looked even dafter, boys dressed as men and girls looking like their mothers.
People gathered in groups around the hall smiling. The girls were exchanging compliments on their dresses while the boys were trying to make themselves look big. There was a strange, stale, sweaty smell that hung in the air. I think this was one of the downfalls of doing a dance in a sports hall. Even the teachers were getting merry and seemed almost human although at times I felt embarrassed for the occasional one who wanted to show how it was done while dancing out of rhythm and looking like a demented orangutan. Several parents who were helping clear the tables peered at them in disbelief while trying their best not to laugh blatantly in their faces.
Old Miss Grady looked like a constipated goose as she took photos of the students and their dates as they arrived. There was no food, only potato chips, nuts and dip. The music was sickly pop and sounded like a gerbil injected with heroin. Even the sound of smashing glass appealed to me in comparison to this abomination that was so desperately trying to pretend to be music! The tables were covered in red crepe paper and had circular stains where cups had been carelessly placed. The lack of order and symmetry was enough to unhinge me but I wanted to prove that these kind of social gatherings had no relevance or importance in my life.
In a way I did find it amusing. After a while I managed to relax to a certain degree. Five cups of alcohol free punch later and my bladder was full to bursting point. I searched for the toilets and realized the only ones open were in the corridor on the left side of the hall. The further away I walked from the dance I heard the music start to distort as my gut got tight. There was something not right, even the air seemed cooler and I quickened my pace. I rushed into the toilet and freed my bladder. Just then I noticed the sound of someone pacing back and forth inside the bathroom. I sat in silence as I was fully aware that there was a large number of boys who would love nothing more than to beat me up one last time.
After ten minutes I heard the bathroom door creek and slam shut. I collected myself and stepped out of the stall. There stood Jake, he put his hand on my shoulder and explained to me that he had come up with the most amazing plan to embarrass Mr Wood. I was highly suspicious why Jake suddenly saw me as anything but a punching bag but I personally had no desire to get a pounding that night. So I listened attentively and agreed to help him with his plan. We walked back to the dance and Tom appeared as if out of nowhere. They both seemed confident and really excited as their faces lit up with cheeky grins. The first thing we had to do was go outside to Jake’s car and fetch the rotten milk that he wanted to drench Mr Wood in. The only problem was when I reached into the boot of the car I quickly realized there was no milk, there was no plan, it was too late, and it was all a trap. I had stupidly walked right into it.
I was knocked unc
onscious and thrown into the boot, bound and gagged. I felt like I was buried alive as I opened my eyes, all I saw was pitch darkness. Sweating profusely, my wrists were burning due to the tightly knotted ropes. In reality I might have been in the boot of the car for fifteen minutes but it seemed like a torturous eternity. I felt the car swerve as the endless motion caused me to be slide and involuntarily smashed my face, bruising and blackening it. My body was being battered by the torturous movement when finally I heard the breaks screeching to a halt.
I dreaded what was about to come. I heard them get out of the car laughing as they slammed their doors shut behind them. They approached the boot of the car and I heard Tom joke about leaving me in the boot all night. Jake disagreed and told him that they had come here for a reason and now it was time to get on with their plan. They didn’t want to be gone for too long as people might start talking or get suspicious.
They hauled me roughly out of the boot and I felt the metal edges scraping away my skin as blood streamed down my bare arms. They shoved me upright onto my feet and I stood there blindfolded and totally at their mercy. My legs shook as I got ready for what was about to come my way. Jake was the first to attack me. He threw a wet towel that had been soaked in gasoline over my face. My eyes stung and felt like they were melting away as tears streamed down my cheeks. My lungs turned raw with every breath I tried to inhale. The fabric sucked into my mouth as droplets of the gasoline slid down my gasping throat.
I could smell an all too familiar scent of a branding iron. That’s when the heat inside of me started to take over. You see Tom and Jake had made one error in assuming I would ever leave my house without my scalpel. I threw myself to the ground as I placed my hands and legs behind me. I managed to free myself from the rope. Instantly my hand found my scalpel and my crazed beast was unleashed. It was like stabbing through a red foggy dense mist. My hand the carrier of justice as every cold stabbing motion made me feel alive and frenzied. I watched as the blood dripped and slid down my scalpel making its way onto my petrified skin. What had I done?!
Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Page 11
