Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning

by Nuza, Catherine;

  “Don’t hello me, Aunt Morgan!” I sneered as I peered around her to see the face of the corpse she had cut open on the cold metal autopsy table. It was Sue! I started to panic. What was Morgan doing to my baby girl?

  ‘Help me daddy!’ her innocent voice cried out to me.

  “What are you doing? Stop, don’t hurt her!” I shouted at Morgan. The veins on my neck bulged to bursting point and my stomach turned making me feel sick. I knew with one cut Morgan could kill her, kill her again. I had already lost her once I couldn’t lose her again.

  “What is going on Khedlar? Are you okay?” Morgan asked with fear tainting her voice.

  She was staring at me while my baby girl was being butchered wide open on the table. “Get away from her!” I roared protectively. Morgan didn’t move, instead she lifted her hands out of the cavity and laughed.

  Her eyes turned cold and blood from her clenched fists dripped onto the floor. She stayed motionless in shock for a few moments. Her mouth opened but no words escaped her lips.

  “Get away!” I screamed as I pushed her forcibly away from Sue.

  I turned to look at my little girl’s face but it wasn’t her. It was someone else, where had she gone? I grabbed the scalpel and started to cut away at the corpse to find Sue’s face, covering my bare hands in lumps of clotted blood. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t understand what was going on. Where was Sue? Who was this imposter and why was she wearing my daughter’s skin.

  “Who are you?” I asked Morgan seeing her as a butcher of my little girl’s innocence and purity.

  “Khedlar, it’s me, Aunt Morgan, you know that,” she said. I could see her breathing was rapid and shallow making her voice crack as she spoke.

  “You are all liars, all of you! Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you right now! After all you have done to me to destroy my life,” I shouted. My hands were sweating at the realization that my life had all been a tangled web of lies.

  “We both know you don’t have it in you to kill me Khedlar, you love me. I have always been your favourite aunt, so I forgive you for what you’ve just said to me. You’re obviously not well Khedlar,” she said twisting the emotions of love and hate so flippantly in her words.

  My head started to spin as images blurred rapidly past my blinking eyes. Why wasn’t she scared of me or running for her life? She just looked at me the way they did in the white hell. My ears started to burn and I wiped them with the back of my hand, then I covered them with my palms to block out her voice. I had a moment of pure clarity and in a heartbeat I knew that I wanted to kill her, I wanted her dead, and I wanted to kill them all. I could see myself cutting out their tainted, soulless hearts and squeezing each one of them dead.

  “You’re a liar, you don’t care you never did, you or Ann! You played into the lie of her being my real mother and knew she was abusing us but you didn’t care did you? You didn’t help us leave. All you cared about was taking us from Georgia, you’re sick! How do you live with yourself? I bet Bradley is rolling in his grave over what you have done, you never deserved to have children! You are wicked!!” I screamed at her as her masks fell off one by one.

  “Get out, you have no idea what the truth is even if you heard it! You’ve obviously seen your mother and she has tainted your mind with lies. Ann is your real mother, Georgia is your aunt, and you stay away! I know how you killed your wife and kid. Stay away or I will cut your throat and stop you going round telling lies. Don’t you dare to ever talk about my boy again!”

  I knew she meant it. There was a really sadistic gleam in her eyes and she had a lot of experience with a blade, so I backed off and left. I will let my words kill her from the inside for now and I will be back to finish her off. Just as I thought she was another pawn in this diverse game of chess.

  I came out of the morgue bewildered and searched for the taxi, it was gone and so was Dariouse. I must have been inside longer than I thought. I assumed that he might have gone to get a drink, I didn’t really care. Hopefully he had gotten lost or kidnapped, I could do with something going my way as everything was interchangeable depending on the persons perspective. I sat down on a nearby bench and watched all those sad people who think they are so foolishly happy, and for the first time in my life I realised that I was the sad pathetic one. With all that I had been forced to endure it was amazing that I wasn’t barking and frothing at the mouth, purely mad.

  Come to think of it, anyone of them could be lying. I was sitting in despair when I saw Dariouse out of the corner of my eye. He was standing by the taxi and obviously looking for me. I let out a sigh of disappointment as I realized that I was still stuck with him. Strange how I didn’t see him before, I must have subconsciously discarded his face. I walked slowly towards the taxi, I just knew that if I pissed him off enough he would go back to his mother. He meant nothing to me and I intended for him to know that. I ignored his wave as I opened the car door to sit in the front passenger seat. While I glanced at my watch I saw the faded tint of blood on my hands. I pulled my sleeves over them and made sure my expression didn’t give anything away.

  The car drive back was silent, I didn’t say a word to him and neither did he to me for that matter. I felt that that was quite enough for one day. Tomorrow it would be Georgia and I needed to build my strength up for that encounter, until then I would allow my mind to rest.

  I rapidly showed Dariouse around my house. It was slightly embarrassing as I hadn’t been able to clean the house thoroughly first but with all that was going on in my head I was not seriously bothered by it. I couldn’t care less what Dariouse thought of my house as I didn’t have servants and this wasn’t a mansion, so he would just have to deal with it!

  To my surprise we ended up talking for a while about how different our childhoods were; me growing up with two people who claimed to be my real parents and him having to live out of sight with father and barely able to see mother until he was practically grown up. I noticed how his eyes changed when he talked about Georgia, they softened and sparkled a childlike glow that I didn’t understand. He seemed to love her the same way Sue loved me, this angered me how he could still have his mother to love when my daughter Sue had been so coldly ripped from my life. It was all wrong and I wanted him to feel my pain, my loss and make him see life through my cracked lens. In my eyes he didn’t deserve to be happy in any sense of the word, he hadn’t done anything to me but his unbroken life made me hate his past and present, including him. It helped me understand how Ann and Georgia had destroyed Demetrius and my life by making our existence unbearable. They never cared about our well-being, all that mattered was that they had tried to destroy Georgia by taking us away from her. Judging her ability to be a mother to us when they were all just as demented as each other. I wished for a moment that I had never been born, but as the anger rose I was determined to fix the problem. I would erase them from existence one by one. The whole thing filled me with hatred and made my blood boil but I found comfort in the masks I had uniquely designed and started to realize that the emotions between love and hate were trapped behind an icy wall of numbness. I knew then I was not human any more. I would use my pain to correct it all and to stop and kill what never should have existed at all.

  Chapter 24

  Family

  I realized quickly that Dariouse was proving to be harder to crack than I anticipated. I decided to take him down to The Poison Apple for a couple of beers to loosen his mental defences. They say that alcohol makes people speak the truth, maybe this will get him to be honest with me and not coat lies in sweetened deceit. I had no intention of getting drunk, I needed to keep sharp and I’d never had the urge to inebriate myself as so many liked to do on a daily basis.

  A commotion at the bar drew my attention away from our conversation which was frustrating me as Dariouse evaded my blunt questions effortlessly. Smashing glass caused people to scatter away from the drunk who was roaring at the bartender to keep serving him. He waved a broken bottle neck
at the object of his fury and I held my breath in anticipation of him using it.

  Two beefy bouncers were heading towards him and I wondered who would come out on top. The drunk was short and weaving on his feet while the bouncers were enormous and sober. A bouncer told him to drop the bottle but the man spat in his face. The other bouncer lurched forward to punch the drunk who then jumped back, knocking over a bar stool. The drunk moved with surprising speed as he stabbed the glass shard into the bouncer’s startled face. Blood sprayed the counter and the drunk cackled at his victory while the other bouncer grabbed him from behind in a vice-like bear hug. Game over I thought, that would be the end of my entertainment for tonight, what a pity. To my surprise the drunk head butted backwards and broke the man’s nose. I wanted to give him an encouraging clap for his bravery but thought Dariouse might stare at me. I urged the drunk on mentally to let loose and go for it. The bouncer staggered back as blood gushed from his nose and the drunk pounced forward to stab him in the throat. Lucky for the bouncer that the drunken man’s aim was off and he sliced a lump of flesh loose rather than severing his arterial vein which looked like his intended target.

  I cursed under my breath at his bad luck and watched eagerly to see what would happen next. This was better than mother’s home made cupcakes by far. The drunk spun around looking for the other man who was standing in a boxer’s pose, ready to fight. The drunk grabbed a beer glass off the counter, smashed it on the surface and threw the shards into the bouncers face. Bits of shrapnel bit deep into his flesh clawing tiny cuts all over his skin. At least he didn’t miss that time. The bouncer blinked to clear the alcohol and glass from his eyes and the drunk used the distraction to his advantage. He stabbed at his raised fist and sunk the bottle neck into the back of his hand. The bouncer screamed out in pain as he stared at his hand in disbelief, watching the bottle neck just sitting there, deeply lodged inside of him as blood flowed in rivulets down his arm.

  The other bouncer punched the drunk in the back of the head so hard he sprayed several teeth onto the floor with blood and saliva. The drunk swiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand and stared at the bouncer. The look he gave him was pure evil. The bouncer was in trouble I thought but didn’t seem to realize it, daft fool.

  He grabbed two wineglasses by their stems and smashed the tops off of them. He walked forward and the bouncer hesitated which was a fatal mistake. The drunk stabbed one broken stem at a time into the man’s eyes and blinded him. He looked like a cartoon character with google eyes as the base of the wineglasses sat lodged in his face. He should have gone to the opticians where he could have gotten two glasses for the price of one I thought. I chuckled to myself as I watched the destruction unfold before me.

  The drunk wiped his bloodied hands on the bouncer’s chest to clean them, spat at the petrified bartender and sauntered out of the pub like it was just another ordinary day. I breathed out and didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath. I felt exhilarated and alive watching the drunk handle himself so beautifully. Everyone else had fled from the bar and so had Dariouse. I didn’t care, I had been so engrossed in watching the carnage that I hadn’t even noticed.

  I went behind the counter to help myself to a bottle of vodka. The bartender told me to get out but I ignored him as I sat back down again to continue drinking. Where had Dariouse gone and why did he keep disappearing? He was up to something I could sense it but had no idea what it could be. He was a strange little man but seemed to be harmless enough. My mind was cluttered and tangled up with the sight of blood which had sparked a flame deep within the soul of my inner darkness.

  Just before the bartender approached my table to nervously hand me my outstanding tab, Dariouse appeared from out of nowhere. He also seemed to have had a good night as his expression was light and over-animated

  “Where did you get to brother?” I asked genuinely curious as to his previous whereabouts.

  “Long line at the men’s, you know beer sometimes affects my stomach, sorry for leaving you without company,” he said as his gaze drifted to his watch.

  “Fair enough,” I remarked. “Let’s get back, it’s nearly about to shut,” I said as I stood up and put on my jacket. What a blatant lie, the pub was empty after that fight, I don’t know who he was trying to convince, me or him.

  Dariouse mirrored me and we left the bar as I let out a chuckle watching the barman sweep up the glass that was drowned in blood. What a good night I thought, I have to come back here again.

  The walk home was refreshing and the air was chilly and invigorating. The wind was blowing gently and strange noises surrounded me but in my messed up world I was actually more curious than ever before. I had time to clear my mind and focus on what I needed to do next. I wanted to get home, have a shower and go to bed. I would need the rest to be on my best form.

  When I got to my house I sat down on the sofa and started to devise a plan of action. Tomorrow I will go to see Georgia and Bernard. I didn’t care any more what they thought of me, my needs were chewing away at my restless mind. I craved to know all her secrets, I knew she had plenty of those. I wanted to be sure there were no more surprises in store for me. I’d had enough, it was more than I cared to handle. This time I would go prepared. I would take my scalpel with me just in case.

  The following morning I went to the local used car dealership ‘Honest Sky’s Car Mart.’ I knew it was the dodgiest place in town but didn’t have much of a choice as I was limited in time to shop around. I didn’t want the car to be traced if it was involved in anything illegal. The owner was notorious for selling black market plates which suited my needs just fine.

  “Morning sir,” said a sour faced assistant with curly black hair and a spotty face. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.

  “Morning, I need a car, one that is cheap and discreet,” I said as I looked around the lot. My eyes spotted an old van with blacked out windows which I thought would be perfect.

  “Yes sir, how much is cheap?” he asked as he followed my gaze. “That one there is only three thousand, a steal really. Do you want to take it for a test drive?” he asked.

  “That’s far too much I don’t want to go over a thousand,” I said as I stared intently at him. This young pup had better not try to mess with me or he’d find out just how nice and convincing I could be, especially with my scalpel.

  “We have this one here Sir. It doesn’t look like much but the engine is okay,” he said as he pointed at a black ford that was rusting and covered in dents.

  “I’ll give you eight hundred, cash. Go get the keys. I’ll take it now,” I said not giving him a chance to argue with me.

  His mouth opened to challenge me but when I shoved the cash into his hand it shut promptly. His eyes lit up with greed as he quickly stashed the money into his pocket. He scuttled off to fetch the keys as I took a closer look at the car I’d just bought. It would have to do, I only hoped it would get me to where I needed to go. I wasn’t convinced it could do more than five kilometres without seizing or blowing up.

  I drove to the shopping mall and bought a six-pack of beer and one ridiculously expensive camera. I went home to get Dariouse and our stuff. I’d decided whilst buying the beer that I needed an ally in order to succeed in finding out Georgia’s secrets.

  I began to prepare some lunch for us and figured that I would mess with his mind to get him to help me. The bacon sizzled loudly in the oil and the smell wafted through the house. This must have woken Dariouse as it didn’t take long for him to come to the kitchen with a big grin on his face. I threw the eggs into the grease filled pan and turned to face him.

  “Hungry?” I asked attempting to seem like I even cared.

  “Yes, I’m starving,” he said as his eyes widened and it looked like he was going to drool on my bleached floors.

  “Have a seat,” I said as I pointed to the kitchen table, “it will only take a sec.”

  “Thank you brother,” he said as his tone of voice seemed alm
ost like he was grovelling. That is so pathetic I thought to myself as I turned my attention back to browning off the eggs.

  I arranged the eggs and bacon on the plates identically and placed them on the table. Now it was time to win him over with my undeniable charm.

  “Do you trust mother?” I asked innocently, trying not to vomit in calling that monster my mother.

  “Yes very much, she loves us Khedlar. She has never harmed me, only given me love and taken care of me. She always has apart from when she was locked up at St Helens, she had no choice then. It took her a while to finally find a way to get out of that dump,” he said passionately. He looked too stupid for words, this was going to be like taking candy from a baby. This is when I realised he didn’t know what mother had really gotten up to.

  “How old were you when mother started escaping St Helens in order to see you?” I asked his overly happy face. To be honest this picture perfect illusion mother had created in his eyes was messed up and I was going to set him straight.

  “I was young but she used to come home only once a month. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that mother ran away so we could become a family again,” he told me.

  “You see Dariouse, I went to St Helens when I was trying to find mother. I found out quite a lot about her escapades.” I had his full attention now as he sat forward on the edge of his seat. It was obvious he wanted to learn more about our dear mother.

  “What do mean Khedlar? Please tell me more, I want to know,” he said. He was almost begging me for the information I fully intended to give him.

  “She escaped at least once a week, didn’t you know? She pretended to be a laundry lady, and used the disguise as a means of coming and going as she pleased. The strange thing is, she didn’t come to see you or father.” I sat back in my chair pretending to look confused before I carried on. Dariouse looked wounded and his eyes welled up with watery tears. I knew I’d hurt him but I honestly didn’t care. “She was escaping so see someone else!” I said as I frowned and showed my disappointment on a face that was a mask of my expression.