Paranoiac (12 page)

The door in
front of me swung open and standing in front of me was my father.
As he towered over me I truly felt like an awkward teenager again.
Tears were running down his puffy swollen face. It’s so strange
seeing a grown man cry, especially if he’s your father. My dad, for
as long as I knew him, never cried before this night. I always
thought seeing him like this would shock me but I felt nothing. I
was numb and my mom finally lost her battle. My dad’s features
twisted into anger and he grabbed me by my shirt and slapped me
across my face. “It was you! You killed her!” He yelled, specks of
spit flying into my face. Falling to his knees, he hugged me for
one of the first times in my life and sobbed.

I
smiled with a wide grin at this gesture. Not because this moved me
or touched my heart in some endearing way. I was smiling because
it
was
my fault she was dead. I
killed her out of mercy and it scared me how easy it was. It broke
my heart that she died by my hands but it made me indescribably
happy with how much it devastated him. He always blamed me for her
sickness. He beat me, tortured me emotionally and fractured my
soul. Every time he terrorized me, he tore out and killed a piece
of my humanity. I smiled, tears budding in the corners of my eyes
as I recounted my dark and irreversible deeds.

That night, I heard from my room a whispering, dry plea in
the form of my name. At first I couldn’t tell if I was hearing
things or if someone was actually calling out my name. The more I
heard my name called out in between rasping breaths the closer I
got to her room. The door was already open when I got to her. She
laid there, her eyes almost bulging out of her tiny, shriveled
skull. She was motioning for me to come closer, to come into the
room. I hated seeing her like this. Her hair was once beautiful,
full and shiny. Now it was more wiry, patchy and lifeless. Her skin
used to glow and now it hung off her bones loosely. She was barely
human and this wasn’t how I wanted to remember her. She kept
motioning for me to come in but my legs were shaking. “Zac, come
here,” She said in the most weak pathetic voice I had ever heard. I
stepped into her room and slowly walked over to her bed, convinced
that if I walked any faster it would somehow break her.

The room smelled awful. I could smell rot, dead skin and
antiseptics. I couldn’t fathom being this sick, lying in my own
filth, being able to smell myself die and decompose, being so weak
that just the will to stay alive was an insufferable pain. As I
walked closer and closer to her, the smell got worse and worse. She
looked up at me when I got to the side of her bed. Her eyes, oh
god, those pitiful eyes. She grabbed my wrist with more strength
than I thought she had but it didn’t last long. Her hands were icy
cold and her nails were sharp and untrimmed. She looked me straight
in the eyes and dryly said, “Isaac baby, I want you to kill me.” I
was shocked and had tried to take a step back but she tightened her
icy grip. “Isaac, you are going to kill me. You have
to.”

I
didn’t fight back, staring at her face in awe. “Mom, I know it’s
hard but I just can’t. I’ve never hurt anything,” I said to her
avoiding the piercing eyes that focused on me.

“
Please dear, you’re the only one that can do it. Your dad’s
too weak. You’re strong, you’re like me,” She tried to sit up but
she couldn't muster the strength.

She let go of my wrist. I could see the tears spilling out of
her eyes. “Mom I can’t, it’s not fair.” I could have left her and
this conversation but my morbid curiosity welded me to the sick
room.

“
Don’t lecture me on what’s fair Isaac,” She said before
coughing. Her breath was awful. It was musty and smelled putrid,
like she had been vomiting in her mouth and swallowing it back
down. Her coughing subsided and she wiped at her mouth with a
dirty, stained, rancid rag. “Isaac, this isn’t living. I’m just
sitting here waiting to die all because your awful father can’t let
me go.” She sat for a long while, just staring at me.

I
was starting to understand. Yet I didn’t know if I could do this to
her, the only person that loved me. Still I understood why she
wanted to die. “How could I even hurt you?” I asked. She smiled as
my resolve weakened. “How could I live with myself?” I sat in the
chair behind me and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I couldn’t
believe I was even considering this.

“
It’s easy baby. Just take this pillow and put it over my head
until I stop moving.” She stared at me, tears in her eyes. “Zac, if
you do this, it will set me free. What you’re doing is a good
thing. What you’re doing, above all else will hurt him, your dad.”
She smiled and touched my hand lovingly. I could almost see an
afterimage of who she once was. “I know you hate him Zac and I
haven’t loved him for years. He refuses to let me die. He keeps me
in this hell and he tortures and hurts my baby boy.” She was crying
now and it was so pathetic.

“
Mom, you’re just as bad as him. You let him treat me the way
he does.” I clenched my fists. Not because I hated him or her but
because she was so desperate. She was desperate enough to appeal to
my rage. She was trying to fuel this murderous deed with the hate
of my dad. And when she saw that it wasn’t working she tried to
make herself the victim of my furious hatred. Everything she said
was pushing me closer to the edge. She was making it easier for me
to make the decision. That’s the power she had over me. That’s the
power the people I love hold over me. “Okay,” I said quietly, then
bowed my head and started crying.

My
mom handed me a puffy white pillow and slumped down flat on her
back in the bed. I took the pillow, stood up and hovered over her
face. “It’s okay Isaac, just do it swee-” I jammed the pillow on to
her weak, wheezing face and pressed down as hard as I could. She
couldn’t fight back. I thought of all the times dad hit me and
pressed harder with every strike I felt across my face. I
remembered her always sitting in the background, ignoring the
bruises and my screams. I used the anger to press harder and
harder. She shifted under me and I could hear her muffled moans. I
could feel and see her bones writhing underneath her skin. It
didn’t take long before everything was quiet. I feared that in her
last moments she changed her mind, that it wasn’t instinct that
drove her to fight back but fear of dying at the last second. I’ll
never know.

I calmly took
a step back from my crying dad and stared him dead in the eyes. “We
only have each other now,” He said to me softly, sniffling and
rubbing at his nose. My face distorted in anger at his words. It
was too much too late. He had been taking out all of his fears,
anger and frustration on me for years. And now he wants to treat me
like his loving son. He must have been drunk, desperate or both.
The instant he saw my face he knew it was impossible. He felt the
weight of his actions and his dead wife on his shoulders. Walking
back into her room, he shut the door and continued
sobbing.

I slinked away
angrily, went down the hall, down the stairs and straight into my
room. Packing my bags, I grabbed my birth certificate and social
security card and left. I had just finished high school, had my own
bank account and trust fund, so I just left. Taking one of my dads'
cars, I took off to Chicago. I knew he wouldn’t report it stolen;
he knew he owed me. At least that’s what I was hoping, especially
after his new found conscience.

Journal Entry Twenty One

I felt myself
being pulled out of the car as I sped down the highway. An adult
again, I sat back on my old bed, holding the journal. I tossed the
notebook on the bed in disgust and jumped to my feet. Once again a
never ending stream of tears were running down my face as I
restlessly wandered around my room. Those memories had to have been
bullshit. I refused to accept any of it.

My mom died
when I was over a thousand miles away, sitting in my English Lit
class while Molly copied my notes. How could I forget something
like that? How could I lie to myself like that? I, so clearly,
remember going to her funeral and my dad not being there. Molly had
been consoling me at the airport before I flew back home. I
couldn’t have killed her because I loved her; I was destroyed when
she passed away. But something inside of me knew it was true and
now the cat was out of the bag. The truth was crawling under my
skin and I couldn’t shake it off. I tried to push the guilt away
but I could still feel my hands pressing down on that pillow. The
sound of her gasping, ragged breathing was still fresh in my
ears.

Then there was
my dad. He hadn't been calling me all those times after I published
my first book, wanting to take credit for my success. Those calls
were because it was the first time he’d seen any sign of me since I
had run away. He was reaching out because he actually loved me. He
regretted abusing me and wanted me to come back yet I threw it into
his face.

I heard a
gunshot from behind me and saw an image of my father lying dead on
the floor. The side of his head was missing and his body was
surrounded by liquor bottles. “No!” I yelled, covering my ears and
slumping to the floor, my back to the bed.

I started
rocking back and forth. The cogs were slowly turning. My memories
were starting to fade back and snap back into place. My mom was
dead and I killed her. My dad was dead and he killed himself,
because of me, and all of this was because of me. I blocked it all
out. Booze, Molly and my stories were the only things that mattered
to me anymore. After my dad died, I didn’t even go to his funeral.
Of course I didn’t. I hated his guts and I never forgave him for
what he did to me, for making my mother so miserable that she
wanted to die. She had been so despondent that she begged me to
kill her when she got too weak to do it herself.

After he died
his lawyers called me and told me that he had left me everything. I
always knew he would leave everything to me. It was his way of
saying sorry, or at least that’s what I was telling myself.
Truthfully he probably did it out of guilt more than anything. And
of course I soullessly accepted. I kept telling myself the bastard
owed it to me.

When I
inherited all of his belongings it just made me feel empty. It made
me feel alone and forced me to realize that I owned everything that
belonged to that evil man. Everything he loved and I hated belonged
to me and I didn’t know what to do with it. I wanted to burn all of
it. I wanted to give it all away but for some reason I was never
able to.

Grudgingly, I
looked around the room and finally accepted that this house
belonged to me. I was the one who re-designed it. Even though I
hated the place, I was drawn to it. I think in some sick way it’s
because I killed her here. I don’t know why it made this place so
alluring but it did. Maybe it was because in some twisted way it
was the most intimate moment of my life and I refused to let it
slip away so easily.

But I still
couldn’t remember how I even got here. I knew I owned this wretched
place, that I escaped to it from time to time but it wasn’t very
often. And I only ran away from my quaint, little house when I
wanted to hide from my manager, my publishing agency or old college
friends. Ever since my books gained minor popularity, every person
I had a class with in college thought they could get something from
me. I didn’t even need the money I had.

I was
completely alone, sitting on a fortune and no one to share it with.
Molly barely spoke to me since after college. It was not because
she had something against me but because she had been traveling the
world ever since graduation. That’s all she ever wanted to do and
she was the only one I wanted to love. She was the person I gave
money to. Molly always let me pay for her adventures and it made me
happy to spoil her. She always bought me gifts from wherever she
was but what I really loved were her letters. It meant so much to
me for someone to handwrite a letter in this age of texts and
emails. She sent me one every week and it was always
perfumed.

Unfortunately
that’s all I could really remember. I pulled myself on to the bed
and picked up the journal. This had all of the answers. It was the
key to untangling my true memories from the false ones. I wanted to
know everything but something silent tugged at me. It was a warning
and it whispered, “Maybe you lied to yourself for a reason. You
should know that the fantasy is much, much better than the real
thing.” I shook my head and rubbed at my eyes. Tired, my body hurt
all over and I was so dehydrated I could hardly wet my lips. The
only thing left for me to do was to continue on. I’ve come this
far, dredged through the confusion and the lies trying to figure
all of this out. All the while I had been deluding myself into some
ignorant, safe bubble. Inwardly, I knew none of this could end
well. I entered this life terrified and screaming and I’ll probably
end it the same way.

Weakly, I
pulled myself onto the bed and grabbed the notebook. I sat on the
edge of the bed and held it in my hands. It was warm and heavy,
almost like it was alive. My hands were shaking as I opened the
journal, scared of what I would find. I’ve been building walls and
lying about my past to protect myself for as long as I could
remember. Starting to read the journal once again, I felt that same
strange sensation take hold of me. I felt the familiar tug on my
body, like a lasso being wrapped around my waist, pulling me into
another world.