Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Read online

  I reluctantly left that day and returned to an empty house where I cried for hours knowing that I didn’t have a family any more. I held Sue’s teddy bear against my chest as I heard the voice messages from Sally’s sister Len calling me every name under the sun. I was falling apart from the inside out. It was the last time I saw Sally for a while until she brought Sue to my house to collect her things. That was the day that they were killed. The day that any chance of fixing things was lost and I was left without a wife or daughter. It was all too much for one man to take.

  My breathing slowed down and eased the strain on my pounding heart, my hands unclenched and eventually I managed to fall asleep.

  Chapter 7

  Am I A Killer?

  The next morning was like any other day; I opened my eyes and lay in bed relaxing. That’s when the trauma of last night hit me hard! I had to detach myself fast although the injection still made me feel drowsy which helped to a certain degree. I felt my leg was feeling better and I decided to go for a walk. I put on my slippers and wrapped myself up in my belt-free robe.

  I peered out of the door. A cold shiver of anticipation ran up my spine. I looked to the right then to the left, I was alone! No one crept the halls, I was free to wonder, but what to do first? I think a nice shower is in order, yes just the right thing to relieve the stresses of life in this place.

  As I walked slowly down the hall, the third light from the end flickered. I made a left turn and entered the dark, white-tiled bathroom. I flicked the switch on and headed towards the towels, they were always kept in a neat pile on the white wooden bench. I would never pick the first towel because someone may have touched it, nor the one on the bottom because it was touching the bench where so many have sat before. Eventually I decided on the second one from the top.

  As I slid the towel out from the pile I heard a scratching sound. At first it was faint and distant but then it started to sound closer and closer, harder and rougher. Where was it coming from? I examined the room from floor to ceiling and just as I made a second sweep something caught my attention on the window. Red letters were daubed in some sort of red paint! It read ‘REDRUM, REDRUM.’

  Okay, maybe the drugs are messing with my head or my mind is on self-attack again. I closed my eyes to see if it would be gone when I re-opened them. No, the words were still there mocking me. I might have killed people who I had loved but I don’t remember it. I don’t know what I had done or how it had happened and now someone was mocking me; rubbing the worst mistake I may have ever made in my life in my face. I felt like my mind was starting to slip.

  I turned around and unfolded the towel in my hands. I heard a loud clang as a metallic object fell to the floor. I bent down searching for it and there it was, a key! I picked up this big old-fashioned key and held it in the palm of my hand. I examined it and the cold metal feeling on my skin took me back, back to my past.

  I saw a boy with a box in a room, the memory felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience. It was like I was looking at myself placing something inside a metal box, locking it with this key and burying it in the woods near the old farmhouse where I grew up.

  As I strained my mind for more information, more answers, the memory faded and I was left in this grubby tiled bathroom. I didn’t really feel like taking a shower any more, I just felt intrigued with the key I now possessed. I peeped out from the bathroom door looking into the hallway to make sure no one was roaming the halls. Nothing, nobody was there and just as I was about to reach my room I felt an unwelcome hand on my back. I jumped round, startled to see Henry smiling away behind me.

  “Gotcha!” he shouted as he laughed in his deep resonating voice. Henry was a full-bellied old relic who thinks that scaring someone in the hallway is the best fun in the world. He was only four foot nothing so it’s not like you would ever see him coming. He had one glass eye which obviously never managed to keep up with the other even though his real eye had a lazy movement itself. He could talk to someone with his glass eye and read the paper with his good one and none would be the wiser. If someone were to win a prize for worst breath, capable of killing a horse, he would take the gold.

  “Hello, Henry,” I said in an unwilling manner, “why don’t you go scare a nurse or something by plopping that glass eye of yours in a cup and giving it to her.” Poor sad fool. He can do anything he likes, just as long as it had nothing to do with me.

  “Good one Khedlar, I can’t wait to see her face, I love shocking people,” he answered quite happily as he strolled towards the recreation room.

  “I would never have guessed,” I muttered to myself as the reason for his being admitted was because he had shocked his neighbour to death one sunny afternoon.

  He had explained to me in the past that he only wanted to give him a slight electric shock when he opened his rubbish bin. I think shocking him to death was his real intention though. He said that his neighbour had ugly gnomes outside his house and that he wanted to pay him back for years of visual discomfort by having to put up with them for so long. Henry must be in his sixties now. He was old, wrinkled and plainly up to no good.

  It reminded me of myself as a child keeping a dead cat in the deep freezer. My mother found it one night just after she had gone through half a bottle of Vodka. We had to call an ambulance as she started having ‘palpitations,’ screaming and saying she was dying. When I was a child I couldn’t understand where I was supposed to keep a dead cat so I could study it later on. Mother punished me and made me cook dinner that night and for the rest of the week. She said it would make me appreciate her more and all she did for me. I personally think she just didn’t want any interruptions while having sessions with Mr Vodka. Father was away on business and as my advocate, he was gone. What mother said was done with no arguments, if not she would come up with a more creative punishment. All this would nowadays fall under child abuse but back then was just considered discipline.

  You see mother was clever when it came to punishments. She would never leave a cut, burn or bruise where it was easily seen by prying eyes. The worst part of it all was that the hidden places were the most sensitive. This made it harder to detach yourself from the pain that mother inflicted.

  One day father was away on one of his teaching conferences, this left us vulnerable to fulfilling mothers every command.

  I’d been in my room reading that day, when I heard mother’s cries travelling up the stairs, filling the house with sadness. I hated mother when she had made Demetrius and I cry from the pain she so lovingly inflicted on us. I just couldn’t hear a woman cry, especially my own mother. I walked down the stairs and entered the kitchen to see her sat at the table in floods of tears. I approached her and cautiously placed one hand on her shoulder.

  “Your father is never here … and … I miss him so much,” she said choking and sniffling between her words of confession.

  “I’m here,” I said trying to sound grown up and mature.

  “His father hurt him so badly when he was young you know,” she said. I could tell she was going to tell me something tragic just by looking at the expression on her face.

  “We used to run away together, your father and I, away from our horrid parents and the world. It was lovely but when we came back we were punished,” she said. I could see her staring at the floor like she was in a trance and remembering the past in her head. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to know but if I abandoned her now I could have upset her further, unleashing the reins for my own abuse. I drew a chair out and sat down beside her. She grabbed my arm tightly with her hand.

  “He’s embarrassed about it all you see,” she carried on, “he used to stop my father from hitting me and took my punishments for me, he is such a good man. You should be proud of your father,” she said looking deeply into my eyes.

  “I am,” I said not really knowing what to say to all these things that mother was telling me. She removed her hand from my arm releasing me from her grip.

  “It was disgusting
how people abused children back then, thank goodness that doesn’t happen any more,” she said. I was expressionless and just stayed staring at her. I wondered what mother saw as abuse. I think I will never know unless she told me.

  “This stays between us, right?” she barked. I could tell that she had said all she was going to say.

  “Yes mother,” I said giving her my word. With that mother had gotten up, grabbed the bottle of vodka and disappeared off to her room. I still remember how scared I was while I sat at the kitchen table, just waiting for her to take out her anger and frustration on me.

  Later on that day it had started to rain outside, it was dark and gloomy making the house dim and cold. I had been so occupied with my books I had completely forgotten about my maths homework. I was sat in the kitchen waiting for mother to finish cooking dinner. I could feel in my gut that something wasn’t quite right with mother. Her mascara was slightly smudged and her body was rigid. She was muttering something under her breath which I couldn’t quite make out. Brother at this point came into the kitchen and sat at the table beside me. He took one look at mother and glanced at me. His eyes widened as the coward got up from his chair and started walking out the door, when mother turned around.

  “Sit down!” she ordered as the capillaries in her eyes seemed to be reaching bursting point.

  My stomach clenched and turned, I knew this wasn’t good at all.

  “Seeing as you boys don’t care about cleaning up and doing your homework, I think it’s time you paid the price for your disobedience!” Her lips curled and her eyes impaled our happiness and robbed us of our voices. “You will be paying the price for both of your mistakes. You are going to watch each other take the punishment. Are we clear?” She scanned our eyes which were wide with terror. Her guarded eyes seemed to slip, revealing an expression that gave away her enjoyment of the thought of us being punished.

  I frantically scanned the kitchen to see what was in arms reach of mother. Knives, chillies, rolling-pin, hot oil, it was hard to tell what she would use and my mind was racing from the anxiety and anticipation of what was to come.

  Mother came towards me and her eyes seemed softer but I could see clearly she had an addiction to the adrenaline high she got from causing us pain.

  “Take off your shoes!” she barked at me as if she was a snarling feral dog. She spoke as saliva escaped her lips and splattered on my face like droplets of acidic rain. “Lay face down on the floor and don’t you dare make a sound. Remember you only have your brother to blame for this!” Her eyes were hollow and I knew vodka had taken over. Mother was nowhere to be found. She grabbed the knife that was on the counter and placed it into the burning oil. I felt myself getting hot and dizzy, finally my body was getting to blackout point. She crouched down by my feet and cut in-between every toe, as I felt the smouldering knife slice into my flesh and the blood started to run … I passed out.

  What happened next I am unaware of but my eyes stung and my bed was covered in blood and urine? I was so weak that I couldn’t move to go to the toilet as the anxious thought of seeing mother in the hallway parallelized me. I had literally pissed myself to sleep.

  The next day Demetrius was screaming when he woke up. I rushed into his room and saw his cut-up naked back was still seeping blood. The wounds had obviously stayed stuck to his t-shirt during the night and made it extremely painful to peel it off in the morning.

  I couldn’t feel my feet, they felt numb. Well my whole body did which at least allowed me to function.

  Downstairs mother had made us breakfast, she was all picture perfect and father was sat at the head of the kitchen table. He was reading the newspaper while drinking his morning coffee.

  I never told father what mother would do to us, not any more, as last time he just laughed and said that in his day he would have gotten way worse. He would tell me that mother only punished us because she loved us and to be thankful for that.

  I grew up thinking that this was normal and all mothers would treat their children this way. It was only when I had overheard teachers talking about the bruises on Tom’s arms that it made me question the normality of my home life.

  I snapped myself out of the past to regain focus on where I was in the present. I approached the doorway to my room as I heard a bit of a commotion coming from round the corner. Footsteps sounded closer and closer so I decided to run into my room and jump into bed. I guess the memories of mother’s discipline triggered me into acting like a scared child. This would happen from time-to-time but it was out of my control.

  When I lay down in bed I felt the hard metal key which I had placed in the pocket of my robe, imprinting its mark on my right leg. I was just about to stash it in my pillowcase when Alice entered my desolate lair.

  “Hello Khedlar. Lovely morning isn’t it?” she stated, smiling at me with that hollow attribute of fake happiness. When I looked closer at her smile I noticed there was a bit of lettuce stuck in her teeth. Disgusting, she had obviously decided that ignorance is bliss and letting reality spoil her day was just not worth it. It scared me how fake these people were, one day calling you a murderer and the next day ‘oh what a lovely morning.’ And all the time nothing but smiles of pure evil.

  “Here are your pills, and here is your water,” she said handing them over to me. Her hand brushed against mine and I felt a strong urge to wash my hands immediately! I never enjoyed skin-on-skin contact, especially with some emotionless corpse like her but I held it in just so she would leave me in peace faster. I swallowed them with one gulp of water, they always scratched on the way down. “Slept well I hope?” she asked, as if trying to act like she cared. She stroked her neck which showed how uneasy she was in the situation.

  I was going to say ‘oh lovely, those injections are incredible, can I have another please?’ in a sarcastic tone of voice but just before my thoughts formed into words she continued.

  “Jake will be here soon. He said he likes you a lot and he is looking forward to having another chat. These young ones get so involved, but I guess we all have faults don’t we?” she rambled on critically. It was the most honest thing I had ever heard from her lips, which made me hate her even more.

  ‘Yeah! Like you the other night calling me a murderer and ordering that dark, eerie man, what’s his face, to come in and stick a needle in me’ I thought in my mind.

  “Oh well. You’re not really in the mood for talking today are you? See you later, bye,” she said in a happy squeaky voice. Such tones as hers were painful to my ears and impossible to ignore.

  She smiled for the third time as she left my room. Well at least I can relax now for a bit until the monkey man comes to call.

  Before I knew it there he was with flushed cheeks and his eyes glazed as if he had been crying. He walked over to the side of my bed and just stared at the floor, dazed.

  “What’s the matter Jake?” I asked him, curiously. Why had his character changed so much since the other day?

  “Nothing, it’s my problem; I know it’s wrong to bring my personal problems to work,” he said as his eyes began to well up.

  “Now Jake, let’s talk about it. I won’t tell a soul, okay?” I said, surprising myself a bit.

  “It’s, it’s my granny, she… she’s going to come here because, because they’ve told the family she has lost her mind.” He ended this disclosure with a sniffle while wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. My eyes kept a constant check on that mucus filled sleeve to make sure it was far away from me while trying to continue with the conversation.

  “Oh well, this happens all the time Jake, you get old and you don’t act ‘normal’ and that’s it. You end up as a prisoner in this place.”

  He burst into tears. “But she is not crazy, I know she’s isn’t, she just thinks that my grandfather, who died last year, is in the house, and she talks to him. That’s all, the poor thing,” he stuttered as he tried to defend her sanity but failed miserably.

  “Okay Jake, we’ll fight for her freedo
m and demand them to reevaluate her mental state. Then you will know for sure,” I said while trying to encourage this sensitive barge.

  “My mother couldn’t handle the news,” he said “I think she is petrified of the thought of her mother being crazy, let alone living here. She’s convinced that if my grandmother comes to live here she will just waste away,” he squeaked.

  “Well Jake just help her the way you help me. If it’s been checked and been proven for certain then you just need to understand the reality of her future situation, and just accept it.”

  He looked at me through layers of tears and wiped them away with the back of his big hands. “I guess you’re right; I have to be strong for my granny,” he concluded.

  “That’s right Jake. Now calm down and know it will all be okay, you’ll see,” I said.

  Jake had fast become a comfort to me, I don’t think he even realised how his simple normal life and problems had a way of calming and grounding me. I came to the realisation rapidly that I wasn’t very mentally stable and I needed an anchor to firmly hold me in reality. Jake freely gave me this, he made me feel like an average man not a mentally ill patient who was responsible for murder. I always felt amused and entertained around him. I believe this is what having a friend feels like. I had never had friends, not real ones anyway and he was the closest I have ever gotten to having one. I felt responsible for making him feel better which was also strange for me to admit to myself. I had only ever acted this way with Sue, my little girl. Not even my wife communicated her true feelings and was very cold when it came to any show of affection, even holding hands while walking down the street was just not okay in her eyes. I had decided that I would try to help Jake as a friend and if it turned out I had made a mistake in trusting him he posed no real threat as he was as daft as two planks of wood.