“But, you should. Talking through these…”
“Will do nothing,” he snapped. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”
“But you’re telling me?”
His body collapsed on the couch next to me. “I think you’re hiding demons too, Samantha Matthews. I want you to introduce me to all of them, because I think I finally found someone whose demons would play nice with my own. It’s okay if I call you Samantha Matthews, right?”
I sat silent.
He leaned his head back and offered me a sad smile. “Fine, I’ll fucking continue giving you everything. Shot after shot. Pop. Pop. Pop. Then clicks, like he didn’t believe all the bullets were used, repeatedly pulling back the trigger in hopes that more bullets would tear through our flesh. I was so happy he was out of bullets…but, no I was wrong. The insanity didn’t stop, because he had more fucking guns, with a hell of a lot more ammunition. He never even told me he was that angry. He just joked about it, so I thought it was just a morbid joke. I never even knew he had a gun. I never thought he was serious.
After the massacre, I mean it was still surreal to me, that word, massacre. How many people can say they’ve lived through a massacre? After the massacre, I became fascinated with blood, especially my own. How it ran through my body, what kept it pulsing through my veins, and the biggest question I could never find the answer to, was why my heart was strong enough to keep surging that blood through my bullet riddled body when my fucking mind wasn’t. Why did I survive? I know I didn’t live after the incident, but why the fuck did I survive?
I was hospitalized for weeks after, but all I remember was pain and news reporters, which in essence was the same monster, wasn’t it? When I finally got released from the hospital, I spent the majority of my time locked inside my room repeatedly slicing open my skin with razorblades like it was a drug. Just to watch my blood flow, watch the choices it made…to clot or to run thickly down my arm in one long stream of crimson. I could feel the quickening of my blood as it thickened and pulsated through my veins. How many people can say they feel that?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging its ends, and scratched at his scruffy face. With a corded neck and clenched jaw, he continued, “Finding me one day, hands bloodied and scarred, my mother dragged me to the hospital and they kept me there for evaluation and questioning.
Did I have blood lust?
Did I feel the need to hurt myself?
Did I feel aggressive towards anyone?
He was my best friend, how did I not know?
Was I in on the plan?
They listened to my fears. I didn’t want to go outside. I always needed an escape plan…but to them, my fears weren’t justified, and medicine was their answer to everything. They believed I was just as sick as Thomas was. Why do people always vilify the people they don’t understand?
Then came the fucking Lithium. They said I was bipolar, manic, beyond repair. So they gave me mood-altering drugs for voices I did not hear and mania I did not feel. I had to have blood tests to closely monitor me and regulate the toxicity of the drugs in my bloodstream. Do you know what it’s like on that? I threw up for a month straight and lost 25 pounds. You don’t get high on it, nope - but you can enjoy some other wonderful benefits, including, but not limited to shit like diarrhea, vomiting, numbness of the brain. God that’s fucking fun, and oh yeah, this one’s the best…permanent deadness. Now, the other shit they shoved down my throat got me high; I hated not being in control. I hated sleeping, nodding out like a fucking junky all the time, moody and irritable. Insatiable.
I was a normal fucking sixteen-year-old kid before this shit. I had seen horror movies, I was well read and smart, I knew what I could turn into because of this. I knew there might be a monster lurking somewhere inside me waiting to escape. And I waited and watched, wondering when the Mr. Hyde in me would introduce himself. Nightmares kept me up, drugs put me out, and my mind was so out of focus and narcotic-induced-comatose that I would sometimes forget my own damn name.
Psychotropic oval-shaped blue pills made me constipated, gave me a sharp case of palsy in my limbs, and kept me in various states of fear and madness. I wasn’t crazy, but they were making me become it. I was a walking zombie, a twisted imitation of myself, damaged by violence and tragedy. They called me delusional and paranoid. They called me the dead kid walking. But when I didn’t take the medications they offered me as my cure, I would still see the splashes of blood against my skin, still smell the gun powder, still hear the echoes of the bullets and laughter. I could still see those fucking pitch-black colorless eyes of my tormentor, my best friend, as he tried in vain to kill me.
The world was trying to change me, telling me I was broken and damaged inside. I decided I was better off on my own, where people wouldn’t assume I was going to turn into the monster that attacked me, like it was a contagious disease.
I ceased to be a person, and instead, became a case fucking study in violence. I became mute, voiceless for months, not wanting to give them anything more than what they took from me. So I wrote in one of those composition notebooks. It was an outlet for my adolescent aggression, my violent thoughts… I was alone and learned to live with the gruesome imagery in my head, by writing. The doctors kept telling me that it was all in my head, but what they forgot was that it had been in front of me. All of it was laid out brutally for my eyes to see the last breaths of my classmates, for my skin to feel the warmth of their blood, for my ears to hear their cries and pleas, for my nose to smell gun powder and acidity of iron, for my soul to feel damaged beyond repair. This wasn’t in my head, this wasn’t in my fantasies, it was chillingly and viciously real.
I spent years building up walls around me to keep people out…If I go to my brother’s, I have to sit in the back, near the exit, in view of everyone, where escape would be quick. The tension coils tightly in my body all the time, I’m constantly in a strained state, my muscles are always working against themselves. I never had to spend too long in a gym, because I get more of a workout just standing somewhere thinking.”
The tips of Kade’s fingers traced a soft line on my jaw. One lone tear quickly slipped over my lashes, then more followed, streaking sadness down my cheeks. He curled his right hand possessively around my throat while the other wiped away my tears. “Kade, I’ve seen nothing in you that show madness, only your very understandable anger. Bad therapy can mess up the rest of your existence if you allow one person whom you think holds a degree in something use their opinions to change you into the person they think you should be.”
“Enough about me. Now,” he breathed against my skin. “Now it’s your turn, Samantha Matthews. I just laid my life out for you, so don’t be scared, because there’s nothing you could say that would make me think differently of you.” The fingers at my throat stroked my skin and added pressure.
“Kade, I’m very happy with the person I was and the person I am. I accomplished more in my life at thirty-two than most people do in their entire lives. I’m not ashamed or guilty of anything I’ve ever done. There’s nothing that I think I’ve done that I regret. Oh, yeah maybe one,” I laughed bitterly. “I guess I didn’t check my husband’s pulse after I thought I killed him, because the sick son-of a bitch is still after me.”