confessions of a murderer

chapter 2

When you get into a certain mindset, you can ignore what everyone else says. Most people call it getting high, but I have my own name for the amazing feeling of being in control for once. I call it my twilight zone. When I'm in my twilight zone, no one can touch me. No one can tell me who I am or what I am allowed to do. No one can tell me I'm a
murderer, or that I'm not allowed to walk on this earth. I'm in charge when I'm in my twilight zone. It's nice.

Thinking back, my uncle always told me I didn't deserve to walk on this earth. This earth. Did he mean there were other earths I could walk on? Or was he just trying to fill up space in what he wanted to be a fancy sentence? My uncle was the kind of man who you didn't cross. You just didn't. There was nothing to be said, no unspoken rulebook or set of guidelines. You just knew. If you were born into our sick, twisted family, then you were born knowledgeable of my uncle's wrath. You just knew. You had to.

I was the exception. I've always been the exception. I was the one who didn't come to life knowing about my uncle. I was the one who was different. I was the murderer.

It's actually kind of fitting. I was the one born messed up, so naturally, I was going to be the one that ended up the most messed up. If there was one thing my family didn't judge each other about, it was being messed up. We all were. But I was more so than everyone else, and they all broke their unsaid rule to not judge based up on the quantity of messed up things you had done. In my family, it was kind of like your IQ, but opposite. The higher IQ you got, the better you were. The higher messed-up-rate you got, the worse you were. But it went unsaid. The entire family knew I was the one mess-up in their long line of perfectly covered up mistakes. And they all judged me for it. All except my Mom and Dad, of course. But they ended up being killed, anyway, so what's the point? Killed by the messed up one, the
murderer, me. And I'd like to say it hurt, but really, it didn't. It should have, so I say it did, but it didn't. In reality, I've been in
my twilight zone ever since the night of Mom and Dad's death. Ever since everyone started blaming me, I've been in my twilight zone. It's not voluntary, though. I don't think I ever actually decided that I was going to be in my twilight zone from Mom and Dad's death on. It was more of a self-defense mechanism then, and now it's become me. I am my twilight zone. I'm not really there anymore. Sure, I eat and sleep and drink and interact with people, but I do so as little as I
can. Today was really the first time I had ever stood up to anybody. After Mom and Dad's death, of course. Nothing bad happened before Mom and Dad died, and vice versa. Nothing good ever happened after. Except
for Jayden. He was good. I liked Jayden. He had a pretty voice and angry teddy bear hair and I liked that. I didn't like how he kicked
me, but that's okay. He made up for that with everything else.

So when I woke up, I decided not to voice my thoughts on him kicking me. He had been nice to me so far, so why ruin it? He didn't say anything about my nightmares, either, which I was grateful for. I don't know why he didn't, though, seeing as he slept in the same bed with me, a ways apart, but still. My nightmares are usually very obnoxious, and I more than likely woke him up. Maybe he just didn't want to say anything? I doubt it. He didn't seem to care when he
kicked me last night. I probably didn't even have any nightmares.
Whenever I was scared of the potential nightmares, I used to go crawl
into bed with Caroline and they would all go away. I would get yelled
at in the morning, of course, but it was worth it because I could
finally sleep. The nightmares had become more frequent, however, and
soon, I had one every night. That's when I began to run away to the
alley, so I didn't wake Caroline up.

Jayden kissed me lightly on the top of my head. "Care to explain?"

"Explain what?" I asked, fearing the worst. If he asked, he would find
out that I was a murderer.

"The nightmares." How was I supposed to explain? Oh, hey, Jayden, by
the way, I murdered my parents. No biggie. Like that was going to
work.

So I lied. "I've always been afraid of monsters," I replied timidly. I
wouldn't meet his eyes. What if he looked at me and was able to read
me and saw right through my lies? Then what? Would he call me out on
it? Would he get mad? I hadn't known him well enough yet.

And he hadn't known me very well either. He nodded, a small smile
creeping onto his face. "I'll always be there to hold you, I promise."
And, stupidly, I believed him. And it was the worst mistake of my
life. Worse than killing my parents, worse than being me. Worse than
being a murderer.

But, of course, I didn't know it at the time. So I beamed at him,
stupidly. It was the biggest smile I had smiled in months, and from
the look on Jayden's face, he knew it, too.