A Neat Mess

11.Who Was Brenton

Sam's reluctance to take Jenna to a therapist transcended reason.

As a young adult, Sam had visited her clinically insane uncle Brenton in a mental hospital. Sam's father had committed his own brother after a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

Brenton, as a young man with a knack for finding trouble, had a reputation that preceded him. His teenage years were marked by bad decisions—dabbling in drug use, frequent fights, and hanging out with the wrong crowd, often landing him on the wrong side of the law. Despite his frequent brushes with authorities for vandalism, petty theft, and disorderly conduct, Brenton had managed to avoid prison through a mix of luck and the leniency of those who respected Sam's dad, a war veteran.

In the family, Brenton was the uncle "we don't speak of."

The day that Sam had visited Brenton in the mental asylum was the only time she'd met him, and events that followed left a dreadful stain on Sam's memories that compelled her to stay away from these places as much as she could. In fact, Sam was not even taken there to visit her uncle. It was one of her mother's morbid parenting technics.

For Sam, whatever the intention was, she read it as another reason to be ashamed of who she was related to and where she could have ended up if it wasn't for her mother.

All Sam could remember was how depressing and lonely that place looked. The walls were a clinical grey with darker grey skirting boards. In fact, the most colourful thing inside the place was her favourite floral dress – a sight that the staff and patients, who were now strongly acclimatised to the banality of the place, would often look upon with awe.

As Sam walked through the facility, it felt like every scream and every fear in that place were imprinted on the walls and grew and spread like a dark, omnipresent ivy. All Sam wanted was to get out of there and never go back.

"That is where you're going to end up if you stop your medications and let the crazy get out, do you understand?" Sam's mother once said to her as they stood in the hall, watching one of the patients struggling to release himself from the constraints that one of the security guards had placed on him. "That's if you're lucky enough to not to end up in prison! That's a million times worse than here."

After Sam and her mother's visit, Brenton showed remarkable improvement. His doctor agreed he could take a few days off to stay with his 82-year-old mother, Alice. They spent the evening enjoying a pleasant conversation and a home-cooked meal before retiring to their separate rooms around ten o'clock.

The next day, Alice awoke early, as she usually did, to make breakfast for her son—the perpetual late riser. Despite her debilitating arthritis, which affected almost all the joints in her arms and legs, Alice rarely let it stop her from cooking and cleaning, even if it sparked an argument. At 9:30 AM, almost four hours after she'd gotten out of bed and made breakfast, she decided her son's sleep-in had run its course and hobbled upstairs to his room.

As she ascended the stairs, Alice called her son's name.

No answer.

As her hand coiled around the doorknob, she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, but opened the door anyway. At first, her brow crinkled in confusion at the perplexing sight before her, Alice's eyes went wide with terror. There, on the bed, sat the lifeless, naked body of her son with a plastic bag tied over his head. At the mouth, the bag had been sucked inward, no doubt the result of rapid, panicked breaths. If Brenton's television hadn't gone on sleep mode, his mother's horror would have been compounded by the sight of the vulgar adult movies that he'd been playing all night. But the image that her eyes were reluctantly fixed on were disturbing enough. She opened her mouth to scream, but lost consciousness, collapsing on her son's bedroom floor.

Even for the police, who see a lot, what they found in that room and the tape he was watching was sickening. One of the officers mumbled, "Rot in hell, pedo," and her partner nodded, his face twisted in disgust

Although Brenton's accidental suicide occurred years after Sam's parents separated—her father having abandoned them and never returned—Sam's mother insisted they attend the burial. The turnout was small and disheartening, with only five people present, none of Brenton's own siblings.

Sam found herself overwhelmed by the emotional damage of her early years, despite her logical mind trying to cope. She felt as horrified and embarrassed as she had as a little girl in the mental hospital hallways. Her emotions were in denial, repeatedly shouting 'never' as if to ignore the pain. Even though she hadn't ended up in a mental asylum or prison, she didn't feel she had grown up well.

Hearing a door open and close gently, Sam realized Ben was awake. The clock showed twenty past five, making it pointless to return to bed. She had to start getting ready for work soon.

Sam watched Ben walk downstairs. At nearly forty, he was in excellent shape, and she wondered where all those beers went.

"Hey, how long have you been awake? Couldn't sleep?" Ben asked quietly.

"Had a bad dream. I can't accept that Jenna could be the problem. I can't picture her hurting anyone," Sam replied.

Ben sat beside her. "It's too early to think clearly, but I'm sure you have a plan."

Sam continued, "I feel like something has broken in her. She seems deeply disturbed."

"That's you, not Jenna," Ben said, sounding harsh but meaning well.

"For now, we need to observe her more," Sam insisted.

"More helicopter parenting? When has that ever worked?" Ben asked.

"I was thinking of having Lucille here full-time, 24/7, and we install cameras" Sam proposed, ignoring Ben's comment.

"We also need cameras everywhere," Sam added.

"So, you want supervision over supervision?" Ben asked.

"Yes. Things can happen when we're away. She might not be as careful as we think. What if she has a boyfriend we don't know about?"

"And he's only dating Lucille to get to Jenna?" Ben said.

"I know you're being sarcastic, but yes, it's a possibility and not uncommon."

"I have to say no for several reasons. The main one is that it would offend Lucille, who still cares about Jenna. It's hard to find someone as flexible and trustworthy as she is. If she wants to do something wrong, she'll find another way."

Sam wasn't thrilled with the outcome, but she saw Ben's point. That didn't mean she couldn't find other ways to keep watch.