Get into the mind of a mad man. How does he talk? How does he think? How crazy is crazy? Is it genetics? Is it choice? I don't know the answers, but I've often thought of them whenever my poor father came to mind. Years ago, when he was just a young man, shy of twenty-four, he was sent to the asylum on account of mental disorders.
He's a schizophrenic.
As his son, I try to think the best of him and avoid asking myself such questions about his mental health. But I can't help it; his case has always clawed at my curiousity.
I'm not allowed in the "house of horrors", as my mother had long forbid never to set foot into his "cell". My mother, Janice-Leigh, had taken liking to my father out of pity. She had always been drawn to the shipwrecked souls and wanted badly to "heal" my father from his whirling hell. He had a certain charm and innocence about him that lured women into his company. He sweet talked them and made them feel "safe." No one would've suspected him to be insane, but he played it well and the mask of deceit fit him perfectly.
My mother began distancing herself when he savagely described how she would die if she ever tried to leave him. Indeed, my father was still locked in his cell, but that didn't keep her from not seeing him - until that day he had threatened her. I was only twelve at the time, young enough to know my parents disagreed on many things, but not old enough to realize the true seriousness of the situations. At age eighteen, she presented the idea to move to a motel my father had once owned..
"The place" was foreign to both of us. It was located in Arizona, in a desolute area. It reminded me of the Wild West with all the shrubbery surrounding the cabins. I remember distinctly the blinking welcome sign at the dusty entrance. It was dusk, and the sky behind me was a warm orange tint with fiery clouds floating above the horizon. A small breeze whipped my dark hair and flimsy button down shirt as my fingers traced the luminous tubes that spelled my last name: Bates. Bates Motel.
YOU ARE READING
MOTEL CHILD (Haunted)
Mystery / ThrillerHe is left with only one inheritance: his father's motel. Gentle, quiet, and sensitive, young Oliver is oblivious to his father's psychotic past until an older woman and her daughter come to his motel. Their stay is brief, but they leave behind a c...
