When the rest of the world is crazy, what do you do when they say you are insane?
Chapter 1
It is funny how some days the mundane, the boring, the routine of it all looks so depressing. How the daily drudge of getting up to the buzz of the alarm clock sucking coffee down in the hopes of staying awake after the world's fastest shower before you race out the door to sit in traffic to get to an every day type job to work an every day type shift only to head home in every day type traffic to eat a microwaved dinner before collapsing into bed to repeat the next morning seems like a prison. That the best alternative to facing another day like it would be to simply take an ice pick and slam it through your eye and piercing it into your brain to end the monotony. There was a time when that was my life. I hated that life.
It is also funny, in retrospect, that looking back on it now I'd give anything if I could just have it all back. I wish I could have the dull routine. I wish I could simply live that repetitive mind numbing life. I guess you can't unsee things. You can't un-ring a bell. There is no going back.
--
The wheels gripped the pavement as the luxury car made it's way down the road. The chatter of the front seat passengers went on as the young woman sat alone in the back. She was talking, but no one was paying her any mind. Her conversations never made any sense, they never did, so it had been years since they had listened unless they were involving themselves directly with her. Even at those times they talked to her just to have some sense of normalcy even if her responses made no sense in the least to the matter at hand. Sometimes people would try, but mostly she was ignored. A blessing and a curse that she had to live with, one that would change the world as she looked off and asked “Doesn't that seem to be moving quickly?”
--
Standing in the soft rain I gaze at the holes side by side and at the caskets set in them. The staff from the funeral parlor invited those that came to go to the restaurant where the repast was being served. I was going to go, but I needed more time. I looked at the matching boxes my hands clenched in fists jammed in my pockets. What was I going to do? Everyone was telling me what to do. Everyone was willing to give their opinions on what I should do, but it wasn't their sister. Words were being thrown around, big scary words, but people acted as if it was like sending her on a quiet vacation to enjoy a brief trip away from it all. Trouble is that institutions, hospitals, and facilities for people 'like her' didn't sound like a vacation to me.
They didn't have people 'like her' for siblings. They didn't know what it meant and they didn't know what she meant to me. To just shove her off in some, hopefully, sterile place where she would get who knows what kind of treatment wasn't a life. It was well documented in her records that she didn't make sense. Leaving her alone in a facility like that would be like leaving an infant at the same location. She was helpless, they could do whatever, but I couldn't watch her there twenty-four seven, but they wanted me to just drop her off and go on with my life like I could do that! My normal life stopped the minute the phone rang days ago.
“Mr. Johnstone?”
I was woken with a start at my home phone ringing, no one really called me there anymore. Most people used my cell. “Ya?” I rubbed my eyes trying to figure out who wanted what. “What time is it?”
The voice ignored my question, “Sir, we need you to come down to Mercy General”
That woke me up. Some stranger on the phone was asking me to go to a hospital. “Wait, what? What's going on? Who are you”
“Sir, this is the chaplain at Mercy General and there has been an accident”
He couldn't finish his thought as I interrupted him, despite my mother's best attempts at raising me to be a respectful gentleman, “Accident? Who was in an accident? Was it my sister? My parents? Did they ask you to call”
