I open my eyes as a painful thud echoes throughout my head. It’s dark. Nothing can be seen, so I reach around with one hand with the other holding my head steady as the pain trickles away. However, something is in my hand. One of our kitchen knives, covered in a wet, warm liquid only to be accompanied by a rotten odor.
“What the hell happened?” I ask myself. Feeling the cold floor, I realize I am still in my parent’s big, old stone house. As my eyes adjust with the darkness, I feel next to me a figure. It is tall, but with a lump on its lower end, and as my hand dribbles down further I feel two extensions: legs. “Oh my-.” I am cut off as I lift my hand to my face noticing the feeling of familiar ooze. My eyes focus on it and learn the color red, and then I say it, “Blood.”
I jump up from the ground and look at the floor. Two figures are there. The faces are masked by darkness, but both are barefoot as toes stick out. I feel the blood flowing around my feet as it draws from the two corpses. I hit the light switch: Mom and Dad. I stumble to the ground beside them and toss the knife away. I drench my eyes in tears and blood from my stained hands; pulling my head to the ground and rolling over.
There is a sound of rushing water from nearby. I get up, and hurry to its source: the kitchen. No one is there, but as I walk up to turn the sink off, blood rushes down the drain as if someone was washing their hands. Steps and laughs are heard in back of me, so I turn and see him standing there. On the hutch in the living room. That large green smile that I remember from moments ago which I thought was a dream. Two big eyes, long purple shoes, with a body stuffed with fluff. The clown doll, Hutch, stood above with small traces of blood on his hands.
“You did it,” I say, catching my breath beneath my tears. “You killed them! You-!”
“What’s going on down there?” screams my Aunt Matilda from upstairs. She’s my mother’s older sister (I like to think much older). Her cold voice always matched that grey-stained hair and wrinkled skin. I hear her steps come down and then a scream, waking the neighborhood.
Blue and red lights flash from the outside of the windows. Cops rush in through the house as my Aunt Matilda holds my eight-year-old brother Danny close. He barely sheds a tear, but looks at me as if I’m a monster. So does Aunt Matilda. She would always say, “Andrew, you’ll never amount to anything. You and you’re drinking!” This time was no different, as the police had to keep her from coming at me with the bloody knife on the ground. She wasn’t who they were checking out though: just me.
I hear Detective Carver speaking with my lawyer and psychiatrist. Dr. Yelkins was always called whenever I was in legal troubles. Harvey, like the doctor could usually always work out some deal to get me out of jail (most of the time) but this was different.
“He’s still my patient,” says Dr. Yelkins. “The laws of the state are that anyone who can be found criminally insane is at least given a psychiatric evaluation.”
“Not only that,” Harvey argues with the detective whose shaking his head. “Someone with a mind as unstable as his is not good for prison. You’ll be doing more harm than rehabilitating.”
Detective Carver says, “Look, you two. It is not going to be hard to convince a jury that a man with a history of violence and criminal activity murdered his own parents out of a fit of rage and withdrawals from alcohol.”
“That’s just the thing,” Dr. Yelkins argues. “It isn’t his fault. The years of drinking and sudden withdrawals has caused-.”
