At eighteen, I stood staring into the bathroom mirror. I felt like I was six again and it was the first time I heard the word freak. I was in the bath-tub with my little brother. William, is what I called him. My parents never seemed to give him much attention, so I thought it was my job to take care of him. He never asked, but I always washed him when we took a bath. As I rubbed the soap-soaked sponge over William’s tiny face, I could hear my parents arguing in the other room. “It’s not fair,” I heard my mother say, her voice cracking, close to tears. “Jody, be honest,” my father said. “He’s a freak, for God’s sake. Can’t you at least see that much. I mean, what was the first thing the Doc did when that fucking thing came out of you. You remember don’t you?” I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I ignored it, and continued playing with my foam blocks.I dunked them under the water for a moment, before hanging them on the tub wall, one by one in the shape of a castle. It seemed as if William had smiled at my creation, so I smiled as well. He began to cough, a hacking, wet sound, and I knew there would be something coming out of his mouth at any moment. I grabbed some toilet paper, folded it over three or four times and wiped around his open lips, careful not to push any of the mucus back into his mouth. A noxious brown-green liquid trailed off the tissue, hanging like a wet spider-web until it splashed into the soapy water. The smell reminded me of when dad came home in the morning, instead of late at night. He’d always lift me up and I could see a crusty outline around his lips that begged me to wipe it away, yet his breath smelled the same as William’s mucus and I could never make myself encroach upon it. I stood in the tub, the water splashing against my shins. I shivered and William felt the same chill. “I wonder where Mom is with our towel,” I said to William. He made no effort to reply, his tongue hung limp between his lips. His strange eyes crossed, and his head rolled around in a choppy, awkward circle. “William, cut it out, I’m going to--” The door flew open, the knob slamming into and through the wallpaper and sheetrock where it became lodged. The force of the door crashing through the wall reverberated, knocking my foam-block castle, William, and I back into the tub. We ended up sitting paralyzed, facing the darkened doorway. There were no lights shining behind the figures outlined by the doorframe, but the bathroom light, and the steam from the tub displayed my parents in a way that I will never forget. My father’s gritty hand was wrapped around the back of my mother’s neck. All of his teeth were visible, clenched and white against the dark hair around his lips. My mother was hanging like William’s tongue, only attached by my father’s hand wrapped around her neck. “Do you see that, Jody!” my father screamed, pointing at William and me with one hand, and violently shaking my mother with the other. Her hair whipped in front of her face, and I would have been surprised if she could see us at all. “That’s supposed to be our child. That fucking Freak! If you want to waste your time, trying to get that, that, thing to work in this world, then go ahead. But I won’t be around, you can bet your sweet ass, I won’t.” My mother’s sobs grew in intensity, and I could hear her choking on them. My father let her go, and she dropped like a corpse onto the floor. I had never seen my father like this, I wanted to ask him something, I wanted him to lift me up, and I wanted to wipe that crust off of his lips, but I couldn’t. He stood there panting and gritting his teeth, for what seemed like a long time, before turning around and walking out into the darkness from which he and my mother came. I stood up, horrified by what I had just seen. I knew it was my fault, but I couldn’t understand why. I thought it was strange that he only mentioned one person, considering William was with me the entire time. I could hear my mother stirring as I rose again from the tub. She looked at me and I could see the pain in her eyes as she tried to smile. “Stay right there, baby. Mommy will be right back,” she said, as she got up and left the bathroom. I did as I was told and when she returned, her hair had been put up in a ponytail, revealing a fat blue bruise on the top of her left cheek. She handed me a towel, and I wrapped it around myself and William. My mother left again and returned with a small step-stool that I used to reach the sink to wash my hands, and brush mine and William’s teeth. I stepped up and looked at myself wrapped in the light-blue towel. My hair dripped bits of water onto the rim of the white porcelain sink. I waited a little while for my mom to get me my toothbrush, and squeeze some mint-jelly onto it. But she just stood behind me, breathing slowly, staring at us in the steamy reflection of the mirror. I stared at myself for a while, noticing that I had covered William’s face with my towel. I loosened the left-side of the towel to reveal his shrunken head attached to my shoulder. In the mirror, for the first time I felt ashamed. I let the towel drop to the floor, as my mother’s footsteps faded from the bathroom and vanished into the dark. Believing that I was alone, I recalled my father’s screams and realized that I was the freak he was talking about. The reason he just left me, my mother, and William alone. I felt William’s head tilt back, his wide open mouth revealing row after row of deformed teeth jutting out in improper directions. I could see for the first time why his tongue was always hanging out of his mouth, for the insides were so crowded by teeth, they provided no room. His eyes were mismatched, not only in color, but in their oblong shape and differing distance from the top of his skull. His hair was sparse, as if suffering from old age, and it clung to the wrinkled flesh that covered his misshapen head. In the mirror I saw myself staring at William, my little brother, who could not control the movement of his head, or his mouth, or his eyes. His ears were absent and he began to look less and less human as I stared. I closed my eyes and began to cry. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don‘t know what to do,” I chanted through sniffles and tears. I opened my eyes, tears mingling with the bath-water still drying on my face, and saw my mother standing behind me. In the mirror I saw her lift her right hand and reach towards William. Her face contorted as she came closer and closer to where my shoulder met his head. She began to shake, bringing her left hand towards her face to cover her mouth, clenching her eyes shut completely before her warm hand rested upon our wet flesh. “I’m sorry baby, mommy’s so sorry,” she said, pulling her hand away from her mouth and reaching towards her pants. I didn’t know what she was trying to dig out of her pocket, but she was having a difficult time getting whatever it was. I turned around, hoping to help her, but as soon as I did she wailed, dropping a shiny object, and falling to the floor. “Mommy,” I said, “What’s the matter?” I dropped off the step-stool and inched closer to her, but she kept backing away. I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to hold her, or be held. I wanted her to tell me everything was going to be okay, or that there was nothing wrong with me, or something, anything except this constant backpedaling. “Mommy?” I said, again, desperate for some connection. “Just go to your room, and go to bed, baby. This will all be over tomorrow,” she replied. Scared and feeling utterly alone, I listened, stepping into the darkness beyond the bathroom. I looked back for an instant and saw my mother search the bathroom floor for a moment, before rising to her feet. As she stood, I caught a glimpse of her now steady hand grasping the long handle of a butcher’s knife, before she reached back and slammed the door shut. Too scared to do anything but go to bed, I spent the rest of the night telling William that everything would be alright tomorrow, just like Mommy said it would. Nothing to worry about, I told him. I remember thinking in vivid detail before I fell asleep, that maybe, just maybe, this was all a dream. “How wrong could I have been, William?” I asked, eighteen again, and feeling just as terrified as I was twelve years ago. I came to accept the reasons that my mother killed herself that night. My therapist told me that it wasn’t my fault, and I believed her, respected her, even loved her for that insight. All of her questions allowed me to talk, to spill myself out to her, but she couldn’t help me anymore. Nor could my estranged father, the ghost of my dead mother, my doctors, not even William…. Only me. Looking at William for the last time, I felt ugly, disgusting. A monster, a freak, a disease that needed to be eradicated. “William,” I said feather-soft. “If you’re really there, little brother, show me that you’re alive.” My words broke down a bit, my voice crawling towards a darker place. “Speak William. Come on! Shake, move, spit, anything. Please for the love of God, do something! William!? William?” I asked for the last time, crying with my hands clenched around the white porcelain sink. I looked back at us in the mirror, praying that I would hear him speak, utter just a single world and I could go back to believing that he was real. No luck. His eyes stayed blank, and his tongue just hung there, limp and dry as a thick desert worm. If I was going to accomplish anything, I knew I had to act, and not just mull around thinking about it for eternity. It was tonight or never. I gave him twelve years to show me. Twelve years of a boy whose name was never heard. I, Bradley, never existed, only Freak, only Two-Heads, only Voodoo-Boy, and I couldn’t live that life anymore. I released my grip on the edge of the sink, and bent down to reach the hedge-clippers I had purchased the day before, and sharpened just this morning. With shuddering hands I pulled open the blades and slid them around the point where William’s head met my shoulder. I could feel the edges already digging little slits into our flesh. A small trail of blood trickled from each side, one sliding down across my bare chest, the other disappearing behind me. I inhaled as much air as my lungs would hold and shut my eyes. I crushed the handles between my palms and punched my fists together, meeting almost no resistance until both blades had met, and I could feel the flesh pinched between them. The pain was far more than I had anticipated, and I felt the warm blood cover both my back and chest, before hearing it drop onto the cold floor. I didn’t think I’d be able to pull the handles back out before I went into shock. My arms began to feel very heavy, and they fell towards the sink, the clippers wrenching William’s head from my shoulder, flooding my mind with fresh pain, and covering the sink in red ichor. My eyes started rolling around in their sockets, and my entire body began feeling heavy and limp. The clippers crashed down into the sink, causing William’s face to turn towards my own. His strange, blank eyes stared up at me. I watched in horror as his mouth opened, wider than I had ever seen. Row, upon row of teeth beckoned me as I crumbled to the floor, drowning in William’s wretched, agonizing screams. The next thing I remember, I awoke in a bed unable to lift my left arm. I could overhear people talking, unintelligible words for the most part, but one I knew like a second heart-beat. “Freak,” they said, clear as water at dawn. “Freak,” they said, followed by something new. “Freak,” they said, and "murderer.”
All content is the copyright of Derek Hayes. No content may be reproduced without express permission. If you would like to use any of the content, contact the author at: dhayes@silentepitaphs.com