by Jay Kerk
Dr. Thompson walked to his desk and took out something from his drawer. He came back with a newspaper and a tablet.
He took a seat next to me on the couch. “Jason. I’m so sorry for what happened. You had a beautiful family. Moving forward seems unreasonable today, or tomorrow. But with time, you can move forward.” He sighed. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
I held my breath. I didn’t know what to hope for; I knew what I didn’t hope for and the list was long.
“Check this.” He handed me the paper and my hands trembled. A short article written in the local journal, and the title read:
HAPPY FAMILY. THINK TWICE.
ESTABLISHED COMMUNITY WOMAN KILLS DAUGHTER OVER AFFAIR WITH FATHER! FATHER KILLS THE MOTHER!
“What? Is this real? Are you serious? This is disgusting. Unacceptable. Why are they allowed to spread such spiteful news? INCEST? How is this possible? This isn’t real! This isn’t real!”
“CALM down!” Dr. Thompson yelled, and I froze, surprised by his shriek. “Stop. Just stop saying this isn’t real. The universe is not conspiring to doom you. This is what history put down, the records, the court documents. This happened.” He pointed at the newspaper.
“I choose not to believe because I remember none of this. No way,” I said.
Dr. Thompson was already typing on the tablet. “Look.” He pulled up the same story from different resources. “Remind yourself you were under the influence of a substance. Maybe with a different personality. You started an affair with your daughter, and your wife learned about the relationship, she fought with your daughter and killed her. You came in and saw Lea’s body, and couldn’t accept what your wife had done, so your rage took over, and you killed her.”
“But I can’t believe I would do anything to Lea,” I said. “Probably Lisa acted on jealousy. I don’t know. I would never harm them.”
“The police found your DNA.”
“What do you mean, my DNA?” Again, my heart pumped aggressively. I felt each beat in my neck, gut and arms.
“The police retrieved DNA from Lea’s body. Your DNA.” He waited for a second.
“No. Nooooo. This isn’t real. THIS ISN’T REEEAAALLL.” I pounded on my head and screamed more. “What DNA?”
“Sperm. She wasn’t pregnant.”
I curled up on the floor in the fetal position, humming and grunting in pain. I heard chatter and screams. I vomited next to my head and rested in my place, and then I perceived people were moving me.
CHAPTER 6:
MATHEW
Denial? They’re gone, and I don’t deny this.
I assumed everyone imagines losing a family member, accidents happen, my heart skipped a beat when an unfamiliar number showed up on my phone’s screen. The anxiety peaked whenever I came too close to crashing into another car, or when Lisa said an idiot nearly pushed her off the road.
I woke up in Dr. Thompson’s office drenched in sweat from a nightmare, and he slept in his bed. Vandals had spray painted our house: they wrote CRIMINAL in red paint. FUCKER and RAPIST with black spray. ROT IN HELL, PEDO in yellow. Someone else had drawn the middle finger. I entered the house consumed with hate and hoping to catch one vandal. Once the door flung open, the house was on fire, burning, and the heat blasted on my face like a warm slap. I could hear the flames sizzling and crackling, and in the nightmare, I thought we had lost our memories in the fire.
Fuck the memories, I lost my family. The words shocked me; they are not words merely written from ignorance or prejudice; I am not a victim. No one was adding insult over injury, I well deserved the insult.
It was pitch black outside the office. I pressed the screen of the electronic clock which said 3:32 a.m. Gary turned in his small bed, and he sat up. I doubt he slept.
“How are you now? You slept for some time, and I kept you here. I thought we better continue directly after you woke up. Jesus, so early.” He said in a low voice looking at his wristwatch.
How the fuck was I supposed to feel when my family was dead? Psychopaths would not process emotions appropriately, should I worry about his question?
“I don’t know. Let’s make coffee. Do you have any here?”
“Yes, but only the instant kind. Do you remember what we talked about?” He sat down across from me.
“Instant is fine. I do,” I desired to scream again but had no energy.
“I want you to stop the train of thought when it tells you what happened is not real. Whenever you want to scream, try to replace the frustration with phrases, like, this happened, but I did nothing, or I wasn’t myself during the incident. Later on, you can replace the phrase. What we don’t want is to refuse the fact and thus the reality.”
“Have I ever reached this stage? You know, in our earlier meetings?” I asked, he smiled. “Please tell me.”
“Yes. The reason you regress is that you push the knowledge out of reality, so the experience stays somewhere inside and not in contact with the present. The current consciousness kicks the content or encounters out.”
I don’t get it.
“Difficult to understand, but this compartmentalization is what happens in our brains. The pain is immeasurable. I can’t tell you not to feel it, but I can tell you how to manage those painful feelings. Hopefully along the way, the pain will slowly subside. The situation is unimaginable now, but it will become better.”
“It’s so bad. Oh, man, I didn’t even say goodbye.” My tears fell again, and I sobbed.
“Be honest. What are you thinking? What is your view on life?” He waited, but I didn’t respond, I couldn’t. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to live without them.
“Do you want to live?” he asked.
He waited for a response that didn’t come. “Can you find a reason to live? Do you want to stop living?” he asked.
“No. Yes,” I sobbed.
“Also understandable, and it’s normal to think this way. We have limits as human beings. We can only handle a certain amount of pain. If we’re feeling extreme fear, we can lose consciousness once it surpasses our tolerable threshold” He paused. “I want you to find a reason to live. What if you can honor their memories?”
It’s not enough. But the words didn’t come out.
“What if there is another thing? Something big enough to give you the drive to live. You spend your time fighting with yourself, we need to change this.”
“What?” I was hoping to connect with the spiritual world, a gate through dimensions. The best thing was to be with them, hugging them.
“Come and see,” he said.
He held a small photo, and I sat next to him. The photo was of our family, but with a boy.
“Who’s this boy? I know him from somewhere,” I said.
“His name is Mathew. Do you recognize him? Or remember any specific time you spent with him?”
“No. But I have seen him a lot.” He could be a neighbor’s kids or someone Lea had babysat.
Dr. Thompson showed me another photo. “Look at this one.” I was holding that same boy up in the air. He appeared to be about seven or eight years old.
“Wow. That’s shocking. I don’t recall who he is, but I remember this photo. This is a birthday party, and I am thrilled. No clue about him though.” I felt scared. Perhaps Lisa or I had hurt the neighbors’ kid. I hoped he wasn’t also a victim or collateral damage.
“This is your son, Jason, and this was his birthday party.” Dr. Thompson said.
The revelation stunned me, but within a minute, the memories flooded in. I perceived them downloading into my brain as if I were watching a progress bar.
“How could I have forgotten my own son? Where is my boy? Mathew. Is he okay? Oh, God. Please let him be okay.”
“We don’t know for certain. The police presumed him alive, but they haven’t located him yet.”
“What do you mean ‘presumed alive’? We must go get him, search for him. What did the cops do?”
I was excited but equall
y worried because many months had passed. “When did he go missing?”
“He’s been missing since the incident. The cops did a lot. Let’s use this to focus on getting better.”
I was pacing the room. I lit another small cigar, even though my hand was shaking.
“Let’s call Luke now. Maybe he knows something.”
We called Luke, and together they explained further what had happened. In short, someone had kidnapped Mathew, and the chances of finding him were slim, at least they and the police thought so.
CHAPTER 7:
PEANUTS OVER WALNUTS
I don’t understand why things happened in life. People tell you it is all part of a bigger plan, or God is testing you, or you are paying for your mistakes - karma. I prefer a different idea about purification, basically meaning the same soul kept coming back to Earth to be cleansed by passing through many cycles. The imagination behind this idea is admirable. But, of course, we can’t be sure about any elucidation. I tried to be practical, to rationalize my catastrophe and understand the reasons.
Why me? I often asked myself. The spiritual roots were inside me, but they were dried up and dead. I settled for accepting I hadn’t done an adequate job of protecting my family, from myself.
My diagnosis was ‘crazy, with a possible second insane personality’. Dr. Thompson told me the medical term is dissociative identity disorder. He also mentioned he had taken his time in coming to this diagnosis, as per the most recent criteria.
Within a month, I stabilized to a functional stage, and I enjoyed the facility. The downside was that I had to partake in a sex offenders group. I couldn’t fathom being treated for something I didn’t have, for what I wasn’t, despite all evidence.
On many occasions I would decide to leave, fed up with the routine and the treatment, but I was surprised when they told me my stay was court-mandated. Luke said, “You were unfit to stand trial, so they found you not guilty by reason of insanity. However, they sentenced you to go to a mental hospital. You should be thankful you’re in this place, where you can do what you want.”
“This was what happened when the cops found you drenched in blood while standing over your family’s bodies, unable to remember anything. Then they matched your DNA and concluded that… You know. That you were sleeping with your daughter, your own flesh and blood.
Luke explained what would have happened if the ruling had been guilty but mentally ill. It meant I would have had to go through all this and then continue my sentence in prison. Apparently, there is an enormous difference between “guilty but mentally ill” and “not guilty by reason of insanity.”
My legal team, which Luke wasn’t part of, did an almost impossible job of proving I was insane beyond any reasonable doubt. The rate of accepted insanity defense cases is very low, and after acceptance, you must win them. Only one in ten thousand cases were accepted and won.
Despite my lack of knowledge of the judicial system, Luke tried his best to explain to me what happened. Afterward, I felt ashamed that the entire world joined the choir: rapist, incest, killer.
“When do I get out?” I asked Luke, more times than I could remember.
“I don’t know. Nothing is certain in such cases. Usually, they release you when you’re no longer a threat to yourself or others. They will review your case in six months. Just play along, my friend. Benefit from your stay. Consider the stay an opportunity to heal from the loss.” He didn’t dare to suggest healing my sexual perversions or wash away my guilt.
I wondered if the staff could sense my despair. Every day, I opened my eyes and felt disappointed to be alive. I spent a lot of time wishing I would die peacefully during the night.
Oh, fuck I’m still here! I’ll make some coffee, I would think when I woke up.
I was smoking again. I had only quit for health reasons. I smoked again because I didn’t care anymore, despite the improvements in my stamina and the rigorous exercise.
Luke believed someone had framed me, so he helped me as a friend and not as a lawyer. Nobody was as generous with his time as he was.
The state’s narrative is that Lea had sent a text to Lisa saying: “Too bad you couldn’t keep your man. I’m moving out.” Lisa confronted Lea about “our” relationship. Lisa, unable to accept the facts, shot Lea. The detectives found gunpowder residue on her hand.
One bullet hit Lea in the chest and pierced her heart, and the second passed by her as she fell and hit the wall behind her. The shooting angle confirmed the height of the shooter was similar to Lisa’s, not to mine. The investigators confirmed in the ballistics report that the shooter equipped the gun with a silencer.
I couldn’t get over the fact that Lisa had a gun to begin with. Now I was supposed to believe she’d bought one with a silencer? Had she been planning a perfect crime? The idea was strange and didn’t fit the image of the woman I’d idolized for her peaceful approach and respect for others.
“The question isn’t whether she kept a gun,” Luke told me, “because she could have bought one for personal defense. Remember, you weren’t always sleeping in the house. The question is whether she needed a firearm. Intended to use one. Was capable of using one.”
I didn’t know all the answers, but surely, she could handle a gun. “Why would she buy a silencer? Doesn’t that confirm her intent?” I asked.
Luke explained it was a possibility, but sometimes the arms dealer tempted customers to buy both the gun and the silencer as a package or just told inexperienced buyers the silencer was part of the package - we sell them together. So, she could have bought the gun with a silencer for protection.
Lisa had discarded the gun into one of the many dumpsters at the back of the neighborhood while on her way to pick Mathew up. The police’s theory was that after the crime, she’d wanted to smuggle Mathew out of the country. The cameras confirmed Lisa came alone in her car and picked him up at 2:35 p.m. Afterward, she must have handed him over to someone before coming home to collect clothes and cash.
At 2:10, Lisa had gotten the text from Lea.
At 2:35, Lisa had picked up Mathew from school.
I came home at around 3:15.
Lisa didn’t expect me to come home early, but I did. Presumably, I saw Lea’s body and flipped out. I confronted her; she admitted it, and I strangled her with one of my belts, but not the one I was wearing. Mathew was not there.
A few hours later, a neighbor knocked on our door to discuss the neighborhood patrol. He saw the scene through the window and called the cops. I had cleaned the bodies and dressed them, prepared dinner, and seated them around the dining room table. The cops said I was speaking for all three of us when they arrived, that I was in a complete trance.
Nobody in the neighborhood had heard the two gunshots.
Still no sign of Mathew’s whereabouts.
All the police officers’ and private investigators’ following leads got nowhere. They didn’t leave a stone unturned in the whole country. Luke ran ads across the nation, and he received thousands of hollow calls. He still had an investigator on the case. We wished someone would just hand him over out of the blue. The reward reached one million dollars, with no benefit.
Life inside the facility was comfortable but not thrilling. I floated along without a purpose, counting the days. They offered family therapy, but I didn’t have a family anymore, my brother and sister wanted nothing to do with me. They thought I would molest their children. I didn’t expect them to come, although I had always supported them when they needed me, but they could have at least called and asked about me.
I never thought of escaping again. Wherever I wanted to go, my destiny was sealed. I was finished on many levels, but I still didn’t want to end up in prison.
On one of my walks with Luke, I thanked him sincerely for being there for me. He said, “My friend, I’ve witnessed a lot during my years of practice, and I learned not to trust what people claim. Even when we’re certain of the truth, you can never imagine what’s going on inside
someone. You’re innocent, but you know how the legal system works.” I knew he thought I was innocent, but hearing him say it comforted me, despite all the zombifying meds I had ingested. He also mentioned, “I don’t believe you had a second personality under which you acted and killed.”
They separated us into groups inside the facility, and everyone despised my group. Imagine being an outcast even in a mental institution, as if being in one isn’t enough to destroy you. My group included pedophiles and people who had kept child pornography.
I had to pass the time to get out. They said I wasn’t making progress in therapy. After many discussions with Luke, he asked, “You aren’t sick, so how can they treat you? You must be sick to be treated. Do you get where I’m going?” So, I had to fake sexual perversion, then show progress in my treatment for it. The act was demeaning, but according to their scale, I had made considerable progress in no time.
A month is now considered no time, not valid from my point of view.
A slender, fine-looking woman attended one of my counseling groups, so I had something to look forward to three times a week. The therapists divided us into teams for tasks such as doing puzzles or building bridges. The woman always tried to cross the room and join my team. But when they put us in pairs, she would run away.
She attracted me, but I didn’t know if her magnetism was because I hadn’t had sex for a year. Like grocery shopping when you’re hungry—it’s not recommended. I didn’t even masturbate during my entire stay. I’d had a few wet dreams, which happens if you don’t empty. I wondered if animals got wet dreams too. I intended to look it up online later.
The woman’s name was Kelly. I wanted to know more about her. I asked her why she was in the center, and she said, “You take an interest in me, and the first thing you ask is what’s wrong with me? Try harder.”
I followed her around the compound. Following someone energized me in a gruesome way. I wondered whether I felt this thrilled when I stalked Lisa. I gained little about Kelly, except that she often shopped at the only two places available in the facility. I gathered she had lived in the drug addiction unit first and later moved to the general population residence, but the information wasn’t sure. There was something strange about her case, she also attended sex offenders group sessions.