They Said I was Sick: They Said I was Sick

 

DISCLAIMER: Anything you recognize isn’t mine. Any authors I mention aren’t me. I just own the plot and the character of the narrator and the girl who got her finger chopped off.

They said I was sick. All of them did. My friends were more than a little worried. My family was frantic. Every psychiatrist I saw declared the same—you’re insane. Personally, I don’t know how I could possibly be out of my mind. But I guess, to a sane person as you doubtless are, these ramblings I am about to put down won’t mean a thing. Oh well, I may as well go on with it. The other thing that everyone says is that I should write all this down. So here it is. My story.

I think it all began with my fascination with detective stories in my seventh year of age. I heard the Boxcar Children stories by Gertrude Warner one day while driving with my friends in their car, and I was instantly attached to them. I read all the books, then progressed gradually with my expanded reading comprehension skills on to the bigger books of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I read and reread them until I knew every word. Then I read them yet again. It wasn’t long before I discovered the Victorian lore and gore of Edgar Alan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Gaston Leroux, and Sir Conan Doyle. I was in my very element there; from that point forth, I was hooked onto the addictive, dark authors as these men were. I memorized entirely, word for word, ‘The Raven,’ wrote essays on The House of Seven Gables, analyzed The Phantom of the Opera and the Josef Routebille novels, and was plain old obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. I came to even talk to statues of black birds and empty rooms, play with ropes and pretend to strangle my friends in jest, and rename these same friends as ‘Lestrade,’ ‘Morton,’ ‘Gregson,’ and even ‘Stanley Hopkins.’ My own, preferred name was Watson, because he was a doctors, and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up.

With reading these books came watching the movie interpretations of them. I would sit, spellbound, watching Basil Rathbone abuse Nigil Bruce on screen in their Sherlock Holmes movies, or Charles Dance as he played such a kindly Erik with Teri Polo, or any number of actors as they played ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ or ‘The Black Cat.’ I relished every scene, especially the ones where someone died, for I thought that was exciting. Heck, I still do.

Not too long after I found these magnificent authors and gave them various fragments of my heart, I discovered the expansive world of Agatha Christie. I swear on my mother’s grave that I read approximately all of the books Christie wrote over the course of a year. Gradually, I collected the numerous movies and TV shows of Poirot, Miss Marple, and others. These were not as bloody, really, as the Holmes and Phantom movies, but they were delicious nevertheless.

But after being exposed to those works of fiction, as lifelike and vivid as they were (especially with the complimentary graphic movies) I felt the direct need to recreate them for myself. So, first I tried being the detective.

Playing the role of Sherlock at age twelve in a city where there are no crimes in which to exercise one’s own ingenuity was far too dull for me. I spent most of my time moping about my life and being depressed.

Then I tried to make my own horror and mystery movies, complete with the goriest props I could get my hands on. I think it was about this time that I created the most superb haunted mansion for Halloween that my town had ever seen, and single-handedly. I don’t believe I need to mention the fact that I used plenty of red food dye and ruined all of my dolls with the imitation bloodstains. Anyhow, soon my frivolous ideas were becoming rather boring.

I decided, then, that I had better become Emo because I realized that it was not my addiction to detectives, anymore, but, rather, to the bloody scenes that the detectives regularly encountered. So, whenever I was alone and bored out of my mind, which was often, I used whatever things sharp I could get a hold of and slit my skin. Soon even this became unbearably intrepid, however, and here I think is when my friends started to worry. And this is saying a lot, because I had other afflicted friends who also cut themselves and similarly hated the world and themselves. However, I shrugged off their protestations and concerns, saying that I didn’t care what they said, I would do as I pleased. So then they somewhat let me be. Well, most of them did, anyhow.

I was cutting like crazy, and no one was actually trying to stop me anymore. My parents didn’t know about my obsession; I wore long sleeves at home. But they did know that I loved the color scarlet; any day I did not wear red was a day wasted. We even painted my room walls red after a while; I liked that a lot.

Finally, at this stage, people tell me that this is when my brain snapped. I realized, at this point, that I could cut other people, and they would bleed just as much as I. This idea fascinated me. So, I started to ‘accidentally’ cut people I came in daily contact with. The climax of this stage of my life was when I sliced off my friend’s finger with a knife while we were making dinner at her house one evening. She remains without her finger to this very day. But overall, cutting other people was far more interesting myself. I learned the important lesson that no matter what color one was, no matter what race, their blood always was the same—dark puce red.

Then the little ‘accidents’ I staged were becoming rather too frequent. I decided, right then and there, to cure myself of my obsession and not cut anyone or anything. This resolution lasted about a week, until I rolled over my neighbor’s cat with my car…on purpose. My, that was a glorious piece of work. Well, then was when I knew I should need to find a better, secret way to go about my cutting so that no one should suspect it.

I began intensive training on myself. After consuming tons of caffeine at night, I molded myself into a creature that could go on without much more sleep than two hours at most. The purpose of this was that at night, I could sneak out of the house and into random people’s houses and cut their wrists. Not to kill them, oh no, merely so that I might enjoy the sensation of making them bleed.

However, my game soon came to be a bit dangerous; when I cut the people, they would send the police after me once I had left. So then I changed my practices drastically from cutting the person’s wrists to slitting their jugular vein. This, along with being far more satisfying for me (since there was more blood), it also was a great deal safer, because the person died, as you may assume.

No one knew I was the one behind all of this horrid ‘serial killer’ and ‘homicidal maniac’ stuff they talked about on the news. Well, perhaps the friend whose finger I cut off might have suspected, but I don’t believe that she did. The crowning achievement I made in the course of my hobby was that of killing a young couple in their bed on their honeymoon. It was rather disgusting when I realized what they were doing as I killed them, but it goes to show exactly how sneaky I got to be, that I could kill two fully awake and able adults. Haha.

It really became a subtle art to me. I would choose my victim a fortnight in advance as they shopped in the Wal-Mart where I worked. Really, my position as a cashier there was most opportune; I could demand a look at their drivers’ licenses without their suspecting at all. Normally, I chose middle-aged single women for my victims. First, I rarely chose men because their skin was tougher and less satisfying to cut. Then, I never chose older women because I rather liked the old ladies, who always smiled encouragingly at me, the pathetic young woman working her way through college in such a wretched place as Wal-Mart, and I felt that I should let them just die in their own time. Then I wouldn’t kill younger girls because they were of my generation, and I didn’t want to damage them, unless they were particularly nasty to me. The older women who were well into life, however, and unmarried, were, quite often, snobbish to me, despite the fact that a lot of them were a lot worse off. I detested it every time they were fussy about their purchases and haggled over the prices with me…as though I could do anything about how much their objects cost!

After selecting my victims, I would stalk them in my off-time from work and school. They never noticed me again, most of them, because they were too blind to ever notice me. Or, rather, they ‘saw, but did not observe’ (to quote Sherlock Holmes) me, because I was younger and lesser than them. I would, however, disguise myself slightly, just in case I did pick up on an especially shrewd one. I became an expert stalker after a time, I do declare.

After watching them for weeks and noting their habits meticulously, I would prepare for my killing them. This merely consisted of choosing a time and planning when to strike. I believe this was my favorite part of the whole regime besides the actual slaying itself.

Well, I went on with my killings for a year undisturbed, with approximately one every week, minimum. No on ever suspected me, as I said before. I learned every trick of the trade that there was to know, and my hobby was the most successful part of my measly life. My technique must have gotten a bit sloppy one night, however, and I didn’t quite do a good enough job. They managed to survive a few moments after I left, enough to scream for some other resident of their apartment, who discovered their prostrate room-mate, and sent for the police.

No one was more shocked than I when, days later, the police were knocking at my door to arrest me. No one in my family or social circle dared consider or believe for a moment that it was me who had done this ‘atrocious series of felonies.’ My parents hired the best lawyer in Massachusetts, but he wasn’t much help to my case, especially since against all his precautions, I confessed to it all in court. As I told them later, I wanted recognition. This was my work. I didn’t want anyone else taking the credit of it for me.

They all said I was sick. My friends told me this as they drove me down to Happy Acres Farm. My family told me this as they registered me in the great big Happy Acres logbook last Tuesday. Ever since I was handed over to the rather kindly people in white coats who manage Happy Acres, they’ve been telling me that I’m sick. It gets rather tiresome hearing that every day, though. Personally, however, I think it’s all just a big fabricated lie. They’re all in a conspiracy against me, ‘cause I know they’re all supremely jealous of me.

I actually remember something from all those crappy little kid shows on PBS besides my ABC’s and 123’s. Big Bird and Barney the Dinosaur always said to ‘live your dreams’ and that ‘you can be anything you want to be, and do anything you want to do.’ I’ve remembered those two sage adages all my life. And that, my friends, is all that I’ve done. But now the same people who made me watch those same shows, and encouraged those same sayings in my youth, all they do is tell me now is that I’m mentally sick. What a bummer.