Thunder and Lightning

The whole town of Inverness shook with each bolt that struck it.  The broad faces of the white suburban houses were momentarily turned electric blue as the sky filled with a horrible light and the land was trembled by a damning BOOM.  The sound and the sight of the storm were interrupted only by the deafening patter of the rain on the roof and the dense stream of water running down the glass of the window.  Matt tossed and turned and gritted his teeth, trying desperately to fall asleep in his bed, however the grim conditions on his doorstep and the abhorrent voices in his head kept him from doing so.

'They’re in your way,'

'You need them out!'

'It’s the only way,
Without a doubt.'

'Your mind, your world, they will infect,'

'Their path for you is incorrect.'

'Relieve yourself, or you will be hurt!
A life with them, is one in the dirt.'

'You think yourself in a path of unjust,'

'Do not think!  Just do what you must!'

'You think that your parents can do you no wrong,
Send them on their way, to the place they belong.'

Matt clawed at his ears, ignoring the skin under his nails.  He cried silently for anyone who might be listening, but only the voices responded.  Matt wished himself dead, he wished himself far away from the hell where his “holy” god had put him.  His throat burned and his eyes stung as he was reduced to a small child, bursting out in tears and getting frustrated at something he couldn’t help.

'Retrieve the knife!'

'The knife in the drawer!'

'Retrieve the knife!
Don’t think anymore!'

'Your life is corrupt and your world is black!'

'Your blood will boil, and your skull will crack,'

'Your bones will crush, and your brain will swell,
Until your parents are sent to hell!'

'Your soul is gone, you’ve not much left,'

'Don’t let them succeed with this greed and theft!'

'What are you to do when your world is all gone?
When you’ve nothing to live for, when you’re not but a pawn?'

'When you’re cup is empty and their lives are full?
When you’re stuck with the weight, and they’ve nothing to pull?'

'What happens when the light burns out at the end of your life,
When there’s nothing to boast of, not even a wife?'

'When the light burns out at the end of your life,
and you wish for the day, where you wield the knife,'

'Where you shut down the one and only binding force,
That held you back from a great life’s course?'

'What happens then?  Will you fall down and cry?
Will you accept the life you watched sail by?'

'Will you understand then what we tell you is true?
Will you regret the day you’re nothingness grew?'

'Or will you see it now, that the future is clear,
That there’s nothing to think of and nothing to fear?
Don’t you see it now?  The hate towards them?
The fire?  The rage?  The joy they condemn?
Find it within you to have a good life,
Go downstairs, get the knife.'

'Feel the wooden handle stick to your skin.'

'Place the blade right under their chin.'

'See the blood pour out of the neck,
Make sure that they’re dead.  Make sure that you check.'

Matt wanted it all to stop.  What had his parents done to him?  They put food on the table and a roof on his head.  They got him what he wanted for christmas.  They put him in a good school and got him therapy for his depression.  Why did they deserve to die?  Why did Matt deserve to live?  Anyone thinking such horrible thoughts should surely be dead themselves.  A world without killers is a world more safe.  Matt pressed down on his eye sockets trying not to believe that he had just thought of himself as a killer.  As a filthy murderer who saw profit in the loss of life.  Matt saw a way that this could all end.  That this could all be over with.  He could hang himself.  He could do it in his room and he could do it tonight.  Everything would stop.  He wouldn’t have to suffer from the voices, and his parents didn’t have to suffer from him.

His parents didn’t have to suffer from him…  Why were they suffering from their one and only son?  Why were they so often inclined to take nights off from him and go to a movie?  Why did they so often leave him behind with his aunt and uncle while they went to his grandmother’s funeral?  Was he not important?  Did they hate their troubled son?  Their son who so often needed therapy sessions for diseases he didn’t even have?  Their son who was a loser at school and who was beaten for being different?  Did they not love the one child they ever had?  Was he the one to drive his parents apart?  Was he the reason for all of their fighting late at night?  What did he do to deserve them?  Why did they hate him?  How could they hate him when he only came home with good grades and only very seldom go himself into trouble?  What was the reason for their hatred and greed?  The reason for the corruption of his life and the nothing he saw in his future?  The reason the endless days where he couldn’t escape the path that they had set him on?  The reason for the times where no love was felt, for the infection of his mind and world, for the voices who now only seemed to speak the truth…?

It was then that Matt took his palms away from his eyes and saw the knife.  The knife that was suspended in the air and that floated above him.  The knife that sat downstairs in the kitchen drawer.  Matt reached out.  He extended his arm toward the hovering steel and snaked his fingers around the handle.  As he pulled it closer to his face he realized that he was no longer in his room.  He stood above his parents in their bedroom.  He stared at his dad as his dad stared back, although his dad did not move, and his dad did not blink.  His mouth was open in a blank scream and some sort of red ran all the way down his body, splattered in droplets on his face but drenching the otherwise white shirt on his chest.  Matt looked at his father’s arm and noticed that it was grasping on for dear life to Matt’s wrist.  Matt tried to shake it off but his father would just not let go of him.  Matt started telling his dad to let go, but he wouldn’t listen.  He screamed at his father to let him be but the arm stayed firmly attached to his wrist.  Matt tried desperately to pull his arm away, but only succeeded in pulling his father off the bed.  Even limp and lifeless on the ground, his dad refused to let go.  Matt looked at the place in which his father slept and saw the biggest pool of red he had ever seen in his life.  It soaked the linen of the bed and started to leak onto his mother’s side, his mother remaining asleep with her head hanging tossed over the pillow and the same blank scream as her husband plastered to her face.  Finally Matt succeeded in ripping his father’s grip away, after which he noticed that a substantial amount of the red was on his hands.  He went into his parent’s bathroom and turned on the faucet, taking precaution not get any of the red on the sink handle.  He started to scrub it away but for the life of him couldn’t get it all off.  Through the 30 minutes that he had his hands under the running water and the whole bottle of soap that he used, he just couldn’t lift all of the red off of his hands.

By the time Matt had realized what he had done to his parents and had decided what to do with the rest of his life, the police had gotten to him.  They untied him from the ceiling when he barely had just a breath left in him.  Matt desperately wished that the voices would come back to him so they could tell him what he should do next, but they never did.  Matt lived alone inside his mind for the rest of his life.  He never did sleep again, and he never could get any of the red off of his hands.