The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 2 Read online

  “My mother was a wreck,” he continued, “lying in bed crying, staring out the window, waiting for him to return. She was sure that she had somehow caused him to lash out, to destroy her kitchen then leave her in such a state of distress. She needed him to return, her little boy, so that she could put her arms around him and snuggle him until he was better. But he didn't get better. When he returned, filthy and starved, he headed back into his room, shutting us off from his world, his place of solace and contentment. Mom tried to talk to him, to reach out to him, but he wouldn't even acknowledge that she was in the same room. He ignored her pleas, and she would often head into her room in tears after trying to spend time with him.

  “It went on for months.” He twisted his hands as he talked, lost in the memories, seeing his mother’s tears vividly in his mind’s eye. “I tried to reach out to him, offered to take him with me when I went to go hang out with my friends. I wanted to be like Dad, to believe that he would just snap out of it, just come out of his room one morning, smiling at us all, and sit down at the breakfast table to eat pancakes, normal.

  “But it just never happened. Years went by, with him locked behind that door. He would sit at the table at dinner, picking listlessly at his meal. We didn’t dare attempt to engage him in conversation; he would dart back into his cave at the slightest provocation. He lost weight, his bones poking out of his skin more than is normal for a preteen boy. His skin was sallow, pale and sickly from a lack of natural light. Dark circles ringed his eyes, evidence of his nightly ritual of sitting in the dark, holding himself, and laughing at what the nothing had to say instead of sleeping.

  “My parents began to worry about his health, and the fear that he might take his own life became a reality that none of us wanted to talk about, the elephant in the room, so to speak. Mom and Dad would argue in whispers about what they could do to help bring their little boy back from the darkness. Dad seemed to think that he needed friends, outings, discipline, all of the things that keep a normal boy in line. Mom knew, she could see that he was not normal, that he needed some kind of help. She wanted to take him to a doctor, a psychiatrist, who may be able to explain to her why her little boy had turned into such a reclusive monster, practically overnight.”

  Rick held his head in his hands, his mind echoing with the screams of his brother and mom that night. She had broached the subject over dinner, gently suggesting that Jacob go see a doctor. His brother’s eyes had risen from where they were staring at his half-eaten plate, unbridled hatred boring into his mother’s heart as he stared at her.

  “Doctor,” Jake said, the first words that he had spoken to her in months, his tone odd, disconnected, eerie. “Do you mean a shrink, Mom?”

  “Well, Jacob,” she said, squirming uncomfortably under the penetrating gaze of her youngest son. “We all love you very much, and you seem to be struggling.”

  “Uh huh,” said Jake, laying his fork gently down next to his plate. “And you think that I need to see a shrink.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to go and talk with someone,” said his mother, folding her hands in her lap.

  “What do you expect the outcome of this little visit to be, Mother?” said his brother, leaning his head on his hand, his elbow propped on the table. Rick stared at this young man, unable to comprehend how his sweet and playful younger brother had morphed into this, this creature, in just a few months. An unhealthy glow flickered in his eyes, a burning hatred for a woman whom he had cherished dearly, wandering through the fields on the way home from school, gathering bundles of wildflowers to present to her when he arrived home.

  “I,” she said, hesitating, choking on her words, the strength of his glare too much. She looked away as she said, “I really don’t know.”

  “Perhaps they’ll drug me,” his brother chimed in, a maniacal lilt in his tone, as if he were singing a song to her. “Placate me with tranquilizers. You can prop me up in a corner, put me in my Sunday best, display your perfect son for the neighbors to gawk at.”

  “Jacob,” said his father, silent until now.

  “Maybe,” said his brother, leaning back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “Maybe they’ll lock me in a cage. Take me away to a safe, white room where no one in this family will have to deal with me anymore.”

  “Baby,” said their mother, reaching across the table, offering her hands to him.

  He was having none of it, shooting up from his chair at the table, pacing around the room as he ranted, his eyes wide, staring at nothing. “Oh, I know,” he said, his voice growing louder as he paced, gesturing wildly with his hands. “A full frontal lobotomy! That would get the job done in one fell swoop!”

  “Stop it, Jake!” said their father, pushing his chair back from the table as he stood abruptly, his face reddening with fury and fear as he saw for the first time how far his youngest son had traversed into madness. Tears rolled down his mother’s cheeks as she tried to catch her breath, whimpering cries emanating from her with each punctuation of his brother’s rants. Their father reached out his arms, crossing toward his raving brother, and Rick shrank back in fear as Jake lashed out, sweeping the dinner dishes from the table, causing them to crash noisily to the dining room floor. He leapt onto a chair, climbing up on the table, his eyes filled with rage as he charged his sobbing mother.

  “Is that what you want, Mom!” Their mother screamed, shoving her chair violently away from the table, attempting to escape him as he came closer to her. Her chair toppled, and she crashed heavily to the floor, her head knocking hard against the hardwood floor, knocking her unconscious.

  “The police were called,” Rick said, making eye contact with Alex for the first time in a long while. “The way that my mother was screaming, the neighbors thought that some crazed axe murderer had broken into our house and was busy slaughtering us all.”

  “Was your mother all right?” asked Alex.

  “She had a concussion,” Rick replied. “They kept her in the hospital for a few days for observation.”

  “And your brother?” Alex asked hesitantly. She wasn’t sure that she really wanted to know, but she held her tongue, letting him continue with his story.

  “The police took him away in handcuffs. I’ll always remember that, standing in the dining room, unable to move, watching as my little brother was dragged through the house by two men in uniform, thrashing and spitting like a wild animal. It was unreal.

  “He was sentenced to assault and battery,” he said, “But instead of sending him to lockup with all of the other criminals, the judge ordered a psychological evaluation. After several days of questioning by different doctors, they judged him to be criminally insane, and sent him to a psychiatric hospital upstate, where he spent the next several months.

  “Our house was a desolate place after they took Jake away. Mom felt guilty, as if somehow she had caused the whole thing, and she slipped into a deep depression. She and Dad argued all the time, spending entire evenings screaming at each other about nothing, only to end up heading to opposite ends of the house to cry alone. Dad started drinking, which only fueled the misery. I hid in my room most of the time, taking up Jake’s old habits, but not for the same reasons. I could not handle what my family had become, all because of what he had become.

  “We drove up to visit him one time. It was his birthday,” he said, a soft smile crossing his face. “The trees all along the drive were in bloom, pink cherry blossoms blowing around the parking lot like a snow storm. It made the place seem like a dream, sort of a heaven. But that was only on the outside, a façade. Once we stepped through the main doors into the hospital proper, you could feel it, the disturbance in the air. Something was wrong here, very wrong, and it made your skin crawl.”

  Endless white tiles lined the floor, crawling down hallways marked with numbers painted on the wall in bright colors. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, some flickering as if fighting for their last breath before finally giving up, all hope of shining another day lost. A nur
se in a starched, white uniform had led the way, her soft shoes making not a sound as she traversed these halls, past dozens of unmarked doors, the deadbolt locks on the outside a true sign of what happened here when the lights went out.

  Rick had wondered what it would be like to be locked in your room at night, battling the monsters that lived inside your own head. He shivered, not wanting to think about his little brother in exactly that situation. He hung his head, not wanting to see any more of this place, his brother’s prison. He longed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Staring at the back of his father’s shoes, he shuffled silently, his stomach tight with fear, hoping to avoid a repeat of the last time that he had seen his younger brother.

  The nurse brought out a great ring of keys, her nimble fingers sorting deftly through them, in search of the specific key among hundreds that would allow them entry into the dayroom, where his brother was waiting for them to arrive. Selecting a small, silver key, virtually identical to hundreds of others attached to the ring, she slid it deftly into the lock, twisting it violently, causing the lock to groan and open with a loud click.

  These people knew that they were trapped, held in this place with heavy iron bars, barred from the outside world by the ominous clank of an impenetrable lock, the key for which they would never hold in their hands. Some sat in chairs, gazing longingly at the azure sky, bright with sunshine. Another world lay outside the large windows, a world that most of these people did not belong to. Out there, people had jobs, families to take care of, and the responsibilities of a normal life. In here, where the soft sounds of a cartoon were the only accompaniment to the sobbing of a young woman balled up on the floor in the corner, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, rocking herself gently for comfort, this was their normal. This was their world.

  Jacob sat in the middle of an orange vinyl sofa, his hands resting folded in his lap, and his eyes turned to the floor. Rick stared at his younger brother, shocked at the change in him since their last encounter. He seemed small, broken somehow, nothing like the vibrant and enthusiastic young man that he had grown up with. He wore a t-shirt and blue jeans, his feet bare on the cold tile floor. As Rick watched, reluctantly following his father's footsteps, closer to what was supposed to be his little brother with each step, Jacob scratched at something on the arm of the sofa, picking away at the ancient vinyl, digging a hole with his fingernail.

  “Jacob,” said the nurse in a singsong tone that carried a note of pity, as if she were talking to someone who were on their death bed, “your family is here for a visit.”

  He continued to pick at the fabric of the sofa, the tear that he had created growing larger. He didn't look up, didn't make eye contact, didn't run into the waiting arms of his mother, tearfully apologizing for all that he had done, all that he had become. “Why?” he asked, further destroying the furniture.

  “Oh, Harold,” said their mother, her voice choked with unshed tears. She had been afraid to come, afraid to face what her youngest son had become. Guilt worried at her. Fear that she could have done something to prevent this, to keep him from being in this cage, kept her awake many nights, crying in the dark bathroom, trying not to wake what remained of her family.

  “Jacob,” said their father, putting his arms around his wife, lending her strength and comfort as they stood uncomfortably in this room, surrounded by madness and despair. “We love you,” he continued. “We just want you to get better so that we can bring you home.”

  The finger halted, the incessant tearing of the vinyl ceased, and Jacob lifted his eyes to his family standing before him. The burning rage that had been in them had been replaced by a dull glow of hatred, a distaste in his expression as he gazed upon them, his father, his mother. He turned his eyes to Rick, and a glimmer of dark pleasure rippled somewhere deep inside him.

  “Do you want me to come home?” he asked, his attention focused on his older brother.

  “I want you to get better,” Rick said, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He didn't know how to deal with this, being looked in the eye by sheer madness. All he knew was that he wanted their family to be happy again, to be normal again.

  “Do you think I'm sick?” asked his brother, tipping his head to the side in question.

  “I don't know,” said Rick, shoving his hands into his pockets, kicking at a chip in the tile floor.

  “If I'm sick,” continued Jake, standing, “then I should be in a hospital, not in this…” He hesitated, lifting his arms to the room. “This place. This place is for crazies, lunatics, madmen. Do you think that I deserve to be here? Am I as crazy as all these fucks?”

  “Jacob,” said their father, crossing to his son, reaching out to him.

  “No!” shouted Jacob, darting away from his father. “Don't touch me! You don't want to catch my disease, my sickness!” He leapt onto the couch, jumping from cushion to cushion, smacking his father in the face each time he came near, laughing maniacally.

  Two large men in white came from the office near the door, both dressed in white uniforms, their black shoes silent on the tile floor as they rushed toward Jacob, grabbing hold of his arms, holding him still between them as they forced him slowly to the floor. One of the men pulled a syringe from his pocket, slipping it deftly into Jacob's vein and pushing in the plunger.

  Jacob howled, thrashing in the grip of these behemoths, until the drugs took hold of him instead, his body going limp, his head lolling to the side. His eyes came to rest on his brother's gaze, and Rick could see what was left of the little brother that he knew screaming from inside the shell of this monster that he had become. A single tear rolled down his cheek, dripping onto the tile floor as his eyes slowly closed.

  “Mom cried for days,” Rick said, looking down at his hands, lost in the horror of his memory. “She wouldn't get out of bed. Dad tried the best he could to cheer her up and to take care of us at the same time. He was a lousy cook; he burned everything that he tried to make.” Rick chuckled halfheartedly. “I remember there was a lot of pizza back then.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes brimming with tears. Alex wanted to reach for him, pull him into her arms and comfort him as he had once done for her, but she didn't feel that his story was complete, and she wanted him to continue. She pulled her sweater tighter around herself, warding off a sudden chill, the sun having set completely now, ridding her of its warming light.

  “They tried what seemed like hundreds of different medications, many of them only lessening the symptoms. Jacob was hearing voices, and could not control his outbursts. He became violent with the hospital staff, and was forced to spend time locked in his room, which only made things worse. He went to therapy, alone and in groups. Shit, the whole family had to go to therapy.” He sighed, running his fingers through his hair, to release the tension.

  “At one point, after he had been in that place for close to a year, he seemed to be showing some improvement. They thought that they had finally found the right combination of meds to keep his behavior under control, and decided that it was time for him to return home. I had just graduated from high school, and was getting ready to head off to college upstate.

  “I remember the day that Dad brought him home. We planned a little party. Well, really Mom just baked a cake and we hung up a banner and some balloons, but we wanted to celebrate. Thanks to modern medicine, our family was going to be normal again. Mom cooked his favorite dinner, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, and it was ready on the table when the car pulled in the driveway. Mom was terrified, you could tell, the way that she bustled around the house, making sure that everything was ready. Only she wasn't ready, not for how things went down.”

  “What happened?” asked Alex, her interest piqued.

  “Nothing really,” Rick said, turning to her. “Dad opened the door, they came in the house, and Jake walked right past us and into his room. There was no party, no celebration. Dinner went cold on the table.”

  “So he wasn't better then,” she commented.
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  “Oh, he was,” Rick continued. “He didn't yell. He didn't attack anybody or throw anything. But he didn't do much of anything else either. He would eat when told to, shower when he was told to, sit in front of the television with the rest of the family in the evening and watch sitcoms. But his personality was gone; the medications that they had given him kept it very much dead. There was no ‘Jake’ left, only a drone wandering around the house, following orders.