Meine Mutter, Mein Retter

I gazed at those blue eyes of hers. The fibrous tissue in her iris was unable to contract with the light. No animation was left in her cells. It was clear she’d been dead for a few hours now. The pigment of her skin had blotches of purple. Blood had settled from lack of circulation.

I scanned her body for any indications that may have caused her death. No bruises. No wounds. No cuts. Nothing. I found it quite strange that her purse was around her shoulder. She must have come back to my room after I’d passed out. I dumped the contents of the large bag out on my bed. Typical female shit. Make up. Receipts. Cell phone. Keys. Orange pill bottle. Almost ignored it until I read the label. Percocet. Figured those could be useful at some point. Tossed them to the side. Still, there were no clues to why she had croaked on my bed. Didn’t feel like it or had time to play CSI. I had somewhere to be. I pondered for a moment on what to do with her after I got back. But for the time being she could be put away. I carried her dead weight into my closet and would hide her until I returned.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

My stomach wasn’t ready for food yet. Still felt nauseous. I gulped down three bottles of water. Tried to re-hydrate myself from the night before. Told myself I was never drinking again, although I knew that was complete bullshit. After showering and getting dressed I grabbed a Dos Equis on my way out. Figured it would help with my headache.

I stood outside the six-story building of my walk up apartment. I wore a thin dark jacket, jeans and a pair of grey Steve Maddens. Although summer was over the weather was decent. It wasn’t warm but I could still feel the beams from the sun on my face. It wasn’t cold but the wind still blew a small breeze. The leaves on the Honey Locust trees had turned golden and flocks of birds had already begun to aggregate in the sky for southern travel. I walked to corner of my block in Hell’s Kitchen. Waived my hand and summoned a taxi.

The transit took me from the West Side to just beyond the Upper East Side and next to the East River. Three towering buildings stood by each other in a dreary mass of land. All of them treated the mentally ill. One in particular was surrounded by tall fences with coils of barbed wire, advanced security systems and guards. It wasn’t a common prison, but a maximum security hospital. It housed the criminally insane.

My mother lived here.

That night when I was on that euphoric trip, I felt like I was invincible. Time had slowed down and my memory existed like snap shots on a camera. I’d black out and regain my conscience. I could remember hovering over my mother’s boyfriend’s dead body, watching the blood rush from his chest and form a pool on our marble kitchen floor.

I felt nothing for him.

There was no regret, I felt no sadness. There were no emotions. I just stood there. I was numb. More snap shots. Black out. Conscience. Slow motion. More blood accumulating on the floor. Red. I needed him to go away. My mother was screaming in the background. My mind envisioned him still hurting her. I moved to towards him with the knife. Black out. Snap shots. A lot more red. Pieces of flesh here. A dismembered body part over there. Slow motion. For a moment time was frozen. Then another black out came.

This time when I came to my mother held the knife and was cleaning the handle with a towel. She then began to rub the tips of her fingers all over it and placing imprints on the blade. She walked through the large puddle of blood in her over priced heels. She leaned over, made a face like she was going to vomit and touched on his butchered body. I stood there dazed. I was lost and confused by her actions.

“What are you doing?”

“Go in your room,” she told me.

Her voice was shaky and low. I offered to get rid of the body and her tone became louder. Her vocals were forceful this time.

“Go in your fucking room.”

I walked away slowly and stood in the hallway to examine her next move. She picked up the phone and dialed a short number. I listened closely.

“I’ve done something awful,” she told the person on the other end, “I’ve just committed a murder.”

My mother was arrested and her picture was on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in the country. She was sent to Rikers, but after being evaluated she was declared mentally unfit and not guilty by reason of insanity. They transferred her to the facility, at Wards Island, where she’d spend the rest of her life.

I was only sixteen at the time and was sent to live Frankfurt, Germany with my aunt. My family there didn’t care for me much. Could have been the fact that I lit their dog on fire. But I couldn’t sleep. That damn mutt barked until late hours and one night I had enough. It wasn’t anything personal towards them.

When I turned eighteen I fled their home the first chance I got. I caught a ride to the Czech Republic and spent my young adult life living in Prague. I picked up the art of thievery quickly. Prague was a tourist trap and there were gullible people from all over the world that visited. Between money exchange scams, cab service scams and basic pick pocketing, I never went hungry. I never went without somewhere to lay my head.

The nightlife was wild and alcohol was abundant. A beer cost around a dollar and fifty cents converted to U.S money. I’d spend many nights eating plates of goulash and dumplings at the outdoor restaurants, while drinking glass after glass of Gambrinus. After my food had digested and I was liquored up, I had one main goal.

Sex.

Before coming to Prague I could count the number of girls I’d slept with on one hand. But after living there for a few months I had lost track. It had become an easy conquest for me and the females visiting for vacation were often ready to say yes. All I had to do was offer those blue pills and they were rolling around in my bed by the count of three. I ran through so many and at times I hadn’t been as careful as I should have been. I slowed down and became more cautious after I’d caught something. It had me scared to take a piss weeks after I was cured. The fear of my dick burning every time I went to the bathroom stayed in the back of my mind.

I never fell in love and wasn’t sure if I even knew how to love. Fuck it though. I didn’t want any parts of that shit. But at times my loneliness ate away at me.

I had no one.

During hours beyond midnight I would find myself riding the night trams, high off of shrooms. My eyes would stare out the window taking in the light, the colors and the architecture of the city. Buildings would move, objects would morph and my mind would create a distorted reality. A few times I had gotten kicked off the tram because I was so high out of my mind and began to puke.

One night I took too many different pills. I drank too much alcohol. I blacked out and woke up in the hospital. I had over dosed and that’s when I knew my time in Prague was over. That’s when I decided to come back to New York.

I didn’t obtain a regular job. I knew shit about working so I did what I knew how to do best. I stole and I manipulated to survive. I was a master at it. Just as I always did my entire life, I had money. But still the lonesome demons haunted me. I needed to feel connected to someone in some way.

I started to visit my mother.

Seeing her in that facility drugged on Zyprexa and other forms of antipsychotics killed the little amount of my heart that I still had left. She hadn’t even been unstable and now she was a doped up zombie.

That was supposed to be me in there. I was supposed to be locked up in the same building as the Butcher of Tompkins Square. Daniel Rakowitz had killed his girlfriend and ended up cooking her brains in soup. He was supposed to be my housemate.

My mother was my savior.

Our visits were short and consisted of me doing all the talking. She would be dazed somewhere in Looney-ville while I rambled on about my life, how much I missed her and about the good ol’ days. I’d tell her I loved her and that I would be back soon.

I’d usually spend the taxi ride back to Hell’s Kitchen thoughtless. But the body that was stuffed in my closet had intrigued me. My mind was racing.

When I returned to my apartment I noticed my door wasn’t closed all the way. I entered with light steps. The plastic bottles of water were not formatted on the kitchen counter top like I had left them. There was a trail of dirt on the floor leading into the hallway. I could hear shuffling coming from my bedroom. I slowly turned the knob on the hallway closet and grabbed the wooden broomstick. I crept down to my bedroom’s doorway ever so carefully. All my things were everywhere. It looked like a tornado had gone through my room. A stocky bold man dressed in dark colors stood by my window, back facing me, talking on the phone.

“She’s not here,” he whispered into his cellular device.

I was about to sneak up on him when he turned around. He dropped his phone and gave me a blank stare for a few seconds. His mistake. I cracked the wooden broomstick over my knee and charged at him like a raging bull. Rammed it into his gut. He made a few uncomfortable noises and attempted to grab me but his efforts were weak. I banged the back of his head on the windowsill until his skull busted open. I inhaled hard trying to catch my breath before dropping him. As my heart’s pace began to return to a normal state, I began to feel frustration take over. I wasn’t mad that someone had broken into my apartment. It didn’t bother me that much that I’d spend at least an hour straightening the shit up in my room. I was pissed that I’d have to spend more time brainstorming.

Now I had to figure out how to get rid of two dead bodies instead of one.