A Shattered Mind

In bed I laid tired from the long day of work that had drained me. The neighbor’s garage lights shined through my blinds and kept me wide awake. The silence that filled my house was suddenly stolen when the phone rang. After a few moments of exchanging words with an unknown person my dad stomped down to my room and threw the door open. While throwing clothes on, my dad had told me about a bad accident that had happened at the apartment complex that he managed. We were to leave immediately.

As we drove I could sense my dad’s nervousness. As concerned as I could tell he was, he still managed to make the 10 minute trek across town less mundane. We filled the trip with small talk of cars, family, weather, and a few other topics of everyday life. Once we pulled up to the small parking lot my father’s mood changed greatly. His words quickly ended as I continued to run my mouth off until he told me to “be quiet now”. The Lines in his face told me that he was serious. I have never seen him look so stern before, my father was always one to joke and have fun but at this moment he was almost a different man.

After the shock of the sudden punishment wore off I looked up and saw a mob of police officers standing under a rusty street lamp right outside one of the many apartment buildings. Looking at them I tried to decipher what had happened, they all looked very worried about whatever had happened, they all huddled nervously around a clipboard while a lone officer paced nearby in the wet grass.

As I jumped out of his silver ford truck I felt the night air surround me, the air was very heavy and breathing was difficult. I noticed a woman run out of the building crying. She was a young woman with blond hair, white trash clothes, and blood on her hands. As fast as she had run out a police officer grabbed her and tried to calm her. She was screaming words that made no sense to my ears. The only words I could decipher were words that my parents had forbid me from ever saying.

My father and I lurched closer to the building and a cocky, young officer looked down at me through his sunglasses and then back up to my dad. Questioning why I was here he said to my father “I don’t think he should see this, maybe he had better wait in your truck?” My dad was getting very upset and just said the following words with a very flat and dry voice “Take me inside now.”

Once we all entered the building I noticed dozens of tenants standing outside their doors in their pajamas. The only person who was more curious than them was myself. Their presence made passage to the room of the incident very difficult. My father and the police officer had to push and shove the people to the sides of the small white hallway all the while I walked safely behind and listened to everyone’s screaming.

When we arrived outside the apartment, my curiosity grew to its highest. What was inside? Why were all these people screaming and why was that women crying so hard? It was all about to be answered and I had never been more excited in my young life. The Anticipation for Christmas was nothing compared to the rush I was feeling at that moment.

The officer swung the door open only to reveal another gang of police officers involved in some sort of paperwork. That night the entire force was focused in one room. Whatever happened was the biggest thing to come along in months and I was aching to know what it was. Everything was revolving around this place, much like gravity. I had to know what waited for me inside.

As we pushed even farther into the dark room I noticed even more women crying. One woman was crying much worse than the others, her tears seemed to be dripping through her fingers, and even in my young age I could tell that she had lost something very dear to her. Police officers tried to comfort her but failed. At that moment nothing could help her not even the other women. My attention was suddenly pulled away as a cop came within inches of us and instructed us to follow him into what appeared to be a very dimly light bedroom.

Nearing the bedroom I noticed some kind of fluid all over the walls. The room was very dark so making out that strange liquid was impossible but it was dark and smelled like burnt hair and rotting eggs. My father cracked the door the rest of the way open and everything had been revealed to me. A man wearing no shirt and torn jeans lay on the floor next to a black pump shotgun. His head was missing and his body was covered in blood.

A flood of horror filled my chest and I jumped back. In doing this I tripped over and hit the ground. On the ground I saw the ceiling; it was not untouched by this incident either. The ceiling was spray painted thinly with blood and I even noticed pieces of this mans skull wedged into the tile ceiling.

I quickly gathered myself and stood up, trying my best to act mature in this room of adults who seemed to know less than I did. We all stood in a thick silence waiting for someone to speak up. The first person to make a commotion was the dead man with no head. His body began to violently shake and blood jumped out of his neck. Everything in the room, the old bed, the oak dresser, and even my father seemed to disappear. It was only me and this corpse who was shaking angrily.

My lungs got anxious and quickly filled with air; breathing became difficult as my body trembled. I was quickly losing control over my senses until my father quickly pulled me back into reality when he grabbed my arm and drug me to the truck. He seemed angry about what had happened but even angrier at himself for letting me witness it. Very concerned he said: This is hard for me and I am a grown man. I can’t imagine what this must be like for a thirteen year old kid, are you ok?” In my innocent confusion he had to explain to me that the man in the room was indeed dead and the violent lashings were just his “reflexes” at work.

He sat me down in the truck and turned the radio on and told me to wait here for his return. I tried to keep my mind off the recent happenings but I couldn’t stem away from my curiosity. My Mind seemed to shut out the music and I began to wonder. Why would someone do something like this to themselves? What was the last thing going through that mans mind before he took his own life? Suicide and death was all very new to me, it both scared me and intrigued me all the same.

The next day my father woke me up once again and explained to me that their had been a problem with the company who was supposed to clean the scene of the accident up. It was an argument over money or maybe some other adult issue. At any rate instead of professionals cleaning up a young mans death it would be my father and I. We set out once again for the apartment complex. This time there were no words exchanged in the car, no police officers, no noisy tenants, nothing besides my dad, me, and a bloody room that needed cleaning. Everyone else in the world seemed to be sleeping.

We spent the next three hours carefully cleaning up dry blood and scraping chunks of skull, hair, and brains off the walls and ceiling. The room was much quieter now; all you could hear was the scrapping of wet sponges against dried blood. It was almost a completely different room from the scenes I had witnessed the previous night, even the sun snuck through the blinds to put a little shine on the stained shag carpet. We tried very hard to make the time go faster with conversation but it was useless. Uncomfortable silence ended up winning the round and would accompany us for the rest of the day.

  It took much longer that I had hoped, surprisingly enough you can only be so enthusiastic about cleaning up another human beings body parts off a wall. Even so, we did accomplish our task, near the end I was tired, sweaty, and a dead mans blood covered my hands much like a set of old red gloves.