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Burned
By Mareen.
Now that it's all over, I am sometimes wondering if it is all my fault.
All parents ask these questions to themselves in case their children's future didn't came out the way they wanted it to come out. Children become addicts, parents feel responsible. Children become...something else, parents feel responsible. It's only natural for a parent to feel responsible for what the child becomes as a grown up. We raised them. We did the best we could. And we failed. So we ask ourselves: Maybe we could have done more. Maybe we shouldn't have said this, or shouldn't have done that.
After all, I can't change the past anymore. It's over. And even if I would have the chance to go back and change things, maybe it all would have ended the same way again. I can't say. And brooding over it won't make any difference.
He wasn't a failure though. I could never feel that way. The truth is, sometimes he was the only light in my life and my only light in the darkness that is the Centre.
But lights tend to burn out sometimes. And whatever it was that kept him alive inside, kept him insane, it burned out like a light. Too bright lights...Like he was one.
It all started very slowly. His calls became more desperate. His questions about his past became more desperate. The more he found out, the more questions he ended up with. His quest was a neverending story, because deep inside, he was still like a child. He had always believed that one day he would find his Holy Grail, all the answers. But the truth is, the Centre is too good in hiding the truth between lies. It produces so many lies, no-one could ever unfold all of them to find the one real thing between it. He just never understood that. So he kept on digging and digging instead of leave it all behind and start new. He could have had the chance to do it. But he didn't. If he failed in anything, it was in living a life.
Maybe I should have helped him overcome his loneliness. I could clearly see how alone he was and why I didn't do anything about it, I can't say.
Maybe that's why he couldn't let Miss Parker go. He needed someone to accompany him in that loneliness. So when she refused to follow him on his way, he started behaving ... strange.
His calls became more and more confused and after a while they became violent. Listening to him talking like that made Miss Parker worry for him. She talked to me about it, but all I did was telling her some psychological crap that wasn`t helping anyone but myself. It made me sleep easier. "He's just going through a hard time." I kept on telling her and myself. I believed it. But she didn't.
She stopped telling me about his calls, and I only realized something was definitely wrong the night she called me. Miss Parker was sounding like crazy, out of her mind. She was demanding me to come to her home right now. When she led me in that night, she was holding a drink in her hand. She was shaking, not just her hands, her whole body was. A shaking mess of fear.
It was her bedroom she led me into. I can't describe what I saw. All of her clothes, the furniture, even the windows...everything was broken and shattered. And the colour red. Red everywhere. Spread all over her things, and for a moment I felt like in standing in the middle of a sick modern art picture that was smelling after death.
"Over there", she said and nodded at the right wall. Words on the wall. "You betrayed us".
"Us?" I said.
"Us", she answered. "Our friendship, Syd."
It was written in blood. And it was Sam`s blood. We found that out later. The moment they found Sam`s shattered body, Broots ran a test. It was Sam`s blood. He had written the words in Sam`s blood. He had spread Sam's blood all over her room. Oh god.
He didn't stop then. He went on and on. He constantly watched her. He wrote her letters. Love letters sometimes, so full of emotion. Other kind of letters...How he would find her and get her and punish her for what she had done to them. And once, there was a letter consisting only out of two words, written in his own blood. "Help me."
But we couldn't because we couldn't find him at first. So he went on and on. And people died.
His pretends changed. He didn't gave the people he was after a taste of their own medicine anymore and called the police then. He punished them himself. He just left out his savety net, the one that had always provided people from getting hurt in his pretends. He killed them all by himself. And he really liked it. His murders always had something of a painting.
Art.
Jarod always liked to draw.
The Centre changed the rules then. They had told us once to bring back Jarod "dead or alive" but now, unlike to the past, "dead" had been made the preverable option. Maybe they even had a bad conscious about all the people he killed on his way. Or maybe the Trimuvirate only feared for their own lifes.
Sam had been just a little tease. Mr Raines was next. "Someone" cut his throat. Not even God had been able to save Raines this time. Mr Parker. Shot in his own house. Mr Lyle...lost more than his thumb this time. He left Lyle bleeding to death after shooting him in the stomach and cutting his tongue out. He wrote me a letter about it. He had watched him the whole time. He had been sitting on a coach in Lyle's house and watched him dying in front of his feet, and in his letter, Jarod told me how much he had liked talking to Lyle while he died away. "Watching is good, Sydney" he wrote. "I finally understood why they liked watching *me* that much when I was a child." I can't dismiss the idea that he learned "watching" from me and it makes me want to throw up. What kind of father does all of this make me?
Sometimes within that time while we were trying to find him, I was fearing for my life, too. I know that he came to my home now and then when I was in the Centre. He never destroyed anything like he did in Miss Parker`s home. He `changed` things. Once I came home and he had redesigned my whole living room. But usually there were just small things. Like changing the way the pictures on the wall were hanging on the wall. Or he re-ordered the books in my shelves. Little things to frighten me just a bit. Untill today I am not sure if he really intended to kill me or if he was just playing games with me. I can't really say. I don't know that new him.
We finally did catch him because he couldn't stop himself from going to Miss Parker's house. Jarod was never predictable in anything but that one thing: He would never leave Miss Parker. She was the one who caught him. I think she tried to kill him when she shot at him. But I can't be certain. She never talks about that evening. But I *think* she wanted to kill him. Not because she was afraid of him, what she certainly *was*. But that wasn't the cause. She tried to free him, just like he had asked her to when he had written "Help me." After all, she was still his friend.
Jarod isn't dead. At least his body isn't. If Miss Parker tried killing him, she failed, or maybe she didn't fail but just couldn't go the whole way in the end. As I said, after all, she was his friend. And she loved him, no matter what he did to her. Maybe she just hadn't been able to end his life.
Jarod is gone now in spite of her not killing him. Not from the Centre. We have him back. He's in the Renewal wing, like all the other burned out lights the Centre produced. Sometimes, he even says a word, and sometimes, he even says a word that makes sense. Usually he's just sitting in his room and he`s drooling. The drool is running down his face and down on his lap, and he just doesn't care. It hurts me so much to see him like that. I am only glad he isn't aware of what he became. I hope he isn't aware of it. I hope so very desperately. And I am so sorry.
I am so very sorry we didn't catch him earlier.
End.
By Mareen.
Now that it's all over, I am sometimes wondering if it is all my fault.
All parents ask these questions to themselves in case their children's future didn't came out the way they wanted it to come out. Children become addicts, parents feel responsible. Children become...something else, parents feel responsible. It's only natural for a parent to feel responsible for what the child becomes as a grown up. We raised them. We did the best we could. And we failed. So we ask ourselves: Maybe we could have done more. Maybe we shouldn't have said this, or shouldn't have done that.
After all, I can't change the past anymore. It's over. And even if I would have the chance to go back and change things, maybe it all would have ended the same way again. I can't say. And brooding over it won't make any difference.
He wasn't a failure though. I could never feel that way. The truth is, sometimes he was the only light in my life and my only light in the darkness that is the Centre.
But lights tend to burn out sometimes. And whatever it was that kept him alive inside, kept him insane, it burned out like a light. Too bright lights...Like he was one.
It all started very slowly. His calls became more desperate. His questions about his past became more desperate. The more he found out, the more questions he ended up with. His quest was a neverending story, because deep inside, he was still like a child. He had always believed that one day he would find his Holy Grail, all the answers. But the truth is, the Centre is too good in hiding the truth between lies. It produces so many lies, no-one could ever unfold all of them to find the one real thing between it. He just never understood that. So he kept on digging and digging instead of leave it all behind and start new. He could have had the chance to do it. But he didn't. If he failed in anything, it was in living a life.
Maybe I should have helped him overcome his loneliness. I could clearly see how alone he was and why I didn't do anything about it, I can't say.
Maybe that's why he couldn't let Miss Parker go. He needed someone to accompany him in that loneliness. So when she refused to follow him on his way, he started behaving ... strange.
His calls became more and more confused and after a while they became violent. Listening to him talking like that made Miss Parker worry for him. She talked to me about it, but all I did was telling her some psychological crap that wasn`t helping anyone but myself. It made me sleep easier. "He's just going through a hard time." I kept on telling her and myself. I believed it. But she didn't.
She stopped telling me about his calls, and I only realized something was definitely wrong the night she called me. Miss Parker was sounding like crazy, out of her mind. She was demanding me to come to her home right now. When she led me in that night, she was holding a drink in her hand. She was shaking, not just her hands, her whole body was. A shaking mess of fear.
It was her bedroom she led me into. I can't describe what I saw. All of her clothes, the furniture, even the windows...everything was broken and shattered. And the colour red. Red everywhere. Spread all over her things, and for a moment I felt like in standing in the middle of a sick modern art picture that was smelling after death.
"Over there", she said and nodded at the right wall. Words on the wall. "You betrayed us".
"Us?" I said.
"Us", she answered. "Our friendship, Syd."
It was written in blood. And it was Sam`s blood. We found that out later. The moment they found Sam`s shattered body, Broots ran a test. It was Sam`s blood. He had written the words in Sam`s blood. He had spread Sam's blood all over her room. Oh god.
He didn't stop then. He went on and on. He constantly watched her. He wrote her letters. Love letters sometimes, so full of emotion. Other kind of letters...How he would find her and get her and punish her for what she had done to them. And once, there was a letter consisting only out of two words, written in his own blood. "Help me."
But we couldn't because we couldn't find him at first. So he went on and on. And people died.
His pretends changed. He didn't gave the people he was after a taste of their own medicine anymore and called the police then. He punished them himself. He just left out his savety net, the one that had always provided people from getting hurt in his pretends. He killed them all by himself. And he really liked it. His murders always had something of a painting.
Art.
Jarod always liked to draw.
The Centre changed the rules then. They had told us once to bring back Jarod "dead or alive" but now, unlike to the past, "dead" had been made the preverable option. Maybe they even had a bad conscious about all the people he killed on his way. Or maybe the Trimuvirate only feared for their own lifes.
Sam had been just a little tease. Mr Raines was next. "Someone" cut his throat. Not even God had been able to save Raines this time. Mr Parker. Shot in his own house. Mr Lyle...lost more than his thumb this time. He left Lyle bleeding to death after shooting him in the stomach and cutting his tongue out. He wrote me a letter about it. He had watched him the whole time. He had been sitting on a coach in Lyle's house and watched him dying in front of his feet, and in his letter, Jarod told me how much he had liked talking to Lyle while he died away. "Watching is good, Sydney" he wrote. "I finally understood why they liked watching *me* that much when I was a child." I can't dismiss the idea that he learned "watching" from me and it makes me want to throw up. What kind of father does all of this make me?
Sometimes within that time while we were trying to find him, I was fearing for my life, too. I know that he came to my home now and then when I was in the Centre. He never destroyed anything like he did in Miss Parker`s home. He `changed` things. Once I came home and he had redesigned my whole living room. But usually there were just small things. Like changing the way the pictures on the wall were hanging on the wall. Or he re-ordered the books in my shelves. Little things to frighten me just a bit. Untill today I am not sure if he really intended to kill me or if he was just playing games with me. I can't really say. I don't know that new him.
We finally did catch him because he couldn't stop himself from going to Miss Parker's house. Jarod was never predictable in anything but that one thing: He would never leave Miss Parker. She was the one who caught him. I think she tried to kill him when she shot at him. But I can't be certain. She never talks about that evening. But I *think* she wanted to kill him. Not because she was afraid of him, what she certainly *was*. But that wasn't the cause. She tried to free him, just like he had asked her to when he had written "Help me." After all, she was still his friend.
Jarod isn't dead. At least his body isn't. If Miss Parker tried killing him, she failed, or maybe she didn't fail but just couldn't go the whole way in the end. As I said, after all, she was his friend. And she loved him, no matter what he did to her. Maybe she just hadn't been able to end his life.
Jarod is gone now in spite of her not killing him. Not from the Centre. We have him back. He's in the Renewal wing, like all the other burned out lights the Centre produced. Sometimes, he even says a word, and sometimes, he even says a word that makes sense. Usually he's just sitting in his room and he`s drooling. The drool is running down his face and down on his lap, and he just doesn't care. It hurts me so much to see him like that. I am only glad he isn't aware of what he became. I hope he isn't aware of it. I hope so very desperately. And I am so sorry.
I am so very sorry we didn't catch him earlier.
End.
