Dear Big Brother,
The day I found the body was the day I got back from my first year of college. I came home expecting a welcome home party I assumed mother felt obliged to throw. She had become an aloof woman after father had been killed, before his murder she was benign and loving and then it was as if something inside her just snapped after the funeral. The woman I had grown up calling my mother was gone, replaced with a shell of mortality. I was used to the house being quiet when I would visit but this time I came home to a morbidly empty house where everything was gone, stolen I should say. The only thing left behind was a small cherub statue in the middle of the living room that my mother had gotten as a gift from the church on my father’s birthday. The angel’s little hands were facing upwards along with its gaze, as if asking why this happened. To say I was shocked would be an understatement, I felt so many different emotions in one second I thought my brain would explode. I was confused, righteously upset as my childhood home was destroyed, every memory I grew up with came back to me full force as I walked through my now destroyed home. I remembered the couch on which I had jumped off the back of and broken my arm when I was younger because I wanted to fly like Superman, the kitchen table that I drew on with sharpie that ensued with my month long grounding. Anger soon took over those memories, this was my home that was ransacked, my home that was destroyed and maimed, my life that was torn apart and stolen like it was nothing. I remember the hot, angry tears that flooded my cheeks and the sting of my sleeve as I harshly wiped them away.
Stop crying, men don’t cry.
By the time I had made it upstairs I began to notice the smell and God, what an awful smell it was. It reminded me of the time you and I had found that dead cat in the woods when we were out exploring. The house reeked of death now that I think back, I was just too stunned to notice it. I was scared, I didn’t know where mom was, I kept asking myself why I didn’t get a call from the police or why the police weren’t even there. Did nobody know what happened? I know my mother was rather reclusive lately but somebody must have seen something, or at least heard something.
Every room upstairs was the same as the first floor, unfathomably empty, even my favorite childhood toy was gone from my room. What kind of robber would have use of a red stuffed dinosaur toy? A robber with a prowess for ruining people’s childhood was my best guess.
Entering the last room was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Laying on the floor in an empty room, was my mother. Her eyes like lifeless marble orbs seemingly staring into my soul as I stood frozen in the doorway. I’ll never forget that stare.
I think I blacked out after that, I only remember the police finally showing up and having to tear me away from her body that I was cleaving to. The police said a neighbor heard me screaming and called them. I don’t remember screaming.
She was wearing her favorite lilac dress, her hair was done up and I assumed she was going on a date. She hadn’t tried to go out on a date after dad died, you weren’t always there on her good days where she would bake again and she would laugh and dance and sing like nobody was listening. That woman I saw on the floor though, her face still haunts me, her cold, pale cheeks sunken in, bugs crawling all around her and in her, and I just can’t take it anymore. I don’t know what’s real and what’s a hallucination, sometimes I think I dreamed the whole thing, that none of it even happened in the first place.
Whenever I sleep she’s there, most nights I can hear her calling my name as she stands in the corner begging me to come with her. Each night was a different nightmare but soon enough they had progressed to replaying her murder over and over and over even though I never saw how she died. After a while I began seeing her death from the killers point of view, I watched as she begged and cried and did nothing. I felt the cold grip of the gun in my hand and I heard her last scream as I pulled the trigger.
I’m telling you this so that you might better understand why I’ve decided to do this, though I know you will never truly understand because you didn’t see her. Her face haunts me, Trevor, her eyes follow me in my dreams, in my nightmares. I can’t go on living like this, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I love you.
Your little brother,
Benny
The day I found the body was the day I got back from my first year of college. I came home expecting a welcome home party I assumed mother felt obliged to throw. She had become an aloof woman after father had been killed, before his murder she was benign and loving and then it was as if something inside her just snapped after the funeral. The woman I had grown up calling my mother was gone, replaced with a shell of mortality. I was used to the house being quiet when I would visit but this time I came home to a morbidly empty house where everything was gone, stolen I should say. The only thing left behind was a small cherub statue in the middle of the living room that my mother had gotten as a gift from the church on my father’s birthday. The angel’s little hands were facing upwards along with its gaze, as if asking why this happened. To say I was shocked would be an understatement, I felt so many different emotions in one second I thought my brain would explode. I was confused, righteously upset as my childhood home was destroyed, every memory I grew up with came back to me full force as I walked through my now destroyed home. I remembered the couch on which I had jumped off the back of and broken my arm when I was younger because I wanted to fly like Superman, the kitchen table that I drew on with sharpie that ensued with my month long grounding. Anger soon took over those memories, this was my home that was ransacked, my home that was destroyed and maimed, my life that was torn apart and stolen like it was nothing. I remember the hot, angry tears that flooded my cheeks and the sting of my sleeve as I harshly wiped them away.
Stop crying, men don’t cry.
By the time I had made it upstairs I began to notice the smell and God, what an awful smell it was. It reminded me of the time you and I had found that dead cat in the woods when we were out exploring. The house reeked of death now that I think back, I was just too stunned to notice it. I was scared, I didn’t know where mom was, I kept asking myself why I didn’t get a call from the police or why the police weren’t even there. Did nobody know what happened? I know my mother was rather reclusive lately but somebody must have seen something, or at least heard something.
Every room upstairs was the same as the first floor, unfathomably empty, even my favorite childhood toy was gone from my room. What kind of robber would have use of a red stuffed dinosaur toy? A robber with a prowess for ruining people’s childhood was my best guess.
Entering the last room was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Laying on the floor in an empty room, was my mother. Her eyes like lifeless marble orbs seemingly staring into my soul as I stood frozen in the doorway. I’ll never forget that stare.
I think I blacked out after that, I only remember the police finally showing up and having to tear me away from her body that I was cleaving to. The police said a neighbor heard me screaming and called them. I don’t remember screaming.
She was wearing her favorite lilac dress, her hair was done up and I assumed she was going on a date. She hadn’t tried to go out on a date after dad died, you weren’t always there on her good days where she would bake again and she would laugh and dance and sing like nobody was listening. That woman I saw on the floor though, her face still haunts me, her cold, pale cheeks sunken in, bugs crawling all around her and in her, and I just can’t take it anymore. I don’t know what’s real and what’s a hallucination, sometimes I think I dreamed the whole thing, that none of it even happened in the first place.
Whenever I sleep she’s there, most nights I can hear her calling my name as she stands in the corner begging me to come with her. Each night was a different nightmare but soon enough they had progressed to replaying her murder over and over and over even though I never saw how she died. After a while I began seeing her death from the killers point of view, I watched as she begged and cried and did nothing. I felt the cold grip of the gun in my hand and I heard her last scream as I pulled the trigger.
I’m telling you this so that you might better understand why I’ve decided to do this, though I know you will never truly understand because you didn’t see her. Her face haunts me, Trevor, her eyes follow me in my dreams, in my nightmares. I can’t go on living like this, I’m sorry. Please forgive me, I love you.
Your little brother,
Benny