I'm a Villain Now

They call it rock bottom when you lose everything. When you have nothing left. When the only direction you can go is up. It can only get better from here, they say. At least it can’t get any worse. Except it can. It can get worse. It can always get worse. Most of the bad guys are dead or in prison before they get to show the world just how bad they can really be. The truth is though, that when you reach a point where all the good is gone, the point that most people call rock bottom, you realize that there is an endless sea of darkness to explore and exploit.

           When I think back on it, I am truly impressed with how much I put up with before I stopped trying to wear the white cloak. I was good once. Pure once. I believed in people. Believed in good. I shouldn’t have. It was naïve of me to ever consider that people could be trusted to do the right thing. These people were showered with praise and admiration for their contributions and their achievements all the while they were the real victimizers behind the scenes. Bloody knives wiped down, sanitized and dressed up like perfect bouquets of crimson roses.

           I can at least hold onto a shred of respect for my birth parents. At least they owned the fact that they were throwaways. The world had no use for them, and their solution to that problem had been heroine. The blessed needle. That slight prick followed by intense pleasure. Short-term pain in exchange for long term delight. In that state they could forget the world. Forget their problems. Forget that everyone around them had given up on them. They could even forget about me. I was five when they conducted the dual overdose, and I only know that because I overheard people at the police station talking about it as they tried to identify me. Rhonda and Billy hadn’t been great about keeping important files on hand, specifically my birth certificate.

           Quite honestly, I’m still shocked that I survived that long. I don’t have too many memories from those days, but I can’t imagine that three square meals a day or proper cleansing on a consistent basis were high on their priority list. That right there should have been the end of my good nature. It should have marked the point in my life’s story where I went bad. The exact point that I could blame for stealing any future I had a chance at.

My junkie parents choosing to leave their child alone with no one else in the world. Somehow though, I held onto that word that churchgoers and bible-bangers love to slur about. I held onto faith. I had faith that the system, as they called it, wouldn’t be so bad. I had faith that I might make some friends. Faith that a true-hearted couple would swoop in and take me home and guide me into my new life of happiness and safety. Faith is for weak people with no resolve and the elderly ones that are growing ever closer to their expiration date. It’s also pointless. I learned that quickly, but I admit I was fooled at first.

I was bamboozled, and this prank was one of the best I have ever seen. Put the rabbit back in the fucking hat, because that parlor trick has nothing on the one Jeremy and Theresa Evans pulled on me. Me and everyone else. They were perfect, everyone said so. We used to get all kinds of people at the orphanage. Of course, they don’t call them that anymore but that is what the fuck it was. An orphanage. And we got more oddballs and weird fucks than you would ever expect the administrators would allow around a bunch of kids. Not Jeremy and Theresa though. They were picture perfect. Just like picture day at school. Perfect outfits, perfect references, perfect smiles. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

We all knew it too, even those of us who were still pretty young. We all did our best to straighten up our bunks, rub the wrinkles out of our clothes and lick-wash any dirt clinging to our cheeks and chins from playing outside up until they pulled in the drive. They drove a Mercedes and stepped into the brisk Milwaukee air wearing peacoats and fancy hats. Their hands covered with expensive-looking leather gloves and their necks protected by elegant scarves from department stores so exclusive most people had never heard of them.

They were a shoe-in. There would be no strenuous vetting process, the admins probably didn’t even check their references. They looked the part, how bad could they be? I would be the one to find out. The lucky one, they had called me. Because Jeremy and Theresa Evans chose me out of the bunch. Why? That was anyone’s guess at the time, but I found out about four hours after we arrived home. I’ve heard other people talk about their homes. Places of warmth. Joy. Safety. Home is where the heart is, isn’t that the saying? For me home was where my heart was turned black. Cold. Numb.

I had been excited. I had my own room, I had my own chair at the dinner table, I even had a fish tank with actual fish inside. At the time it was a dream come true. A fairytale just for me. Then nighttime came. They wanted to tuck me in, make sure I was comfortable. I told them I was, but Jeremy wasn’t convinced. He needed to lay with me for a while until I fell asleep, first night in the new house and all. Theresa had smiled. Not a smile that a mother would wear, but a smile that someone who was getting away with murder would wear.

Well, I wish murder would have been what he’d had in mind for me. Nope. It was far…far worse. You know, murder is something that can only happen to someone once. Have you ever considered that? Of course it isn’t ideal, but at least it is one and done and then it’s over. The things that my adopted father did to me, over and over again through the course of several years…it was never ending. There was no escape. At least with murder the suffering had an endpoint.

I learned quickly why Theresa had smiled that way. Because she was almost sicker than Jeremy was. She knew exactly what was going on. Got off on it. Giggled about it, I could hear her from the other room. That was just the tip of the iceberg for her, the nighttime stuff was really just for Jeremy’s pleasure, her real payoff was having her own personal house slave to order around and beat at her discretion.

Before I go on, I want to be clear, I am not a victim. That is not what this chronicle is about. If that is what you thought, you’re mistaken. I do not see myself that way and anyone who does doesn’t last very long these days. I am simply laying out the foundation of who I am today. Because who I am today…most people won’t understand. Don’t want to understand. Couldn’t bear to understand. This will be my manifesto one day. Not today, but one day. This will be my love letter to the world to explain exactly why the things that I have done had to be done. Or maybe they didn’t, who knows, but they sure seemed like they had to be done to me.

Anyways, the nighttime stuff and daytime labor went on until I was about fourteen. The summer of my fourteenth year I shot up almost a foot and gained about thirty pounds. Tucking me in was no longer an easy task and after two black eyes, a fractured rib and a ride in an ambulance after a “nasty fall down the stairs”, Jeremy got the hint. It wasn’t to say that I didn’t come away from the exchanges with my fair share of souvenirs, but I was willing to take them, he wasn’t. The same followed with Theresa when I refused to do her bidding any longer. Everything just stopped.

They knew they couldn’t be rid of me until I turned eighteen. Sure, they could have tried to have me taken away, thrown in juvie, or some other state institution, but they weren’t willing to risk it. It would have been their word versus mine, but all it would have taken was one person to believe me and their whole façade would have come crashing down. Nope, they figured it would be easier to just adopt another me. Start the process all over again.

Maybe they figured I would just be happy it wasn’t me. Maybe they thought they had destroyed any compassion I had left in me and so I wouldn’t bother. Whatever their reason, they thought I would stand by and watch the same things that happened to me, happen to the next one. They were wrong.

His name was Robbie. Never asked if his proper name was Robert or what his last name was at birth, because I never cared. He is…was Robbie to me. Plain and simple. Even younger than I had been. He was three and a half. Barely old enough to hold full conversations. I guess the sick bastards figured they would get a few more years out of him than they got with me. Imagine their surprise when they went to tuck Robbie in the first night and I insisted on laying with him until he fell asleep.

“No, no, you go to your own room, I got this,” Jeremy had said.

“No, actually I got this. You can go to your own room. Matter of fact, feel free to turn my room into an office. I think I am going to bunk with little man from now own,” I’d responded stepping in between him and the kid.

Jeremy had looked down at Robbie, then back at me, apparently deciding he was too young to pick up on the undertones of what we were really talking about.

“You didn’t want it to be you, it isn’t you anymore. Take that as a gift. Now get out of my way.”

I didn’t move. Not an inch. Any fear that had resided in me had long since gone. The only thing the bastard could have done to me at that point was kill me and I would have welcomed it.

“You’re right. It’s not me anymore. It’s not gonna be him either. I didn’t have anyone to watch out for me. He does.”

Saying the words had felt good, I still faintly recall the feeling. It’s one of the last times I recall having any good feelings inside. I won the battle that night, and ultimately, I would win the war, but it didn’t end up feeling like it. I protected Robbie that night and every night after that, but I couldn’t stay awake and alert twenty-four hours a day, no matter how hard I tried. For months I stood watch. It was my only focus. I grew close with Robbie. Truly like a little brother. I even taught him a few things, few phrases, couple colors, showed him some great Disney movies. I loved him. You know, he was the only family I really had.

That was all the longer it lasted though. A few months. Eventually the day came that I dozed off in the living room one afternoon. I got careless. Lazy. Robbie paid the price, and it was the ultimate price, as they call it. Jeremy had built up a whole lot of anger and aggression during his several-month hiatus from tucking anyone in. Choking wasn’t something he’d typically done with me, must’ve been a new move altogether because he “accidentally” took it too far. Robbie was blue when I found him. Neatly packed away in his bed and cold to the touch.

Now that I think about it, that was it. That was the moment when anything good left inside me died and died forever. Just gone. I sat with him until the morning, just sitting there. I couldn’t cry. I remember wanting to, but I just…I just couldn’t. The next morning Jeremy came in, stinking of Irish whiskey and cigarettes. I knew what I wanted to do to him, but at that moment I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I was so tired. So empty. He told me to follow him, and I did, all the way out to the back yard.

It was fenced in, the back yard was. Privacy fence. It was early enough that none of the neighbors would be up, just after dawn. He went in the shed for a few seconds and came back out with a shovel, threw it down at my feet and told me to dig.

“What?”

The words really hadn’t registered the first time he’d said them. I guess he felt big that day. Like more of a man now that he’d killed a toddler. I remember the wave of that odor hitting me like a damn linebacker when he moved closer to say it again.

“I said dig. Did you hear me that time you fucking retard?”

“What for?”

“To plant a Christmas tree, what the fuck do you think for? The kid is dead and he’s dead because of you. Because of your fucking meddling where you shouldn’t have been. All you had to do was leave it alone and enjoy it not being you, but you couldn’t. You had to go and be a hero and here we are, so you’re gonna fucking dig and you’re gonna fucking bury him.”

The only word that really registered for me at the time was hero. You had to go and be a hero. It sure didn’t feel that way. If I was a hero, Robbie wouldn’t have been killed. A hero didn’t fail a little boy like that. Not in a single one of the comics. A hero would have saved him. A hero would have picked him up and flew him out of there. I didn’t fly him out of there. I didn’t protect him. I wasn’t a hero. In fact, I decided in that very instant that I was a villain instead.

The sound of that shovel head smacking against his skull…just the mere memory of it still helps me fall asleep some nights. He didn’t know what hit him. It was a shovel fucker, I remember thinking. He would have known that if he had stayed awake through what happened after I hit him. I wish he had stayed awake. I wish he’d felt every ounce of pain, every slice and stab. But he didn’t. Matter of fact, he was never awake again after that. The amount of blood was really the only thing that surprised me. It was just so much…like…so much more than I would have guessed.

It was kind of nice to have that information when I went inside and found Theresa. It was less of a shock the second time around and more fun too. Robbie wasn’t able to feel better, but I did. I felt much, much better. So much better, in fact, that it changed my entire outlook on life. All that anger that had been floating around in there for so long…I’d finally let it out. It was the only thing that had felt good in forever. So I decided to embrace it. To lean into it. To chase it. I like being a villain. I like having nothing to fight for and absolutely anything to fight against. All I have to do is decide.

“Brandon?”

There was no response.

“Brandon!”

I’d actually forgotten she was sitting there. Miss Margret. The shrink is what I called her. Sitting there in her perfectly primped suit and pulled back bun, looking down at me somehow even though I towered over her. Especially sitting down as we were.

“Sorry, I was just…sorry.”

“What? You were just what? Daydreaming?”

“Not exactly.”

“We were discussing your journal. Remember? You had it hidden under your mattress? You went off on a bit of a tangent there and then just went quiet. We were talking about Robbie and…about Mr. and Mrs. Evans, what you did to them.”

“Oh yeah,” I said giggling a little. I didn’t mean to giggle. I knew it probably wasn’t the right response, but I couldn’t help myself.

Miss Margret closed her padfolio and set her pen to the side before interlocking her fingers and setting them down in front of her like a disappointed mother about to scold.

“Brandon, we have been working together for almost two years. Did you know that?”

“Never really gave it any thought Marg.”

“Miss Margret.”

“Ah, that’s right, sorry.”

She let out one of those heavy sighs. The kind that she probably didn’t need to but did anyways because she wanted you to know just how much you were agitating her.

“Thought or not, we have been working together for just under two years. We have been talking, doing exercises, all sorts of things to try to get to the heart of why you did what you did.”

“You know why. You read my book, you know exactly why. Because of what they did to Robbie.”

“Brandon, police have searched that house many times, they never found a little boy. Just your adopted parents.”

“Don’t start Marg. I’m not making him up.”

           Another heavy sigh.

           “Do you have any feelings about what happened? About what you did? Any regret? Guilt? Anything at all?”

           “Pride. Satisfaction. Relief.”

           Sign number three.

           “Let me tell you what I do know Marg, what I did is nothing compared to what I will. I’m a villain now.”