Fitting

"You’re probably gonna think I’m crazy… and the thing is, you might be right.  The world stopped making sense the day I saw her in a bathtub full of blood.

"And I could even guess what you think happened.  You find your sister like that and you’re gonna be a bit traumatized.  Anybody would be.  So you think I built up this delusion as part of PTSD or some shit like that.  And if that’s how you’re looking at it, it makes sense.  It fits.  People like it when things fit.  But sometimes they don’t.

"Sometimes you can’t explain away what happens with a pre-existing understanding.  You can’t just categorize everything, slap a label on it and file it away.  Cause some part of you (maybe not the logical part, but some part) knows it doesn’t fit.  And when that happens, you gotta wonder.

"Like when they pulled her out of that tub- she should have been dead.  And I think she was.  I know she was.  No one agrees with me, but I know my sister.  She died that day.  They may have pulled her body out of there, stitched up the cuts and pumped it back full of blood- but she was already gone.  I knew it as soon as I saw it in the hospital.

"They let us go in (my dad and me), and as soon as I saw those eyes I knew.  They were the same blue eyes as my sister’s but they weren’t hers anymore.  Something else was looking out of them.

"And I’m sure it’s about now you want to see if facts and logic contradict the story.  You wanna point out that anyone would look different after trying to kill themselves.  That I was looking at someone who was too depressed to seem like the person I knew.  But I did know her.  I knew my sister and I knew her depression.  She’d been depressed as long as she’d been alive.  It was just part of her personality.  I know that sounds weird, but it’s true.  And that wasn’t it.

"It wasn’t depression that made it lie and manipulate every single person it came in contact with.  It wasn’t depression that made it start sleeping with every guy in school.  And it certainly wasn’t depression that gave it seemingly magical powers over everyone.  And it wasn’t those meds they prescribed, either.  Every kid in school, every teacher, every neighbor, even my dad- they were all under its spell.  Jumping and posing and bouncing like marionettes.  Depression won’t do that.  Meds won’t do that.  And my sister sure as hell wouldn’t do that.

"And I’m sure you wanna point out that my dad knew her, too.  Say that a man would notice if his own daughter wasn’t there anymore.  But the fact is he was too busy worrying about her to really see it.  See it where she had been.

"I don’t know what it was.  I don’t know what they pulled out of the tub that day.  I did a lot of research trying to figure it out.  And you want crazy, there’s plenty of that on the internet.  I may be crazy but I’m not crazy.  I never figured out what it was.

"We stopped going to church when my mom died and since I was so young I don’t remember much of it.  But there was one thing the pastor said that stuck with me.  He said that evil was opportunistic, that it preyed on the weak willed and that we had to secure our will in God in order to protect ourselves.  I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about at the time.  Not until I saw my sister’s body in that hospital bed.  Then I remembered.

"I said I didn’t know what it was and that’s true, I don’t.  But I know it was evil.  You don’t do that kind of shit if you’re not.  My sister wouldn’t do that kind of shit.  And don’t tell me that sexual promiscuity or whatever you call that bullshit is normal in disturbed people- that’s not what it was.  It was control.  It was removing the order from the world and putting chaos there instead.  It was breaking things down and creating… I don’t know what.  I just know that within three months things were so irrevocably fucked up that there was no repair, there was just damage control.

"Telling my friends that it wasn’t her who sacrificed them in the public eye and left everyone whispering in the hallways every time they walked to class.  Telling the quarterback (who I don’t even like) that there was more to life than football after it crashed his car and left him in a wheel chair.  Trying to get my dad to go to the doctor when he kept having those pains. 

"I should’ve done something sooner.  I think he might still be alive if I’d realized the twisted shit it was doing sooner.  Or if I hadn’t been such a fucking pussy about doing something about it.  And I know you think that was a heart attack- but it fucked with his pills, I know it did.  I don’t know what he was taking instead of his heart meds, but whatever they were they killed him.  And there’s nowhere else they could’ve come from.  There’s no logic you can use to argue that one away.

"It looked at me at the funeral, you know?  It held my hand, to make it look it good.  And that’s when I realized what had happened.  Why he was dead.  And that’s when I realized I had to do something.

"So I know you think I’m crazy, because you think I shot my sister.  But I had to use a gun- cause the slit wrists and legs didn’t do it.  It had to be a shot to the head.  Well, several.  But that was the only way I could be sure. 

"And I know that’s a crazy thing to do, so I accept that I might be crazy.  But that’s not the question- is it, doc?  The question is, if there’s a diagnosis for that.  The question is if I fit.  Cause if I don’t fit the label you gotta wonder… know what I mean?"