Isaiah had to sit through family dinners every Monday night. It was his parents’ ways of keeping tabs on him. Making sure he was taking his medications. Making sure he was going to his doctor appointments. Making sure he was a normal member of society. It was stifling to him. Especially now that he had tasted something delicious. Steak, pork, chicken, lamb, they all smelled disgusting to him now.
Normal, that’s all his parents wanted him to be. Normal, normal, normal. He was fed up with normal. His sister was “normal,” the perfect child. She caused no problems for their parents. He hated her like a selfish brat. Unlike him, she could skip these weekly dinners and it irritated him. He had things he needed to get done just as Sarah had things to get done. But Sarah, the ever-perfect Sarah, having grown up in fear of her brother was allowed to abandon family time. She was always able to. Run to her room when Isaiah was present. Run to their mother when Isaiah did anything that bothered her. If only he could be his abnormal, she would understand why he acted the way he did.
He didn’t want to talk, he never did. Not now when his mother was off somewhere, and his father stared at him. He wanted him to stop. He wanted him to eat the nauseating food on his plate. Do something but stare at him. His father’s gaze brought Isaiah unnecessary questions, unnecessary probing. Girlfriend, job, overall life. Then he would ask about appointments, prescriptions, changes. He hated it almost as much as he hated his sister. He drank water like a traveler in a desert. He didn’t touch his food. He couldn’t touch his food. The sweating gaze was becoming too much to bare. He wanted his father to get on with it. To berate him for being abnormal. To let him go home. To let him eat something edible. What even was normal, he asked himself. Who decides? Who sets the guidelines? The doctors were his first guess. They told him, told his parents that he was abnormal. Who made him that way? Was it society or his parents? Did he piss off God in the womb? He found it funny, the concept of God. If there was a God then it would’ve stopped him from eating that woman. It would’ve stopped him from doing anything considered abnormal in his life. Maybe his life was just one cruel joke by God. He decided God could go to Hell.
His father inhaled, slightly, moving as if he just came out of a daze. “Your sister is getting married.”
“Why?” He asked.
His father took a sip from his glass. “Do you understand the concept of romantic love?” He asked. Isaiah thought he was patronizing him, but he sounded genuinely curious.
“It always seemed…” he trailed off, thinking of the right word. “Troublesome.”
“How so?” His father responded.
He paused, trying to figure out the right way to explain his muddled thoughts. “You have to spend time and energy caring about someone else. For what? To not be alone?”
His father let out a sighed laugh. “You never bothered to care about anything but yourself.” He paused, then added, “She doesn’t want you at her wedding.”
It didn’t surprise him she felt this way. She didn’t want him at any of her soccer games in elementary school. She didn’t want him at any of her swim meets in middle and high school. She didn’t want him at her high school graduation, or at her college graduation. It was that fear in the back of her mind: What if Isaiah lost it? Did something that couldn’t be fixed? The neighbor’s cat was her friend, and he took it away from her. What else might he take away from her? Per her knowledge he had never killed a person, but that nagging thought what if he kills her fiancé? made her wary of him. He took what she deemed was rightfully hers. It wasn’t his fault, her mother told her, he’s not right in the head. He’s not normal. That’s all it ever came back to: normal.
He was sick of his parents’ ideas of normal. He tried “normal”, and it failed. It failed superbly in his mind. What a beautiful fall from grace. He imagined Lucifer’s fall from grace was just as beautiful. Beauty, that’s all anyone cared about, beauty and money. He learned early that people thrived on money, and that everything and everyone had a price. He asked those doctors how much it would cost for them to tell his parents he was cured and didn’t need pills. At first they said that’s not how it works, but he pressed on. They finally gave him an answer, close to five hundred thousand dollars. Where would he, a young boy, get that kind of money? He’d have to steal it, he reckoned. Consequence was not something he understood then. He barely understood it now. Why is he not allowed to live the way he wants? Wasn’t there a piece about everyone being free and having the right to pursue their happiness? His happiness was looked down on, pushed aside. Where was his right? Some could argue his happiness would take away from another’s. Maybe he could get around that by finding someone whose happiness was rooted in wanting to die. They giveth and he taketh away.
“Why don’t you come back and live with us?” He asked. “You might feel more comfortable here.”
“I’m not a child anymore,” Isaiah said, his voice even. “If these weekly dinners are all I have to deal with to be left alone, then the pros outweigh the cons.”
This house brought him confusion, infuriation, not comfort. He got scolded for burning ants with a magnifying glass. He did it because he was bored and told to play outside. He was playing, but not in the way his parents had wanted. There were millions of ants, why should he be scolded for killing off a few? It wasn’t the ants they were concerned about, his mother said, but the grass. The grass could catch on fire. It didn’t, was his defense. He made sure it didn’t. It was only after the cat incident he had to be watched outside. Even his taste in books were considered troubling. He liked books about unsolved murders and serial killers. His parents wanted him to read, said something about it helping his brain grow, yet he wasn’t allowed to read the things that interested him. He was caught dissecting a rat in the garage and his father disciplined him. He thought they were varmints, that’s what his father had said. Varmints didn’t deserve to live were his father’s exact words. He didn’t understand why doing the things his parents had asked him to do, doing the things he thought were okay, got him in trouble.
Yet Sarah did everything she was asked of her, and she wasn’t reprimanded. She played outside when told and wasn’t scolded. She read books when she was asked; her books were never taken away from her. It was okay for her to set out rat traps and poison. He thought of taking that poison and putting it in her drinks. He’d do it slowly. Just enough to have an effect on her, but not enough it would kill her outright. He’d keep adding it until she was sick to her stomach. Until she died right there at dinner. He’d feign shock, sadness, be the concerned younger brother. His parents would never know it was he who killed her. Why did she get all the praise and he was shunned? They fought once, no one knew where he had acquired a pocketknife. He didn’t feel anything but sweet rage in that moment, however Sarah claimed, after the shock, that he was crying. He had cut her cheek trying to make his hunting last. She had a scar now, she had to get stitches. That was the first time he was told he was abnormal. It was normal for siblings to squabble over petty things, but it wasn’t normal for it to turn violent. It wasn’t normal for it to almost end in the death of one of them.
At first they thought he could be cured by the power of God. They were fools to think that. What afflicted him was not of the soul. What afflicted him was of the mind. It was clear to them soon after. When faith didn’t work they sunk thousands of dollars into doctor appointments and pills. Doctor appointments he didn’t feel he needed. Pills he refused to take. He was fine. There was nothing wrong with him. Normal was just a concept that differs from person to person. Differs from region to region. Country to country. Was anybody truly normal?
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