Thank you very much. Here is another one I just finished.
The Mad Witness
So here I am, sitting in a witness stand for the first time in my life. In all of the thirtyfive years I was a well-acclaimed psychiatrist, I was never called to testify. Frankly that still suprises me, because –I say this as a overall remark, I do not want to break my oath of trust- I’ve had some serious mad cases on my sofa. But now while I’m standing up, I have another oath to take. With my hand on a book that is thousands and thousands of years old –and I still don’t even know if the content of it is in fact true or not- I have to swear that I will tell the truth and nothing but the truth while being in this locked judgement hall. I always found it quite remarkable that we have to swear on an object that isn’t solidly proven to be a source of truth itself. Well, that is a comment that can be debated by several populations in this country, or even on this whole planet called earth. For me it doesn’t work, but I don’t judge anyone who thinks it’s the guidance in their existence.
Because I place no value on the most famous and also most discussed book in the world, I decided right there and then to tell the truth if it was convenient to save my own ass. So, you may wonder how I ended up here, repeating the words said by the man who is standing right before me. Well, that might be a long and weird story, but I will try to make it as briefly as I can. About four years ago a young man walked into my office, well, more dragged in by his worried mother. The mother told me on the phone –when she called to confirm if I accepted new patients, because I was about to retire in less then two years, but that’s another story, which I will not bother you with- the boy was a loner. He used to be a very happy, social and active boy untill he went to middle school. He didn’t seem to fit in, he always came straight home after school and he never brought any friends with him. His mother tried to talk to him, but somehow he seemed unavailable for any human contact. The only time when he communicated to his mother at all was when he just snapped for no reason, he would trhow with whatever that was in his reach and he would blame her for things she didn’t even know he was talking about. He never talked to his father, ignored him the second they were both in the same place. He never looked him in the eyes, let alone he would speak to him.
I considered it to be a classic case, just some kid that was bullied when he transferred classes and thought his father wasn’t around enough when he was little. Boy, was I ever wrong. He sat on the sofa without making any sound while watching at his shoes for the first couple of sessions. Never looked up and I never pushed him. After a while he started to look at me like he was observing me, trying to figure out if it was safe to talk to me. I just patiently waited for him to make up his mind, luckily that didn’t take very long. When he lay down and started talking it was just small talk, but it was a start. Every session he seemed to open up more, he even started to make jokes. But whatever we talked about it was never about his problems. Untill one day I was putting away my notebook when suddenly out of the blue he said something that made me freeze right on the spot. I turned around and looked at him, checking if he really said what I thought he said. His eyes were dark, his face mad and expressionless at the same time. The sight of his appearance confirmed the words he just said, but he repeated them anyway. “My father raped me and now I want to kill him!”
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The next sessions he told me everything, it’s like he had enough of keeping it all to himself. I didn’t know if he really trusted me by then, or that he just needed to tell someone, before all of it suffocated him. I never talked him out of it, I encouraged him to talk about it. To explain every little thought about killing the man who fathered him, but also tormented and humiliated him. I thought that the more we talked about it, the more the anger and fury would slowly become less. And for a long while it seemed to work.
The cops showed up at my doorstep about a year ago. The father was found murdered, lying in the garage with a bullet through the front of his head. The murder weapon was nowhere to be found, so suicide was out of the question. Another big problem was that the son was missing, dissappeared without a trace. The police thought he had something to do with the death of his father and ran away out of fear. The mother noted that he had been in therapy at my practice, but I hadn’t seen him since I retired. But still these men where standing outside my door trying to find out if I had any idea where the boy could be. I told them I didn’t know anything, I still had my oath of trust –even if I was already retired- and I wouldn’t tell them. To be honest I didn’t want to tell them even if I was permitted to. Over the sessions I had with the boy he started to grow on me and I began to understand his motivation to kill his father. The stories the boy told me were so horrible that I started to hate this man myself. Sometimes the incidents were so detailed in his tellings that I fought the urge to throw up. I was getting to personal attached and I knew it, it was the main reason for me to retire a year early. The boy seemed fine, but I was more screwed up than ever.
They found the boy, all the evidence that was found and collected was pointing in his direction so he was arrested. Because I was his treating psychiatrist for a year I was called to testify on behalf of the boy’s mental state. So here I was. But how could I tell them the truth? I could never, too many was on stake. I was thinking about my wife and how I loved her, she was the centre of my universe. I smiled while picturing how lovely she was this morning. Sitting at the breakfast table, while the sun lightened up her hair. She was lost in todays newspaper, scissors lay next to it. Like every Friday she was sorting coupons, a habit she had for all the fortythree years they were together.
I couldn’t do it, I had to lie. I turned my head when they took him away, to ashamed to look him in the eye. He had to suffer for the cruelty I commited. I slowly looked up when he was almost out of the room, just before he was dragged through the door he turned his head and looked straight in my eyes. He had the same look in his eyes as his father, seconds before he died. The look of pure fear.
Last edited by T.G.I.F. on Tue Jul 10, 2012 4:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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