Reality Of The Mindless

Brody Battersby

Some say using big words are just ineffective, useless, demeaning, and plainly idiotic. I, myself, enjoy the use of longer words. Like serene, idiotic, scrupulous, and others such as those. But, when making a point one must not use language that another cannot comprehend. As such, when arguing or stating facts, one does not exaggerate their vocabulary to heights of which the other cannot see, hear, or process. A police officer does not come to a house and say: “Madame, I do regret to dispose of your heavenly evening but your daughter is farther and passed as she can get”. They say it how the fact is, “Your daughter is dead”. But a writer writes in elegant hand and exposes the words like a painting of rhymes, metaphors, and insatiable critique. Thus, when reading a poem to a passed loved one, one must choose to be as elegant as a writer in free hand, or as solid as a brick of mortar and steel. Sadly as it is, neither of those can or are correct. When losing a loved one, one does not laugh and celebrate their death as it is in writing. One weeps and cries, their soul itself torn to shreds by the specks of mortality bursting through the seams in a ever painful release. Yet, when my own sanity escaped my being, I saw the world as colors, shapes, and sounds that were… Not as real as you’d expect.

I was the youngest of 3 brothers at the age of 15. An accident has destroyed the use of my lower body and half of my torso. I could not walk, though my family lived on a hill, and that was no fun. The roll to and from anywhere close by was a curse upon my arms and shoulders, like needles piercing my bone and suctioning my vulnerable bone marrow. When I did return to my home, my brothers were always there to greet me; Horrid smiles plastered their faces and sticks in their hands. My wheelchair always had large, silver spokes, and as they stuck sticks into them, I was frozen and stuck. Letting me rot out at night as it rained. Or threw stones at me while I was stuck in one spot. They laughed at my misery. And whenever they were hurt, I laughed at theirs; Only to be reprimanded by them and my parents in a disdainful way. One day I was on the grind on my way back from school, panic flooding through my blood as I knew the painful smiles there to greet my shallowed form. The voice in my head grew louder as I approached, my brothers nowhere to be found. From behind me, I heard a loud pop. Much alike a pellet gun or airsoft rifle. It was the latter, it shot again, reverberating through the back of my chair. I whipped around to see then,the gun pointed at me, mere inches from my nose. “GRAB IT!” Someone yelled, yet nobody turned their heads “DO IT!” It shrieked. Grabbing the base of the gun I yanked it downward, freeing the weapon from the grasp of my brother. Now free from his hand I fired the 8 remaining shots at my now fleeing kin. It laughed, oh my friend, my newest friend laughed, overly content with the irony of my pain. They left me alone the rest of the day.


I awoke with a cloth in my mouth, a gag of sorts. I screamed, my unechoed voice muffled and drowned out by the painfully high pitched giggles of the voices around me. I tried to move, my arms tied and legs broken, I had no feeling in my legs, and they were bent as such an angle I looked like a demonic monster or demon sent from hell to kill everything around me. I was forced into what was like a plastic box, they laughed. The sound of tape and ropes were heard oh too very clearly, as they locked me in my fate like a mouse caught in a trap. It started slow, like a dragging with the thud every second. I counted. 182 steps. They stopped, my head sore from the whiplash and pain of the constant thudding. Then I heard her, my own mother, angry with the boys. My own mother, the one who married my father, who drove into a car with me in front, destroying my mobility.

She scolded them, telling them things I wish I heard. I screamed again, trying to get her to free me from my plastic prison. She kicked the box I was in, and kicked it again, and again, like horrid thunder her foot teetered me off the edge and directly down the stairs. My neck whipped back and forth like a rope on a car and I passed out, when I woke I was on my bed, my head bloodied, my door locked from the outside, and my wheelchair gone. “GET THEM! HURT THEM BACK!” The friend inside my mind yelled: “THROW THEM DOWN THE STAIRS! BURN THEM TO HELL!” It continued. It seemed like all I could do was listen, and obey. This thing wanted to help, I thought, “It is me, and I listen to me, and noone else”! I growled and crawled to the window, crawling out into the open yard, my legs far from the unmolested state they were before. I found my wheelchair thrown into the garbage along with most of my belongings. “Wanted to get rid of me eh”? I grumbled, fueling my anger and hatred for the ones who shared my genes. I pulled it free and wheeled to the shed, the same shed covered in dents where I was shackled and stoned. I saw three things first: an Axe, our hedge trimmers, and our large, expensive wood chipper.


“Good. They will know my hate. My pain, and yes, I will never regret this.” I said aloud like an evil villain plotting his plan to his minions. Taking the axe I put it in my lap along with the trimmers and a cord I made my way inside via our back door. My brother’s bunk bed was on the bottom floor, lucky me. Ever so silently I entered their room. Smashing at the top bunk I yelled, waking the pair, and the bottom one, Lazarus, was already tied, gagged, and sobbing. The other, one jumped onto me, and with the arms I had developed for so, so long I whacked at the crook of his exposed neck. Blood flew across the room the the wings of a tainted angel. Something happened, I did something I’d never have done in years, I laughed. I laughed until I cried at his deceased and lifeless husk. Lazarus was awake and trying to scream. I took the trimmers and chuckled, placing the 2 blades hooked to the top bunk so that all he could see was that and my bloody, laughing face. I then took my axe, and began noisily hacking at the four supports, still laughing so hard that my eyes were red and puffy. The bunk crashed down and smashed, crushing his legs with a satisfying crunch as his skull was impaled by the old and rusted metal. I laughed as his muffled scream made me laugh. By now my mother was staring at me, mortified from the open door. I turned to her and sneered “You did this, and lookie here what happened”... Her face as pale as the now near-bloodless corpses of my brethren. She had this look, a look…

A look that said “You’ve looked out on a city and know how much of it you don’t have”.
A look that said “You’ve walked into a mob warehouse during an arms trade.”
A look that said “You’ve realized your heist is going wrong.”
A look that said “You’ve just seen your youngest child murder his brothers happily”.
A look that said “I’m next aren’t I Hamish?”

She ran from the room, and by the crash of the back door she was right where I wanted her. I wheeled fast behind her, managing to swipe at her leg with my tool of trade, my axe and stuck her to the grass. I hurriedly pulled from the shed our wood chipper and placed the heavy, blasted thing on the table. Dragging her still alive body into the whirring jaws of her demise as she screamed for her life, her gore and chunks of bone flying from the smoking machine as her legs, then hips and torso along with her head and arms were bloodily devoured. I laid beneath the machine, rolling in the bits laughing like I just won the lottery; And in my own way, I did. The police arrived within the hour, one of them vomited, it was funny. The others bloodied their hands to throw me into the car, as I was asleep at the time. I went to court, and funnily enough they sent me where I am now, a mental hospital. The voice is still my friend, and I listen to him way more now.

They gave me therapy, and one day, I hated, I loathed it, I despised it; So pinning my therapist to the ground I took my finger and removed his eye from the socket. And ate it. Around his crimson stained face, a mixture of spit, blood, and tears dripping to the floor around us in a pool danced a dance no human has seen ever before. Removed again and sent to prison was to be my next destination. 2 years and I left, back to the hospital. The funny thing is, everything I wrote here is true… You may not believe, in fact, I suggest not too. But the ramblings of the mad drive those who understand insane.