Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 97525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Chapter 80 - Brant
Ever since finding out my condition, I've read everything I can find on Dissociative Identity Disorder, my research hampered by the fact that there is little on the subject. What I have read is troubling, made more so by a likely omission that my mind will not reveal.
DID is typically caused by emotional trauma of some sort. Abuse, or a significant event, one the brain tries to hide, initially creates the first sub-personality as sort of a protective defense against the knowledge it doesn’t want the brain to have. The rare DID exceptions are brain damage, physical impairments that cause a shorting out of the cranial lobe from which idiosyncrasies result.
I haven’t had any physical damage, no hard blows to the head, no horrific accidents that would have caused multiple Brants to emerge. I also, with the exception of December 12th, haven’t had any traumatic events. And December 12th happened after – and was a result of – my development of DID.
The obvious answer is that I must have had a traumatic experience and have psychologically hidden it. I called my parents and believe them when they claim ignorance of any triggering events. My curiosity isn’t worth contacting Jillian. Right now, she can rot in hell.
Dr. Terra has tried, in a roundabout way, to unearth this possibility. He forgets the man he is dealing with. I'm intelligent enough to attack a problem head on. I don’t need subtle pecks at the corners of my brain. I need to split my psyche open and dig at the root of my problem.
I can feel the incident. It nags at a part of me, like that errand you walked into a room to do and then forgot. It lies, just out of reach but at the corner of my mind, occasionally tapping at my brain matter when it wants to drive me bat-shit crazy. I need to unearth it. Need to open my past and find the key.
Now, for the 32nd evening in a row, I try. The chair beneath me creaks as I sit on the back veranda, my feet propped against the railing, the skies dark as a storm approaches. I can feel the air thicken, thunder clapping as lightening streaks the sky. I contemplate going inside to avoid the rain, but the overhang should keep me fairly dry. As the rain begins to tap a staccato beat on the roof above me, I close my eyes and try to remember the past. I try to remember a summer twenty-seven years ago.
And then, listening to the familiar sound of rain against a roof, it comes to me.
Chapter 81 - Brant
Sheila Anderson had been beautiful. Half Cuban, she had tan skin, dark hair and eyes that gleamed when she laughed. I had never spoken to her. I sat three seats behind and one seat over, and just stared.
I was nervous; I was awkward.
She was untouchable.
When she left school each day, I followed her. I had a valid excuse. She lived a street over and both of our paths home followed a logical route. So I followed, and I watched her hair bounce, and I stared some more. She was always with friends, she giggled, she whispered, she hummed, and I listened.
I listened to her giggle until the day that she cried, and my world broke in two.
It was a Wednesday and it rained. A big sloppy downpour, where one foot outside meant a plaster of all of your clothing to your skin, no ‘quick dash’ possible to keep yourself dry. I saw her standing in the front porch of the school, her steps tentative as she contemplated the initial step into the torrent. I stood beside her, offered a small smile to her friendly beam. We waited together, until the moment that she ducked her head and ran, squealing, her hands covering her head.
I followed, and it was just the two of us running across the parking lot. Through the church. Down the road with the fence. Past the house with the dog. We ran, and it just kept coming down. The rain was ice cold and unrelenting, nails against your skin.
She slowed, and I slowed and it came time for me to turn down my street. I stopped in the middle of the street and she continued past me with a smile and a wave that I could barely see through the rain.
I watched her until I could barely see her pink shirt. Then I glanced left, the sight of my mailbox barely visible through the rain, and ducked my head against the wet needles. I turned on one shoe and ran after her.
The man’s arm is one I have seen in a hundred nightmares and never understood its place. Thick and dark, not from the color of his birth, but from the tattoos. A sleeve of evil, skulls and snakes, the muscles of his arm jumping with the action of his ink. I was a few steps behind her when his arm shot out, grabbing the back of her as easily as one would pluck up a cat. The rain obscuring my view as I saw a blur of arms and legs, the heavy patter of rain muffling the cries. I slowed, unsure of what was happening as he pulled her against his chest and stepped away from the sidewalk, into the heavy shade of trees, ducking into the yard he had come from.