Beautiful Insanity

Company of Sane

It’s been a long time since he felt the heat of sun on his skin. The winter sun wasn’t warm but dull yet its brightness brought a sense of freedom he hasn’t felt in few years now. According to his behavior, he should be allowed outside at least few years back but obviously he wasn’t in an asylum to take a sun bathe in fact it was made sure that he met no one except occasional nurses, Jim and Doctor Marley.

Five years with no human around would drive any man insane but then again, Tate wasn’t looking for sanity in people who were willingly working with people like him. In this human zoo where words said had no meaning was the perfect place to destroy his mind.

But Tate have lived too long and hard to lose his mind over simple loneliness after all he was always alone.

His eyes looked at the red head shuffling through her bag looking for something. She was the reason he was able to see the light of day or actually be able to see trees, humans. How easily she had let it happen when so many had tried to make sure he will die in those four walls.

His mind going back to the newspaper and tabloid which was thrown his way by Jim few days back. His usually perverted eyes were actually sober for once as they looked at him from head to toe as if he was no longer an ant but a tiger. He left without a word as Tate when through the newspaper first and in no time found why Jim was suddenly so wary of him. On the fifth page was a large picture of Iliac Bethel dressed in olive green and looking as siren as he first met her.

The pictures focus was clearly no supposed to be her but the man standing beside her holding her arm.

Bethel. A senator of America from last few years. He had worked closely with President and was in laws with the Mayor if New York.

The tall man was smiling as he looked at his daughter who was clearly smiling back politely.

The article was clearly about the senator but yet the picture was trying more to showcase Iliac then the said man.

No wonder she was able to reach him when his existence was removed from the world.

No wonder she was able to let him be able to see sunlight.

He understood better when he opened the tabloid and found several pages of Iliac in the same dress as she associated herself with people in the party and it seemed there was an interview about her life as well. The tabloid claimed that all the words written came from the very own Miss Iliac Bethel.

“Your favorite food is really steak?” He found himself asking involuntarily.

She paused her actions and her red hair shook as she looked at him in confusion, “My favorite food is ramen.”

Clearly the tabloid words weren’t from the very own Iliac Bethel.

“Why do you assume I like steak?” She continued.

“Ah, a tabloid said so.” Tate answered while touch his nose.

He watched as clear signs of understanding drawn on her face. The usual relaxed face turned cold for few seconds before turning back as it was. Her beautiful eyes shining in the winter sun.

“My father wants my favorite food to be steak.” She answered. The tone of her voice clearly wasn’t matching with her expressions as they were void of any emotions.

“You don’t like him?” He suddenly asked, leaning forward to make sure he didn’t miss any of her changing expressions.

He was disappointed to see that her expressions didn’t change as she simply said no.

“Why?” He demanded, curious why a girl who looked so harmless with wrist as thin as he could easily break would dislike her own father who was enabling him to open doors which no longer man was capable of even viewing.

The same girl who was smiling so easily in faces whom were clearly unknown and uninterested to her.

Her silent laugh paused his eyes on her face, what a pretty face it was which lines forming around her eyes and eyes almost closed as her slowly shook. The red nose due to cold was twitching every now and then, the pale face he saw last time was carrying a hint of red.

“There are way too many reasons for me to say. Can we talk about you now?”

He leaned back, sulking. Talking about himself is all he has been doing for last five years. That was always the focus of the conversation. Why, what, how. It was always the same old pattern.

Seeing him being silent, she asked, “Why was someone who killed as many as you have got no attention in media?”

Tate looked at her silently. Nobody asked that. In these long, lonely years, nobody ever cared about who he was and where he came from or how he came to be here because every one of the people who ever sat in front of him were not there to meet Tate Wilder, they were there to amuse themselves to see how mad his mind has gone.

Do sane minds go insane that easily?

Or do insane minds become sane with time?

“I don’t know.” He lied easily as if he has reversed this answer a million times even though it was asked for the first time. He had never need to reverse this answer because he had known nobody would ever ask

“There is also no record of your trial open for public.” She stated as she looked at him in the eyes.

She knew he lied.

He remained silent in reply.

He was unwilling to let her know anything from his own mouth yet he wasn’t able to stop her, tell her to not ask such questions because the answers might get her in the same place he was bound to. But there was selfish part of him which wanted her to keep probing, to keep being persistent for answers but he was also anxious because he didn’t lose much behind these walls but one mistake and she will.

“The detective who arrested you also retired the same year and went off the grid. Tell me, did you really kill those people?”

He laughed.

“I killed them and I will let no man take the credit for those killings, Miss Bethel.” There was a silent threat in his voice.

His first kill was a mistake, a desperate attempt but right after the killing it suddenly became easier to kill again.  The sight of blood wasn’t as frightening as he once had thought. The lifeless body he stayed beside for hours wasn’t as disgusting as his feelings before. The sight of it turning cold, pale was somehow so stilling to his heart that the next time he swung that pipe, he had looked forward to bring as much disgust to the person who sees his next victim as he had felt seeing them alive.

“How old were you when you first killed?” She leaned forward towards him as if asking him a secret. Her eyes filled with curiosity as if he hadn’t admitted of murdering people but told her a passing event of her life.

He suddenly felt the pulse on her neck very attractive.

His eyes moved to stare at the sky. He wasn’t looking at anything particular but the memory of his first kill wasn’t really pleasant. For him it was just another day, of those bad days he had few times a week but that day, he was just tired. So very tired of his life so he pushed and then shoved and suddenly, his weak body had the strength of a grown man and he kicked, and finally killed.

“I was ten.” He answered shortly, not wanted to talk about it.

“How did it feel to kill someone?”

He turned his eyes to look at her, wondering if he would find the same curiosity as before but found that she wasn’t looking at him at all but blankly staring at nothing like he had, as if as he was, she was within another memory, an unpleasant memory.

“Miss Bethel, have you ever felt a need so desperate to the point it kills you if its not satisfied?” He asked, his eyes going wide in madness in remembrance.

Iliac turned to look at him with her grass green eyes, lips in a slightly trembling with an answer but that was fine with Tate, he didn’t need an answer as he laughed loudly and continued, “My first few kills had satisfied that need and then it became an instinct to kill, a second nature. So, tell me, Miss Bethel, do you want to kill someone to satisfy a need?”

He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice as he asked this question because he had seen those eyes, her beautiful eyes which held the same crazy he had seen in his own eyes the first time he killed. He wanted to know who she wanted to hurt, who she wanted to make disappear from this world and why.

She didn’t answer him as he had expected after all, he was the one with freedom to be insane in his thoughts and actions, everyone outside these walls had to keep in their animals to walk in the freedom the world had created with said definition.

In the end, wasn’t everyone bound to cages one way or another.

“How do you choose your victims? I noticed no pattern in your kills? There is nothing similar about them, no their gender, not their occupation, nor their characteristics.” She quietly asked him, as if her brain had worked hard to find something else to talk about.

He smiled and said in a sickly-sweet voice, “Oh, they were all familiar to each other. Everyone of them was the same.”

Confusion dawned on her face as she searched her papers and he laughed out loud at her naiveness. He knew she wasn’t strong enough to stand beside him, nor was she someone who could have enough strength to go deep in his abyss where she might find herself to be dead or much worse. The void which had landed him bound to these mad chains, he didn’t want to join his world but he couldn’t find himself to stop her. He wanted her join this madness but with the freedom of a common man.

He wondered if he had actually gone completely mad to drag an innocent woman to dance on his whims. Whims which were held tightly by the voices in his head. The same voices which were without a conscious of right or wrong.

Or maybe those voices were just his own.

Maybe she was right, maybe he was the devil himself.

“You won’t find anything in those papers, Miss Bethel.” He softly spoke as if trying to charm her, he moved closer and continued, “You want to find the truth? Can you stand the truth? Are you willing to search for it till the end?”

He had asked hoping she said yes but there was still a part of him, some human part of him that was afraid she would say no, she would refuse to enter into his chaos.

The voices in his head wanted her to become part of what he had come to be.

What a selfish asshole he was.

“Tell me.” The fire in her eyes looks so f*****g pretty that he grinned, eyes darkening.

“How many victims did it say I had killed?” He asked.

She didn’t need to search her papers to know the answer.

“There were thirteen victims mentioned.”

“I have killed sixteen people, Miss Bethel. Find them, you will find why I killed.”

And so, he would welcome her to his mad, mad world and good god, insanity would look beautiful on her.