Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning: Psychological Thriller of How a True Psychopath is Born

By Catherine Nuza

How much truth can you handle and how far you would go to get it? Understanding the human condition can ignite horror and disbelief. The mind can be understood even when broken, it challenges who we really are. Psychopathic instincts drive Khedlar into his unpredicted hell and carnage he is driven to orchestrate. Through the looking glass of sanity and insanity, Khedlar battles with his mind and conscience in a world where madness is normality and fractured projections of the past are all he has left. How a psychopath is born and the need to survive combines in the ultimate psychological thriller of love, death and betrayal. How deep is the rabbit hole in the darkest corner of your mind? This is the beginning! Get ready for a chilling, accurate, fast-paced story unraveling one lie at a time. Not all that lies beneath the human psyche is beautiful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: Aug 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781594337307

Catherine Nuza

Catherine Nuza portrays through her writing a personal perspective of life experience in caring for people suffering from mental illness. Being a writer all her life she tells the story from every angle including facts, experiences, imagination and work. Travelling from a young age she has sampled humanity from all walks of life and understands sociological and psychological traits of cultures and weaves these elements into her story. Caring for a wide age range, she has developed a humanistic lens garnered from hard work, the desire to help others and reveals her knowledge and experience. The story evolved rapidly into a full-blown novel with the notion to create and unveil the journey and making of a psychopath. Not enough is shared about the evolution of the human mind that creates these monsters. She writes with an educated eye that visually paints the picture of their world.

Book preview

Drops

Chapter 1

Introduction into Insanity

Come on, get up Khedlar!

What? Where am I?

I could feel the bed sheets tightly muddled up around my body, forcing me to be a slave of sleep. My mind was absent, drowsy and dull and I could feel the sharp pain of a pending headache. My hands were shaking as I tried to aim with numb fingertips to wipe the dry sleep from my eyes. My obstructed vision managed to gain focus as the last piece of sleep lifted, revealing someone approaching my bed. As my eyes began to focus I saw it was a lady standing over me dressed completely in white.

Oh God! It was the nurse. I had always hated nurses. She was an odd-looking woman who was plump, in her mid-forties and had dark curly hair framing her round, red face. She wore no make-up apart from green eye shadow that was plastered thickly onto her eyelids. Her old-fashioned glasses hung by a pearl strap around her neck. She stood there, hovering over me, staring at me the way they all did, with their stupid smiles of sympathy, as if to say, ‘Oh, I am sorry you’re crazy and condemned to this white hell.’

This was the V.I.P. destination for the sanity challenged. A place where other people on the outside can be put at ease that all the lunatics, are in an isolated dump and won’t bother them any more. More people would join us on a weekly basis and slowly, bit by bit, they would go from passably normal to utterly insane.

It is the drugs … I mean medication they give you in this place. If the nurses were fed up with someone they would just force you to take an obscenely large pill to send you off to Narnia. Less work for them although it would result in a bad headache for the patient in the morning. This would fall under normality in this dismal place. Drugs were at their disposal and the government was supplying them by the cartload, for free. Excuse me but yes, I do believe that hell is the best word in the whole English language to describe this inhumane place.

Your demons become your best friends and like for all, the inner torment proves too much. It smothers your soul and makes your thoughts abstract, dark and twisted. It takes you to places you only ever used to visit in your darkest dreams. Not all prisons in life have bars you can see. In fact the worst ones are the cages we create in our minds designed by fear and despair. Growing up I was an outcast, different and never understood even by the people who should have known me, should have loved me … What can I say, no one ever really took the time to get to know me. I guess I never really got to know myself.

I would live in my books, become the characters of the stories … the darker the better. Some have commented in the past that I never acted like a child at all. Mother would at times show concern about me, she would sit me down and talk about great-great-grandma Ruth. According to my mother, Ruth was the same as I was, an antisocial loner who was obsessed with the darker and bloodier things in life. Apparently she lost her mind completely one day. She’d had enough of her husband Bernard and stabbed him twenty-eight times in the chest with a butcher’s knife. When she was taken to the police station and they asked her why she had done such a horrible thing and stabbed him so many times, she had simply replied that she was looking for his heart. Ruth had been convinced for years that he never possessed one. Mother would always cry when talking about great-great-grandma Ruth which I personally never understood.

Mother’s emotions mostly confused me and honestly just took up so much of my time. I tried to keep her happy to a certain point or at least create the illusion that I had real friends and was sociable.

Time to have your pill, Khedlar, the nurse insisted in her bland monotone voice, brining me back to my current reality.

I didn’t complain as that would only lead to trouble and trouble would result in getting mentally probed again, or worse, starved. No, I will behave.

Okay I hear you, I said trying to find one connective ounce of compliance between my body and mind. I sat up slowly in bed, shuffling the white sheets loose so I could move freely. They always itched terribly and had a disinfectant odour about them.

I placed the odd-looking tablet in my sleep dried mouth and coaxed it down with a large gulp of water.

Now, she said in a higher octave as if she was trying to sound enthusiastic, get dressed and someone will be by in a while to take you to the recreation room, okay? She did an impersonation of a smile and left.

God how I hated the lack of personal space the staff gave me in this place. Taking orders and doing exactly what they said when they said it at times made me feel like a performing circus animal in a demented warped world where nothing makes sense.

I like order because everything has a purpose, everything has to have a pair. I once was a pair. I was once in my right place but now I feel out of place, my mind a prisoner of solitude with nothing of substance to think about.

My slippers lay exactly three centimetres from the side of my bed, that’s how I liked it. I might have been in others eyes a bit obsessively compulsive but that is me, everything in its place.

As a child I had a twin. They say that the second twin is a mirror image of the first, as if the same person’s soul was shared between two bodies. Sometimes I would strain to remember what had happened to my twin, his name was Demetrius. We sometimes shared visions of what the other was doing, it was a strange connection that we both had with each other even though we were never close.

He was the happy one, where my compulsive urges ruled my life, his was ruled by spontaneity. He was an erratic force to be reckoned with. He would act as if I never existed in his life, in his world. We could be sat in the same room and yet walls in our personalities kept us from engaging with each other, even at any basic level. I would never have said it but at times I had wished to see life how he did, with such ease and lightness. That was impossible for me!

Our parents were normal, anything but bland I guess. That is why I was their favourite son until, well, there’s no point in thinking about my isolated, death-filled youth. My memories of growing up usually sparked up layers of uncontrollable anger. I used to pass out a lot when I got so angry. I wished to rip the skin off my flesh and reveal the raging beast which slumbered within.

I took my work very seriously in school. I always kept a good report constantly going and I was able to shine in class. After the bells rang it was a different story. All I remember after school was the name-calling, harassment and demoralizing mocking, but most of all the inability to fit in with a crowd. I never knew what clothes to buy not that mother gave me much of a choice in the matter. I sat alone at lunchtime, peering down at my food and wishing that all of these feelings of not fitting in would somehow disappear. I hated being a child physically as in my mind I felt a lot older. I was talked down to by all and ignored by most. I found it hard to even know how to act as my father was away a lot on business trips and I had no guidance. Everyone could tell I was lost.

I would leave the classroom and head straight for the restrooms to wait until the bullies were tired of waiting for me. That way I would be left alone to have a safe walk home.

I always wondered why Tom and Jake liked to bully me. I speculated on occasion if they had been bullied themselves. A couple of times Tom had mentioned to the teacher that his dad wouldn’t help him with his homework but as he stood there saying this, the bruises on his arms told a much more detailed story of his life at home.

Jake on the other hand came from a very wealthy family. His parents had left him at home with a Norwegian live-in nanny and gone off to the States for work related reasons. At least that’s what the older kids spread around school. He must have felt quite alone in a way, I suppose. Although the thought of trying to talk to them came to mind every now and then, I sensed a passive approach would be the best strategy for me to pursue. My sole purpose in their lives was to be used as a punching bag.

I lived in an old refurbished farmhouse situated in the town of Dawn Vines, a small and isolated place for most, unkind for me. My parents had bought the old farm off Marta. She was in her late sixties and had to sell it as she was physically unable to keep up the maintenance. My mother had decided that this was a brilliant place to raise kids. Within a couple of months she had renovated the whole lot and created a home for us. We even got to keep two of the horses.

I would dream of becoming a doctor, helping people and saving lives, feeling the balance of life and death in my hands, playing God, so to speak. It was a lifetime ambition of mine and I craved to make my parents proud of me.

My parents never knew at first but I’d done several successful operations on cats and dogs in the far corner of the garden under the cover of the large rose bushes that grew tall and dense. Equipped with a home-made scalpel, one of my mother’s old sewing needles and thread, I was on my way to becoming an amazing surgeon. I loved to feel the blood, hearts and guts in the palm of my hand. Holding life was amazing, too amazing to describe in mere words.

Creating my scalpel was a mission in itself. Father had forgotten to close the tool shed one winter’s day. Naturally I was curious and decided to have a look inside. I saw it from the corner of my eye, father’s Stanley knife. I took it and ran to the cupboard in the hallway of the house. I remember staring at the sleek, sharp blade as it just begged to be used. It sparked the thought of what I could create from this blade … , a scalpel maybe? The blade would be sharper than the knives I had swiped from the kitchen for sure. I had been filled with excitement as I always loved to create things using my hands. I had looked up at the shelves above me and saw an old, smooth wooden photo frame which would work perfectly as a handle. It was broken so I knew it wouldn’t be missed. I meticulously cut two lengths off the frame to the size I needed and shaped it for the grip with a wood file. The two pieces of wood sandwiched the blade perfectly. It was beautiful the way both elements came together. From that point on my cuts were sharp and precise. It was my most valued possession growing up and I loved the way it sat so perfectly in my hand.

One day Demetrius was dead, gone, as if he had never existed. Although my parents had comforted me for many years after his death I wasn’t the one who needed it as I knew exactly what had happened. I kept a twisted, dark secret that was so lush to hold in my head that I have never told a soul.

They never found his body but the police had concluded he was dead. His jacket and other personal belongings he wouldn’t have been without were found near the river by our house. The police told my family that the search had been called off as they had concluded he must have drowned in the river.

The river by our house was deep, dark, polluted and completely uninhabitable for life to survive. The only thing that had been able to live in it were lots of thick, tangled weeds. It would be the perfect place for a child to drown for sure but my brother and I knew the river like the back of our hands.

The wind would blow through the leaves in the day making almost musical sound waves but as the sun lowered the river would take on a much more sinister vibe. The darkness could play tricks on your eyes, no birds or any wild animals lived by the water’s edge; maybe it was evil. It was somehow tragically poetic and represented a time untouched.

My parents had never seen or heard from Demetrius since then to prove he wasn’t dead so they had come to terms with it and realized that this must have been what had happened.

That night I remember clearly. Mother was sat in her chair and father was smoking his pipe when there was a knock on the door. I could see in mother’s eyes as she opened the door her need to hear from the police that they had found my brother at last. The police explained to my parents that all resources had been used to no avail and that it was time to conclude he had drowned.

Mother fell to her knees and father dropped his pipe on the tiled floor. It made a loud clang as it hit the ground and cracked the edge of the mouth piece. He held mother tightly as she cried so hard that at times no sounds resonated through her lungs. The doctor was called that night and mother had to be sedated. It was all too much for her. Father was busy on the phone all night trying to make arrangements for someone to cover for him at work while she slept, but it was useless as he had to leave again the following Monday as planned. I don’t think mother ever really forgave him for that. She screamed at him for three days solid before he left, shouting how he had no heart and how could he leave at a time like this. Mother was broken, father was detached and I knew everything but I had to stay true to my word. I had made a promise to my brother that I would never tell a soul.

Death could be such a torment for some and a blessing for others. Death itself fascinated me into a dark endless chapter in my life, hidden from all around but always there for me to enjoy secretly.

My favourite aunt was on my mother’s side. Her name was Morgan and she owned the town’s morgue. She had set up the business when I was about three. I was persistent in asking my mother if I could go see what she did for a living but the answer was always No! By the time I was eight my parents finally gave in to me and allowed me to go visit aunty Morgan and to see her morgue.

They drove me there while asking me repeatedly if I knew what it was. Do I really want to see dead bodies? They kept saying that it was very strange for an eight year old boy not to be afraid of these kinds of things. All of these questions and statements came out of my mother’s mouth and were accompanied by stares of confusion as well as concern from my father. When we arrived mother stated that it was twelve o’clock and that they would be back at one-thirty to pick me up after they had run some errands. I set my watch alarm.

I quickly got out of the car and gazed for a moment at the building. It was composed of red brick and in the display window there were tombstones in all different styles and sizes. Above the door there was a large black stone sign with the words Town Morgue, inscribed in gold.

Standing outside I could feel the excitement building up inside of me. I took a deep breath in and floated towards the door. I opened the large heavy wooden door and walked inside. The air smelled damp and I suppose the other odour I could not establish was the scent of death.

As I walked down the stairs I saw a desk much like the one in the hospital’s recreation room. It was old, black and solid except this one had incredibly intricate detail all down the legs. There was a lady there sitting at her desk. A free-standing lamp created a halo above her head and the background seemed to fade out into grey. As I approached her she slid her black-framed glasses down to the end of her nose.

Hello kiddo, you must be Khedlar, your aunty told me to send you right in when you came. Just go through that door on the right and go on straight, and there she’ll be, okay? she said as she watched my curiously.

I nodded and proceeded down the hall as she’d explained, buzzing with excitement.

She seemed nice enough and not at all the kind of person I would’ve expected my aunt to hire. She must be a good receptionist because my aunt was very particular about these things.

I followed her instructions and eventually found my aunt. She came up to me, gave me a hug and ruffled up my hair the way she always did.

So your mum tells me that want to see some dead bodies? Why is that love? You’re so young, wouldn’t it scare you? she asked seemingly trying to hide her pride for me in sharing the same interest as her.

No it won’t scare me. I wish to learn about death because it’s intriguing. I wanted to come when I was younger but mother wouldn’t let me, I admitted to Aunt Morgan.

Her eyes softened as she smiled warmly and patted me gently on my shoulder. This made me feel like I was about to see things in real life that I’d only been able to imagine from words in the countless books I’d read. For the first time in my life I felt like I was in the right place, a place I could allow my knowledge to evolve and grow. I felt like it was a small victory for me and through our shared passion I wondered if it would allow me to create a bond with my aunt that I’d never been able to have before.

She took my hand as we walked down into a lower level room. This room was a lot colder and was covered in white tiles from top to bottom on the side where the autopsy table was situated. I assumed this was a good idea because if blood splattered on the walls and floor it could all simply be hosed down. On the other side there were over fifty draws embedded into the cold metallic framed walls. The bodies were just barely wrapped up in a fine cloth and some were showing signs of decomposition. The skin was mottled and tight, the eyes hollow and dead. I never realized how heavy a dead person was.

We looked at over ten different bodies while Aunty Morgan explained to me how to examine their organs to find out the cause of death. It was truly amazing, informative and interesting. I felt enlarged hearts and guts sliding in-between my small hands, pressing my passion further, allowing me to set my untainted eyes free and to give in to the dark urge pressing me forward. I remember feeling my cheeks starting to hurt as my telling smile took over my expression. Alas something was missing and I knew all too well what it was. The pulsating beat of the heart in my hands, the smell of blood filling the air, life and death hanging in the balance.

We were about to examine another body when the alarm on my watch went off; it was time to go and meet my parents. I felt the time I’d spent here was in no way done, I had to come back! It was so addictive and I liked the feeling of being in a space where I could experiment and discover so much more visually than by reading books.

I thanked my aunt, gave her a big hug and ran out of the morgue to wait for their car to pull up. A couple of minutes later they arrived and I remember getting in the car and sitting there in a fascinated trance so thick that I never heard a word my parents said. From that point on I was consumed by my fascination with life and death, even more so than before.

I would go to the library after school every day to read books on different topics but always in the area of life and death, science, fiction and medical. I was hooked! The more I read the more I craved knowledge.

I would have dreams, dreams of cats with extra limbs that I had sewn together. I had taken animal form, flying through a dark red sky plucking out animal’s eyes with my black blood stained beak. I was savouring and devouring the metallic taste that slid down my throat, so warm and addictive.

Chapter 2

Defeat But Never Acceptance

God, how did I ever end up in this place? I once had a life, a very good life, a family and… The squeaking sound of a wheelchair passing by my room interrupted my trail of thought.

As I looked up I peered towards the door on the wall opposite my bed, there was Brenda Biscotti waving frantically as per usual. She was all fun and games until she got upset; then she would become very dangerous!

Two months ago a new volunteer helper was trying to get her to eat in the dinner hall, a bit too forcefully for her liking and Brenda flipped. She grabbed a fork and stabbed it sideways into the poor girl’s neck screaming, You eat it, you eat it!

The psychiatric hospital faced a lawsuit three weeks after the incident and had to pay for the girl’s counselling, loss of earnings as well as compensation for her trauma. I think they will be paying out for a while. Who would have thought someone could do so much damage with one fork? From that point on, no metal cutlery was allowed even with supervision within the walls, and what better to replace them with than white plastic ones.

The thing is that no one would really expect that from the normally eccentric Brenda, unless that person had upset her before. She must now be in her eighties. She had the kind of face you felt you were safe with, a grandmother’s face filled with love and understanding. Her brown soulful eyes, would allow you to read them so deeply that you knew she had been through a lot in her life. Let’s not forget the smile, it was sort of a half and half smile slightly more raised on the right side, shining with her fuchsia pink lipstick. She would never be seen without her lipstick.

Yes, you could say she might be a bit obsessive about some things like her appearance, but each to their own. I remember her once telling me in the recreation room, ‘appearance is my life, and some might call me shallow. Just because I am in a sick place that does not mean I have to look sick. No, I try, even though people don’t understand me.’ She always sounded lonely I thought to myself.

Bye, Brenda, I called as her smile widened. Poor demented woman.

I miss the sound of Sue waking me up in the morning with her sweet little voice. Placing kisses on my cheek saying Wake up daddy.

She was the best thing I had ever created in this life and the feeling of her not being close to me made my heart feel empty and cold. In my crude reality of this place I had truly nothing of value, nothing that made me feel alive. It made my mind want to blur the past and present together in a delusional state of my living reality. What can I say, the sterile truths of waking up to the white walls that caged me in this prison ended up being the blank screens I projected my memories onto, to relive the best moments of my past life.

I truly believe that Sue was the only person in this world who loved me unconditionally. She was my world, my absolute everything. Not even my love for Sally could equal the love I had in my heart for my little girl. She was my flesh and blood, family in the purest sense of the word and now I would be without her smile forever. It was a wound that ran deep inside my core.

Sally had managed to convince me, for a while, that a couple could last and that love between partners would never die. To this day I don’t think she knows how her ‘love’ destroyed me. I resented how many nights I‘d sat on the sofa waiting for her to come home like a loyal dog. It turned out I was just simply a dog in her eyes, a fool that could be easily lied to and cheated on. A year ago it had all come to a head, the shouting and arguments never stopped and even her voice sounded like white noise in my ears. She had initially blocked me out and I had retaliated, doing the same to her in return. All we had been left with in the end was the question about Sue. I didn’t want to lose my little girl and Sally would use her as emotional blackmail to make me agree with whatever she wanted. My life had no colour before Sue, nor after. I lived in a greyscale, washed out, colourless world surrounded by thick, heartless people. They were all faceless with no capacity to retain a soul. I mainly kept to myself and no one mattered any more, not now, not without my Sue.

My barren room was painted pure white with no sharp corners and no personal effects were allowed; only what they considered a necessity was there. I had a fitted wooden wardrobe that was finished in the same white paint that plastered the walls, and a small clock hung on the left side of the opposite wall. It is bland, unstimulating and tasteless.

I never understood the reason for the colour, nor did I try to. I simply thought the colour was the embodiment of evil! After a while the walls and doors looked the same as they blended into a white smudge in the blind