Part One | Adolescence

JOEL WAS BORN THE younger of two children. He had an older sister named Susan. He and his family lived in a modest house in a small town. His father was often away for work. His mother lived in her personal bubble, detached from the world. On the surface, they appeared to be a normal family. The circumstantial curse of living in a small town meant that everyone knew everyone, and social rankings were inevitably assigned. Joel’s family was ranked by the town as low class, and insignificant.

As a young boy, Joel had no knowledge of his rank. His primary focus was playing with his toys by himself and creating imaginary worlds where he was important. Once his older sister started school, his solitude and imagination only grew. In his mind, he could do anything, but his confidence remained in his daydreams.

Once he was old enough for school, he realized that social standing was a real thing. Though he couldn’t understand the concept, he certainly felt the effects. Quickly labeled a loser in the cliquish social atmosphere, he made few friends. It’s amazing what children can get used to. Joel didn’t realize that the lack of structure and rules at home made him into a stereotype of self-fulfilling prophecy.

He would wear dirty clothes for days in a row, and rarely brushed his teeth or bathed. He thought nothing of it, but the other children noticed. He found out the hard way that it’s true what they say: “Kids can be so cruel.” He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to be treated. He was ignored at home and wished the same would be true at school. He did his best to keep silent in the classroom, but would periodically voice himself when trying to be social.

The more he expressed himself, the more he was ridiculed. His confidence to speak shrank down to microscopic proportions. He accepted that he was not liked. He accepted he was a loser. Combined with feeling invisible at home, it didn’t take long for him to believe that he was, in fact, a waste of skin. The more outcast he felt from the world, the deeper into his mind he ventured. Toys remained an avid part of his life —he could use them to create any scenario he wanted. He had some control.

In public, Joel was always well-behaved. His family attended church regularly, and he had convinced himself that being a good person might eventually sway the pendulum in his favor. He did his best to follow all the rules, be punctual, and have proper manners. At home became a different story as he advanced into adolescence. He was more comfortable there and never received any discipline from his mother when he acted out.

He would often leave a huge mess with his toys. His mother would sometimes grumble about it, but then she would simply put them away. He’d create bigger messes on purpose, trying to get her to yell at him, or give him some kind of discipline, or attention. This was to no avail, and soon enough, his actions caused the rest of his family to look at him as troubled or abnormal.

As he grew, his social status at school did not change. He did his best to become a shadow —speaking only when spoken to, not trying to make any friends, and doing nothing unusual or different that may draw attention. These were the ideals he lived by. His academic difficulties added the label of stupid to his battered reputation. The more he struggled with math, the more he believed he was intellectually inferior.

When he did have friends over, they were the children of his mother’s friends who had no choice but to be there. He would take advantage of the comfort of being in his home environment and would act out on a grander scale to impress them. He would be destructive and show no respect for the house or the other members of the family. He had learned they wouldn’t say anything, and would just clean up after him and pretend it never happened.

On one occasion, Joel and his friend built a large speed bump out of snow that spanned the width of the driveway. By the time Joel’s father returned home, it had formed into a giant block of ice. His father dealt with this in his own way. He would yell and make threats, but Joel knew he would only be home for a couple of days before he left again, and there would be no follow-through.

The older he got, the more self-aware he became. He started noticing that the other kids’ families were not like his. He experienced bouts of sadness and would cry himself to sleep at night. He hoped his mother would take notice. She did on a couple of occasions, but would either ignore him or accept the answer of “Yeah” when she asked if he was okay.

The more his sadness grew, his destructive tendencies increased. Desperate to push the limits further and evoke some sort of reaction from his mother to prove that he was at least acknowledged, he continued to act out. He began shooting birds out of the trees with his BB gun. He would cut off their legs and cover them with his sister’s clear nail polish. He kept the legs in a small wooden box.

He began using fireworks to blow up bullfrogs, leaving their exploded bodies all over the lawn. He would put the family cat in a pillowcase, secure a rope around it and tie the other end to the banister above the stairs. Then he would throw the cat over the railing and watch it swing through the stairwell and often collide with the ceiling of the room below.

His actions were ignored.

It was clear to Joel that his family must have noticed his behavior. He wasn’t sure if they chose to ignore him because they didn’t care, or because they didn’t have the courage or empathy to try and address his problems. His mother often spoke to him in a disappointed tone and would say things that implied she was noticing something was different about him —often simply saying, “Oh, Joel.” She would never actually come right out and say anything directly.

Joel and his sister Susan were close, but they saw things differently. She took more of the same approach as their mother; push it all away and ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen and eventually you will believe it. Anything but face reality. Anything but allow herself to feel pain, or sadness. Being from the same family, Susan had the same reputation as Joel, but she did her best to fit in. Anything that happened in her life that she felt was an injustice was met with anger and blame rather than internalized as a vulnerable emotion.

As Joel neared high school age, despite his cruel and destructive actions at home, he did his best to remain a good person. He had no interest in drugs, and was still polite and well mannered. Outside of the home he was generally respectful. His faith had begun to slip but he still held on to hope that there was something out there bigger than him. Something looking out for him. He hoped one day things would make sense, and his life would have some sort of meaning.

Part Two | Transformation

Joel was nervous to begin high school. He had heard a lot of things about it and wasn’t sure how he was going to fit in. It started the way he expected it to —he was looked at as a loser, and felt like an outcast. It probably didn’t help that he continued to wear Ninja Turtles track pants and not brush his teeth, but he was too afraid of change to do anything about it.

It wasn’t long into the year when things at home changed. His father left the family for his mistress. It wasn’t like he had been around much anyway, but this impacted Joel significantly. He mourned the loss of the relationship he could have had with his father.

His mother coped in solitude, isolating herself and staying in her room for most hours of the day. Joel couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. His father had never allowed her to work and she was left to figure out how to live a new life supporting two children on her own. On a few occasions, Joel tried to console her, but she didn’t express or even acknowledge the feelings she was experiencing.

Not long after, his sister found love on the internet and announced that she was leaving to be with her new boyfriend. Again, Joel tried to empathize, knowing what life had been like for her with the family’s reputation. He was sure that it must feel amazing to be loved by someone after being ostracized and disregarded. He could relate —he just hoped that one day he might find himself in a similar situation.

About three months later, his mother started dating again. She met someone quickly and began spending time at his house. It didn’t take long before she was away more often than she was home. She would buy some groceries and come home at night to sleep. But for the most part, she was gone, and Joel felt increasingly alone.

Something inside him changed. It was like one day he woke up and no longer cared about anything. His values, his morals, his faith, what was the point? He decided to make some drastic changes to his appearance. After so many years of being petrified to alter the slightest thing about himself for fear of being bullied, he finally felt that he was able to stand up for himself. There was something liberating about not caring, and all of his built-up loneliness and apathy now felt like it was ready to fire out of him in an angry blast.

Using safety pins, he pierced various parts of his face and bought new clothes that were offensive and unique. He redecorated his room with pictures of rock stars and movie monsters. He cut out a large section of his carpet and painted on a chalk outline, as if a dead body had once been there. Joel knew to an outsider, this would appear as a desperate cry for attention, and maybe in a way it was. For him it was more like a beacon.

A statement.

“Go ahead and come at me. I don’t give a fuck. I am ready.”

His mother made a few comments about his new appearance, but remained in her world and pretended he was fine. School was a different story. He showed up looking for a fight, looking to have the opportunity to finally defend himself the way he always wished he could have. Instead, the same kids that used to torment him wanted to be his friends. He couldn’t understand it, and he was disappointed. He didn’t want to go picking fights, but he had been certain that someone would instigate one after noticing his transformation.

His new look was important to him, like he was finally able to portray his true self. He was comfortable —feeling like he had nothing to lose, he embraced the idea of having friends. The people who gravitated toward him saw part of themselves in him. Outcasts, losers, people who were fueled by anger or apathy. People he could relate to.

Joel began doing what he did best, pushing his limits. He started smoking cigarettes in the house and even got his mother to buy them for him. His empathy for his mother was dwindling, turning to anger and bitterness. He felt like she owed him.

Joel eventually took to smoking weed with his friends in the empty house. His mother would come home late, complain about the mess they made, tidy up, and then go to bed. No mention of what they were doing. One night, Joel and his friends were in his bedroom with the door closed tightly. They were smoking hash from a bottle. The room was so full of smoke that they could barely see three feet in front of them. Joel’s mother came home and opened the bedroom door.

“You guys should open a window in here,” was all she said.

One of Joel’s friends had thrown the smoke-filled bottle under the dresser when they heard the door and retrieved it as soon as it was closed again. They all laughed.

“Your mom didn’t even notice that the whole room was hot boxed!”

Joel was still not satisfied, consumed by festering emotions that had built up within him over his entire life. Now, he treated his mother with no respect, but still faced no consequences. She just ventured deeper into her own world, pretending more and more like he wasn’t there. He got sick of feeling like he didn’t exist and decided to push a little further.

Drugs are not difficult to find at a public high school if you travel in the right circles, and it didn’t take long for Joel to find LSD. The world became a different place. The way it looked, the way it acted, everything. He found a new sense of self that required no outside validation. He felt important and insightful. He continued to chase the feeling with other drugs, experimenting and embracing. Drugs became life.

One day at school, Joel took some acid before first period with Dale, a kid he didn’t really know. By the time lunch rolled around, they were tripping hard. Dale, who had a reputation for stealing, suggested they go into town nearby and break into the church. Joel didn’t care and was up for anything. He wasn’t sure anyone would leave any money in a church on a weekday, but he didn’t give it much thought.

The two boys walked to town and approached the target. Joel was reluctant, but once Dale kicked in the front door, he had no problems following. They went inside. Dale kicked in the office doors looking for the collection plate, money, and wine. Joel found himself focused on something else. He flashed back to the days when he attended this church. All the false hope he had been given about being a good person and having it make any kind of difference.

He began destroying things. He knocked over a statue of Jesus and smashed it repeatedly against the floor until the head came off. He threw candles from the altar as far as he could, kicked over the baptismal tub, and snatched the Bibles from the pews and ripped them to pieces before throwing them around like confetti. He threw hymnals through the stained glass windows, and then pissed on the floor.

Dale emerged from a small room, holding a bottle of wine.

“Jesus man, what did you do?”

Joel picked up the porcelain head from the Christ statue and held it up.

“Jesus?”

They laughed before heading toward the door. As soon as they set foot outside, they saw the police car. Joel wasn’t afraid, but Dale tried to run. The cop took the savior’s severed head from Joel’s hands before applying the cuffs.

Once processed at the police station, he was officially charged with breaking and entering, and destruction of property. The police called his mother to come and pick him up. Joel waited for her with anticipation. He really didn’t care that he had been charged, but surely his mother would give him some kind of reaction. He was, after all, in police custody for breaking into a church and tearing the head off of Jesus.

“The school called, and they are suspending you for a week,” was all she had to say.

“Is that it?” Joel asked, disappointed.

His mother focused on driving, and didn’t respond. It seemed that the more he acted out, the less she saw him. She dropped him off at home and informed him that she was going to her boyfriend’s house.

He sat around for a while, but soon his friends arrived as they typically did. They had heard the rumors around the school that he had been arrested and wanted all the details. They sat around in the living room getting high, but in his mind he kept asking himself what he had to do to get some kind of reaction from his mother. How could he pull her out of her fairy tale bubble and prove to her that he did, in fact, exist?

Part Three | Louder Than Words

It was Thursday night, and Joel was thinking about how he could make a bigger, bolder statement, one that would be loud enough to get his mother to notice. Every weekend, she slept at her boyfriend’s house, giving Joel ample opportunity to do something magnificent. But what? He was too sober to come up with anything, and had no money for drugs.

He decided to look through the house and take anything of value. There was a store in town that would buy used goods. Over several trips he hocked the television, the stereo, a few other electronics, and some of his mother’s jewelry. He wondered if that act alone might be enough to get a rise from her, but when she got home, she didn’t mention anything about it. Joel figured she probably did notice and chose to pretend that she hadn’t to avoid the need to deal with it.

The next day, Joel awoke and headed for the bus stop. As he left the house, he caught sight of his neighbors. They were a family of four, much like his once was. The parents and children seemed like they got along well. Joel hated them. He stared at them, squinting, as they all piled into their family sedan, cheerful and seemingly connected. He thought to himself, maybe he should burn their house down.

Arriving at school, he used the money from his pawned household for an 8 ball of crystal meth. In those days, he didn’t care what drugs he did as long as they separated him from reality. The day felt long, and when it was finally time to go home, he almost didn’t even want his friends to come over. He wasn’t sure what they may have thought about him doing meth so he decided to hang onto it until they left.

They went through their usual routine, smoking weed and playing video games. Joel knew his mother would not be returning that night, so he figured after his friends left, he would try a couple lines of crystal and see how it felt. Getting high with his friends was something he normally enjoyed, but on that night, he couldn’t wait for them to leave. Once they finally did, he pulled the bag from his pocket.

He took a small amount and used his student ID card to crush it into a fine powder. He railed his first line, and the sting caught him off guard. The nasty drips that followed were disgusting, but he suddenly felt awake, alert, and motivated. It was a new feeling for Joel, and it made him want to do something. He paced around the house for a while, contemplating. He did another line.

That was the process for about four hours. Wander, pace, punch walls, do meth. He was already halfway through the bag when the feelings of power and rage got the best of him. His logic was gone, his rational thinking lost, and he was running solely on anger and impulse. He left the house and grabbed a baseball bat from the garage. He held it tightly in his hands as he examined it, a mad smile stretched across his face.

He made his way to the neighbors’ perfect family home. All the lights were off inside, a sure sign that he had the element of surprise. He used the bat to smash the window of their front door, allowing him to reach inside and unlock the deadbolt. He felt like he was being stealthy as he entered the home. The father came running down the stairs, but Joel felt no fear or hesitation. He walked up to the man and cracked the bat across his face, blood and teeth projecting onto the wall. He hit the dad a few more times for good measure —more blood exploded out onto the white carpet.

“Three more,” Joel said to himself as he looked up the stairs.

He ascended slowly, pausing for a moment on each step. Once he got close to the top, he heard a voice.

“Honey, is everything all right? Was someone there?”

He grinned and followed the voice. He pushed the door open, and the woman screamed so loud he was sure it must have woken the teenage children.

He went back into action, cracking the bat over the woman’s skull until the screaming stopped. The blood was all over his clothing, all over the floor, spattered on the walls and ceiling. He heard the door open and turned to see both children standing just outside the threshold. The boy lunged at him, and Joel used the end of the bat like a fencing foil, jabbing it into the boy’s stomach. The boy fell to the floor, gasping for air.

As Joel smashed the teenager repeatedly in the chest and face, he noticed that the boy’s sister was gone. He knew he couldn’t let her get away. He stepped on the boy’s face as he left the parents’ bedroom. When he got into the hallway, he smiled as he saw the girl lying at the bottom of the stairs. It seemed she had been in a bit of a rush and tumbled down the steps, coming to rest a few feet from where her father lay bludgeoned. Joel slowly descended toward her. She was sobbing uncontrollably.

“What do you want? Why are you doing this?” She went silent after most of her teeth were smashed from her skull. More blood decorating the carpet.

Joel felt beyond euphoric. He wasn’t yet finished. He wanted to make a display for his mother, show her his pain through art. He knew that she wouldn’t be going into the neighbor’s house, so he devised a plan. The meth made him feel superhuman, and he had no doubt he could drag the bodies next door.

He started with the father, who was closest to the door. He grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled. Despite the darkness in the room, Joel could see the trail of crimson along the white carpet as he gained ground. In the cover of darkness, he pulled his first corpse down the sidewalk and into his house.

He propped the dead man on the couch and returned next door. The teenage daughter was next. He tried to drag her over the same path he had traversed with her father, curious to see how saturated he could make the evolving smear of blood on the carpet. He hauled her body down the sidewalk and into his home. He chopped another big line of meth and snorted it before returning for the next.

He grabbed the boy and dragged him through the hallway and down the stairs. The teen’s head made a distinct sound with each step as they descended. He dragged the body to his house and put it on a chair in the living room, arranging the body with the others. He was sweating, but still didn’t feel tired or worn out.

Last was the mother. When he heaved her off the bed, blood splashed from her skull when she hit the floor. Joel smiled. He dragged her down the stairs, across the sidewalk, and over to his house. He placed her on the couch and sat beside her, draping his arm around her shoulders.

“You guys want any meth?” When they gave no response, he did more by himself.

For the next few hours, he pretended the family was his own. Much like he did with his toys as a young boy. He was able to pretend that his reality was whatever he wanted it to be.

“Hey Susan, how are things at school?”

“Oh, good Joel,” she responded in his mind exactly as he wanted her to. “Making a lot of friends and getting good grades.”

He smiled and nodded, doing another line of meth before turning to his surrogate parents.

“Mom, Dad, are we still going to the beach next weekend?”

He told them all the feelings he was having and all his hopes for the future. He even helped his mother off the couch and danced with her around the living room. He had to support her head, but it was still a nice moment. Soon enough the meth was gone. He had done the whole 8 ball in a single night. So much for spreading it out over the weekend.

Looking for more drugs and seeing nothing but an empty bag, his mind darkened at the prospect of returning to reality. Waves of anger and resentment crashed through him as he regarded the corpses in his mother’s living room. Meth was a strange drug and it was possible that he took a bit too much. He started punching the father in the face, screaming at him for abandoning his family. He twisted the daughter’s neck until it nearly did an entire rotation.

“You think you’re better than me?”

“I’ve got something special for you.” He said, staring at the mother.

He flung open the garage door and disappeared inside, returning to the living room with an axe. The night had passed its darkest hour and was slowly transitioning to dawn. He relentlessly chopped at the mother, turning her face and chest into the consistency of ground beef. Her arm fell to the floor, severed.

He looked at the arm and glanced up at the ceiling fan. He smiled. He turned off the fan and as the blades slowed, he grabbed a roll of duct tape from a drawer in the kitchen. He pushed the daughter to the floor and hacked off her arms one at a time. He looked up and counted the blades; there were five. He pushed the father onto the floor and proceeded to hack off both of his arms. He was starting to sweat, and the sun was peeking through the window.

He took a chair from the kitchen table and positioned it under the fan. He grabbed the mother’s arm first. Standing on the chair, he laid the arm across one of the blades. The hand stuck out from the edge. He wrapped tape around it until he was sure it was secure. He did the same with the daughter’s arms, and then the father’s. He glanced up with pride to see the hands all protruding from the ends of the blades.

It was art.

He turned the fan on low. It struggled to operate with all the weight, but it did spin. He laughed in delight, then he switched it to a faster setting. The blood from the appendages flung onto the walls as the fan spun. He laughed even more, finally maxing out the speed. The blood got more distance, and speckled the ceiling and everything in the room. The mechanism shook as it spun, so he set it back to low to avoid ruining his creation.

He went back to what remained of the bodies and resumed hacking. He painted the walls with blood and draped body parts from the furniture, drips of plasma falling from the blades of the fan. It looked like a tornado had gone through the meat section of the grocery store. He paused and looked around, couldn’t wait for his mother to see. He sat on the couch, finally feeling a glimmer of fatigue. He zoned out for a while, staring at the blood-soaked walls. It didn’t take long before his daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of sirens.

He looked out the window to see that the police were next door. It didn’t take a great detective to follow the trail of blood that led from their front door, down the sidewalk, and directly to his mother’s home. Police burst in without knocking. The first officer through the door covered his mouth to stop the vomit from contaminating the crime scene. He pushed his way back through the other responders to spew the contents that he wasn’t able to swallow.

It looked like a work of fiction. Something from a scene that could never possibly happen in real life. As far as small town cops go, they did the best they could. It took everything they had to keep the integrity of the scene. There was blood everywhere and the amount of body parts made it difficult to even determine how many victims there were.

Needless to say, Joel was taken into custody.

They placed him in the back of one of the cruisers while they investigated the scene. They must have called his mother because she showed up and looked a little upset. She glanced at him as she passed by the police car, but didn’t stop to ask any questions. She tried going into the house, but the cops wouldn’t let her. Joel watched the conversation and the look on her face. She was crying and emotional. She refused to look at him. He heard her address the officer.

“Get him out of here!”

Joel lowered his head, not out of shame but out of disappointment. All he wanted was for his mother to pay him some attention. Be it with discipline, a hug, a punch to the face, anything. He began to cry, reflecting on his life. Everything he did to feel cared for that never got any reaction.

One of the officers climbed into the driver’s seat of the cruiser. He said nothing. The vehicle was soon in motion. Joel looked out the window, his mother still pretending he wasn’t there. After all this time, and all of his efforts, he was reminded that he was, and always would be, the invisible son.

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