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Tuesday 18 November 2014

Sanctuary


- If you just wait here - he should be arriving any minute from his daily walk with his attendant.

I wait, the room is spartan but tidy and pleasant apart from the lingering odour of the institutionalized.  Probably sterilized regularly and devoid of the normal bacterial fauna we're used to from home.

Very hygienic, could belong to an OCD teenager with an obsession for tidyness.

I'm bringing my brother a Christmas present, it's the first time I've visited him in 15 years.

When he arrives, his caretaker accompanies him inside and seats himself on a chair in the corner of the room while my brother sits on the bed.  He looks up into my eyes briefly but I don't see any hint of recognition in there and he looks away.

He also wears some sort of safety cap that looks like a cross between a hockey helmet and an executioneers hood. Unsettling...

He looks sideways at something in the distance and his dried lips part in something resembling a grin without being a smile and I'm stricken by the absence of frontal incisors - his entire front row of teeth is gone. Missing. I didn't know.

Mother told me something had happened, something bad. She wouldn't say exactly what beyond vague bits and pieces and she didn't have the strength to visit him anymore so she had been hinting regularly that I should.

I ask the attendant to give us some privacy, he looks puzzled and asks if I'm sure. I tell him I am even if I am not and he leaves to get some coffee and a cigarette to go with it judging by his yellowed fingertips.

I raised my brother to a certain degree, grew up with him or rather beside him as he never grew up. His body matured and grew stronger but his mind never caught up.

After I left them mother tried to continue by herself and did so for some years until she didn't have the strength anymore to handle the outbursts of a child trapped in the body of an adult and eventually found some supportive housing for him run by an association for the mentally handicapped.

It was inevitable and always had been since the day he was diagnosed. It was the best for him and the best for her also.

- What happened?

My brother looks up, he seems to have heard my words but still no hint of recognition or understanding.

- Who did this?

Blank stare, grin.  He starts chewing on his lower lip and rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand.

- I will find them

Nothing, the lights are on but if anyone's home they aren't answering the door nor do they care for visitors.

I swallow my tears and my rage and leave, the drive home is as unreal and foggy as the visit itself but I remember this;

You beat my brother's teeth out, then you raped him.

I will find you.

I will make you hurt.

...and years later I did, but not in the way you'd think.

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