And the Cat Ran Away With the Fairies

There’s an old saying somewhere that goes something along the lines of;

“When you’ve done washing the dishes, put them somewhere safe to dry.”

When he’d finished wiping the blood from his knife, Andy put it away in the drawer with the lock on. Mum used to say it was a bad idea to conceal your weapons, even if they are just kitchen utensils. She said you look more like a criminal if you hide things than if you leave them out. Even when Sam’s Schizophrenia got real bad and Andy had to lock everything sharp away, especially the cutlery with the yellow finish – Sam said those types are the worst – Mum said the police wouldn’t appreciate a murder with no murder weapon. And to trust her.

Sam killed himself when the cat ran away with the fairies. He said magic scared the cat and that magic wasn’t allowed in the house anymore. Magic couldn’t cure him so what was the use? He said the cat was possessed so he wasn’t upset when the cat disappeared, just lonely. He said he only got upset when the fairies were mean to him.

Mum said Sam’s illness was her fault. She believed she ate too many curries when she was pregnant and the spices must have done something to his brain. Andy wasn’t affected, she didn’t eat curries back then.

Mum lost her bus pass once. She blamed Sam because of his obsession with the photograph. She said it was unhealthy for a growing boy to like his mother’s bus pass photo so much. Andy still thought to this day, that his mother was spooked by Sam’s obsession so she threw the bus pass away and blocked it from her memory. He said she did that a lot; blocked things from memory.

Andy used to eat fish once a week. Every Wednesday at five pm. Mum was afraid he had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but we all thought that was more Sam’s style. He often felt alone and isolated even before Sam got ill. When he was sane he used to make Andy space cakes; that’s another thing Mum blamed for the illness. Andy wasn’t affected by it. He just got high from time to time.

Billy Dean from next door said that Sam filled the kettle, boiled the water and then watered his plants and it was his fault they all wilted and died. Sam said it was cold outside and everyone likes a warm drink when they’re cold. Andy explained to Sam that although the plants had feelings they didn’t drink hot water, only tea. Billy Dean put his house up for sale when Sam made kettles full of tea. Mum said Andy shouldn’t use Sam’s illness to make fun of the people even if it did mean they were getting rid of a pair of twits. She’d never liked Billy Dean and his wife was even worse. A right old battle axe.

Mum told Sam to ask the fairies if they were planning on sending the cat back any time soon, she was due at the vets in a week for her boosters. Sam told her to stop being stupid. The cat had run away with the fairies of her own accord and probably wouldn’t be coming back so it would be an idea to cancel the appointment.

Mum sometimes liked to think that Sam played a lot of pranks and that maybe his illness was just one big prank and one day he’d slip up and reveal he’d been playing a trick on them all these years. She often said she wouldn’t mind if he was. She’d ask him for tips on acting because he was good at that. But Sam never slipped up.

Andy used to drink Vodka in the mornings. He’d pretend he was being healthy and having a glass of water with his cornflakes. No one ever noticed, not many people sniffed the air when he was in the room, the alcoholic stench went unnoticed as did his blurred vision and slurred speech. Sometimes he’d drop a cherry in the bottom of the glass to see if Mum would cotton on to his strange behaviour. But she was too busy struggling with the lock on the cutlery drawer.

When they were kids Sam used to tell Andy stories. He was the more creative of the two. Andy wasn’t creative. He was a straight down the middle type of kid. While Sam collected flowers for a fairy garden Andy was already cracking the mystery of Pythagoras Theorem. There was nothing wrong with Andy’s brain and as the years went by he was determined to prove it.

Mum often referred to the two boys as both being sick individuals. Sam was sick with a diseased brain and Andy was just weird. At the age of ten he used to go out onto the farm next door and collect dead chickens, pluck their feathers and chop their heads off with a carving knife. Mum said it all started from there. Andy being sick that is. He was a weird kid and everybody thought so. He used to kick dogs, pull their tails and ears and even throw cats. He’d shoot pigeons with an air rifle, kill ferrets and hedgehogs with his bare hands and he even stamped on his best friend’s snake until it was mushy because he said it looked at him funny. To start with everyone thought it was Andy that was mental, not Sam. Others said he was acting weird to sympathise with his brother – but only Andy knew the truth.

His first real taste of violence was when he was sixteen. Andy had a lot of older friends, older friends who were into drugs and drinking on street corners. Monday through to Thursday they’d sit at the corner of Chapel Street drinking cheap cider. Andy stuck to the Vodka of course. Fridays and Saturdays they’d venture into the Spinning Duck on Shepherd Street and drink cider in there. Andy stuck to Vodka again – straight with a bit of ice. Despite being a heavy bunch of fellas Andy and his mates were fairly well behaved. Most nights they kept themselves to themselves, drank a few pints, popped a few pills and had a merry old time.

Other nights and one fateful night in particular Andy and his mates were enjoying a few drinks at the bar when someone from across the other side of the room started to whisper insults about Sam. Andy and Sam weren’t close at this point but no one messes about with brothers. Andy of course flipped, climbed onto the top of the bar, slid across it, ran to the other side of the room, smashed his glass on a table and jabbed the sharp jagged end in the guy’s face. It was out of fear for his life that the poor lad didn’t press charges. Andy was hailed a hero. Sam thought he was stupid.

It was then that Andy discovered he had a taste for smashing people’s faces in. Like a junkie he grew addicted to it. Unlike a junkie he didn’t do it that often. He only splashed out on his fix when it was really necessary. Sam was bullied at school, so Andy taught the bullies a lesson. Sam was tormented at college so Andy taught them a lesson too. Sam attempted to work in a kitchen but found it difficult getting things right. People around him didn’t take kindly to his clumsiness and pointed out his mistakes. Sam quit. Andy tried to teach the manager a lesson but got arrested.

Sam used to talk about the people in his head causing trouble. Gypsy was the first. She used to yell insults at him day and night. She used to make him do things out of the ordinary to make him look stupid and peculiar but at the same time make him think he was saving the world from toxic poisoning. The most obvious example was the plastic bag trick. Gypsy used to make poor Sam carry a plastic bag in his pocket and when he strolled through the park he was made to take it out and pick up any dog poo that was floating about abandoned and reeking of toxins that were harmful to mankind. Mum took her son to the doctors when she found him burning his own excrement on the barbeque.

The psychiatrist Sam’s GP referred him to, put him on something called Largactil, an antipsychotic that murdered poor Gypsy and caused an angel from heaven to sit inside his brain like it was protecting a diamond from a robbery.

The angel watched over Sam’s brain for about two weeks until Martine came along and wreaked havoc with his neurotransmitters, she killed the angel and ruled the roost. The doctor prescribed Rispirodone which didn’t kill Martine but drugged her and put her to sleep for a while. It reminded Sam of Mel Gibson being frozen in time in Forever Young.

Throughout all of this Andy remained his brother’s rock, expressing family solidarity in whatever they did on a daily basis. It was clear Andy loved his bother dearly and probably more so than Sam could manage to love him back. Andy would do anything to save Sam from what he was going through, much of which he was unaware of. But Andy was strong willed and watched his brother like a hawk.

For weeks Sam’s mind was as much at peace as it could be and there was no interference from any sorts of demons or angels or any other kinds of supernatural beings. And so life went back to normal. Mum washed her hair with the hose pipe in the back garden, Sam built houses out of playing cards and Andy when out drinking White Lightening and vodka with his friends. Some people said it was Andy that was the weird brother and others agreed. But Andy assured them he was not the one hearing the voices.

When Martine made a comeback Sam and Andy were watching television. It was late one Sunday night and Andy was back from a trip to the pub. They’d settled down to a late night repeat of Law and Order when Sam started acting strangely. He started to sniff and wipe his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his jumper and began to edge further and further away from Andy on the sofa. Martine apparently was instructing him to “do away” with Andy.

The psychiatrist later said that Martine was acting as a protection unit, protecting Sam’s family from any more disruption in their lives. Sam believed she was jealous of how close he and his brother had become and wanted him all to herself.

One day Mum brought home a cat. It was only when the cat was around that Martine made an appearance, so Sam came to believe that the cat was Martine and that she was no longer a symptom of his illness but was a very real reality. Sam believed that magic had transformed Martine into the cat and that it was magic that was responsible for everything that had every happened to him.

For Christmas Mum did as she was told to and bought Sam the magic set he had requested. He practiced lots of tricks but no rabbit appeared and the cat squealed every time he went near it. Eventually the fairies came and took the cat and Martine with them.

Feeling isolated and alone Sam went very into himself and took a vow of silence. He liked to think he was like Audrey Hepburn in the Nun’s Story, and was doing the grand silence like the nuns.

He hanged himself from the big tree in the back garden while he was trying to rescue the cat. No one could really tell if it was an accident or if it was intentional. No one knew what Martine had said. Some say Sam was still alive when his family found him. They said they could see his legs twitching as though he was trying to save himself, others said it was just the wind swinging him from side to side.

Andy was the one who went to cut his brother down from the tree. Accidentally the knife slipped and sliced poor Sam’s throat. So whether he was alive or not Andy soon put an end to his brother’s suffering. The blood went everywhere. Especially on the knife. He washed it with the rest of the dishes and made sure he put it somewhere safe to dry.