⭐️ Winner of the 1.5 - 2k category

To whoever is reading this,

When this reaches you, the blood on the carpets would have probably dried, the smell of rotting bodies in the air like too much perfume. The sirens will probably be wailing, but I don't care much for that. I am not writing this for pity, or whatever else you may think, but I am writing this to show you the injustice that you have done to me. Me and mine. All of you.

The halls stank when I was first admitted to that asylum down by Corey Bay. Marble shone on the floor as the heels of nurses went click click click against it. My first episode was yet to begin, but they had all seen me making a commotion at Dunkirk Mall, where they called the police on me. Obviously, those no-good cops with their Golden Boy Scout manners sent me to the nearest crazy shack.

If this had happened to me before, I would have gone crazy, but this time, it was different. This time, it was intentional. Thank God for those policemen who sent me there, because little did they know, it was exactly where I needed to be.

I am not crazy. Whatever they may have told you, it was all lies. Lies after lies after lies. Now, every crazy person has said this at some point in their life, but this is different. I wasn't crazy because I was acting. That was all it was. An act.

Why would a sane person want to act crazy and get sent to an asylum for? He definitely had to be crazy, right? Wrong.

He was poor, but not crazy. Never crazy.

I am not crazy.

Poor guy, with his poor house and his poor clothes and his poor shoes and his poor sister.

His poor, poor sister.

My baby sister. My little heart. My rays on the cloudy days, my sweetness on the bitter tongue. The song to my dull melody, the stars to my dark night. My hope and my salvation. She was what got me up in the morning and she was what got me through my days. Because if it weren't for her, I would never get out of bed. I would stay there to rot until I ran out of food and starved to death.

Because I don't care about myself. My parents are gone, my life's in shambles. What is there to care about anyways? But she made me care. I could starve myself all I wanted, but I could never starve my sweet, innocent, little sister.

So I got up every morning and I went to work. I got us as much money as I could get, working three jobs and a double shift. Because that's what a big brother does. That's what a big brother is for. So, that's what this big brother did.

It started last year. It all started last year. When she began to scream. When she begged them not to hurt her. But every time I heard her screams and rushed to save her, there was nothing to save her from. She would be standing in our bare living room, with its ratty sofa in her dirty clothes, screaming at empty air.

I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know and it cost me so much. It let her dive deeper into the pit inside of her, the gaping hole that she kept falling, tumbling and tumbling while I watched helplessly. Everyday I pulled her back, but she fell a little more. She was falling and I couldn't catch her.

For the first time in six years, I took her to the doctor. The clinic smelled fresh with sanitizer and the doctor sat in his pristine little coat with his pristine little glasses and polished little shoes. He sat with all the riches in one hand and told me the earth-shattering truth about my sister.

She had schizophrenia.

It's a disease which causes hallucinations. It explained everything. How she would scream for help from invisible monsters when there was nothing there. Relief went through me. I had thought she was dying, I had thought she was broken, but it was nothing like that. Just a bit of wild imagination. That was all.

Little did I know that the invisible claws were real, and that they would drag her under.

I didn't know.

Not until it was too late.

So we went home and she still saw them. She saw the monsters and demons. She still shrieked when there was nothing to shriek about. She still cried when there was nothing to cry about. She would still scream "Help me," "make it stop," and "please don't hurt me."

I couldn't stand the tears and sadness, so I tried to help her by making the biggest mistake of my life.

I gave her a knife.

It was a polished piece of metal, with an intricately detailed hilt, vines and delicate flowers entwined on it. A pretty thing for my pretty sister. It helped for a while, and she didn't scream as often. Instead, she would brandish the knife, slashing at invisible intruders as if she were playing a game of pretend.

It was never pretense. It was all real, but I just didn't know it yet.

It still wasn't enough and late at night, I would still hear her crying and screaming for help. I could do nothing, and it drove me insane. For her I would do anything. So I painted the walls with blood and lined up rows of bodies for her to stab, to help her forget. To make her realize that it was all fake. At least, that's what I thought.

It continued like this, but it wasn't enough. I realized that she needed help, help that I couldn't afford, but there are other ways here in the ghetto. There are always other ways.

I was going to find them.

There was that asylum near Corey Bay, the one that the doctor had told me had the cure. The cure that could fix my sister, that could stop her screams and sooth her cries.

So I left my sister to defend herself with that knife and I set out. I told her that I would save her. I told her that I would be back. I told her that she would be cured. And my sister, in her innocence, believed it all.

She was not gullible, my sister, but she was optimistic. She had one thing I could never have. Hope. So when I told her she would be cured, she hoped and she believed. But our hopes were different. She believed, believed that the universe was as kind as her and so it would never fail her. I had a different kind of hope, the knowledge that the universe never owed me anything.

I had to go get it myself.

So I did.

I went out to Dunkirk Mall, dressed in tattered clothes, shouting at the top of my lungs. I went and I smashed glass bottles and knocked down shelves, a crazed look in my eyes. I thought of my sister and how unfair it was that she couldn't get the cure and I raged and raged and raged.

The police came.

They took one look at me and decided I belonged in the loony by Corey Bay.

When I got there, the nurses took over me, putting me with the other lunatics. I screamed and shouted and babbled about saints and angels and devils. It was enough to convince them all that I needed help. That I was crazy. So they kept me under, shoving pills down my throat to keep me quiet and strapping me to my room to keep me from raging again. I was a storm and they were trying to contain me.

Little did they know, storms always break free.

So one day, when the pretty nurse with her blond hair and perfect teeth came to give me those pills, I broke her arm. She would have screamed, but I forced her to shove those pills down her throat. See how she likes it.

She fell back and I laid her on my bed. She looked so peaceful, almost like she was sleeping. Her kissable lips breathed in air softly and her eyes were closed. She looked like an angel, a halo of blonde curls spread around her. I wanted to savour the fact that I had overpowered her, how easily her bone had broken under my hands.

I walked over to her, mesmerized by her beauty. My hands went around her throat and I squeezed gently, marveling at the thought of her life under my hands. Harder, I wanted to squeeze harder and so I did. She was absolutely beautiful as she lay there. Her blonde hair was like my sister's, a beauty that needed to be preserved for the world to see.

And I was going to preserve that beauty.

She didn't deserve to grow old, to wither and die. I was doing her a favour. I squeezed her neck harder than I've ever squeezed anything before. She gave a little gasp from her plump lips and then she was still, her chest rising and falling one last time. I wanted to stay behind, to watch her for eternity, but I couldn't.

Because I still had a sister to save.

So I got to work quickly, shucking off the nurse's lab coat and donning it. Grabbing her little clipboard, I left the ward.

The asylum by Corey Bay never thought something like this would happen, did they? Because if they did, let me assure you, they wouldn't have had a map with every kind of label. The kind of label that I needed.

I found the room, that room that held my sister's cure. That room that held the light to her dark plight, the air to her lungs. And I broke the glass, shattering it into a thousand pieces like my heart would be shattered.

I just didn't know that yet.

I took the cure, that tiny bottle of pills that could end my sister's nightmares forever, that could be the key to her broken cage. I raced down the halls and out the door before I could be caught. I kept turning back to make sure that no one was following me, but there was never anyone behind.

They never suspected a thing.

So I ran home, all the way from the asylum to my sister. As I reached my street, a smile broke onto my face. Everything was just as I had left it. The paint was still peeling from my house's door when I entered it and the third window to the left was still cracked.

At least, I thought everything was still there.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was the ghastliest thing that I have ever smelled in my entire life and I will never forget it for as long as I live, which is pretty short, considering what I will do after this letter is done.

Then I saw her.

At first, I thought she was asleep on the ground just like the nurse. That is, until I saw the hilt, the intricately detailed hilt with its vines and delicate flowers buried in her gut, blood blooming over her white, tattered gown. Her eyes were still open, and her face twisted in fear, as if she could still see the devils in death.

Those invisible claws took my sister. And now she was dead.

That tiny bottle of pills is still in my hand as I am finishing writing this. I am not writing this for your sympathy, or to have this on the newspaper as the most recent tragedy in our tragic world. I am doing it to tell you my story. To tell you what happens when you give to the rich and take from the poor. When you let an innocent little girl kill herself because she is seeing things and couldn't tell the difference from what was real and what wasn't. To tell you the mistakes that you have made, every damn one of you, who let my sister die.

To tell you all of this because my corpse won't be able to, at least not after I eat those pills myself.

From,

The dead brother of a dead angel

P.S. I hope you all rot in hell for what you did to her.