Between Truth And Lies
Author: Mystic Dodo
Published: January 2013
Warnings: suicide themes and perhaps inclinations of an incestuous relationship if you look hard enough.
Debra wonders when things became complicated.
She wonders when she stopped caring about her brother's unwavering support and advice - not now, but throughout their entire, shared lives - and instead found herself tossing and turning at night, memories that she couldn't untangle from one another leaving her with a bitter taste of anxiety at the back of her dry mouth.
She wonders about Dexter and Harrison.
Quinn. Angel. LaGuerta. Masuka.
She wonders about her friends and her colleagues, the people she passed in the street, the latest crime and the suspects and the victims...
And she wonders if they ever thought about their life the way that she did. She teased questions relating to the victims in her mind; potential secrets that made their heart stutter; if they had some strange fetish that could cause them immense amount of embarrassment should it be known to the general public; undercover lives and unknown friendships that meant more to them than the people they knew in real life. She wondered if the victims had a thing for foreign music or if they hated certain sounds or if they wished some areas of their life had turned out different…
It was easier to make up scenarios for the victims. It was far less stressful to make up situations and secrets and spoken words for the dead than it was to sort out the mess of her life.
Sometimes, she wonders if she should just end it and join them into the land where nothing mattered.
Then, her thoughts would wonder back to Dexter… and to his reactions – perhaps lack, come to think of it – and his thoughts and emotions and behaviours should she ever do something that nobody would think her capable of doing.
Debra liked to think that Dexter would be distraught; he would have the quiet, wide eyed blank stare that he had adopted after Rita was murdered, clutching his blood stained son to his chest as though he couldn't quite believe what was happening to him.
Would he ever hold her like that, should he find her lifeless corpse? Or perhaps, in the more likely scenario, he'd analyse her blood splatter and detail with a detached tone of voice just how the bullet had entered her body and if she died instantaneously or if she bled out before leaving for a doughnut. Or to have a beer. Or a steak.
Those moments were gone. The simple times were gone.
Instead, she is left with valium and beer and more valium and sleepless nights and thoughts that would have concerned her just a few months ago and always the question of "what if" dancing about her subconscious.
What if she stood out in front of an oncoming car?
What if she took too many of her medication?
What if she was killed on a job?
What if Dexter killed her?
The idea wasn't appalling as it should have been, if it had planted itself in a different scenario. Although Debra would never admit it - never admit to a majority of the latest happenings if anybody asked – it was the thoughts of death that comforted her more than the artificial calmness brought on by the pills prescribed to her.
Death was simple.
Life was complicated.
And Debra wondered if things would really be as serene as she believed if she ever did opt for the option out. Would it really be a case of it being like she was falling asleep without having any dreams to plague her or would take the more bleak option, Debra coming to in the pits of Hell and still surviving in an existence where the complex thoughts and emotions were still inescapable?
It would leave a mess if she took the back door out of life. Who would be in control, what domino effect would it have on her work-partners, what about Harrison, Astor, Cody… what about Dexter?
Everything complicated in her life returned to him.
And she wondered when she stopped caring about her brother's silent support and became entangled the how's and whys and what if's of his past, of his motivations, his justifications for his kills, of his relationships, of his emotions… and Debra couldn't sleep knowing that there was a possibility that he never truly cared about her throughout the duration of their now horrendously obvious façade of a functional family.
Was life really worth living?
Was death really worth dying?
Debra didn't know the answers and she wondered - doubted, guessed, speculated – if she ever would know the full truth to anything ever again.