Marked by Red John
He was very young, not older than twenty five; but the man never does look his age. Even now, fifteen years later, he looks to be in his thirties and I know he's not. He doesn't remember me. And even if he saw me, he probably wouldn't make the connection but I remember him. The day he came into my life is a day that I will never forget. It was the day that Red John was born. But he didn't know that. He still doesn't know that.
Some say that evil is born. Others say that evil is created. They're two sides of the same coin, really. Evil is a state of mind. It is another plane of consciousness. It has nothing to do with blood but that doesn't stop me from using blood to make a statement. I know what you're thinking: I must have been neglected as a child; or abused.
Well, I wasn't but I know why you're thinking that. If I had a horrible childhood then I am to be pitied; more than that, I am alien. If I am alien than it is easy to hate me. Say, I came from a loving family or any sort of a background that you can identify; that would be a dangerous idea because if it can happen to me then it can happen to you. Well, if you were one of Patrick Jane's earlier marks, today's Red John could very well be you.
I've always known that I was different. I didn't need some stupid fake psychic to tell me that I am. But my mother, she was always so worried that there was something wrong with us. Neither my sister nor I are my mother's biological children. She never told us but we always knew. She didn't want the neighbours to know either. Our family had to be absolutely ordinary in every way so that nobody would question our boring existence. Well, if you wanted to be normal, you shouldn't have hired a psychic, you idiot!
She had created a bubble inside which everything was as it should be; outside this bubble there was complete chaos. When Jane came into our lives, doing what he usually does even now after he's quit being "psychic", he did exactly what needed to be done to drive my mother over the edge. He told her what was wrong with our lives.
He had seen through the sham, like the fact that we kept a piano even though none of us could actually play it. He knew straight away that we were adopted. He could see that my sister was sick; that she was dying of cancer. My mother had not told anyone and she was seeing the doctors in my sister's name, sneaking blood and tissue samples out of the house and then sneaking medicine back into the house. My mother had worked hard to make sure that we were the "model" children in our community. This quest for the ordinary was driving me insane but I had put up with it. He could see that I was much smarter than what my mother had hoped for and that I was hiding my I.Q. from her.
He made a couple of harmless inferences to gain her trust. Then he began dissecting our lives and he did not hold back. He identified issues that were long overdue and freaked his client out completely. Then he made a prediction about me that he couldn't possibly have known would come true.
"The boy..." He said, eyes closed in his phony trance.
"What about him?" She gasped.
"He will leave you." He said. "He craves power. He's going to become very powerful."
Her bubble shattered and no way out that she could see, she decided to make sure his predictions didn't have a chance to come true. He predicted that my sister would not survive & he urged my mother not to delay hospitalising her daughter. He also predicted that I would not stay with her in this mundane existence. What would you do if you were in her situation?
The next morning, the police came to Mary Street to investigate a murder-suicide with three victims: two dead and one dying. The boy who was critically injured? Me. The two dead females? My mother and my sister; I don't need to tell you who was the murder and who was the suicide. I was rushed to ICU and I survived. I was seventeen years old. I should have died but I lived. Compared to what I had to go through, Jane had it easy. He has the survivor's guilt minus the near-death experience. He has an easily identifiable (though not so easy to find) foe where as I had nothing. After he gave his performance at my house, he moved onto the next town. I had a name "Patrick" that was one of the most common male names of his generation.
I've now come to accept that maybe it was supposed to happen. Patrick was supposed to come into my life that day because if he hadn't, I would never have witnessed my sister's murder by the woman who raised her. I still use the same methods for my murders as red john. No one can perform a stabbing like a woman can. I've elaborated it into more of a hacking than a stabbing.
And that red smiley face that I always put on the walls? That was Jane's smile before he left our house. It's the same smile that my sister wore on her face the day she died. It's the same smile that I see on all my other victims time and again. They do greet you with horror but they always leave this life the same way: with a smile – sometimes the smile covers the whole face, sometimes it only occurs in their eyes.
This is the smile that I want Jane to remember when we next meet. No more tiptoeing around each other. Two very intelligent men. Two high functioning psychopaths with traumatic backgrounds. Too many for one world.
A/N: No idea where this story came from. Inspiration: probably lack of sleep. Sorry the story's so depressing.