What They Call 'Insanity'
Disclaimer: I Do Not Own SPN or its characters, I DO however own all my OCs, Ideas, and the story.
"The small town of Gildsten Nevada remains in a state of horror after the events of a most terrifying murder of the family of Janet, Alex, and Conner Echoette just four days ago. Where the small family of three was brutally murdered by a mentally unstable young girl who seems to have an obscene obsession with the acult, and other statanic beliefs.
Four days ago on the evening of September 23, the Echoette family were assaulted in their home and killed in what authorities believe to be a Satanic Ritual of sacrifice. Symbols and drawings of Satanic memorabilia were found within the house, and most specifically in the bedroom of the two parents where they were chained to the bed and endured torture before having major organs removed from their bodies. Their son, Conner Echoette, who was eleven at the time, was stabbed in the heart after struggling against the assailant.
The young girl responsible was found at the scene of the crime, wounded and in serious mental dissarray, holding the weapon that took the life of the young boy. When police arrived on the scene, after having been called in by a neighbor who believed they had heard screaming coming from the Echoette residence, the young girl, who claimed to be a member of the Family she had just murdered, hysterically told the police that she had been forgotten by everyone and that Conner had been a Demon and murdered his parents before attempting to murder her. She claimed to have acted in self defense.
Mrs. Moore, a history teacher at the Gildsten High School reported having spoken to the girl as she appeared in her class unexpectedly, as Mrs. Moore remarks, the girl seemed 'extremely troubled and frantic' as she insisted she had been a member of the class the entire year, which is not the case as the teachers, school and students have no recollection of her ever attending school there. In fact there is no record of the girl anywhere in the town, as her true identity remains a mystery.
As the girl, who officials have dubbed 'Echo' as she calls herself, was clearly in a unstable mental state, she was declared criminally insane and transported to a psychiatric ward in northern Nevada, the charge of murder was dropped once she was officially labeled mentally insane. Psychiatrists will keep 'Echo' in a maximum security psychiatric ward for the rest of her foreseeable future, experts do not believe she has any sense of what she did, or what happened that night- but that instead that she was acting out in the middle of a violent psychotic breakdown, for which she has turned to blame events on satanic and supernatural forces.
There will be a service held for the family of Echoette in town hall, before they are cremated and set to rest as stated in their wills, in the event of their deaths. A memorial will be built in their memory, and the town of Gildsten will never forget what happened, or the horrific tragedy that occurred in the Echoette home."
"Echo." The balding man in the white lab coat murmured as he sat across from me, light bouncing off the glasses on the end of his nose. "Why do you call yourself that?"
"... My best friend Sarah gave me that name... Its short for my last name, Echoette.." I mumbled quietly,
"You are not related to the Echoette's," he replied dryly, but gently. "They never had a daughter, you were not a part of their family."
"I was... But everyone forgot about me... They just... Forgot I existed..."
I could hardly move as the police stormed into my house, as I sat there, my fingers curled around the knife still sticking from Conner's chest, head hanging limp and shoulders hunched.
I was so cold, so empty... So broken.
I hardly heard what they said, as they demanded I let go of the knife and place my hands on my head. They had their guns pointed at me, the wailing of sirens fought the sound of wind and rumbling thunder.
I couldn't move, I sat in a pool of my own blood, my muscles dead, lungs aching, heart broken, soul shattered.
".. I didn't... Everyone... Forgot me... And Conner... He was... He was possessed... By a Demon... He tried to kill me..." I mumbled softly, voice hoarse from muttering apology for hours,
Why I called him a Demon, the notion appeared in my mind all on its own. That's somewhere, in some small, dark part of myself, I knew that the thing that had taken my brother, that had been a Demon... It had to have been..
One of the officers thrust me backward into my back forcefully, I yelped at the pain of being shoved so harshly, but I hadn't the strength to struggle, it was a miracle I was even conscious with all the blood I had lost.
They cuffed me, it was pointless though. I wasn't trying to fight.
Two paramedics came in, and they carted me outside on a stretcher, a group of police following them toward the ambulance as the rest checked the house.
It was dark outside, the flash of red and blue against the clouds hurt my eyes, my ears rung slightly at the sirens, hardly hearing them over the haze of my mind, starting to fall back and forth between black and wakefulness.
There were throngs of people behind a police line, people I knew, but all of them looking at me with no recognition. They didn't know me... And honestly, I wasn't sure I knew myself anymore.
The voices of the crowds, the paramedics, the police, the wail of the sirens, the rumble of thunder overhead, the whistle of wind, all of it was nearly dead to me... Everything.
Everything until I heard the rush of hair, and the fluttering of what I could only guess were wings.
The same noise I had heard just before everything was turned upside down.
The last noise I heard before darkness overtook me, and I left behind the one world I had ever known.
White walls, white clothes, white sheets, white floors... White everything. Everything expect my mind, which remained in a perpetual cycle of reliving that night over and over in horrific realty, and a profound darkness that covered my entire being.
I was alone. I was broken.
My mind and soul had been shattered that night, a part of my humanity had been stripped away the minute I set foot in my house, the minute I found my parents, the second I plunged that blade into Conner's chest.
I was falling apart, losing my mind, my sanity, everything. Everything in the world around me had fallen into nothingness, my life had become nothing, I was nothing... Just a murderer, a criminal, a psycho, that no one knew, no one remembered.
Nothing. Empty. Cold. Broken. Shattered.
I was left to endure the memory of what I did, of what I lost. To continually fall away, to become an empty shell, a lesser excuse of a person.
Always asking, why?
Why me? Why had my life been torn up like that? Turned upside down, broken down? Why had it been me, to have to see that, endure that, do that?
For all my questions, I had no answers. Endless asking, no reason for why, no reason I could see.
All I could see was how dim the world was around me, how cold and horrifying it could be. How terrible life was, and now I knew... I knew there were darker things in the world than I could ever have imagined. Things that had lay in wait in the shadows, things that no one believed were real... But I knew. I'd seen it, I lived it.
They thought I was insane. And maybe that was true, but at least I was telling the truth.
I could very well be insane, but who could blame me? After everything that had happened in the course of a few hours, how fast my life had been torn apart, how badly I had been broken... Anyone had the right to be a little insane, and I should be no exception.
But I was still empty. I wasn't whole anymore.
In that psychiatric ward, I spent my days in silence, in darkness, withering away, hardly speaking, barely eating. Any sleep I managed was always riddled with nightmares, blood, horror, death. My body grew weaker, my complexion paler, hair darker, eyes dull, I looked like death, and I couldn't care.
All I could feel was pain, sadness, guilt, fear.
Everyone hated me, the nurses, the doctors. They never let me with other patients, they never pitied me- because all they could see was the maniac who had butchered a family, stabbed a child, and even ripped the hearts out of two people and nailed the organs to the ceiling.
Maybe I deserved that, I had killed Conner. Even if it hadn't been him in entirety, like that deep voice of my conscience sometimes reminded me, but I couldn't get rid of the hole shoving that blade into his chest had left in my heart.
From time to time I thought I saw black eyes in the gazes of the doctors or nurses, I felt the cold pit in my heart harden, my nerves rise. Could there be more Demons watching me? I couldn't be sure, because my mind was so frail and ripped apart it could have been playing tricks on me.
Every once in awhile, one of the doctors would come in and have a discussion with me. They were very much all the same;
"Why do you believe you were a member of the Echoette family?"
"Because I was."
"Why do you think Demons are real?"
"They are... Conner was taken by one, I can feel it in my heart. They're real.."
"How are you today?"
"Broken."
Days turned to weeks. Weeks became months, and eventually all sense of time I held faded away to nothing, it became irrelevant, I didn't care to know, there wasn't a point. I would be here for the rest of my life, forever labeled as insane- insane because they couldn't believe Demons were real, that it was possible an entire town's memory had been wiped of my existence. Because everything I said could not possibly be true.
I was the only one who knew it was real.
The world went on around me, away from me, as I remained tucked in my own cell. From time to time I would hear things about mass weather storms, maybe a new song that was trending, a missing kid in New York... But eventually all of that stopped too, it became irrelevant, and everyone went back to their lives, everyone who had a life to get back to.
At some point I started to forget the faces of my classmates, of my neighbors... The image of my dog Cage became blurred, Sarah became a fragment... Everything... I was starting to lose it all...
One thing never escaped me, the one thing I had heard before I passed out in the bathrrom, before everyone forgot me, before my parents were killed, before Conner...
Wings. The rush of air from the beat of feathers.
The more I thought on it, I was more convinced it was wings I had heard. But wings of what? I'd never seen anything.
That was pushed to the back of my mind after awhile, I knew I would never know what it was. So why drive myself insane thinking about it?
Well, more insane than I already was.
"Today we check in with North side Psychiatric Facility in northern Nevada, as the date of September 23 draws near, nearly three and a half years after the tragedy that befell the small family of three, where Parents Janet and Alex Echoette, and their son Conner Echoette, were brutally murdered in their home by a young girl declared mentally insane while being tried for murder.
We have come to conduct an interview of the Doctors who have been looking after the girl who committed the crime, Echo as she calls herself. Nearly four years ago all interviews of the subject were prohibited, we come today hoping we will be given leave to question Echo and perhaps find out why she murdered the Echoette family, and why she chose to blame it on 'Demons'."
The reporter, a tall young girl with blonde hair, stopped her overview from where she was standing before the Facility, the camera man stopped rolling as they prepared to head into the building, toward me.
I could see them from the barred window in my cell, they had allowed it to be opened to let in some fresh air- that made it easy to hear what the woman was saying.
It looked like the news crew of a local college campus, all of them were young and they gave off a faint air of inexperience in the way the blonde slowly asked if the camera had stopped rolling before she started talking hastily in an excited and exasperated manner.
"Can you believe this? We might actually come face to face with an actual murderer! A maniac no less!" She breathed hastily to the young man holding the camera, who nodded a little and looked over toward the building, frowning nervously. He didn't seem as excited for the outing as his blonde friend did. "I can't believe no one is all over this!"
I could though. My case had only been relevant for a month or two after it happened, before the next celebrity scandel took the front page, the next drought, storm- a crash in the stock market, whatever. The world couldn't care less about some out of the way small-town in Nevada, where some crazy girl just happened to murder three people. People died everyday, and you'd be surprised how many people died in strange ways that seemed even more satanic than what happened that night to me.
The world only really cared about a few things in all reality, and all of them trivial, unimportant. Money, fame, glory, all of it didn't matter as far as I was concerned. How anyone could think what a famous actress was doing in her spare time was any more important than the earthquake in some third world country, or that the arrest on drinking charges of this political official meant more than the tragic genocide of an entire town in the name of God, how any of that was ever thought to be more important, that would never make any sense to me. And they called me Insane.
I watched as the two young people made their way toward the door and inside, I wasn't sure if the doctors here would let them in to see me, they hadn't given me much leniency even though I hadn't been violent or erratic the entirety of the time I'd been here.
And had it really been nearly four years? It felt like longer, but all sense of time had eluded me and blurred into one long nightmare filled with cold, pain and despair. I couldn't know how long it really had been, and I didn't really care on the matter either.
For the interview that the two would have with my doctors, I imagined it would be quite simple in reality. They probably always said the same thing when they were questioned,
"Miss Echo has remained a very placid and voluntary patient here at the facility. She still clings to the facade and belief that she belonged to the Echoette family in which she killed, that she was their daughter and attended school in Gildsten all her life- though no record of her has ever been found to prove such a thing. She also still insists that she did not murder Janet and Alex Echoette, that rather Conner Echotte had been 'possessed' by a demon and she acted in self defense to preserve her life, and that she was forced to take Conner's life.
While she has been here, she has never been violent with any of the staff, and has been very compliant to all questions and examinations. She is one of our most manageable patients, despite the fact that her rehabilitation does not seem likely."
"If she's never been violent, why has she been kept in isolation all this time?"
"We believe that social interventions with other people may have caused her mental breakdown on the night of September 23rd, that lead to the death of the Echoette family. She remains in a very fragile state of mind, plagued by constant night terrors that affect her mental stability and eventually started affecting her physical health. She has been kept isolated from the others in attempt to keep her as healthy and mentally stable as possible."
I could not describe how many times that small conversation on the part of my doctors had run through my mind. It was what I believed they told others, all those who asked questions, it was strange how well I had come to know how they all thought, what they thought about me and why I was 'insane'. Solitude is very good for contemplating things.
I moved away from the window and sat on the edge of my bed, placing the small sketchbook and pencil in my hand in my lap, tapping the pencil against the cover every once in awhile, my dull eyes fixed to the door, waiting... Always waiting, in silence, alone. Forever.
After half an hour, the handle turned and in came one of the large burly men that served as security here, an Orderly. I'd seen him many times, he never said much and neither did I, so everything was always silent between us, just small cues and gestures he gave for what he wanted from me.
In behind him came the blonde girl and her friend with the camera,
"These two would like to have a small interview with you, Echo." The Orderly, I think Ray was his name, said in a gruff voice and I blinked slowly. "Doctor Peirce has given them leave to do so." He gave me a pointed stare and stepped aside to stand next to the door, it was a look that I understood completely.
Don't try anything or I will not hesitate to apprehend you.
It wasn't really necessary for him to give me such a look, as I'm sure he knew- still the warning had to be put in the open.
Ray waved the two behind him in and the door closed softly. The blonde gave me a hesitant smile and took a seat up not far from the bed, that was where the doctors sat when they came to talk with me. Her friend with the camera stopped back a ways, eyeing me cautiously and tense.
"Hello, my name is Bridget and that there is Cameron. We are students at the college near here and we were hoping for an interveiw with you on what whappened, as an assignment for our journalism class." The blonde told me in a soft, cheery manner that suddenly reminded me so much of Sarah, my heart ached a moment and I ignored it. I couldn't do anything but stare at her, eyes dull, expression blank, tired, frayed.
"We researched all we could on what happened, but I was hoping you could give us your version of the story first hand?" She asked, looking hopeful. My side of the story? I had already told my side, I'd been telling people this whole time and no one believed it because it was so utterly impossible. I had thought it was impossible when it happened to me, and I lived it.
"You wouldn't believe me." I mumbled softly, voice weak from not using it very much. There wouldn't be much point, because no on ever believed me, never.
Bridget looked shocked I had actually spoken to her, before she looked slightly thrilled. I wondered if I was what she had imagined, would any one who didn't know what I did be able to see and recognize me as a murderer? As dangerous? I doubted that, I had wasted away into a broken shell of a human being, I had no fight left in me, not inclination for action or violence, I was content to let myself waste away until there was nothing left.
Because once upon a time, I had been very much like her. I had a life, a family, I had friends, I went to school, everything was bliss. My life has been normal, and then suddenly it was ripped up and thrown around, turned upside down and then shattered.
Could she even imagine what that was like? If she had been in my position, when everyone suddenly forgot her name, forgot who she was, and she was shunned, left alone, a nobody. If those people she loved had been ripped apart and she was forced to kill someone she held dear to her heart, what would she have done? Who would she be now?
My guess is she'd be just as broken and empty as I was, she'd probably be sitting in some Mental Hospital somewhere, alone and forgotten. Just like me...
"Still, we'd like to know." Bridget told me without hesitation, she seemed so determined. Her eyes fell from my own to the small sketchbook in my hand, "What's that?"
"Sketchbook." I mumbled lowly,
"You draw? What's in it?" She asked, her interest peaked. I hesitated a minute, before slowly handing it toward her. She took it from me and opened it eagerly,
She didn't seem to have been expecting the type drawings on the inside, the trees and landscapes I had come up with, the abstract art of lines and shapes, the drawing of my old home, of my old car, the sketches of Cage I'd made to try and keep him in my memory, the portraits of my parents, of Conner, of Sarah. I had to draw them, or my already fuzzy memory of them would be lost forever as my mind continued to fall apart in here. She flipped through them, eyes wide and astonished,
Of those few talents I had had before everything went to shit, drawing was one of them, though I would never admit to it. I had never thought of myself as being particularly good at it, but I wasn't horrible either. Sarah had loved the things I drew, another pang of sadness hit me and I winced inwardly.
Bridget came toward the back part of the book, where her searching stopped on the page where I had drawn my father's Old Blade, the one I had used to kill Conner, as best I could remember, the silver swirls in the handle, the odd symbols along the side. Her eyes went up toward me for a split second, before she looked away and turned the page- where the next few pages in that book were filled with countless wings, of feathers and spans in all different sizes.
Maybe she thought she was going to find some more statanic depictions, scenes of murder and death- and she was dissapointed because there was none. What I drew was, in all standards, fairly normal. Not the scratches of a madwoman, not the drabble of a truly insane person.
She paused on the wings, not surprising I supposed, I must have drawn about a hundred or so. I couldn't get the sound of flapping wings, the rush of air, the very noise that had sounded just before my world went to utter hell, out of my head. I tried every style, every length, every size, I was sort of obsessed I suppose.
"Do you.. Like birds..?" Bridget asked slowly,
"No, its not that... Its just a thought." I mumbled back, she blinked. "Something I thought I heard awhile back. I don't think it was a bird... I don't know what it was. I didn't see anything, just heard the rustle of flapping wings." I shrugged slightly, Bridget looked over the depictions a bit longer before handing the sketchbook back to me.
"Maybe it wasn't a bird." She murmured,
"What else would it be?" I sighed and she smiled faintly,
"Maybe the wings of an Angel?" She suggested, and for the first time I noticed the cross pendent hanging from the chain around her neck.
An Angel?
I snorted a little hotly, grimancing as cold fire started to rise in me.
An Angel? From God?
There was no such thing, if there was, nothing would have ended the way it had, if God was really there, how could he or any of his Angels let what happened to me, happen?
If there had been an Angel anywhere near me, how could they have watched as everything shattered around me? As my existence was erased from the minds of everyone I knew? As my parents were tortured and killed, my brother possessed? How could they sit back and watch Conner try to murder me, watch me be forced to kill my brother, or be killed myself?
How could they watch me as my soul shattered that night? As I suddenly broke, became empty? Let me rot here, fade away to nothing?
They couldn't. They wouldn't. So they weren't there, they weren't real.
I couldn't count how many times I had begged God not to make me do anything that happened, how many times I pleaded that it wasn't real, that it was a dream, how many times I prayed and prayed and prayed for everything to go back the way it was, when I was happy.
I had begged Him countless times that night as Conner came at me, I had cried out to Him as I sat there with the blade in my little brother's chest.
There was no God, and there were certainly no Angels.
That look of anger in my eyes gave Bridget pause, and she flinched a little at the angry scoff I let out, voice suddenly filled with anger and disdain.
"There are no Angels." I growled, if they were there, they were bastards. If they were there, they would had to have let all of that happen, they would have let my life become the hell it was now.
They would have let it all happen, they hadn't stopped it.
The echo of the footfalls of Conner sounded as he came down each step slowly, where I struggled to sit up from being thrown down the steps, I watched him approach me leisurely, black eyes glinting in the dark.
"You're not trying hard enough Echo." Conner muttered, "I hate it when people don't try their best."
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and watched in calm amusement as I struggled to stand, off balance and unsteady from a large amount of continuing blood loss and the beating I was taking, not to mention the emotional struggle I was having.
I knew what I needed to do, of course I knew... But did I have the strength to do it?
I did, I knew I did... This was the memory of that night, I'd already lived the conclusion.
Fight. Survive. Live.
And there was that voice again, the deep, husky tone that had popped into my head at the time, and continued to do so every so often as I rotted away in the Mental Ward. The voice I had always pegged as my inner most conscience, the part of me that wanted to sirvive, to keep fighting, to live.
"I'm so sorry, Conner..." I whispered, "I'm so sorry... I was supposed to protect you... I failed... I am so sorry..."
I wanted to wake up, I wanted to get away from the dream, away from the memory. I started clawing my way to consciousness, willing myself to wake up, before the memory could go any further, before I killed him, again. Every time I relived this, I felt my soul shatter all over again, I felt the ice run through my heart, my mind began to fall into an abyss...
Wake up, wake up, wake up! Please wake up!
I felt myself about to lung forward at Conner, about to slice his neck, before throwing him to the floor and plunging the knife through his heart. I couldn't control myself, I fought to but my body wasnt listening, it never did.
Then something happened that never happened before, I suddenly couldn't breath, a weight pressed down on my throat that made drawing air impossible. The memory started to crack and shatter, I started to struggle, what was going on?!
My eyes snapped open to meet a black gaze, the face of a nurse hovering over me, her hand around my throat and lips split into a twisted grin, in her other hand she brought a scalpel toward my cheek, pressing the edge down so it cut me. The room was dark around us, night had fallen long ago.
"Hello Thea." Her voice cooed softly, every syllable dripping with venom. My heart leapt in horror, I'd never told anyone my real name, I'd only ever said my name was Echo.
My hands shot up to try and push her off, but she had one knee on each arm as she strattled me, too heavy for my weak muscles to have any chance of throwing off. The blade of the scalpel cut into my skin as the Demon pulled it down toward my jaw slowly, I couldn't scream with the pressure on my throat from being suffocated. I was drenched in sweat, body shaking and heart pounding in terror.
They'd come back for me, whoever had done this, whoever or whatever was responsible for making my life a living hell, they'd finally come to finish the job. I thrashed, my body weaking fast with the unusual amount of strain and the lack of air. The Demon smiled and drew the scalpel over my jaw and under my chin, dragging it down toward my neck.
"Now, I'm going to let go of your throat. Scream, and I'll snap your neck, got it?" The Demon chuckled, slowly letting go as I sucked in air hungrily, then opened my mouth to yell out for help- the Demon anticipated that and slapped a hand over my mouth, clicking her tongue at me. "Now now, what did I say?" She warned, I glared, still thrashing.
The Demon smirked, "Did you have a nice dream Thea?" It asked suddenly, a knowing look in its black eyes. I flattered slightly, the pain and suffering of that night crashing down on my head again, the Demon noticed how pale I grew and smiled more. "That's what I thought. Now, you've been kept nice and safe for the last few years, but time's come to collect- the boss wants what he went looking for that night, and you have it. Better cooperate, or you won't like what I do to you."
Boss? What he was looking for? Something I have?
Now I was more confused than anything, I had realized there must have been a reason for what happened to me, but I had never been able to come up with one. And now it sounded as of the Demons were after something specific, and they thought I had it?
"So, where is it?" The Demon hissed, I blinked, eyes narrowed as the Demon suddenly let her hand fall from my mouth so I could answer.
"Have what?" I muttered hoarsely, the cut across my cheek, jaw and chin stinging as I said anything, the Demon scowled and suddenly pressed the scalpel into my neck lightly, cutting the skin slightly as I hissed.
"Do not play stupid girl, I don't have the patience for it!" The Demon spit into my face.
"I don't have any clue.. What the hell you're talking about..." I hissed through gritted teeth, the Demon pressed the scalpel against my neck harder, a trail of red running down and pain flaring to a higher level.
"Don't test me! I'm giving you the chance to avoid the hard way, if you don't tell me what I want, I will cut it out of you." The Demon muttered darkly, its anger was starting to flare. And yet, I still had no idea what it wanted.
Then a part of me suddenly wanted nothing more than to refuse to tell it anything, even if I didn't actually know. I wanted to make it angry, I wanted to be stubborn and refuse, I was angry. Anger was bubbling up inside me, anger unlike anything I had felt before. These Demons destroyed my life. They killed my family, they even somehow managed to erase my existence from this world. They had made my life hell, they were the reason I was so broken, and it infuriated me, there was a rage inside me I hadn't known could exist, hatred, I wanted to kill the thing before me, I wanted it dead.
"Screw you." I hissed, spitting into the face of the Demon, who scowled and hit me across the face with a fist. It was very easy to set Demons over the edge I guessed, because next thing I knew, the scalpel was pulled across my neck and cut across my windpipe, I choked on the blood that entered my mouth and throat, I couldn't breath, I was losing blood fast, and black started to drown my mind.
The Demon started to growl furious curses at me, all of which I never heard, because my body started to twitch involuntarily as the life drained from me, out of the slash across my throat, I couldn't breath, I was choking... I was going to die. After all of that, after everything... I was at the end.
A large part of me was OK with it, I was too far gone, I knew I was. I couldn't ever live again, and the prospect of spending my life in this one room was not a pleasing one. A small part of me was suddenly afraid to die, the same part of me that had filled me with rage, the strange part of me that had made my body move so perfectly, as if in practice, to kill my brother so quickly and skillfully that night.
My mind and sight faded away to dark, everything around me fell away, I felt the cold inviting hand of Death... And suddenly I heard it.
A rush of air, jagged now and not smooth, as if the feathers had been torn and turned brittle,
Wings.
"Forgive me, Thea."
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