Damien sat at his kitchen table staring at an old tape recorder and listening to the distant voice that hissed through the single speaker. 

“You can call me what ever you want: introverted, anti-social, a bitch. The medical term is Schizotypal, look it up. I don’t need to explain it for validation. I know my sickness. I know that when the sun shines I’ll have the shades drawn and when the dark heavens poor down rain I’ll stand in it and laugh, for God is weeping. And he weeps for you, Damien.”

He groaned and ran his fingers through his short dark hair. She was getting worse.

“Nobody ever said you were stupid, just out of your **** mind,” Damien said to the tape recorder. He looked at his watch, he had a date in an hour. He shouldn’t have started this, now he would be in a bad mood all night.

“I weep for you Damien. My mind clouds up with thoughts of you, clouds heavy with sadness, heavy with bits of you, and when you get to be too  much for my mind, the clouds shudder and tears fall down my cheeks. We don’t get to watch the news here, but sometimes she tells us things. Today, in my forced interaction time, she told us that syphilis is up. I assume the idiot meant that the number of  cases of syphilis has risen, but she said ‘syphilis is up’, makes no sense. I hate her. Sometimes I think about bashing her head in with my chair, but I can’t lift my chair. Damien, watch out for syphilis, it’s up. Wear condoms on your pretty, hard…”

          “Jesus, ****!” Damien hit the fast forward button.  

         “used to be pretty too.  Gary asked me for a kiss. Slobbering ****. Who wants to kiss a retard? With his fat tongue lolling around his lazy mouth. She says he isn’t a retard, he’s developmentally disabled. I said, is developmental disability up? ‘I can get it up’ yelled Gary from his retard corner. **** retard. Reminds me of your father. Why did you put me here? I should hate you. But I only love you more. I think about you at night and touch dried my up slit. You were the only one I didn’t hate being around. She won’t let me keep a picture of you. God, my nipples get hard when I think about you. I want to kiss you. I would kill her, but that’s what God wants, the death of everything. I hate God more than I hate her, God dried me up, so I’ll let her live. Damien, my beautiful one, I love you.”

           The tape stopped. Damien rested his head in his hands. He popped the tape out of the recorder and turned it over in his hands. The label said, Love Mom with a little smiley face.