Temporary Insanity

A piano only has twelve notes. Every single piece of music you listen to is a variation of those twelve notes.
Stairway to Heaven and Ice Ice Baby are the same song. They're notes are in a diferent order, is all.
I wish there was an easy way to do this. I really do. A hanging, or something. Bullet through the head, maybe. Anything, really. Memory whipe will do, too.
Because it's not his face. It's not his face when he broke into my home. And it's not my daughter's face when he pulled the knife and when she fell to the floor. And it's not even my own face, reflected in the window when I turned to look at my wife, and she was already on the floor too.
It was the doctor's face, in the stand.
You see, there are several scales in music theory. Pentatonic, chromatic, blues, jazz. They all sound diferent. You know that middle eastern sound you get from some songs, like Aladdin's Arabian Nights? That's the harmonic minor scale. Really, a whole bunch of them, but in the end, they are all variations on those twelve notes.
He was sitting there, the doctor and his face, and I was sitting here, and we were across the room. Divided by an open space and a lawyer, and he was asking all this questions about Thompson's Mental Institution. It seemed like a decent enough place.
The thing about these twelve notes is that they don't all go well with each other. You put together a C, a G and an E and you get yourself a chord. It's neat, clean, it sounds good. But you add an F and you get dissonance. It sounds weird, it's not music anymore. Depending on the kind of song you want to write, a C sharp can sound lovely with a B. But you play C and C sharp together and you get the sound of a honk. Dissonant. Ugly. Wrong.
They said he wasn't recovered yet. He probably would never be. Something-schizo-something. He had no idea who he was, where we has. Escaped mental patient. Classic. Same world as we live in, completely diferent reality.
He didn't know, but I knew.
That whole year, I knew. I knew when I walked into his room, in Thompson, with some flowers and a smile. He didn't know who I was, because it wasn't him that night, with my family. Not really.
He was severely medicated.
I knew when he looked up at me, from his bed. I knew when I threw him in the trunk of my 2012 BMW. I knew when I could hear him crying, desperate, lost, his screams passing the backseat and reaching me while I drove. I always knew.
Throughout the whole nine months he spent in my basement, I knew. Deep down, everytime he would look at me. The first months he would raise his head when I opened the door, like a dog waiting for his owner. Fear. Confusion. He didn't know. But I knew.
I knew when I would hear him sing, his voice weak from starvation, from my bedroom in the second floor. Sad songs, "Sweet Molly Malone" songs he learned from his mother, long before he forgot himself.
I knew. Everything I did to him, I knew it all along. Even when he finaly gave up, his eyes too tired to remain open, his voice to weak to sing another verse of Old Mcdonald, I knew.
But it didn't hit me until the trial.
Every song is the same. You change the order of the notes and, suddendly, a perfectly good song can turn into a hideous noise. Ugly. Wrong.
It didn't hit me until Dr. Whatever-His-Name-Was declared, with all the words: Temporary Insanity.
Because I knew that I, unlike him, wasn't crazy. I knew that I was to remember. I knew that I was to share the same reality of my past.
Damn, fuck temporary insanity. Either make it forever or don't bother at all.
I knew that when they locked me in Thompson. And all I wanted was peace. A hanging, or a bullet through the head. Anything, really. Memory whipe will do.
But I can't. I can't because I knew. And now I have forgotten all about my wife and my beautiful, beautiful daughter. But I have yet to forget about the doctor's face, before I go meet them. I have yet to forget the lyrics of Sweet Molly Malone.