Andre Part II

I'm very tired, so this post may need some revision in the morning.

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The paramedics worked on Andre and took him away. He was life-flighted to the nearest hospital and was pronounced during the flight. I knew that he was dead, I had no hopes of visiting him in the hospital. He was gone.

The cops arrived at some point and took over the scene. This included questioning of the witnesses. Still drunk, I was sat in the back of the police car for an endless barrage of questioning. At one point, sick with grief and horror I lost my collective shit. I yelled "Okay fine! You want to hear what happened? I did it. I fired the gun from the couch, it bounced off the sliding glass window, bounced off the file cabinet, bounced off the refrigerator and then went into Andre's head. That's how it happened. Are you happy now? You know, I never understood why people hated cops. And now I know." The interview was over.

I went to a friend's house and stayed for a few days, unable to come home to the scene of the crime, so to speak. When my father finally told me that I had to come home, I dreaded being in that house, in that kitchen. Here is where I have to add a little "Sam's Backstory" for you...

My beloved father was an alcoholic for most of his life. He was the type that drank a pot of coffee in the morning, and when it was done he opened his first beer of the day. He continued to drink until he went to bed. I saw him drunk once during the time I lived with him. He was the most mellow man I have ever known, and probably drank due to undiagnosed anxiety. (Which was later diagnosed and treated.) This does not excuse his behavior, but does explain it. My father was fairly dead, emotionally while he was drinking. When he later stopped drinking, he started to show "appropriate" emotional responses for most things. In the death of Andre, his attitude and responses were crap. /backstory

I came back home to another horror, only this time I was sober. The kitchen had be mostly cleaned while I was gone, but there was considerable work still to be done. The notes left by the police officers were still on the file cabinet and I will never forget the one that was noted "brain matter" with a number. The others were mostly "blood splatter" and the like. There were small spots of blood on the cabinets, along the baseboards, in the cracks of the floor... it looked fine from a distance, but it needed a good scrubbing. And because my dad viewed me as the cause of the mess because I brought Andre in our home, it was my job to clean up the kitchen.

Did you know that the littlest spots of dried blood take a very long time to clean up? I used a bucket of clean water and a sponge, and cleaned that kitchen for an eternity. Every spot on the floor turned into a pink puddle when I applied water. I hated my father that day, for making me relive the horror spot after bloody spot. I had nightmares for years after, where the original pools of blood would reappear again and again. It is difficult to convey what broke inside me that day, scrubbing up the last splatters of blood that once was a part of Andre. I see the notes that the cops left, the red water on the floor, all the horror is still there after 18 years.

To Be Continued...