Obsession

My brother lives in denial. I visited just a week ago, bringing bread and sausage to his children. He's stopped eating now, hungering for nothing but the smooth amphibian skin of a mermaid that doesn't exist, that he has convinced himself is his bride-to-be. He sits silently when I try to speak to him, sad eyes staring at the bone comb he fiddles with, mouth sour from ketosis muttering incoherent half-sobs. His second wife, as everyone knows, has another lover; really, she is good to him for nothing more than raising his children and bathing him whenever his stench becomes overwhelming. His once robust figure has become gaunt and hollowy. He has ruined an entire perfect life.

His first wife, Matilda, was simply angelic. She had flowing blonde hair, a trim feminine figure, and a face that shone with childish wonder and magnificent radiance. She was a young girl, and her romance with him began at only 17: they eloped four months after she found she was pregnant, eight months after they first met. Their honeymoon was her dream, and as beautiful as she was herself. Matilda insisted on Venice; she wouldn't settle for anything less. The gondoliers, the art shops, the tiramisu under the stars: her Venice was magical.

One thing existed there that Matilda never anticipated: insanity. My brother came home from Venice a crazy man. He would refuse to speak of anything but a mermaid, a mermaid he claimed to have met in a canal, following him as he roamed Venice, a mermaid created completely in his expansive imagination. The mermaid consumed him entirely, drawing him farther and farther into sin and away from first his work, then his precious infant twin daughters, then his wife, finally from his own health, and all the while from the graceful saving hands of God.

All his behavior was apparently centered around a bone hair comb he found on the honeymoon, the sort that holds ladies' hair in buns. He started by carrying his comb with him everywhere he went. He was eager to present it to anyone and everyone, explaining that the mermaid he met had given it to him as a token of her love. He would then burst into a monologue about their meeting. The glittering notes of her harp drew him near her. She had coal-black hair, wore pearls about her wrist and neck, and ribbons around her waist. She had an onyx scaled tail and ivory skin offset by ebony eyes and scarlet lips. Her features were more delicate than even those of Matilda, he said, and he swore up and down that someday he would return to her. Eventually he reached the point that he became so obsessed with the mermaid that his friends would avoid him so they wouldn't be forced to listen to the same exhausted story that they had at first laughed off. His job was lost quickly due to his lack of focus. The final straw was his neglect of his wife the day she gave birth: he simply had no interest in anything but his mermaid and that always-polished bone comb.

Then his final, unforgivable sin was committed. His wife was found dead, stabbed thrice in the chest and once in the stomach, left lying in blood-stained bed, only three months a mother. There was no doubt who was responsible, but the incident was hushed up, insanity an ironic asylum for him to hide in to avoid the consequences of his dreadful action. to try and save face, my mother immediately married him to a delinquent young lady who wouldn't have otherwise had the chance to marry well, or at all, and who would serve mainly as housekeeper and nanny.

It has been fully four years since his trip to Venice, and my brother is unreachable. I sit now watching his frail self rock rhythmically, hands worrying the comb like a rosary. He is remarkably affected by his mind's creation. I don't imagine he has long to tarry in this mortal world. It is unclear whether filth or starvation will take him first, but it is obvious that his true killer is himself: the frolicking demon of his imagination and the obsession-turned-haunting that drove him to craziness, to murder, to death.