Illusion – The Madness of Stephan Pine

By: Lebogang Tlou

There are very few things that Stephan Pine wanted in life; being with Amanda was the only one he openly admitted to. He often bragged about what a great man he was because of her to his colleagues at the firm when he still worked there. He had always felt normal when he was around her, always felt like he had found a home at long last. He promised her that he would be hers for ever, and he intended to keep that promise. That was the one thing on his mind when he got off the taxi cab and walked into his new garage. He had decided to move out of his made-over tool shed-turned-backroom in his parents’ backyard months earlier, but had never gotten around to moving in to this place until now. Moving out had been a huge emotional blow. His parents’ house was all he had left of theirs, but he had to move out. It had to be done. It was the only way to prove to Amanda that he wasn’t as useless as she had made him out to sound in their last conversation. He had to show her! She was out of town for the weekend with her friends Samantha and Leigh. But a part of him knew that she was actually with him. The thought of them together plagued him all the while he was setting up his computer in his new study. He placed it by the window overlooking the side door to the white-washed mansion across the street. The doorbell rang.

After tipping the deliveryman and waving him off with a cheerful smile, Stephan looked to see if anyone was watching before he re-entered the house and closed the door behind him.  He placed the small box which he had just signed for on the coffee table in the still bare sitting room and turned to look out the window to watch the deliveryman drive off. He had been quite polite, which was, according to Stephan, a rare characteristic in hired labour. He held on to the notion that good manners and observed niceties separated good people from bad ones, and he perceived himself as a good person. Amanda was just upset when she called him a creep. He forgave her for that one; he could never stay mad at her for too long. Stephan took a moment to marvel at his own brilliance of having his package delivered to his new address when he ordered it several weeks ago as he plugged in his laptop and switched it on. Amanda must not have meant it when she called him a retarded moron.  He forgave her for that one too.  Words spoken in anger cannot be true, he thought as he logged into her Facebook account again. The trick was not to change anything and to simply browse through; else she would surely pick up on it. Over-visiting her friends’ profiles was also yet another thing he had to be very cautious of doing.

Suddenly, his computer beeped. He gave a sigh of relief as the beeping continued. The GPS tracker he had installed to her car had been activated. He had programmed it to activate every time the car was in motion. Everything was on schedule. Amanda was driving back and, according to the flashing dot. The timer said that she was due back by eleven the next morning. Everything had to be ready by then. The sun was setting outside his study window when Stephan, carrying a small sling-bag, set out to make the final arrangements. He waited until the street was clear before he crossed over to the white-washed mansion and walked around to the back door. He withdrew a Tablet from his sling-bag. The firm had supplied all its employees with one standard edition a month before he left, which allowed for them to track all its extra-curricular usage patterns. Stephan had, however, found a way of disabling this software-tracking function for a window of fifteen seconds – which was sufficient to cracking the code to her home alarming system. After punching in several combinations, the back door swung open; alarm disarmed. Now his only remaining objective was to prove to Amanda once and for all that she was wrong in calling him all those emasculating, hurtful words.

He had always said that she was the best thing that had happened to him. He met her at the hospital where she worked three years earlier, on the night that he had rushed his mother to the Emergency Room. That was the night she passed away. She was all he had left, and then she was gone forever; leaving him all alone. He walked over to the sitting room and set the armchair in such a way that it now faced the front. He walked over to the fridge, drew out a beer and some left over salad before going back to the armchair and sitting himself down on it. Amanda had been his mother’s favourite nurse throughout her continued stays in the hospital. That was how she and Adam came to being close friends. That night, she stayed with him while he waited for news from the doctors about his mother’s condition. She even drove him home and made a sandwich when they got back to his parents’ home that night and stayed up with him all night. She was all he had left, and he was not about to let her go. Not without a fight. Stephan did not blame her at all for what had happened. It was all that George Adams’s fault. If he had not come into their lives, Stephan thought, things between himself and Amanda would not have gotten this far off course. After all, it was George Adams who poisoned her mind off against him; the one who filled her head with all sort of lies about him being sick and needing help! He is the one who turned Amanda against him, and now Stephan was going to get her back. He closed his eyes.

Stephan was sitting in a brightly lit room across the table from a balding, portly doctor holding a very thick white file. He smiled cheerfully at the doctor, before thanking him enthusiastically for the news he had just given him. The doctor crossed around the table and unlocked the straight-jacket Stephan had been confined in for the appointment.

“You passed all your tests with flying colours, Mr Pine!” The doctor beamed. “You are free to go home now.”

“Thank you, sir.” Stephan said with a cheerful smile, outstretching his own hand to shake the doctor’s. “I feel like a whole new person!”

They exchanged pleasantries for a while longer before Stephan, after a final nod to the doctor, left the room and walked down the winding corridor to his soon-to-be former ward. He walked into the chamber to find it empty. His ward-mate, a man known only as Harris, had tried to escape the previous week, and as a result was still being kept in the “white-room” for his own safety and that of everyone he came into contact with. Although, Stephan thought to himself as he started emptying out his bedside cabinet, Harris had never come across as being in any way inclined to having any form of malice or violent tendencies about him at any point in the five months that he, Stephan, had been in there.

At long last, he was packed and ready to go free. He walked out slowly, careful not to attract any attention to himself. He was, after all, surrounded by mental patients. He waved as he passed his ward’s matron, a stubby old woman in her late fifties known as Muriel. He spared her a courteous nod accompanied by a smile; never having ever truly liked her very much, did not regard her as someone worth stopping for. He held his breath as he walked out through the big front doors, not once looking back, and into the cab waiting for him outside.

“George Adams? The driver asked him.

“I’m George …” Stephan said to the driver. “George Adams. You are?”

“Yeah, alright, man. They call me Jones, man.” The driver replied.  So … here is the package you ordered.”

The driver drew a thick brown paper and gave it to Stephan who opened it to find a new I.D book and a fully loaded pistol.

“Thank you,” Stephan said cheerfully. “Can I pay you when we get to our destination?”

At this Jones merely grunted before asking where exactly it is that Stephan was going. At this point, Stephan withdrew a printed out picture of half a white-washed mansion; the other half had been torn off. On the half presented to Jones was a tall, dark-haired woman carrying a young girl aged between six or seven years old.

“Take me home, Jones,” Stephan said. “Take me home to my girl. The address is at the back. I am George Adams, and those are my girls.”

Jones the driver had no idea what to make of the man in the back seat of his cab. Then again, by the look of things, he had just left the mental institution. They arrived at the address written on the back of the torn photograph. Stephan returned the brown paper bag, now filled with a thick stack of money, and thanked him for his services.

He opened his eyes again at the sound of a car screeching to a halt in the driveway. It was dark outside, but he could make out the silhouette of a man made by the dull porch light. Stephan stood up, withdrew the gun and waited. The doorknob turned after a rattling of keys, and George Adams entered through the door to find a gun pointing at his chest.

“Stephan?” He asked, stunned. “Stephan! What are you doing, man? Put the gun down! Stephan … No wait –”

There was a flash of bright light as the gun fired, leaving a waft of gunpowder and burning flesh in the air as George Adams fell to the ground, gasping for air. Stephan walked towards him and knelt down by his side. He took the I.D book out of his breast pocket, opened the first page and showed it to the dying man.

“I am George Adams,” Stephan said, looking steadily into the other man’s eyes. “I am George Adams, and this is my house! You … are dead …”

Stephan leaned all the way forward, pressed the gun to George Adams’s head and whispered something into his ear.

“No,” George Adams breathed. “She will never be yours! Never!”

Stephen pulled the trigger for a second time. He looked up and into the eyes of a little girl standing by the doorway clutching a large stuffed bear, tears streaming down her face.