Chapter Fourteen
Al Darnaget was a strange case, because he had lead a life relatively free of criminality.
He had a family, and a reliable job. He paid taxes, and coached his kids soccer team. He was working off payments on his house, and he voted during every election.
Al never gossiped. He gave to homeless people, and when he couldn't find any homeless people, he gave to charity.
He even sympathized with the occasional drunkard, and if they didn't have money to get their fix, he would buy a beer for the two of them, and go sit in the park for a while – just to talk.
How it was that Al ended up on death row seemed like a total mystery for some, but he knew why he was there; it was his conscience.
If he had been any less of a person he wouldn't be here today, which was why he didn't particularly mind being in prison. After all, some of the greatest people who ever lived were incarcerated for following through on with their beliefs.
If there was a God, Al was convinced that God would sort everything out on judgement day. Until that took place, Al was put behind bars, and he lived his daily life in relative peace.
He went where he was asked to go, and he did what he was asked to do. He did not grumble, complain, or gripe. Al went about his life as a man who accepted the consequences of his actions.
Al had experienced intense instability during his childhood. It wasn't that Al himself was unstable. He was constantly forced to take care of himself, because his parents were so incredibly focused on his sister.
When his parents were overwhelmed, and needed a break, Al would step in as caretaker for his sibling.
Her name was Dori.
The pair were close as Dori grew up, because Al seemed to be the only one around who cared to see things from his sister's perspective.
Most people were interested in labeling her as a behavioral deviant, or telling her that her mind was dysfunctional. Al never thought those approaches fair, and so he was present with his sister whenever possible.
Dori was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in her teens, because she believed that Jesus and Lucifer were battling for possession of her consciousness.
They would give her advice on courses of action to take in her life. Sometimes, it was difficult for her to tell the difference between the two, and she would grow confused and frustrated.
Al imagined it must be awful, to have someone talk to you all of the time, and to not be able to trust what that person had to say. He truly felt for his sister, and whenever she would come to him in frustration, he would attempt to remind her to focus on what “she” thought she should do. She never failed to look him in the eye, and comment.
“You just don't get it, do you?” she would say, then she would storm off to be with herself once more.
His parents institutionalized her after she attempted to commit suicide for the second time in her seventeenth year of life.
She had been in and out of institutions for years as and he did his best to visit her on a weekly basis.
During the last few years, she had been so strung out on psych meds that Al was certain the hospital staff were trying to pharmaceutically lobotomize her.
He demanded that they take her off of the drugs.
They stated that he was not her primary caregiver, and that since she had signed herself into the institution, she had placed herself in their care.
Apparently that meant neutralizing any trace of character from her consciousness.
One day, his sister showed up at his home, still in her hospital gown, a frightened, and alternately vacant look in her eyes.
She began describing vivid dreams she was having of the night watchman sexually molesting her in her sleep.
The dream had become so recurrent, that she had checked herself out of the psych ward and had nowhere else to go.
Al was concerned for Dori, but it was hard to tell if this was reality, or just another of her fantasies. He decided to take her back to the psych ward, and spend the night under her bed in order to make sure that everything was alright.
Al managed to check his sister back in, and then climb in through a window around closing. He laid on the floor all night, while the orderlies came in and out, distributed medications, and made small talk with his sister.
Dori was the perfect accomplice, and acted as though it was all a fun games. She tongued her meds that night, and then spat them into her hand after the orderly had left the room.
Dori fell asleep eventually, though it took longer than usual, and at 3:00 AM, the night watchman came into the room. He started by placing his hand around her mouth, and he ended up in a pool of his own blood on the floor.
The police found evidence of Al at the scene, but he had already come forward and professed his guilt.
The night watchman was dead as a consequence of his actions, and Al was imprisoned.