The Name Without Escape

A Story by Phonzthewriter

Fictional Story

Page 1 of 10

The Name Without Escape

I had to find out myself whether the rumors were true. I was afraid that they would be true; I was uncertain. I did not want to know, but I had to. I went into public records and looked up everything I could find. There it was right there; the man that I thought was my biological father was not my biological father. "Why had I been lied to?" Went through my mind. "Why did I have to find out like this?" It is not right. "I guess it couldn't be any other way than this;" I could hardly see I was so full of rage. As I became more reasonable, I wanted to confront my so-called parents, but rushing in headfirst would not solve anything. "They would deny it to the end," I thought. "If they were willing to lie to me for thirty-five years, what's another lie? Even if I had evidence, they still would deny it." "Why had I lived with people who would lie to me like this?" As I contemplated that, I suddenly felt ill. But then I started to reflect on all the good times we had. I still wanted to know why they would lie to me like that. They had to have had a good reason; parts of me were confused and frayed. Not only was I lied to, but I had also been living a lie. I felt like everyone knew but me. I started to become paranoid, and I just wanted to find the underlying cause of the lies.

The next day did not feel any different. Sure, I was more levelheaded, but the damage had been done, and there was nothing that I could do. I started to feel powerless and helpless. Like a baby that was left in a basket that had never stopped crying. Was I overreacting to the situation, or was I right? I spent a few days deciding how I would ask them. I knew I would not get exact answers if I asked them directly. I had to do this carefully, or it would not work. I rehearsed how to bring it up and talked to some of my close friends about it. They understood and sympathized with how I felt. It was not only betrayal, but hiding and living a lie was the biggest problem. They were trying to protect me from something, but I did not know what it was, and it was bugging me. They noticed no outward change after I found out, even though I tried to make it apparent by being snarky and annoying. The more I tried to insinuate something was wrong, the more they acted like something was not.

"They had to know something was wrong." I thought to myself. I had not been myself for a few days. I felt neglected and left out of things until I finally said, "Mom, Dad, I know." I blurted out. They replied, "What do you know?" I told them, "I know you're not my birth parents." They both looked at each other and let out a deep sigh. They said, "They hoped they would never have this conversation and were protecting me." I asked them "what they were protecting me from." They said, "They were protecting me from a terrible family history." I was the son of a pair of serial killers. I was shocked. My heart sank, and I began to feel a bit of denial. They said, "They were sorry and meant to tell me eventually, but they didn't know how to tell me." They told me that my parents were co-serial killers. They didn't go into details, but they told me who they were and said I could research it if I wanted to, and they would answer any questions about my past.

I understood now why they hid it from me as I delved deeper into my biological parents' troubling past. I realized that my town had buried everything about them. No one talked about it, and it had all but been forgotten. I felt like something about me was not right. Not that I had the urge to kill anyone, but I just felt different. I wanted to believe the people who raised me were my birth parents. They took diligent care of me, hiding the ugly truth from me must have been hard on them. I was starting to wonder if there was such a thing as a good lie.