I strained with effort as cell door 193 slowly swung open. It revealed an empty white room, with nothing except a grimy cot and various scribblings decorating the enclosing walls. In the room, an aged man sat on the edge of the soiled cot. As I entered  the confined space with a stolen wheelchair, the man didn’t even blink. His eyes were glazed over in sadness and confusion as he sat, lonesome, in quiet desperation.

“Father, I’ve come to take you home,” I whispered to the man, gesturing to the sparsely cushioned wheelchair.
He looked up at me, and smiled dazedly.

“I know it’s been a while... Don’t you recognize me?” I asked, raising my voice.

His countenance was calm, still, he refused to say anything. 

“We mustn't wait. Someone is bound to find me out,” I explained, agitated that he wasn’t willing to comply. 

“I’m sorry, Doctor. Did you want some tea?” my father finally replied, ignoring my previous statements. “I just recently bought some rather delicious tea, if I could just find it,” he continued, feebly searching his bed.
“I’m your son!” I said, exasperated. “I’ve come to take you home.”

Solemnly, I felt tears rushing to my eyes. Twenty years cooped up in such a place would drive anyone insane. I had waited too long.

“I’m your son! Don’t you see?” I yelled. He just stared back. “Please, come with me. Come home.” I began to weep uncontrollably. 

“No, please! No more medicine!” My father stood up and cringed, catching himself on the stone wall. “You’re trying to kill me!” he accused, his fiery eyes lighting up with fear and rage.

“No, I’m your son!” I exclaimed in a hushed voice “Now, quiet! They’ll hear us,” I whispered angrily, wiping the tears from my eyes. I could feel a menacing hatred boil up inside of me, hatred for the lost years and the system that had betrayed us. And yes, hatred for the man who had abandoned me, my father.

“I’ve spent twenty long years waiting for the perfect time to get you out of this place, and this is how I’m repaid?” I cried “Ever since Mother was killed and you were locked up here, I’ve been suffering on the streets, with no family. Shamed and disgraced, because my deranged father was locked up for murder and insanity.” I wept, no longer caring if I was found out in my stolen hospital caregiver’s uniform.

What was the point? My own father had been brainwashed to the point where even I, his own son, was a stranger to him.

“You’re lying to me! I don’t have a son! You want to kill me!” my agile father attempted to swing the cot towards me, but was too weak to move it but an inch or so.
The aged man had lived a long life, he’d lost his parents and identical twin brother in a car accident when he was just a boy. His wife was murdered, as he professed, by his late twin brother, which no one believed, of course, and was locked up in this insane asylum.

I remember his claim that his twin brother had killed mother out of jealousy, twenty years ago. I was the only one to believe his far-out story. Everyone else thought the man to be insane.

“I’ve wasted my life on you!” I exclaimed. Infuriated, I kicked aside the cot. My once so respectable father, was nothing but a weak, brainwashed freak. He fell to the floor as I confronted him. He lifted his scrawny arms, as if they would protect him. I laughed, my eyes glowed with a fiery anger with now nothing left of the sentiment I had felt before.

“Help me!” the feeble man shrieked.

“It’s too late!” I announced in rage, raising the cot above him. “Five… four....three... two… and,” In the moment of suspense, there was a ruckus that interrupted. The entire insane asylum had erupted into chaos. The prisoners throwing themselves against walls and screaming. And through the cell door rushed in the hospital security and two doctors. I’d been found out.

“NO! Please, don’t hurt me!” My father cried out.

I felt a slight stinging in my arm as a studious looking doctor injected me with a rather painful shot. And I, within a momentary lapse of reasoning, threw the bed to the wall, and fell to the stone floor. It was as if I was in a trance. No feelings. No pain. No sadness. Just confusion. The world  around me began to fade away, and I allowed the men to bind me to one of the rolling hospital beds.

Swiftly, I was pushed down the hallways of the hospital, blinded by the white lights hanging above me. But my life was pointless now. I didn’t want or need anything anymore. So I closed my eyes, and hoped I would never wake again and let everything fade to black.

I blinked several times before the world around me started to come into focus. I lay, unbound, on a greasy bed. I stood up, only to stumble and fall back onto the grotesque cot, once again.

“Finally awake?” said a deep, yet strangely familiar voice.

I groaned rather loudly, but couldn’t seem to form words. So instead, I searched the room for the man who had spoken. In the corner of the white room loomed a tall cloaked man who masked himself with a black scarf and a black top hat perched atop his head.

“Who….?” I began to ask, but couldn’t seem to finish the question. My head throbbed and my bones ached, the pain seemed to grow more and more as I awoke.

Mysteriously, the cloaked figure uncovered his face. The man appeared to be my father. But his countenance was shaped in a warped smile, and his eyes were glued to me as a storm upon a ship at sea. My father’s supposedly late twin.