Loopholes

Filling loopholes

Brodie Hotchner – On his sister, Darcy

On the 16th of September in the year 2014, my sister Darcy Hotchner killed my birth parents at their home and then herself before she could be stopped by local police.

She had a gun pointed at my parents torsos and then at her own head.

I wasn't there when it happened but I don't know what would have happened if I would have been there. Would she have shot me, too? Would I have been able to stop her? Would I have recognized her?

It's been two years since it happened, two years since the most attended funeral in town was held. I was not one of the attendants. Instead, I found myself sat on an airplane on my way far away. I didn't know why that was, it's not like traveling far away will make you forget everything. I just took off.

Ever since that very month of September passed, I found myself reading the papers and watching the news, upset not because my sister's name was mentioned but because her name was passed around as a crazy person's initials. A name everyone feels uncomfortable saying by now because everyone thinks she was crazy.

What if she wasn't crazy? What if everyone in her surrounding, including me, was crazy and she was just an unfortunate victim who failed in putting up with us?

I still keep having What Ifs spooking around in my head and sometimes I catch myself wanting to drive down to Springfield to see how my terrible birth parents were doing or to meet up with Darcy for a cup of coffee to just talk like brother and sister.

That's when I realize that they're gone, she's gone.

*

You might know me from the news for being accused of kidnapping Darcy myself, by my own parents. And you may have been upset because I was making use of my right to remain silent during all accusations.

In the end I was proven innocent. Though I am not in the complete unknown. I am confessing to know something but I don't know if what I guess had happened really did happen. My explanation could turn out to be mere a speculation. But I guess we won't know.

The mystery body that was found at the scene was called Elena, whom no police department could identify. Everyone assumed it was her name because of what Darcy had cut into the wall. Her full name was Elena Hardings and I knew her.

When I was eight years old I was institutionalized. I was admitted to a psychological clinic and nut house — let's just say it as it is — for children where I grew up with my parents visiting once a month. They had stopped visiting when I was around 11 years old. I still don't know why they stopped coming to see me all of a sudden but I was indeed more saddened than upset because it was my fault I was in a place so far away from home. I was basically a narcissist, a child with sadistic tendencies. I belonged to the group of narcissists that absentmindedly, automatically, and often even without good reason, enjoyed abuse. Now tell that to a child who knew nothing about mental illnesses and who's been growing up well and was suddenly separated from their family for what then seemed like the rest of its life.

When I was still living at home with Mandy, Thomas and my sister Darcy, my parents started to suspect that I had mental issues. They thought I enjoyed harming others. Animals, people, it didn't matter. I pushed Darcy without any reason and laughed at her crying and bit her just to make her upset although she was older and much taller than me. But it was me who helped Darcy get rid of our neighbour's dead dog from our garden. Our parents saw me do it, then thought it was best to get me checked up mentally.

Why am I telling you this? For one, to demonstrate why my parents accused me of hurting Darcy in the first place when they knew I was out of the clinic and in contact with Darcy. What if he was released but still sadistic? Holy cow, our daughter! And secondly, the place I ended up in was the place where I met Elena for the first time.

I wouldn't call it friendship but we did have a strange relationship throughout the years. She was two years older than me so she was able to be let out and move out earlier than I could. I never heard from Elena again when she did.

Fact is, I told her a lot of things. Things about my family, what I remembered about them, what I missed about them, what I hated about them. I told her about my mom, my dad, and mostly I would tell her my small adventures with Darcy. Not just the good times, I must admit, because every time my parents came visiting me they used to tell me how great Darcy was doing and it made me upset so I naturally felt the need to vent about it. That probably wasn't such a good idea.

When I was released and moved to my very own apartment at 19, I seeked out to find Darcy. I haven't had seen her for 11 years, she'd never been allowed to come visit me. I wanted to apologize in person and just see how she was doing. We met and she forgave me, she hugged me and told me she understood. We met many more times after that without our parents knowing.

I don't know what Elena was thinking but over the years I've had people from the facility tell me that she had been obsessed with me. I'd never believed any of them. I thought she was being a really great listener when she got really mad herself whenever I told her about upsetting things my sister did when I was still living with them. I didn't know she was really, truly affected by that. But she probably was, now that we've seen that she was Darcy's kidnapper.

I'm saying, maybe she wanted to take revenge on Darcy for me. Maybe she saw Darcy as the main reason I was put into an unsettling place like that where no child should've been put into.

But maybe she saw Darcy exactly how I'd seen her: I had a love-hate-relationship with her. Was that why she was keeping Darcy alive? Because she was precious to me still and she didn't want to hurt her?

The inscribings on the walls that everyone has seen by now really make it seem like Darcy was the one killing Joseph and Ruby but it is also clear that Darcy must have been brainwashed in some way.

Had Elena stalked Darcy starting the day after her release? Had she stalked her to the point where she knew what Ruby and Joseph had done to Darcy? Was that why she got to them in the first place and killed them? Or did Darcy herself kill them, a result of Elena ordering her around?

Darcy had only told me about Ruby Heights and Joseph Keller who were found dead during Darcy's absence. I was the only one who knew about them so how did Elena possibly know them as well? Did Darcy tell her about them whilst she was kept in hostage? Did she tell her that Ruby was caught taking drugs while being pregnant and framed Darcy, saying that she was the one giving them to her? And about Joseph who kept stalking her to the point she never felt safe anymore and asked her for inappropriate favors? Was that how Elena picked her victims and killed them off?

What did Darcy do and what didn't she do?

No one will know but the heavens. Darcy Hotchner's case will always remain with loopholes that nobody else could fill.

I just know that Darcy wasn't Darcy anymore. She'd become someone else, a puppet in sick circumstances.

You can't apply math to human lives. And I'm saying this to defend neither Elena, nor Darcy.

*
The End