{"id":5616,"date":"2025-05-15T21:04:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T19:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=5616"},"modified":"2025-05-15T21:04:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T19:04:19","slug":"the-devil-under-the-same-roof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2025\/05\/the-devil-under-the-same-roof\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil Under The Same Roof"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author:<\/strong> Erika Castrill\u00f3n Morales<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Content Warning: Drug abuse, Domestic violence, Mentions of sexual abuse.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOpen the door, you whore!\u201d He has been giving kicks from the other side of the door, trying to get into the house. May is sitting behind the door, covering her ears to ignore his shouts. She cannot take this anymore. He fled five days ago, and nobody heard from him until now. Every time he leaves, he always comes back home in a frenetic state. May can only imagine the worst. He has been wandering around trying to get his hands on anything strong enough to make him pass out. Being the big sister weighs heavily on her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After half an hour, the screams stopped. May peeps through the window and sees John\u2019s weak body lying unconscious on the floor. There is not a single noise at the deepest of nights. Her heart is divided between thinking her brother is nothing more than a piece of garbage and feeling a bit of pity towards him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May remembers how John was always wicked. As a kid, he was restless and disruptive. In primary school, teachers never ceased to complain about his behavior. Once, during a break, some younger kids followed him into the bushes near the playground. When the teacher came looking for them, she found John showing pictures of naked women to the little kids. \u00a0On another occasion, he stole a neighbor\u2019s cat and smashed it into a wall. He then burned the poor creature on the house\u2019s terrace. By the time he was a teenager, it was clear that John was rotten and utterly mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His relationship with May was highly problematic as well. He never liked her. He used to bother his sister by physically harassing her. He started to pick on her and call her names when they were about seven years old. Luckily, May had long nails and would scratch him like a cat. John would end up crying and exaggerating his wounds. But their mom, Anna, a woman weak in character, took it against May and would beat her ass up. She could see the scratches on John, but there were no signs of the so-called violence in John would have inflicted on May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May is the eldest of four siblings. She is followed by John, Edward, and Michael.  For some unknown reason, Anna spoiled John rotten. She let him do whatever he pleased. He was her golden boy, and John became a mommy\u2019s boy. Anna hid all of John\u2019s faults from her husband and the father of her children, Thomas. A rivalry grew between John and May. The latter was well-behaved and got along well in school: Always getting good grades and compliments from the teachers. But at home, things were cold with their mother, when Anna refused to see John\u2019s faults. If May dared to cry, their mother would force her to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The father was a cobbler who used to work offering his services on the corner of a main downtown street. They lived from day to day. Thomas gave Anna the money he earned the day before to prepare lunch. John, being the oldest of the brothers, was in charge of bringing lunch to their dad. He was a school drop-out and was always at home. Because May was a girl, it was considered too dangerous to have her walk long distances in the streets full of strangers. Also, she had school. But John was always reluctant to do it. Instead, he would walk to the kitchen to eat his father\u2019s lunch and then would take a guiltless nap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing him through the window, May\u2019s mind recalls the multiple times John returned home from one of his getaways. With time, May could distinguish what kind of substance he had taken that day.\u00a0 His arrival was the announcement of a new cycle of confrontations with a hectic John, saying he was going to murder them all. Sometimes, neighbors had to call the police to break up the fights. Anna was unable to acknowledge her son\u2019s troubles. John could not stand anyone looking at him. It used to freak out his demons. He wanted to fight and was a real danger to the family. He used to threaten his younger siblings if May didn\u2019t leave him alone and stopped sticking her nose between him and their mother. If May ran into to him on the streets, he used to throw lustful looks at her and told her that if she kept bothering him, he was going to \u201cscrew her\u201d with his buddies.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May scratches her legs and forearms. Her accelerated heartbeats are mixed with an increasing headache when remembering the past. When Thomas died, things escalated for May. Rumors came to her saying that Anna was calling May\u2019s friends asking for money, that she would later give to John.  He would demand too much from his mom, and she would do everything for him. The two remaining younger brothers had emotional and economic needs that May ended up filling. On many occasions, John would call from jail. He would be caught with drugs in his pockets or high in the streets. Anna would beg May to take her beloved son out of that place. Eventually, May was known in every police station in the city. May would bring him some food and would take him back home, sometimes even bribing the inspectors with money that was not much of a surplus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John went through long years of drug abuse and, at some point, was able to complete rehab. He got a decent job for a few years and became a counselor for young boys flirting with substances.  A time of apparent peace and optimism ran in the family.  But John\u2019s addiction was so overpowering that he went back to it, trying hard drugs this time. It\u2019s been more than fifteen years since the first time John came, kicking the door and destroying everything. May decides to pray and searches in a secluded space in her interior for some faith. She begs her forgotten God to take him. She wants to be free from the burden he is. She wants him dead, for everyone\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May closes the windows and goes to her room to try to get some sleep. She discovers her mom, Edward, and Michael nervously peeping at her in the corridor. She can see in their looks of distress, she asks everyone to return to bed. \u201cWe\u2019ll deal with this in the morning\u201d she says to them as she has so many times before. Lying in bed, May bursts into tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Robert, the next-door neighbor comes first thing in the morning looking for May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIs John home?\u201d He asks her with a concerned look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe really don\u2019t know, we haven\u2019t heard anything today.\u201d, answers the young woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have something to show you, May.\u201d He hands her today\u2019s newspaper. The photo shows the body of a young man bleeding, lying on the floor. The headline reads \u201cJohn Doe dies during police break-in in drug den.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it is him\u201d, states Mr. Robert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is him.\u201d Confirms May with a calm voice, after having recognized John\u2019s shirt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Erika Castrill\u00f3n Morales [Content Warning: Drug abuse, Domestic violence, Mentions of sexual abuse.] \u201cOpen the door, you whore!\u201d He has been giving kicks from the other side of the door, trying to get into the house. May is sitting behind the door, covering her ears to ignore his shouts. She cannot take this anymore. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002978,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[37],"class_list":{"0":"post-5616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-2025-spring","7":"tag-prose"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002978"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5616"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5777,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5616\/revisions\/5777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}