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The screaming came again and began getting louder and louder.

Jack Brown switched his television off by his remote control and carefully listened to the horrible screeching noise coming from the upstairs of his house, his wife, Emma Brown, was holding tightly onto him, trying to find comfort and reassurance in him and praying that what they was hearing was just in their imagination, but the noise only seemed to get louder and louder.

There was a heavy storm outside and rain could be heard falling violently onto the conservatory roof with the gale force wind destroying everything in its path. Perhaps the storm was playing tricks on their minds? maybe they were just imagining it? but there was only one way to find out.

Jack told his wife to stay in the living room while he crept into the kitchen to get weapons to defend themselves against whatever could possibly be up stairs, he grabbed his secretly owned hand-gun from an old, dusty shoebox hidden under the kitchen worktop and picked up a pizza-cutting knife from the cutlery draw to give to his wife.

Jack returned to the living room and once again Emma grabbed him in anxiety, a new thumping noise could now be heard from upstairs, as though someone was smashing the side of a wall. Jack gave his wife the knife from the kitchen, her hand stopped shaking as she clenched the knife tightly; she began to relax as she felt more protected.

He explained to his wife that he was going to go upstairs to see where the noise was coming from and that he would prefer if she’d stay downstairs, she nodded without question and reached out to hug him, whispering quietly into his ear that she loved him, Jack told her everything was going to be fine and then told her that he loved her too.

Jack began to tiptoe up the stairs as discreetly as possible, the thought in his mind of going into the unknown was sending a shivering chill down his spine, he could hear the screaming increasingly more as he ascended the stairs making him feel even more terrified. As he reached the top, he listened anxiously, trying to distinguish where the noise was coming from, he realized after a minute or so that it was coming from inside the bathroom.

He approached the bathroom with caution; he had his gun aimed at the direction of the door and he crept slowly towards it. Pressing his ear against the wooden door, he listened carefully to the screaming that was now painfully ringing through his ears. His hand was shaking as he slowly twisted the door knob, he burst in....

In a moment of shear relief and bewilderment, he found that there was nobody there; he ran to the window and opened it, peering around the street trying to find the source of where the screaming was coming from, his eyes searched the neighboring gardens but all to no avail. With a confused thought in his head, he closed the window and then headed down stairs to tell his wife.

Turning into the living room, Jack was totally unprepared for the scene that greeted him. There on the floor laid amongst a lake of frothing red blood lay the slaughtered body of his wife. He knew this had just happened but how? By who? Why? With fear and disbelief, pumping adrenaline began flowing through his veins, a moment of fight or flight came over him and he took off as fast as his feet could take him, into his bedroom.

Slamming the door behind, turning the key to ensure his security, he closed the curtains; he grabbed the thick quilt from the bed and wrapped it tightly around him like a shield of protection. Inside his self-made cocoon, he hid in the corner in darkness, trying desperately to make sense of the evening’s events. Too scared to move or to even breathe, there he stayed until involuntary sleep took over his body.

When Jack awoke, agitation was his first feeling, there seemed to be a lack of movement, he could not move his arms freely. What on earth had happened? His eyes scoured around his environment, this was not a familiar place. His vision was blurred, moving towards him he could see a group of people heading in his direction, as the whiteness became closer he made out the figures of several doctors and nurses. He heard his own name being mentioned, it was in that moment that he realised why he wasn’t able to move. Jack was encompassed by a tightly bound straight jacket, as they approached they were talking amongst each other about the case they were studying. In horror, Jack could hear them discussing about a schizophrenic patient with a double personality, it was him!

His head reeling from the shock of what he’d heard, he listened intently, every one of their words were magnified. This monster they were discussing, this monster who shared his name, had savagely murdered his wife. Found in a pool of blood in her living room, she had been repeatedly blasted by a 9mm hand-gun.
He became desperate to escape the restrictions of the straps that held him securely, thrashing about, trying in vain to flee. But as his movements became more urgent he felt the sharp sting of a needle piercing his upper arm, a small area of flesh that had escaped its confine. As he drifted into an unnatural tranquility, the doctors continued to discuss their case.

The horror of that night was replayed as they spoke; only this time the story had a twist, a twist that was so abhorrent, he could barely comprehend their words.

It seemed Jacks condition was considerably rare; he had two completely different personalities, neither one connected to the other, and with very little warning of the change over between the two. The doctor explained to the group that they believed certain sounds or levels of volume triggered the change that transformed normal Mr Nice Guy into a heartless uncontrollable maniac. It appeared that on the night of the killing, police had reprimanded some passing rowdy teenagers, who had been running up and down the streets locally to the murder scene, screaming and shouting, and this may have been the prompt for the sudden change in his personality. A change so devastating that this loving, caring husband had savagely murdered his own wife. Unable to control his alter ego and with no prospect of a cure, Jack remains doomed to a life imprisoned, along with others whose minds are too damaged to live in society, reliving that dreadful night over and over again.