Dear Diary June 18th 2019
It’s been just over a year! The air is so much cleaner and bright out here. Especially after breathing that stale concrete air of prison for so long. I’m so glad I’m out of there. The guard who’d told me he was surprised at how long I’d lasted as Kal’s cellmate, he testified for me in court. Just self defense he said, everybody knew what Kal could be like. The other guard, the one who’d ignored me said much the same. Must have felt guilty.
I’m finally with my kids! Full custody once the divorce was settled, she didn’t even fight me hard on it. I think she and Josh moved downtown to a fancy apartment, good for them I guess. I’ve got the real treasure as far as I’m concerned. The first time I saw them I just stared at them unblinkingly and wept. They’d changed so much, Alister had gotten so much taller and stronger and Nina taller as well. She had gotten longer hair and her face didn’t have as much of the baby fat it had when I left.
I don’t think it really even hit me until after I got released what happened with Liz and Josh and the divorce. She cheated on me, with my best friend, while I was wrongfully imprisoned. Wow to put it into one sentence like that really makes it real. It really happened, I’m a divorcee. I always imagined going home and having Liz in the bed next to me to wake up to. I woke up the first morning and there was just nobody there. Once I realized it was time to move on that things were never going to go back to the way they were, it was like trying to pull off a jacket that was stitched right into your skin. It hurt, in a very private way that I don’t talk about much and I try not to let the kids see. I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust somebody again like I had trusted her, I gave her everything, I shared all of myself and she rejected it. I tried so hard just to please her and do right by her and she left me for my friend. Every time I say it, even write it it’s like shoving a razor blade into my heart. It’s easy for me to say I’m over it, that that was over a year ago and I’m ready to move on. It’s a lie though, I’m not ready, it’s all about the kids now and I’m happy with that.
I’ve learned a lot and changed a lot since I’ve gotten out. When I’m home I’m playing with the kids making blanket forts and racing our bikes and having them help me make pizza and cake and different things like that. We read stories and sometimes make stories up too. It is the absolute best. When I’m not doing that and I’m not cooking at the diner down the street I’m reading books myself. A few months ago I was in the library looking for some new books. I stumbled across this big brown paper bag, full of books. You couldn’t see what was in it, just a mystery bag of library books. ‘Heroes’ was all it said on it. I grabbed it and started reading the stack. There were some fiction and some true stories and the thing that struck me was how different they all were while still residing under the heading of ‘heroes.’
Some were brave and cunning warriors who could defeat any enemy in combat no matter how bad the odds. Other’s were non-violent, creating change with their kindness and patience. Some who were rather silent and provided behind the scenes support for others, things they couldn’t have done without. I suppose courage takes many forms. I don’t know who put this mystery bag together but it was very interesting to see the different interpretations of what it means to be a hero. These heroes were so vastly different from one another yet it is obvious to anyone who reads their stories that they were heroic in their deeds. They were all joined with a passion for justice, but with such different avenues they all explored to get there. Justice, what a joke. Justice has never gotten me anything but trouble and regret. I went in to jail innocent and came out guilty. How messed up is that, after a year of trying to ignore it I can say it’s really not working. I’m not sleeping well again. Now when I close my eyes I’m transported back to that night.
I remember the look in Kal’s eyes when I killed him.
I remember the look in Trevor’s eyes when I killed him.
I remember the look in Ziggy’s eyes when I killed him.
It was the same look I had seen in my own eyes a hundred times in the mirror. I saw the cave in their eyes too. I couldn’t think about it then, I couldn’t have the distraction from what I thought was a terrible but inevitable and necessary duty. The veins in their eyes like roots running along the forest floor, stopping abruptly before the rock. The stone cold unblinking gaze of being petrified with terror the moment before they didn’t feel anything at all. I watched the moment their eyes changed from portraying fright to simply nothing. They were all scared just the same as me, the three people in the entire prison I thought least likely to be afraid. How did they hide it so well? Maybe they didn’t but I didn’t notice because I was so afraid myself. Kal, huge hulking Kal who’d terrified me for months and made it difficult for me to sleep. What had happened to him to make him feel fear? Those are questions I don’t have answers for, all I really know is that I saw the same fear in their eyes as I’d seen in my own. After seeing it I still decided to end their lives. So if I can make those decisions after seeing that those other people were just as frightened as me maybe I’m not a hero. None of the heroes in these books are like that, there’s such a vast array of characteristics but none of them would have done something like that. I’d like to be counted among heroes but I don’t think I can be.
I reminisced on the incident again. I was absolutely in control of my actions, as soon as Trevor walked into my room that night I calculated exactly what was going to happen and it did. Kill Trevor, kill Ziggy, make it look like they killed each other. I didn’t even question it or hesitate or try to reason with the idea I just did it. I executed that plan, with the deft fingers of a man who’s done something a hundred times.
For the first long time after I got free I slept so well, it was wonderful. After a while though I had this dream once or twice a week. A month later it was every other night, now it’s every single night. In this nightmare there was the cave again but different than when I was young. I wasn’t in the forest being dragged into the cave. In this dream I found myself in a dark place, I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of me. I started scratching at the walls, noticing that my fingernails were longer and stronger and sharper than usual. Soon I realized I could see a faint path, and my eyes were different. Everything was grey, no colours to speak of. I followed the path with haggard breath and staggered steps but at a quick pace. Then around a bend a wide opening and three men all looking at me like they want to kill me. I didn’t waste any time, I leapt out from the darkness of this place. To my own astonishment I heard growls and barks come from my own mouth and saw claws long as sabres coming out of my hands, except they weren’t hands. Mercilessly cutting into flesh and tearing the men to pieces, I felt afraid when I did it because they were trying to kill me too but I didn’t stop. When they were dead I took their bodies one by one into what was now clearly the cave and when I was dragging the last one, I saw my own reflection in a puddle. I had long claws, fur, bright green eyes and a lupine face. Long dark snout and nostrils releasing spurts of hot air into the sky. That’s when I woke up. I’d always been curious but too afraid to explore the cave, and now it had explored me and found I belonged there. That I had experienced being both the scared man in the forest and the beast coming from the cave that was also curiously frightened. I couldn’t deny it anymore, the truth was unavoidable. Everybody is scared, and everybody is capable of terrible things.
I’m not so naive anymore, I see people for who they are and I don’t trust everybody so easily now. I see that everybody is looking for the same thing. Everybody wants to feel accepted, like home is a real place. Like somebody could know them through and through and not hate them. People don’t often get that acceptance or feeling of security so they act out, or do things that make them difficult to trust. I just have an easier time seeing the disease rather than just the symptom now.
Prison changed me, made me a person that sees more and understands more. I know I’m not a hero, and there are real people who are heroes. So maybe it’s possible to become a hero, somebody the kids can really look up to. They look up to me now, but they don’t know what I’ve done. The way I talk to them, about homeless people or about mean people we see on the street they probably think I’m passionate about justice just like all the heroes, but I know better. I can’t sleep, this is tearing me apart. I’m a murderer and liar walking free and everybody believes I am simply a wrongly accused man. Some people recognize me from newspapers and say things like, “I’m so sorry,” and, “so tragic, what a world we live in that things like that are even possible.” They don’t know the half of it. It makes me sick, literally. I’m losing weight. I don’t have that much of an appetite these days. I just feel like I don’t deserve it.
Everyday that I am free I feel like the gap between me and the heroes in those books widens and widens.
I can’t get this one quote out of my head, “You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” Maybe if I had a real passion for justice I’d do something about it, and I think I know what it is too.
It terrifies me.
Well that’s a start.
THE END
P.S. Leave me a message, would love to know what people are thinking.
Vagabond Prophet 