Dear Joshua April 26th 2018
It’s official I’m the worst father ever. Alister’s birthday was two months ago and I forgot! I was so busy looking over my shoulder and worried about hidden intentions from every face I pass I forgot my own sons birthday! Can you believe that? I have so much credit from work now I could have gotten him a whole stack of books, if Liz would let him have it of course. I feel like such shit that I did that, I’ve been sweating every minute of every day on account of the fear I feel, like it’s in my blood, or in my eyes. That cave entrance again, every mirror I look at. Everything I’ve been going through, all the weight I’ve lost and how scrawny and pale and bloodshot I’ve become doesn’t excuse this. What can I do now though, hope Alister forgives me? I don’t doubt he will, he knows by now I’m not reachable to him. As far as hoping Liz forgives me for forgetting it, I guess I can just add it to the damn pile of things I hope she one day forgives me for.
At least I’m still alive, I haven’t slept a wink since the night he first came at me. Every day at breakfast lunch and dinner he sits across from me now. If I get up to move he just follows. He looks me straight in the eyes as he eats his food. He ends every such time with a single word, “Tonight.”
Tonight?! Tonight what? Like I don’t know. He’s been doing this for a week, knowing I’m not sleeping. Sadistic bastard just wants to see me squirm. The things I’ve been brainstorming are insane, different ways to kill someone with a knife. I swiped another one from the kitchen. I didn’t bother with a broken one but rather a nice big sharp one. I just grabbed it when the instructor wasn’t looking. I keep it under my pillow now in case Kal takes the first knife, the one he met the other night.
Trevor too, shit Trevor. Yesterday he told me he won’t be able to babysit me anymore. I ignored the offense of the statement and simply asked him why.
“I don’t want to, I just don’t want to. Protect yourself you wimp.”
And when I pleaded him to keep me safe from Kal and told him what had happened he just backhanded me hard. I’ve got a real nice bruise on my right cheek now.
Can you come visit me? I’ve noticed the weather is crazy but could you try? I saw from the yard that some trees out by the road had fallen over by the wind and that the clouds looked pretty sinister. It might be the last chance you get I have no idea what the future holds but I know the face of a friend would be a welcome site.
A.N. So close! Leave me some words please!
Tag: creativity
Solitary Refinement Chapter 28
Dearest Elizabeth April 20th 2018
Liz I don’t have a lot of time. This could be the last letter I send. Last night my cell mate tried to attack me, I managed to keep him at bay but he went to bed with a warning for me. He’s coming for me soon Elizabeth, I don’t know if I can defend myself or escape again. Kal is huge and strong and we are locked in a cage together every night. Guards don’t listen, will you?
I’ll do what I can to survive, I’ll do what I have to do to survive. I want to come home to you one day, it’s all I want. Sometimes I dream about waking up to go to work and it’s bittersweet when I have to kiss you goodbye, but at least you’re there. At least we’re together.
I love you Liz, I always have and I always will. I once believed you loved me too, lately I’ve doubted that. Please disprove my doubts, come visit me. Tell me you love me and miss me too. Tell me some excuse about why you haven’t written, I don’t care I’ll believe it I just want to see your face. If you’ve ever loved me come see me now. Do you remember that cave I told you about? The one in the woods that I’ve always been scared of? Well I feel like I see the entrance in my own eyes every time I walk by a mirror. Like I’m always standing at the mouth of it, not being able to see into it but hearing the scraping noises of something coming my way. That kind of terror is what I’m living with right now. I have a terrible fear that this could be goodbye. I really don’t know what might happen over the next few days.
Sincerely,
Your Husband.
A.N. Getting closer to the end! Would love some reviews, I totally thrive on criticism. Shoot me a line and let me know what you think :D.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 27
Dear Joshua April 20th 2018
Woke up this morning and saw the cave in my eyes. Do you remember that cave in the forest I told you I was scared of? I just get the feeling that the blacks of my eyes in the mirror look like the entrance to that place. It’s weird I know but I get really freaked out looking into the mirror. Especially today of all days, after a night like last.
I heard Kal speak finally. His voice was surprisingly high, and it bothered me all the more. Just like how his glasses didn’t seem to fit the rest of him his voice was the same. Like he’s some sort of combination of characteristics designed to make me uneasy.
“It’s cold tonight, I’m going to come up to your bed for some warmth.” He said it so matter of factly, not threatening or with his voice raised at all. I tried to tell a guard like you’ve been suggesting all along but he just told me to get to bed, didn’t really listen at all. Then it was lights out. About thirty minutes after the lights shut off and I’d started to hear snores coming from around the cell block, I heard the creak of Kal climbing the bunk. I had my knife in hand and swung it at him. I missed but he saw the glint of the blade in the moonlight coming in through the window. He simply climbed back down and got into his bed.
Then, once he was settled he whispered loud enough only for me to hear, “I’m going to get you, you know. That broken little knife won’t keep you safe long. I’m going to gag you and do what I want, you can’t stop me and you know it. Nobody will hear your screaming.”
Joshua what can I do? The guards have already shown they don’t really care. So who is there to trust that can help me? Trevor can protect me in the day, but after lights out and we all need to be in bed? I don’t need to be indebted to him anymore than I am already anyways. It may just come to what I feared. I know I swung at him today but I think even I knew I wouldn’t really hurt him, I just was hoping it would make him think twice. Seems it’s just made him enraged. I may have to really do it, I might have to really kill him.
Please tell me you see a way out of this.
A.N. There’s not very many chapters left in this. It’s been a journey but we’re near the end. I’d love some feedback or reviews. My ask box is open in case you’d like to do it anonymous style.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 26
Dear Joshua April 15th 2018
I hear what you’re saying and I appreciate that you’re concerned about my safety and that you want to help me take care of the other things dear to my heart. I really do. I just can’t do that though, I can’t talk to anybody about Kal or Trevor and if I know Liz at all if I trouble her with legal garbage than any chance I have of mending things is gone for sure. I just have to hope that at some point the last drop of water will flow under the bridge and she will miss me enough to come by with the kids. With Kal and Trevor though that’s a whole different animal. Let me put this plainly, if I complain that Trevor has threatened me and that I feel threatened by Kal I may be killed. Trevor has friends in high places so I can’t really trust any of the authorities I may complain to, and even if I complain about Kal I don’t want to have that conversation with Trevor when he says something like, “So I heard you don’t think I can keep you safe, well let’s see how who you do on your own.” It’s just, it’s all bad. Thanks for trying to help but this is one of those things that rests squarely on my shoulders.
Yesterday I accidentally broke the tip off of a knife in my cooking class when I was trying to filet a fish and I bent the blade too far trying to get between the skin and the meat. The teacher told me to put the knife in the garbage and get another. I nodded, and pocketed it.
Joshua, please understand me. That was the most terrifying moment of my existence. Not proposing to Liz worried she would say no, not the complicated births of our children, not all the times I had to skulk back home and tell her I was out of work again. This was even more terrifying than that time we were hiking and I slipped on some gravel and almost tumbled down a cliffside, or the time I was driving my car and got hit by a snow plow.
It was a simple enough thing to do that I’m sure nobody noticed, but it was like in that moment I made the decision that I will kill somebody if I think I need to. Like I’m a murderer at heart just waiting for a life to take and nobody else knows it yet. Having finally passed that check mark of morality, that under the right circumstances I’ve decided I will stab somebody to death, I really didn’t feel good about myself in that moment but I also felt like I kind of had to. I also felt a strange sense of power that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. The means and resolve to kill is not something that sits well with me but I need to get back to my family one day and that means I need to survive prison. I tried to stay under the radar, I tried not to make enemies but I have them anyways.
I didn’t worry about Kal sleeping beneath me as much last night while I lay there with my white knuckled grip on the knives plastic grip. I actually slept a bit myself. My God did I need that. You don’t have kids so I can’t compare my exhaustion to you with even that. When your tired taking care of kids it’s a happy kind of tired. Yeah your sweaty and dirty from playing with them at the park and cleaning up after them in every imaginable way, but it’s your children and you’d do anything for them. The weariness that comes with fearing for your life is so completely different, always checking over your shoulder. Every time I’m standing outside and I feel the wind on my neck I’m filled with dread that I’ll turn around to see Kal pushing me down to do something horrible. Relentless panic is a horrible thing and I hope you never experience it. Maybe animals really can smell fear.
Do you think anybody else here feels the way I do?
Solitary Refinement Chapter 24
Dear Diary March 27th 2018
I really noticed my eyes today, I think for maybe the first time ever, or at least since I got in here. Bloodshot, wide gaze, icy blue with not enough pupil. I always liked my eyes, I thought they made me look good, girls like blue eyes right? I saw more than that though, I saw deeper, I saw fear and a panic just barely undercover.
I remember when I was a kid and I’d go for walks through the forest there was this cave my dad always told me to stay away from. It had a wide mouth but you could see the path quickly narrowed, and after a bend it turned pitch black. I never went into it, always curious, but for the warnings I never satisfied that curiosity. My dad never told me what was in there, I asked him he must not have known either. He would always just say some basic dad advice about how you don’t go into the dark unprepared.
Even once I was an adult I never went in there, it’s fostered in me a fear of the dark and what beasts there lurk. Even well into my teens I had nightmares of something coming out of the cave at night, all I could ever see was long claws and glowing eyes. I always hid and it always knew where to find me. I would be snatched by a grip so strong it was like iron, and as I screamed it would pull me turn after turn into the cave. I always woke up screaming and right at the point where the blackness was becoming complete. That was the worst part, that even in my dreams I couldn’t find out what was in there, I just knew that it meant me harm and I couldn’t escape it. Just a vicious blackness, a hungry chasm, a sinister darkness. Something to be feared for sure but having no name for it made it worse I found.
In the mirror this morning I saw the entrance to that cave in my eyes. The thin bloodshot veins leading to the pupil like the roots of trees that stopped before that hellish corridor. No wonder I’ve been afraid lately, I’ve got fear itself living right inside my head. How fitting that it should find a way to colour everything I look at with its hazy hue and awful whispers in my ear. Even when I’ve been so far removed from that forest, all the worst things come with you into prison.
I think it was one of the presidents that said something like, “There is nothing to fear except fear itself.” Okay, wise words to be sure. Not exactly comforting if you see fear itself in the mirror though. I don’t think I’ll be able to forget the cave now that I’ve seen it. What option now but to live in fear? Or go boldly and explore the cave with torches and pitchforks. Only if the entrance to the cave is inside myself, is the beast then also?
Solitary Refinement Chapter 29
Dear Joshua April 26th 2018
It’s official I’m the worst father ever. Alister’s birthday was two months ago and I forgot! I was so busy looking over my shoulder and worried about hidden intentions from every face I pass I forgot my own sons birthday! Can you believe that? I have so much credit from work now I could have gotten him a whole stack of books, if Liz would let him have it of course. I feel like such shit that I did that, I’ve been sweating every minute of every day on account of the fear I feel, like it’s in my blood, or in my eyes. That cave entrance again, every mirror I look at. Everything I’ve been going through, all the weight I’ve lost and how scrawny and pale and bloodshot I’ve become doesn’t excuse this. What can I do now though, hope Alister forgives me? I don’t doubt he will, he knows by now I’m not reachable to him. As far as hoping Liz forgives me for forgetting it, I guess I can just add it to the damn pile of things I hope she one day forgives me for.
At least I’m still alive, I haven’t slept a wink since the night he first came at me. Every day at breakfast lunch and dinner he sits across from me now. If I get up to move he just follows. He looks me straight in the eyes as he eats his food. He ends every such time with a single word, “Tonight.”
Tonight?! Tonight what? Like I don’t know. He’s been doing this for a week, knowing I’m not sleeping. Sadistic bastard just wants to see me squirm. The things I’ve been brainstorming are insane, different ways to kill someone with a knife. I swiped another one from the kitchen. I didn’t bother with a broken one but rather a nice big sharp one. I just grabbed it when the instructor wasn’t looking. I keep it under my pillow now in case Kal takes the first knife, the one he met the other night.
Trevor too, shit Trevor. Yesterday he told me he won’t be able to babysit me anymore. I ignored the offense of the statement and simply asked him why.
“I don’t want to, I just don’t want to. Protect yourself you wimp.”
And when I pleaded him to keep me safe from Kal and told him what had happened he just backhanded me hard. I’ve got a real nice bruise on my right cheek now.
Can you come visit me? I’ve noticed the weather is crazy but could you try? I saw from the yard that some trees out by the road had fallen over by the wind and that the clouds looked pretty sinister. It might be the last chance you get I have no idea what the future holds but I know the face of a friend would be a welcome site.
A.N. So close! Leave me some words please!
Frigid
The wind bites my face
And I know that’s your embrace
But it hurts,
Must you be so cold?
I make a hot cup of something
See I’ve got an answer for everything,
As usual I’m either too smart
Or too dumb.
I don’t even know which
It changes like a switch,
So let the wind bite my face
And make my legs go numb.
Let me stay stranded in the cold
No choice but to be bold,
When I’m captured by your might
Captivated by frightful beauty.
Make your frosty tongue
Climb every rung
And run piercing
Through every passageway.
Don’t give me a way out
Don’t make it a fair bout,
Call me to yourself
Grip me firmly.
Take me in your hand
Put on me your brand
Enchant me with
Your frigid brilliance.
– Vagabond Prophet
Cotton Parades
The way that roots intertwine
Gripping everything together
Clawing through the dirt
To get every bit of moisture.
The way the sky supports clouds
Those dewy cotton parades
Gently pushing them along
For everyone to see.
The way that feathers
In their elevated splendour,
Carry the weight
Of the creature they carry.
Will you support me
Or carry
Or push me along
Similarly?
If a crutch can push against
The ground to help a man
Move his broken body
To and fro.
If a paddle
Can direct the eb and flow
To choose its course
In that vastness of wet.
If I can collect vapour
In little rivulets
And sustain my spirit
With its freshness.
Then surely you so great
Can support me so weak,
A fool puddle jumping
In gasoline.
Could you make me porous
To absorb your spirit
As it soaks into
Every crag and fissure.
Like a tall and ancient mountain
That’s watched every single sunrise,
Would you keep me from crumbling
To just witness you longer.
I’ll happily borrow strength
I have none of my own,
I just want to know you better
To love you more fully.
– Vagabond Prophet
Solitary Refinement Chapter 28
Dearest Elizabeth April 20th 2018
Liz I don’t have a lot of time. This could be the last letter I send. Last night my cell mate tried to attack me, I managed to keep him at bay but he went to bed with a warning for me. He’s coming for me soon Elizabeth, I don’t know if I can defend myself or escape again. Kal is huge and strong and we are locked in a cage together every night. Guards don’t listen, will you?
I’ll do what I can to survive, I’ll do what I have to do to survive. I want to come home to you one day, it’s all I want. Sometimes I dream about waking up to go to work and it’s bittersweet when I have to kiss you goodbye, but at least you’re there. At least we’re together.
I love you Liz, I always have and I always will. I once believed you loved me too, lately I’ve doubted that. Please disprove my doubts, come visit me. Tell me you love me and miss me too. Tell me some excuse about why you haven’t written, I don’t care I’ll believe it I just want to see your face. If you’ve ever loved me come see me now. Do you remember that cave I told you about? The one in the woods that I’ve always been scared of? Well I feel like I see the entrance in my own eyes every time I walk by a mirror. Like I’m always standing at the mouth of it, not being able to see into it but hearing the scraping noises of something coming my way. That kind of terror is what I’m living with right now. I have a terrible fear that this could be goodbye. I really don’t know what might happen over the next few days.
Sincerely,
Your Husband.
A.N. Getting closer to the end! Would love some reviews, I totally thrive on criticism. Shoot me a line and let me know what you think :D.
When Kids are in Trouble and Dad is a Writer
You have disobeyed
And this is what you’ve wrought
You shall feel
The full weight of my wrath.
I have sojourned here
At speeds illegal
I am pregnant with displeasure
At your little mutiny.
Thought to stage a coup?
How cute.
Your maliciousness inherited
Diluted, inexperienced.
I’ve reduced men to tears
With naught but words,
Now they’re pointing at you
What say you!?
I’ve shattered souls
With a lonely syllable.
This little rebellion of yours,
Adorable.
In me that blood
Is at full strength
Seething, writhing, searching,
I reign it in always.
But not today
For you have incurred
The full arsenal
Of my fury.
When you’re older
We’ll rebel together
Against forces unjust,
But today thou shalt suffer.
You will scrub and sweep
You will repent
You miscreant you,
You will beg for rest before days end.
I love you so
And this is how
I show it today,
To insure tomorrow is different.
– Vagabond Prophet
Vagabond Prophet 