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.
Tag: solitary refinement
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 25
Dear Joshua April 3rd 2018
Hey Josh, I think I’m ready to talk to you again I just need to set something straight. Don’t talk bad about my wife. I get it, you see your friend being treated badly by his own wife and you want to say something about it and from your position I can see how you can see it’s not a ridiculous thing to wonder about. I just, I know she wouldn’t do that. If I let my mind wander that way I know that I’ll go crazy. I can’t take it to lose the hope of having my family back again one day.
So I got confirmation that I’m definitely not overreacting by being freaked out by Kal, just the other day I saw one of the guards that I hadn’t seen in a long time tell me he’d be worried if he was me. He said Kal’s cellmates never last this long and that Kal must be getting frustrated, said to be careful and watch my back. It seems as though the guards can’t do anything about behaviour like Kal’s though, until he actually does something to me and I make an official complaint they can’t move me or him or anything like that. How wonderful it is to have my fears confirmed and then be told that there is no solution available to me. I’m so freaking done, every morning I look in the mirror and I see a frightened pair of eyes in a weary body.
When I’m not working in the kitchen I’ve been in the library here, I just realized they had one recently. I used to like reading as a kid but as an adult after work and playing with the kids I always felt too tired to read and would fall asleep shortly after ever picking a book up. Now since I can barely sleep anyways I am actually able to read again. They have a few poetry books that I am enjoying, reading over and over as much as I can in the few minutes I have to spare. I love novels, but poetry is different. I’m learning lots of new words from them that I have to look up in the dictionary. It’s just so interesting that the pain and suffering of these poets chose to manifest itself in such beautiful ways. It helps me feel even though I’m going through this terrible season in my life, it can maybe just maybe mean something to somebody.
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 23
Dearest Elizabeth March 20th 2018
I love you. I’ve been wanting to say that again for a while. I couldn’t wait any longer to write you, I tried. I just couldn’t do it. I needed to say it, but to be honest it’s never been as nerve wracking or scary to say that. For the first time in years I was worried that you might not actually feel that way about me anymore. In three short months I will have been here for a full year and I haven’t heard a single word from you, all I’ve gotten from you is my own parcels returned back to me.
Do you have any idea what this is doing to me? Do you remember right after we had started dating I had just got that lousy car? The one that was way louder than it should have been and had a key broken off in the drivers door so I always had to unlock your side first? I wanted to see what the gas gauge looked like when it actually went empty because it’s different in every car, sometimes above the red line sometimes below it remember like I told you? That one day I was driving you to work and I finally ran out of gas and I had forgotten to put some back up gas in the jerry can and you were late by thirty minutes.
I feel something like that car must have felt, like you’re just waiting to see how much of this torture I can take before I finally give up and die. I just want to hear from you. Could you do that, I need to know if you’re safe and alive and happy with the kids. It must be hard with the kids alone, but I promise you there’s no way it’s as bad as being alone without them. I am beyond confusion, like I understood that you would be mad at me that I wound up in prison because of my stupidity but that was nine months ago. No change in heart or missing waking up to me? Just tell me something simple, like how it’s a drag to have to take the garbage out yourself or something like that, I know you hated that. Or how you have to figure out how to make coffee for yourself. Just talk to me for goodness sake, I really need it, I need something to look forward to. If I knew I might be receiving letters from you it would make waking up above my awful cellmate a little less awful. I love you, but I’m kind of losing hope here. Don’t you want your children to speak to their father? I just don’t get it, help me understand.
Sincerely,
Your Husband.
A.N. This isn’t going to go on a whole lot longer. I hope people are enjoying it. Reviews would be lovely.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 22
Dear Diary March 15th 2018
I need to talk to somebody. I’m going to lose my mind soon, maybe I should start talking to Joshua again soon, maybe I should write Liz again. Writing Liz took so much out of me the last time I wrote her, pouring out all my emotions knowing with certainty I will not get a reply. Josh, I was so mad at Josh for suggesting that Liz might not be faithful to me. I’m trying to look at this from his perspective, seeing a wife that won’t talk to her husband, won’t let her kids do the same, and won’t talk to her husband’s friends either. If I really focus on that I guess thinking there’s more going on than I can see isn’t exactly ridiculous, but what does that help? I love her and I believe she loves me and would remain faithful. If I let myself think otherwise I think I would totally lose hope. It’s hard to keep hoping, but I still look forward to getting out of here and going to see her even if she is furious and she hasn’t talked to me in a long time. Just that face, with it’s smooth skin and sharp lines and dark eyes, it’s still the one I see when I close my eyes and try to ignore where I am. I can almost forget I’m in a bunk bed above Kal when I focus on her, just the image of her doing something normal like cracking eggs into a pan. Sometimes I think of her wearing my baggy t-shirts while making pancakes on a Saturday morning. Everytime it manages to sneak a ray of joy and hope into my day no matter how bleak it has been. I hope it doesn’t get taken from me as contraband.
Did Joshua have a reason for thinking that about her? Maybe I should ask him. Not talking to anybody on the outside is worse than getting bad news from people on the outside I’m finding. When I think of how being ignored like this makes me feel I fall into a vivid daydream. I’m in the dark in a mountain valley, before the light withers I see tall mountains crowded tightly and high above me. After night falls and before I try to sleep I shout so I can hear the echo of my voice off of the mountains so I can feel like I’m not alone. No echo comes, nothing at all. My voice just disappears as soon as it leaves my lips, falling dead to the ground like a flower gone dry and tossed by a wicked wind. It wasn’t quite like I was mute, I could hear the sounds come out of my mouth, but they just never mattered and never got far. As if they were sterile, unable to father meaningful sound and just remaining mindless noise. Where did the hills go? What killed my voice? Questions, all I have is questions, even in my daydreams.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 21
Dear Diary February 14th 2017I sent something to Liz for Valentines Day a few days ago. Return to Sender again. How can I stop this? I can’t make her accept the things I send to her and the kids, I can’t make her respond to me, and I can’t make her visit. I used to love Valentines Day, I wouldn’t do any overtime on those days so I could come home early. I’d swing open the door with flowers in my hand still in my overalls and dirty all over. She would give a rare smile and she’d be already dolled up with her hair up and a pretty dress on hoping I’d do something special and I never disappointed. I’d get a baby sitter and do a movie and a fancy dinner, after I got showered and dressed nicely myself. The whole time I was getting ready Liz would be positively giddy, just kind of giggling and bouncing on the spot like Nina, “come on, come on!”
Sometimes we’d even drive to the city and see a play, a big production, and we’d get champagne during the intermission. Those days I spared no expense. When we got home she would check to see that the kids were asleep and then practically throw me into bed. Unzipping her dress in one quick motion that I’m still replaying in my head, and unbuttoning my shirt while I fall backwards onto the bed. She always got so excited about sex on Valentines Day, any time I went over the top with spoiling ourselves really. I was always excited by her beauty, and I always wanted to spoil her too. I would have done all those extravagant things everyday if I could have. I would always have to make up for how expensive those nights were by working at least twelve hour days the rest of the month.
It was always worth it, not just for the great sex but to see Liz get excited about going out. To see her all ready to go as soon as I get home, electric with energy and bouncing just like our little girl, she so rarely got excited about anything that it was so great for me to see. The kids I could always make happy, just doing anything with them, all they ever wanted was my time and attention. Liz though, it was so hard to make her smile or even seem happy sometimes. I tried though, that’s all I ever did.
Solitary Refinement Chapter 20
Dear Diary January 11th 2017
Okay, peanut butter mystery solved holy shit. This guy named Phil who I’ve never spoken to before but the word is he said something about Trevor to somebody, something he ought not have. I don’t know how but Trevor has dirt on everybody, I wonder what he knows about me. Anyways Phil was eating his oatmeal at breakfast and got up to use the washroom, while he was gone one of Trevor’s pals stirred that peanut butter into the oatmeal quickly.
Phil came back, had three quick spoonfuls and then was on the ground gasping for air, trying to scream for help but no sound came. His face went red, and then blue and nobody did a thing. After several minutes a guard, a new face, came and called for first aid and now I think he’s getting care in the hospital wing. He was without air for several minutes, I wonder if he has brain damage, and I wonder what he said about Trevor to deserve this. That guy worries me more and more, and I’m taking orders from him. Wonderful, just wonderful. I’m the guy who supplied that damn peanut butter. I’m an accomplice to this, will there be an investigation? I could have my sentence extended if I aided in this crime, he could have died, he may have brain damage. Yet if I don’t do what Trevor says who knows what he’ll do to me.
This is the only place where I don’t have to hide feelings anymore. Where I can talk about how I’ve been feeling. It’s like I’m in the part of a movie where nothing could get worse, the enemy is closing in and the sky is dark. Right at the darkest moment the sun breaks through the clouds and somebody comes to the rescue, riding over the hill and cutting through the enemies army straight towards me. As if the hero were a compass finally finding true north. Right now I feel like I’m at that part of the story, but nobody comes. They just close in ever closer, I can see the flecks of black in their irises, the sweat dripping of the ends of noses, trickling in time with their steps.
Is there a way out of this, can I be the hero? Do I have what it takes to save myself? I used to make up stories for Alister with brave and noble heroes, they could get out of any situation. They were as nimble with their tongues as they were with their swords, half the time stopping a conflict before it arose, winning enemies over to the cause of justice. Yet when they did fight boy could they fight, every blow finding home, not a stroke wasted and never was being outnumbered a cause to be distressed. I wonder now if Alister thought his daddy could be such a hero, that if he was stuck I might be able to save him in such a splendid display of courage and skill. I certainly know now that that’s not me, it feels like it’s all I know sometimes. I’m not enough, not enough muscle, not enough charm, not enough intelligence, not enough courage. Too much anxiety, too much idiocy, too much fear.
Still I wonder, with nobody to save me,
Can I save myself?
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!
Vagabond Prophet 