Diary of a Deadman

[Man of Chrome]

“Ma’am, can you sign for this package, please.” The mailman smiles and grasps in his pocket to find her a pen.
“Sure, where is it from?” She takes the pen and signs her name at the indicated spot.
“I don’t know, ma’am. There is no return address.”
“Well, my name is on it. So I guess it should be all right. Thanks a lot.”
“Have a great day.” She closes the door and she sees the mailman getting back into his car and backing up her driveway. She walks to her desk and opens the package. It was packed in thick brown paper and sealed with several layers of tape. It must be important, she thinks. The first thing she sees, is an envelope with handwriting, she doesn’t recognize. She opens it.


This is for you...

I hope that you can forgive me one day for what I’ve done. Although I’ll never be
able to give you the chance to tell me that. Maybe I do not deserve it.

Remember me in every way you want. If you hate me, hate me passionately.
If you can forgive me, do it with all your heart. I do not ask you to pity me,
because I don’t need pity.

Everything I ask is that you keep it. If you don’t want to read it now, don’t.
But there will be a day that you want to know about me and then I won’t be
there to answer your questions. There will be people who can, but I don’t know
if that’s what you should know about me.

Here I give you my soul, my heart, my thoughts and my love for you.
I’ll will think about you until the very last second and I hope I can just get a
place in your existence, where I won’t be forgotten.

I am sorry I’ve never been there for you.

With love,

Dad.


Except for the letter there is a small book in there. Just a little book with a black cover. She opens it and looks through it, without reading. It was his diary. She closes it and puts it away. Although she doesn’t realize it, she is crying. It means that her dad had died. She doesn’t know if she was crying from pain or from relief. All these years she has lived in the uncertainty of seeing him ever again and now the choice has been made for her. She wipes the tears of her cheeks and dries her eyes. No! He hadn’t had any impact on her life for so long, she won’t cry for him anymore now. Enough tears had flown for what he had done. He doesn’t deserve it. She gets the letter and sticks in inside the diary. Then she gets the whole package and puts it in one of the drawers of her desk.
She turns around and looks in the mirror at her face. Her eyes are a little red. You can see, she had cried. She shakes her head. That’s probably what that bastard had wanted. Still have an impact on her life after all these years. She promises herself, that she will never read his diary. Never. She doesn’t want to know anything about what happened or what made him do it. He did it and that’s the most important thing. How could he ask her to forgive him? How could he? He should have known that she would never be able to do that. She gets a tissue and blows her nose, while she’s heading for her couch.
She sits down and looks around at her apartment. She has two rooms. One living room with a little kitchen and a bedroom with a little bathroom. Everything she needs. She painted the walls in the colours, she had wanted, and designed everything. It is nothing fancy or big, but it is home and home is a place she hadn’t known for a long time. After... Well, after her dad had left, she’d been homeless. She’d been moving from place to place, never been somewhere long enough to make friends or find herself a place, she could call home. Although she doesn’t want to, she’s thinking about the time her dad had been with her and her mom. When everything seemed to be fine. Actually everything had always seemed fine. She still can’t believe, he had done it. She just couldn’t imagine him doing something, like he’d done. Of course, she knew that her mom and dad had their issues and some of the other problems, but they never seemed to big. It had always seemed that he could handle them. Apparently he couldn’t. Something had driven him over the edge, where he wasn’t able to think about things rationally.
Maybe she should read the book. She wouldn’t forgive him, she promises that to herself, but maybe understand, as he wrote. Maybe....
No! No! No! See, he’s already manipulating her, because he knew her. He knew that she would react this way. She would hesitate, would be in doubt about it and most of all, too curious. She wishes there was someone she could share this with, but she doesn’t know anyone who would understand her and who she trusts. Not anymore... She’d decide. She isn’t going to read it. If he wanted her to read his sad story, he’d better stand up from the death to make her, because she was not going to and there was nothing that could change her mind. In fact, why wouldn’t she throw it away right now? She wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore then. She walks up to her drawer and gets the package out. She looks at it one more time and throws it in the trashcan. Well, problem solved, she thinks. She wants to walk away, but before she could turn around she opens the trashcan and gets the package out again. Maybe she should only read the first pages. Just to see what he says. It can’t be too bad. She can always throw it away again. Only the first pages to finally get her thoughts confirmed and move on with her life.
She walks back to the couch and opens the diary.


Monday, August 16th, 06.29

It’s only early in the morning, when I am writing this. Behind the glass I can see sun rise. I actually cannot see her. I can see her shine from behind the clouds. It’s not going to be a pretty day, again, but I cannot care less. I’ll be stuck inside this room anyway.

Everything looks exactly the same as any other day, and it will be for all days after this. Even when I won’t be here anymore, but my spot will be taken by someone else. It won’t make any difference. The same bed, made from steel. The same night table, made from steel, with the same lamp on it, of course made from steel. Everything securely screwed to the floor or walls. We don’t have any mirrors. Or at least, I don’t have any mirrors. I cannot tell about anybody else’s room. We are not allowed to visit. I don’t need a mirror anyway, everything looks like a mirror here. I can shave myself by looking in my wall and comb my hair, by looking at my floor. Everything is a mirror here. Even at the moments, you don’t dare to look yourself in the eyes.

She wonders why he wouldn’t dare it. He had always seem like such a brave man to her. How can you be afraid of yourself? You can’t walk away for what you’ve done.

It’s getting lighter outside and in the distance I can see a city waking up. A city they keep me away from, because I am a danger to myself and to others. Apparently... I see the biggerst highways light up from all the cars. People going to work, people going to school, people going everywhere. And where am I? I am in probably the smallest room in the whole city, waiting. When the world’s passing by at topspeed, I can’t do anything but wait. I think about the children who will go to school for the first time. Kindergarten, elementary or high school. As long as it’s new, they will sit in the car right now with their new school supplies. Maybe they’ll be a little nervous, waiting until the stoplight finally turns to green light. Another yard closer to a new step. Some will be crying, some will be waiting for their mothers to pick them up again. Waiting, just like me.

I am thinking about my first day in elementary school. It’s strange how many details I remember of that specific day, while others seem to disappear into nothing. Mom brought me today, because the first day is always exciting. She had bought me a schoolbag and a matching breadbox. She had told me that it was cool. After mom had dropped me off and had made sure I went to the right classroom, she drove off. I remember waving at her, but she didn’t wave back. “Didn’t see you”, she told me later. I walked to my classroom and immediately I found out that my schoolbag wasn’t cool at all. Everybody seemed to be friends already, but I didn’t know anyone. Mom had never seen the need to send me to kindergarten. She thought it was just a waste of money. She could teach me how to color herself, but she couldn’t provide friends for me. Even in the first grade a kind of fashion seemed to exist. One that didn’t seem to be a ‘mothers-fashion’, which mine obviously was. Some moms were standing outside the classroom. At that moment it did not appear to me, but my mom would never fit into that. She’s not the kind that stays to talk to other moms. Now I see it totally clear.
I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself, so I tried to walk around the classroom as inconspicuous as I could, but my footsteps must have sounded as if there was a giant coming into the classroom, because everybody looked up and stared at me. I felt kind of overwhelmed by all those eyes looked at me, but I tried to smile bravely. No one smiled back. Then I saw her, the first person I knew. Lorena, who lived next door. She had eyes, which were almost as dark as her hair. My mom always says that that family had eyes you couldn’t trust, but I liked her. She hadn’t played outside for a while, but we used to play together when they had just moved in. I waved, but again my gesture didn’t get any response. I tried it again, but she seemed to ignore me. And that in first grade... I wanted to sit with her on a table, but she said: “Go away, freak!” Freak... I’d never heard of that word before. The same afternoon I asked my mom what the word meant, but she couldn’t answer my question really well. “It means that you’re really special, Jordan”, she said and I was okay with that.
Later I looked the word up in the dictionary.... I’ve never been able to recognize my mom’s description in it.

I am startled by a key, which is turning around in the lock of my door. It’s not good to dream in this place. To survive, you have to be fully alert every single minute of the day. I chuckle because of the irony of this sentence. A key in the lock can only mean one thing: It’s seven o’clock and I can get a breakfast. Automatically I turn my back to the opening door, until I get the command to move. From my room, made of steel, to the arcade, made of steel.

I wonder how metal detectors work here......

Monday, August 16th, 23:12

I haven’t seen any sun today, again. Well, I’ve seen her for about half an hour during my lunch break from behind a window. I haven’t felt her the way I used to feel her. When I lay down all day, trying to look into her as long as I could. After my breakfast I had to go to work for five dollars a day. Why would someone like me need money anyway? In a few weeks I don’t need anything anymore. No clothes, no food, no money. No love.....

I hear the guys a few cells away from me screaming. They’ve been acting up all day, but I haven’t heard them screaming as loud as they do now. You would almost think that they are murdered. Maybe that’s true, because basically that’s why we are all here. We are the underdog of the society. Once we were normal members of the same society, but one day we exceeded the limits and we were pulled out of society, out of the eye of the normal people. Maybe to protect them, maybe not to give them good ideas. I never thought of myself as one of them, you know. I never expected to end up here, but apparently you never know what’s going to happen in your life. You never know. Someday someone can scare you so bad, that you will put everything on the line. Someday someone can drive you so crazy, that you do not think anything can be worse than that. Both things happened to me.

I am thinking about the days that I came home from work late and saw the lights still burning in the house. I knew something was wrong. Did I forget to pay some bills? Did I spend some money on alcohol that she didn’t know about? I was thinking from the moment I saw the lights being on, until the moment I walked into the house. What could I have done wrong, that she was still up? Did we get another letter from the ‘you-know-who’? Some days I was punishing myself for nothing. Most days I was punishing myself for nothing. She had just fallen asleep in front of the television. So I put my happy face on and give her a kiss on the forehead. She’d wake up and smile. I’d carry her upstairs, turn all the lights off and get in bed with her, where we would make love until we were both so tired, that we’d fall asleep immediately. Some days there was something wrong.
I’d come in as quiet as I could in case she would be asleep, but there she stood. She’d start shouting and within a minute I would know what was the problem. I tried to avoid these situations, especially late at night. I’d be too tired to handle this. By this time I knew, we weren’t gonna be together forever. We’d kill each other. She would just keep on shouting and shouting and I would keep this terrible headache. I would just agree with here, just to stop the shouting. It never worked, it only made her more furious. Most of the times I just walked upstairs and went to bed, hoping that she wouldn’t follow me.

These guys give me a headache too. They keep banging on their doors, until the guards come by to stop them. Then you hear them screaming and shouting again, but for another reason. I don’t know why they are like that. Why can’t they be peaceful with the situation? It’s not going to change anyway. We are never going to be out of this building anymore. I know it. There were times that I felt just like them about it but I have never acted like them. Even though I don’t have any hope for change.

She stops reading for a few seconds and she’s also thinking about the nights, that she would wake up and hear her mom screaming and shouting from the kitchen. Her dad usually didn’t say anything. Maybe that even scared her worse, because she could never know what he was thinking. Maybe that’s why he did it. He could never let his emotions out, but one day he could and ruined his life and hers. In a handwriting that was not as precise and as perfect as everything written above it says:

The lights of the cellblocks just went out. We are supposed to go to sleep. In five minutes they are going to check on every on of us, if we are in our beds. I know, that shouting will start again within any seconds, because there is always at least one, that’s making trouble going to bed... Yes, I was right, the shouting started again.

Maybe I am not like them; maybe I am not a real criminal.

She closes the diary, but she cannot seem to let go that her father was an actual person with feelings and emotions. It has been so long since she’d thought of him in that way. She’d never realized that her dad was unhappy in the prison. She had always imagined him being the tough guy between the other criminals, laughing about the things that he’d done, the life’s that he’d ruined. It scared her that she’d been so wrong, or seemed to be so wrong on this image. It also surprises her that the diary doesn’t seem to make any attempt to justify his deeds. It’s just him, her daddy, talking about the years that she had to miss him.
She stands up from the couch. Now she notices how cold it actually is in the room. When she walks to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, she touches the heater-system and turns it on. It shouldn’t take to long to heat up. She reaches in a floor basement for a little pan and fills it with water. She puts it on the stove and walks to another basement to get a mug.
When the water boiled, she goes back to her couch. Wait, she’s thinking. Let me get a blanket first. I might end up sitting here for a while. She doesn’t really now why her opinion’s changed so quickly. It sounds weird, but it almost feels like her dad is just his normal self in the diary, instead of the monster he was the last time she saw him. She thinks about the last time she saw her dad. The diary doesn’t go that far back. Actually she’d never seen him writing in a diary, so it might just be something he started in jail.
It was in the end of the summer ten years ago. She’d been fifteen years old, a little girl growing up to be an adult. One day when she’d been upstairs in her room reading, she’d heard the bell. She knew her dad was home, so she didn’t go downstairs. She heard voices downstairs, although she couldn’t hear what they said. The voices didn’t sound familiar. Then she heard somebody climbing the stairs. She knew it wasn’t her father, because his pace of climbing the stairs was different. The door to her room opened and a cop had come in. He told her his name, which was McArthur. It is strange how she remembered those details. He told her, that they needed her dad for a while and if she would be okay by herself for a couple of hours. They’d already called her mother and she’d be home as soon as possible. She’d shake her head, that it was okay and had asked why they needed her dad. The cop answered that her mom would tell her. Then they left. She’d looked out of the window and saw her dad going into the backseat of the police car. She didn’t understand it at that moment.

Tuesday, August 17th, 22.34

It has been a busy day today. I’ve been working all day long. I didn’t get the chance to write this morning, because I overslept. Or actually not really. The guards wake us up at 7 o’clock to get breakfast. Usually I am awake before that, so I can take care of some personal business, but today I didn’t wake until I heard the key in the lock of my door. I guess it is okay to sleep in for a day. I don’t have much to do anyway, except for looking out of the window. Dreaming about my past and waiting for mail, that doesn’t come, everyday.

They changed my occupation today. I used to work at steel manufacturing, but I think I’ve shown too much joy in that work. It reminded me of one of my first jobs, where I worked at a horse-smith.

I was only ten years old, when my mom told me to go look for a job. Since I was only going to school from nine till three, I could easily raise some money to support the family. Basically I meant that I needed to support her, since the whole family was just the two of us. I’ve never known my dad. He ran off after he did his job in making my mom pregnant. I am not mad at him; I would have done the same, if I could have. I was just a child, where could I go. I tried to live on the streets for quite some time, but hunger and cold always drove me back straight into her arms. Those evenings, she was nice. She wrapped a blanket around me and together we sat in front of the fireplace. Those evenings, I wondered why I had run off in the first place, but I never took me long to remember that.

She looks up. She’d never known her grandmother. Her dad had left her house, as soon as he’d turned eighteen and had never come back. Maybe he’d never known any love. She shakes her head. No, that’s not true. She’d loved him with all her heart, when they lived together. That couldn’t have been his motive. She thinks about Jenny. Poor Jenny. If you would only have talked to me about it, she thinks. She shouldn’t have gone to the police though. It was just as much Jenny’s responsibility, as it was her dads. You cannot blame just one person.

She told me to find a good job, like a package boy. I said I didn’t want to bike around all day and deliver people their packages. She slapped me in the face, when I said that. I couldn’t be disobedient. Her life was hard enough without me being a troublemaker. I nodded and I said I would go to the post office to see if they needed anymore package boys. So I left.
On my way to the post office I met the horse-smith. He always used to drive around town in his blue van with all his equipment in the back. We didn’t have any horses, so I’d never met him, but I knew his van. I figured how cool it would be to help him out. At once I forgot what my mom told me about the other job and I went up to the blue van.
“Can I help you, kid?” The horse-smith was a big man. He was always wearing blue jeans and a black sweater. He has a small moustache and his hair was blonde and wild. He also used to carry this belt around his waist with the most important tools.
“Sir, can I help you? I am looking for a job.”
“How old are you?” I knew that I didn’t look too big for my age. My mom didn’t always have the money or the time to prepare meals for me, so usually I ate pieces of bread with mayonnaise, when was hungry.
“Ten.”
“You don’t look too big. How do you think you can help me?”
“I don’t know, sir. I was just wondering.”
“I can’t pay you more than five dollars per afternoon. What time do you get out of school?” I was so excited.
“Three o’clock. I can be here within five minutes.”
“Well, at least you’re anxious to work. I’ll give it a try with you, boy.” I was so happy. When I was walking home, I remember that I made a little dance every ten yards. My happiness was over really quickly, when I got back home. My mom was furious about me working at the smith. She told me, that wasn’t the right job for me and five dollars was nothing. I lied to her and said that I went to the post office and they didn’t need me. That satisfied her at least a little and she let me work at the smith.

I’ve heard people saying that men usually marry a woman that is very similar to their own mother. Nobody knows why, but it seems to be a fact. I think I believe it’s true. Although I would have sworn that my wife was very different from my mother when I just met her. But in the end they were exactly the same.

She remembers her mom nagging on her dad about the money that he wasted in his favourite bar every weekend. It wasn’t that much either. Her father usually was a man who knew his limits. He would never spend more money than he could afford and he would always make sure that his wife and kid would have enough money to provide their living before he would go out and have some drinks.

[Man of Chrome]

Voor degenen die gelijk over spelfouten willen beginnen: Die worden er nog uit gehaald, daar waar ze zitten

Graag Uw mening over het verhaal... Ik heb heel lang geleden al een keer eerder een klein stukje gepost, maar dat zit hier ook weer in verwerkt....

Wil men meer lezen? Ja of Nee?

waarom in het engels?

[Little Dutchess]

Man of Chome zegt:

Omdat ik dit heb geschreven, toen ik nog in Amerika woonde. Dat voelde op dat moment "lekkerder" dan in het Nederlands.

Plus het feit dat je daar dan mensen om raad kan vragen en hier ook. Als je het in het Nederlands schrijft, kan dat niet.

Maar daardoor heb ik wel geen zin het te gaan lezen...

[Roosje]

Quis schreef op 23-01-2006 @ 21:21 :
Maar daardoor heb ik wel geen zin het te gaan lezen...

Nee, ik ook niet, en dat is het nadeel. Hoewel het misschien wel een goede oefening is voor m'n proefwerk Engels morgen, maar dat doet er niet toe.

[Roosje]

Little Dutchess schreef op 23-01-2006 @ 19:40 :
Omdat ik dit heb geschreven, toen ik nog in Amerika woonde. Dat voelde op dat moment "lekkerder" dan in het Nederlands.

Plus het feit dat je daar dan mensen om raad kan vragen en hier ook. Als je het in het Nederlands schrijft, kan dat niet.

Huh, ik let nu pas op, ben jij Man of Chrome of kijk ik gewoon verkeerd?

[Man of Chrome]

Oeps sorry, Little Dutchess is mijn huisgenootje

Sorry Kimmie!

Kzal het zo ff veranderen

Interessant verhaal wel. Jammer dat het nog niet eindigt hier...

Het valt me trouwens op dat je soms wat overmatig gebruik maakt van komma's in een zin, die misschien wel gebruikelijk zijn in het Nederlands, maar niet in het Engels.

Verder vind ik de dagboek-stijl wel meeslepend