alright, well here's the first two chapters on something i've started on. let me know what you think and if i shuld submit more. thanks:
1
My wife’s been telling me for months that I should start keeping a diary. She says she took it up, and claims that it’s better than talking to any therapist she’s ever been to, which, she admits, is quite a lot these days. “It cleanses your mind,” she tells me. And sure enough, last week she arrived at the prison for my allotted once a week visitation and handed me this small brown book. She smiled at me, and made me promise to write in it everyday until I’m released. I told her I’d need a bigger diary. She stopped smiling.
It took me a week to get all of my thoughts in order and prioritized correctly, but I won’t be recording my innermost feelings and angst like my wife is eagerly expecting me too. I think she feels that if I let her read six more years worth of tormented thoughts and feelings that it would be a big enough apology to compensate for my crime. But I don’t owe her any sort of apology. It’s not her I hurt. Anyway, I’ve decided to use this thing to record my story. The true one, not the one minute story the media used during the 11:00 news the night it happened. Kara, my wife, won’t like it, but I don’t plan on letting her in on it anyway. I don’t think she considers me a husband anymore, just some monthly hassle (she only visits me once a month, saying she would come every week but gas prices limit her or some half hearted excuse like that) but I can’t really blame her for that. I told her last month that it would be just fine for her to see other people and try to forget about waiting for me. But she said she wouldn’t and still loved me as much as the day we got married. She’s seeing someone now, though, I can just tell. Maybe it’s the way she attempts to smile during her visits; maybe spending ten years with a person will allow you a secret path in to their mind, or some crazy shit like that. Who knows? I don’t think I love her, and I don’t think I ever have.
Jail’s not as scary as society makes it out to be. My cell’s located towards the front door, so I avoid all of the jeers from my other inmates when being escorted to my cell. I wouldn’t really care if I had to walk past all of them, though. They don’t bother me much. I have a cell mate, too. He’s a short man with a receding hair line and a thin beard, and I don’t think I’ve ever even heard him speak. I think his name’s George, but I don’t remember. He’s been here longer than me, much longer. I can tell, whether it’s because of the way I hear jail wears your skin out after a while or the fact that he doesn’t utter a word. There’s a mutual understanding within the cell: keep out of each other’s way and there’ll be no need to converse, speak to each other in any way, or even look at each other. Shit. He’s looking at me from his cot. I think he knows I’m writing about him. The mutual understanding has temporarily been broken.
Anyway, being locked up here allows me the peace and quiet I’ve longed for ever since I was a teen. The house I grew up in was always loud, college was no library, and my wife certainly was no librarian. Being here gives me time to think, and I like that a lot. All of the others scream at night, but sooner or later the noise became a bunch of chirping crickets in the woods, and it puts me to sleep quicker than I thought possible.
My wife says she doesn’t blame me for why I’m in prison, but I think she should. I’ve come to the conclusion that human error does not exist, and we all make the choices that determined where we end up in life. I know, some old shit, but I told you, I’ve had a lot of time (maybe too much time, and it’s only been about eight months) to think. Maybe the whole reason our race still exists is because of some kind of error, and all we’re doing to stay alive is making the right or wrong choices. The point is that I believe I chose to be here through a series of decisions, not because it was some kind of law mistake. Every decision I made in my life, whether big or seemingly insignificant, led me in this direction. Maybe I’m just crazy and this place is getting to me. I don’t know. I don’t feel much anymore, and all I want to do now is write my story down so it’s not locked up inside of my any longer, almost like the way I’m trapped in here. I may even let George or whatever his name read it when I’m finished. Might even get a word out of him.
I decided I like this whole diary deal. I’ll start my story tomorrow, hopefully. My hand hurts.
2[/b]
In between the woods and a seemingly endless barren field stood a lonesome watch tower. The structure was downright enormous in stature, but was frail and weak looking, making it look as if a single gust of wind would finish the building off. The tower was built in 1926 on the outskirts of the former military launching site that stood where the nothingness of the field stretched on for miles presently. The watch tower’s history was insignificant as histories of watch towers come, but its present occupant could care less what that history was. He had a mission to complete, after all.
The people that this denizen used to know christened him Yellow because his moldy looking skin had a yellowish tint. He didn’t remember his birth name, but he liked being called Yellow just fine. Yellow was an enormous man, nearly giving the tower in which he resided in a run for its money. He was wide, also, probably a good amount wider than the watch tower, but he was not far or in any way over weight. He was mostly muscle. Yellow didn’t know his date of birth, age, or family he may have once had. He couldn’t care less about these things, either. The job at hand was the only important think now in his life, and everything depended on its impending success or failure.
The mission he had was to kill a person that was referred to as code name Prince. Yellow didn’t know the Prince’s real name or origins, either, and was glad that the subject remained only Prince. It would make the job harder if he knew anything else besides his target besides the fact that he was an extremely dangerous individual and needed to be put down immediately.
Yellow wasn’t sure whether the Prince had a drop of royal blood circulation his veins, but he was almost certain that he was some sort of high profile foreign government worker, or why else would the military want him finished off? Yellow would never find out the answer to that; the only things who knew were the people behind the simple plan and the high security computer in which the contents of the plan resided.
Sleeping time for Yellow no longer was a thing he could call a luxury, but instead became mere preparation for his long nights of watching and observing. In fact, he could call very few things luxuries; there was the small toilet located on the bottom floor of the tower, there was a seemingly endless supply of food and drink to stay alive, and there was the closet of weapons. There were stacks and stacks of them, everything from guns big enough to take a human’s head off without even being fired and small pocket knives. The odd thing was, he knew how to use most of the weapons—when he couldn’t sleep he would often go to the woods behind the tower and shoot trees or small wondering animals—but he never remembered learning. He wished he had though, for they were more important to him than a family or name he may have once had.
The sun was setting beyond the woods outside, and Yellow immediately began with his preparation for his night’s upcoming work when the floor was no longer splashed with an array of light. He pushed his small bed made up of an old mattress that was more like a wooden table and a few smelly, rotten blankets back into its spot in the corner. There was a small cupboard located on the other side of the room, and he walked over to it—his walk looked more like a waddle; his legs pained him often and it was hard for them to walk in a straight line normally, supporting his massive upper body, and not give out completely—opened it, and pulled its contents out. Inside of the cupboard he kept an entirely black outfit, so black, in fact, that when he lay them down on the floor together he couldn’t distinguish where the shirt ended and the pants began.
Grunting softly to himself, he smoothed out all of the edges with his lopsided fingers, so perfectly that it looked as though someone invisible lay within the outfit. He picked up the pants, making sure they were completely straight, and put them on over his underwear (when he wasn’t on duty he walked around and slept in a single pair of underwear and socks; the black outfit that sat in the cupboard was the only article of clothing around, and if he were to dirty them in anyway the mission’s success could be placed into jeopardy). They were the softest things he could ever remember touching, not precisely sweatpants, but if he had to compare them to something else that’s what he would choose. They allowed him to walk easily and almost pain free. Up and down the sides were a number of various sized pockets that were latched shut. He never opened them, for he only took along three extra things with him when he went to work, none of which would come close to fitting in any of the pockets.
After the shirt was on, he flicked off the single hanging bulb on the ceiling and proceeded down a flight of winding stairs to the lower levels of the tower. The bottom floor was just as bleak as his bedroom. There was a small refrigerator humming off to his right, next to it his armory closet, but nothing else. Hanging from the armory doorknob was an old black ski mask which he grabbed and pulled over his head. Two round eye holes were cut so that the mask wouldn’t interfere with his vision at all. Below the now empty knob, on the floor, was a pair of shoes that fit his feet perfectly, and you guessed it, every single inch of them darker than night. He put them on, tied them as tightly as he could, and pulled open the weapon closet.
Yellow felt like he belonged inside this tight room more than any other place in the tower. He smiled beneath the ski mask, and looked around, sniffing the musty air as he did. There was so many to choose from that he never took the same weapon with him more than once, unless he grew particularly fond of it. Completing a few more turns he decided whom his partners would be that evening; he removed a medium sized gun from the rack to his right, and it looked vicious, like it had sharp claws, ready to kill. The blade he chose was somewhat different than the norm; it was about twenty inches long and curved abruptly at the end. He liked each of them an awful lot. Backing out of the door, he closed the door tightly, wishing each of his babies a pleasant night.
Next was the basement. It wasn’t really a basement of sorts, more of a hidden cavern in the wall that could be reached by pushing it with much force, but he had always referred to the area as his basement. With a rough grunt, Yellow used his bricklike shoulders to remove the camouflaged wall. The room was larger than the weapon closet, but it did not appear so at all. Stacks and stacks of canned foods lined the walls, but there was a lack of variety; at least ninety percent of the canned goods were foods that lacked any kind of expiration date. In front of the thousands of cans were rows of ten gallon water jugs, sentries to the food.
He wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but forced himself to down a small can of what smelled like carrots, although it looked and tasted like a shovelful of dirt. Keeping a gag at bay, he walked to the other end of the room and removed a small black and bounded book from a small crevice in the can battlements.
He removed the layers of black tape that covered the book and opened it. A pen rolled out into the palm of his hands, and he flipped the pages until he found that day’s date. Clicking the pen so it was ready to write, he scribbled in big, sloppy letters “8:36 PM, Wednesday, JULY 23RD: OBSERVE PRINCE’S MOVEMENTS & LOOK FOR SIGNAL”. He had written the same exact thing for three and a half years. He couldn’t see them, but he knew that deeper inside of the hiding place were three other books, all identical to the one that was in his hands, filled to the brim with the same notation. Yellow muttered the words in his sleep and saw them float across the skylines of his dreams.
He clicked the pen once more, placed it in the book’s crease, closed it, bounded it, and placed it back inside the crevice, where it belonged. Chances had it in another five months time it too would be shoved towards the back of the crevice, pregnant to its full capacity and pointless as the other three.
Yellow left the basement, secured the wall so he couldn’t tell anything was out of the ordinary with it, and walked to the front door. It was a steel double door, and no matter how many times he pressed the lock in it never did. It didn’t really bother him though; he was sure not another human soul was in the three mile vicinity, and even if any one did stumble upon his forgotten home, they certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to enter a rickety old watchtower.
He pushed it open, keeping his sword like weapon pointed outside, in case of a sudden ambush. There was nothing, though, as usual, only the dark and ominous trees looming overhead and the endless field stretching on and on the other way.
Keeping close to the edge of the woods so he could use them as a blanket for his already nearly invisible body, he set off to where the Prince was.
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