So, in my English class this year, we had to choose a human rights topic and do a bunch of projects and reports on them. For the final my teacher decided we should "Fictionalize" our information and make it into a story. My topic was the Death Penalty. The technical information is true, but it's obviously not based on a real story. Also, I apologize if this has any obvious mistakes in it, I couldn't find my final draft...
Enjoy. (Hopefully! [= )
There he was, breathing softly with eyes shut and hands curled shut. My baby boy. How sweet he looked! All his skin delicately rouge and bits of fuzzy orange hair sticking from his blue knit cap and his nose, exactly like my own. I touched the glass window with my palm turning it foggy. I traced his shape with my eyes committing him to my memory. My baby boy dressed all in blue; ruddy Irish skin, a little round chin and thin lips in a would-be smile. I dropped my forehead to the cool glass and steamed up the window even more, until I couldn't see.
My clothes were newly packed in a canvas bag sitting at my feet. I was barely dressed myself. My sweatpants were still cool and my orange hair was an unwashed mess in a low bun. I still had the hospital bracelet around my wrist and tears from a long labor dried on my cheeks. My abdomen burned on the inside and my knees were wobbly, my body exhausted. I heaved the bag over my shoulder anyway and unsteadily walked away from my boy, out of his life.
After making my way uncomfortably down the stairs I was able to surreptitiously slip by the nurses in the front and get outside to hail a cab.
Outside was cold and gray looking. Very New York. Very sophisticated winter. I made faces internally at all the winter coats with fake fur linings, the obnoxiously colored gloves, scarves. My own fingers were begging for gloves themselves as they struck out into the street to wave down any taxi looking for business.
I busied myself otherwise alternating between shifting my bag over my shoulder, shoving the annoying strap back into place and smoothing down my frizzing hair. I wished I had a hat. I surprised myself with my simple thoughts, but I felt an unsettling calm sink into me which was in turn making me guilty for not being crying, upset for leaving two people who'd meant everything to my life for sometime now. Nine months. Two years. My baby. My husband. I felt a rush, my heart pounded against my chest and I realized that I was alone, truly alone, for the first time in almost a year. I didn't mind.
I liked it.
I wanted to be alone.
God knows why.
----
He sat down at the coffee with a steaming mug in one hand and the clicker in the other. He carefully sat down his mug on a stained coaster and flicked on the tv. News- snow, wind chill, whatever. Cartoons- Spongebob? Mythbusters- Um, yeah. He settles down into the couch and takes a deep draught of coffee. Sighing satisfactorily his attention turns back to the tube.
The man watches for almost an hour before, despite the coffee, drifting off to sleep, leaving an empty cup dangling from his fingers off the edge of the couch and left over drops of brown dripping on the red carpet. The tv is still on, loud. Soon there's a knock at the door that goes unnoticed by the sleeping man. Then another knock. Three. Four. His eyes finally blink open and he curses emphatically before shoving his legs over the side of the couch and walking unsteadily to the door. He looks through the peep hole and he makes a small growl in his throat.
Swinging open the door abruptly, he surprises the elderly woman behind it. She has her hand raised halfway to the knocker. Annoyed he grabbed her hand roughly and threw it down, away from the his face, "What are you doing?" he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the roaring television.
The woman gave an indignant huff, "Well, Mister Keevis, I as your land woman," she gave a toss of her head and chunky earrings made a smacking noise as they hit the side of her face, "have the right to stop by at any given moment and tell you to turn your damned tv down."
Her red lips smacked together as she yelled and the rouge left an echoing imprint on his eyes, like a camera flash, as she turned on her heel and walked back down the empty hallway to her own apartment, whose door was still open. He glowered and felt his hand rise- mug still in grasp- as though to throw it at her, but he let out a deep breath and then headed inside and slammed the door shut.
Keevis stalked to the tv and slammed his palm against the power button and the screen flicked off. The room was abruptly silent, his heavy breathing the only noise in the room. Frustrated he dragged his hand through his hair. He walked to the kitchen and carelessly dropped the cup into the sink. Out of the fridge he grabbed a cheese stick, tore open the package and took a vicious bite off the top.
'Damned landlord...' Keevis took another vehement bite, 'wily old hag.'
After tearing through the cheese stick he sat on the single bar stool and fumed silently. When he'd calmed down some, after fifteen, twenty minutes, he came to a conclusion. He needed to clean the table off a some point. There were crumbs, split and dried beer, orange juice and soda, plus empty tuna cans and pudding cups. It was starting to smell.
Keevis couldn't remember cleaning the kitchen...the whole apartment for almost three weeks. There was trash and clothes and random other objects lying around on the floor and on unconventional surfaces- the stove, the top of the fridge, on the radio's antenna and most spectacularly hanging off the curtains in the living room. Even some of the Christmas decoration were still up...and around. The tree was gone, but broken decorations littered the floor next to the tv where it had been before the treestand broke. And one of those calenders with the chocolates in 'em was tipped over on a shelf with uneaten and now stale candies spilling out.
He groaned miserably, 'Only two more weeks...' he tried consoling himself, 'only two more...'
'Yeah,' he snorted, 'Two more weeks and then...' His heart broke even thinking about it.
His Laurel. Dead? And people had spent time working to make it happen. That really tore at him. Who were these people? They spend their lives working to send people to their deaths, he snarled out loud, "Damned lawyers."
'And of all the people to accuse, Laurel,' His stomach rolled and started regretting throwing down that cheese stick, 'She could barely lift groceries from the car to the apartment door, how would she be able to....' He didn't want to think of the atrocities those, people, accused his wife of, 'There's no way she'd hurt baby. Never.'
He rolled his thumb over the smooth gold band on his finger and remembered the inscription on the inside. With this ring, I thee wed. The words were simple. Old fashioned. But, he figured, they were probably his favorite words: Ring. Thee. Wed. Well except for maybe: You. Kiss. Bride.
Either way, his wife was still gone and now, almost a year and a half after her sentencing there wasn't a thing he could do. 'And,' he admitted to himself, 'I'm taking it out on the apartment.'
After one last long suffering sigh, he stood from his stool and started cleaning. Keevis swept the floor and emptied the trash- four times, wiped down the table and counter tops, and finally picked up the clothes laying everywhere and filed up several trash bags to bring to the laundry mat.
Keevis furiously dusted, wiped, piled, organized and threw away for almost six hours before collapsing again on the couch; exhausted. He rolled around for a couple minutes before finding a comfortable position and falling straight into a dreamless sleep.
-----
The room was white and smelled like antiseptic, the lights were bright, almost blindingly so. She felt strangely unattached though, sort of disembodied, like being on the tv. She imagined could see herself walking steadily, confidently, head high to the gurney in the middle of the room. She took special care to glare at each of the guards that strapped her down. As each belt clicked she fell closer and closer to earth, when the last belt clicked she tensed herself up in wary anticipation.
The guards, dressed in dark colors dispersed about the room. Two near the door, another two at the head of the gurney, two more at the foot and a couple more about the room. Just in case, she supposed. There were three other men in a white coats in the room as well, one she knew, with glasses and salt and pepper hair, The Warden. The second with darker features, younger than the former. His eyes were angry. The other looked like he was a doctor, he had a kind face, scrubs underneath the white lab coat and an ID card clipped on that had his picture and some official looking symbols next to it.
The man with the angry features silently took her right arm in his cold hands and she cringed at his touch, but he ignored her and continued to wrap a stretchy rubber strip around her upper arm tightly making the veins expose themselves vividly against pale skin. He took an alcohol swab and rubbed in over a vein in the crook of her arm before sticking her with a needle which in turn was attached to the wall. Laurel vaguely remember being told that the actual switch pulling was in the other room. He walked around the gurney and repeated the process on her other arm. Then they started the saline solution drip.
The Warden nodded to a guard standing by an off white curtain Laurel hadn't noticed before. The burly man reached for a simple rope hanging from the curtain and pulled it down. The curtain opened wide to reveal a window that opened into another room next door. Tears rose in Laurel's eyes when she looked into the other room. Her husband's face was larger than life, peering back, out at her. His face was white but his cheeks were stained with an unhealthy pink, his eyes were big and brown, completely devastated, they were wet with tears.
Suddenly feeling enraged she struggled fruitlessly for a few moments against her bonds, an over whelming need to be with, even near her husband over powered her. The guards menacingly stepped forward and grabbed her shoulders holding her down. Her desperation made her body shake, tears escaped the corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
The kindly looking doctor took her hand in his and smoothed his thumb over the back of it until she calmed down. When her tears had dried and she did look as though she would struggle again, he let go of her hand and gestured for the guards to let her go.
Laurel closed her eyes and for just a moment felt embarrassed for losing control like that, but it quickly faded away when she remembered how frivolous feelings like that were right now. She opened her eyes and turned them back to her husband and she gave him the most genuine smile she could manage. He raised a hand and placed it on the glass, making it fog up. The action reminded her so heavily of her actions at the hospital, two years ago now, that her eyes unconsciously looked away. When she looked back he was still looking at her but the hand was gone and his eyes were confused, hurt.
A booming voice interrupted their almost-reunion, "The prisoner may now make a statement before the execution commences."
Before she opened her mouth Laurel took a moment to turn and glare again at the angry man, who she assumed had spoken. He glared back.
Laurel turned over what she had been planning on saying over again in her mind and opened her mouth, "Keevis," she rasped her voice low and rough from little use and crying, she cleared her throat, "David," she started at him to make sure she had his attention, "Keep the damn apartment clean," his face at that moment was incredulous and a small smile pulled at her lips, "Give my clothes to the Will, if you haven't already," now he just looked annoyed, she was trying to remind him of things she used to say. 'Bring in the paper! And don't forget to...'
Suddenly she became serious, "I'm sorry I wasn't meant to be a mother," she apologized, "I don't have that in me, I wouldn't have been able to stay," now she couldn't help the shame that spread from deep inside her, "but I would never hurt a child. Never. That boy was supposed to be yours. All yours."
Laurel sighed and looked at the tiled floor, "But never mine." She couldn't look at his face, afraid to see the disgust she knew would be there.
"Are you finished?", Angry Man asked. Laurel nodded, "Very good. Let's get started then."
Looking perturbed the nice doctor announced the time and date, "1: 42 pm, February 25, 2008. Time of Execution."
Though a microphone or camera the executioners in the other room must have heard this because there was suddenly a noise of machinery turning on and she knew the injection would be coming through the tubes any second. In a panic Laurel looked up and caught Keevis's eyes and he held her gaze. He mouthed something to her, 'I love you.' and she passed out, the injection of Sodium Thiopental hitting her bloodstream, knocking her out.
The heart monitor was still beeping strongly when the next injection of Pancuronium hit, which stopped Laurel's breathing and paralyzed her other muscles. After the Potassium Chloride, to stop the heart, was injected they had to wait for a pain staking thirty seconds before the heart rate monitor let out a long screeching noise, Laurel's heart had stopped.
The guards, the doctor and the executioner all stood stoically waiting for five minutes to be over, to pronounce her dead. The time ticked by slowly and they all watched as the color faded from her cheeks. Her face turned white against her orange colored hair. At 1:49 pm, February 25, 2008, Laurel Keevis was pronounced dead.
-----
Keevis watched his wife be murdered. His stomach churned at the thought. But it was true. He let simple glass keep him away from his wife. The rage he felt for all of those in the room with her was astonishing to even himself. It was a slow burning rage and it was making it's way toward his finger tips, dying to get his revenge for both his wife and son.
Laurel's wide blue eyes as she told him that she didn't kill their son were ingrained in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes...but I'd never hurt a child. Never. That boy was supposed to be yours. All yours. He made himself open his eyes before he could hear what her voice would say next, but not mine. He was torn by that. She didn't hurt their child, but she didn't want him either.
'That's not her fault though,' he admitted to himself, 'She never wanted a child.'
Now that they were both gone what did it matter anyway? All of a sudden he felt like someone pulled the emergency brake on his thoughts and some of him was going forward and some of him was screeching to a halt. He realized that now that he knew for sure that it wasn't Laurel who...who killed his child?
A wave of heat hit him and he power walked out of the morgue with purposeful strides. People in the parking lot turned when they saw him coming. He stomped to his truck and jumped into it and brought the engine to life with a roar. Keevis backed out quickly and drove out of the lot, weaving his way through traffic heading toward the hospital.
His thoughts were erratic, but even with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, he'd come to one conclusion, whoever hurt his boy was in that hospital. He slammed his hand down on the steering wheel, accidentally hitting the horn and scaring the woman in the car in front of him into swerving a little bit. When he finally made it to the hospital it was twenty minutes later and he had a heavily bleeding lip from biting it so hard. He got to the front desk in a rush and the receptionist there glanced at his mouth and pointed to a chair next to a table covered it old magazines. "Have a seat, the doctor will be with you shortly," and then immediately went back to typing something on the computer.
He made a frustrated noise in his throat at her assumption, "Hey, listen, I'm not here to see a doctor, I'm..." She made a flitting, whatever sort of gesture with her hand, brushing him off. He gave her a death glare. She didn't notice.
Feeling at odds with the world he stormed out of the flowery reception area and slammed the door. The receptionist was on the phone. She didn't even look his way. He drove from the hospital with his hands shaking.
When he got back to the apartment building there was a crowd in the lobby standing around, drinking coffee and talking. He ignored them completely and ran up the stairs to the third floor where his apartment was. When he opened the door he fell forward onto the recently vacuumed carpet, exhausted. After he'd caught his breath he sat up and glanced around it was clean, he hadn't touched hardly a thing since he cleaned two weeks ago, it was just as he left it, just as she wanted him to have it.
Keevis went to their bedroom and opened the top drawer to her bureau and took out one of her old faded blue sweatshirts that said Colgate across the chest in bold lettering. He hugged it into his arms and smelled her faded scent. Something tangy like sea water and something fresh like tree leaves. He felt like crying.
He tossed the sweatshirt in a ball on the floor and soon the rest of the clothes in her drawers followed it. He thew them all into trash bags and carried them to the elevator. He pressed the down button viciously until the ding announced the cart's arrival. In the small room annoying, drowsy sounding blues music played, the saxophone diving in and out of a soulful, sad melody.
When they arrived at the first floor he practically dived out of the cart, passing the startled group in the lobby again, dragging the trash bags with him and running back to his truck.
In all honesty he didn't blame them for the strange looks they were giving him, but at the same time he really didn't care at all. He wondered at the surreal-ness of it all. In two years his life turned into something he couldn't have ever imagined on his own. He found out his wife was pregnant, a joy he hadn't dare hope for. And then his newly born son was found mutilated and smothered to death in a bathroom stall of the hospital and the new mother, Laurel, was gone. For two days he'd struggled with the image of blood on his newborns body, his hand missing two little fingers, his face a blue-ish tinge from lack of oxygen.
He fought with the idea that it was Laurel's doing and with the possibility that she'd be kidnapped herself, but at the end of the second day she was found, safe and sound, in a B&B in Vermont, eating an expensive dinner. And now, once he'd forgiven her, she'd been taken away from him with astounding finality. And here he was. Love. Loss. Hope. Repeat. In his blue pickup truck speeding down the highway to deliver clothes to Good Will.
Keevis revved the engine a bit a push the speed to seventy. How easy, he realized, it would be to swerve off the road into the trees. He could picture it, the brown and green, slicked in snow would grow closer and closer and then there would be a reverberating crash, the truck would wrap around the tree trunk, someone who saw the crash would call the police and they would come and fish him out of the wreckage, get him to an ambulance, and pronounce him dead, and that would be that. He'd wash his hands of this insanity.
Some how he fought the urge and made it to the strip mall that held the Good Will. He jumped out of his truck with out turning off the engine, he grabbed the bags from the back and dropped them off in the dumpster that they used to collect with. The parking lot was nearly empty as it was only about three on a Monday and most people were at work still. He double checked to make sure no one was around and put his back to the metal and slid down to the ground, the slush and salt on the ground oozing out from under him and soaking his pants. He closed his eyes. He barely noticed the cold, or the rusted metal scraping his jacket-less back. Soon enough the quiet lulled him to sleep.
He dreamed. He dreamed that he was at a soccer game and there were little kids running around the field, clustered around a ball, kicking at each other and sweating from exertion. Suddenly one of the boys kicked the ball out from another kid's legs and took off down the field. The boy in the goal looked terrified and he pulled up a knee to protect his stomach while his arms crossed in front of his face to protect his head. The first boy wrinkled his forehead in concentration and let forth a wild yell before kicking the ball with all he had and it soared right over the goalie's ducked head, into the goal.
The rest of the boy's team and coaches burst into cheers and ran to grab him into a smothering hug. The parents on the sidelines clapped and cheered for the goal. The boy was ecstatic, an ear to ear grin on his face, writhing with happiness. When he separated from his coaches and teammates he sprinted as fast as his short legs could carry him straight to Keevis who unthinkingly dropped to a knee with his arms spread wide and accepted the boy in a great, big hug.
After a moment the boy pulled back and started talking, "Did you see that?! I kicked that ball so high! We won the game!" Keevis laughed and nodded encouragingly.
"I did see! You were great," He mussed up the boy's hair and the boy giggled.
"Dad, stop it! I hate it when you do that." Dream Keevis froze and suddenly everything went black and he was now in the kitchen of his apartment and there was bacon frying on a pan and scrambled eggs sitting on a plate on the counter.
He turned off the stove and poor the bacon onto the plate with the eggs and poored a cup of coffee in a mug that said "Number One Mom" on the front. He picked up the plate along with the mug and that day's newspaper and brought it down the hall to the bedroom. He pushed open the door gingerly with his foot and walked quietly inside before setting the breakfast on a beside table. In the bed there was the shape of a body, breathing softly, covered with blankets, only orange colored hair peaking out. He took the shoulder of the sleeping person and shook softly. The person groaned lightly and pulled the covers of their head without opening their eyes. It was a woman.
"I made you breakfast. I brought coffee," Keevis said cheerfully. She opened her eyes and smiled warmly at him and he blinked in astonishment when he made eye contact with her.
"Thank you," she kissed him on the cheek to save him from morning breath, "I'll be up in a minute..."
Keevis jolted awake. He'd slid down the dumpster so his back was laying on the ground as well and only his head was being supported. He sat up in the slush and groaned. He got up off the ground and shook off the grayish snow with blue tinged fingers. He was shivering.
His truck was still running where he'd left it and he climbed in and sat down at the wheel. He gripped the wheel tightly and didn't move. He stared blindly in front of him and imagining all that could've been. A whisper of a tear slid from the crevice of his eye and made its way down his face along the side of his nose.
Suddenly Keevis smiled and backed the car away so it was facing the Good Will dumpster about twenty feet away. He revved the engine once. Twice. Loudly. And then he put the emergency break down and slammed his foot on the gas. The truck's wheels spun furiously and there was a smell of burning rubber and there was a huge smashing of metal.
-----
The red and blue flashing lights were giving Officer Peter a head ache and he just wanted to go home, but duty called. Some poor smuck had driven his truck into a Good Will and the Chief wanted the report in sooner rather than later so he could give a statement to the press first thing the next morning instead of giving them the time to come up with some crack story to satisfy the masses. He sighed. He just wanted to go home.
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Thoughts?
Thanks again.
