Young Writers Society

(I can't think of a better title for this so suggestions would be welcomed! It may not make much sense right now but it will when I post the other parts. I've been working on the idea for a while but obviously this is just a rough first draft. Would really love some feedback :-))

1.

With all of my heart, I address this letter to whom I consider to be the dearest lady I have ever encountered; the intelligent Doctor Luella May Craily. They said you requested that I write to you; that you asked them to let me write everyday, because it would be like a continuation of our sessions. Because it would be good for me. I guess I could just tell you I'm sorry, and that I miss you; half of which is true. But, alas, they have cornered me; found out who what I am. And I know you will be killing yourself over not having spotted it earlier, though please don't. None of it is because of you. No, I will write to you about how I feel- carrying on from our sessions, if you like. If you write back- well, that is up to you. I shall not expect a reply, but instead cherish at the mere thought of you reading my words with your striking blue eyes. I am never sure how to start letters – especially ones of this kind – so I will just begin with my inner thoughts.

Sometimes I forget I am not the person inside my head, living the life I have constructed for myself within the tissue of my brain. I am a person in the real word who can touch and feel and hear and smell things too. I’m not fictional, I’m really here. A daily reminder in the form of pain is all I need to wake up. A cut, a bruise, a scratch that tells me I'm still here, tells me that I still feel. Some days, I wake up with happiness carved into my skin, sketched with a fine point as though I am an easel. It scorches like a hot summers day; the kind of pain I don't get to feel any more because the outside is protected with bars of metal, untampered with by my bony fingers. The very fingers which signed all those letters and forms you used to give me. I remember you once remarked that I had “very pretty” penmanship. Armed with just a pencil and thin paper such as this, I cannot achieve such delicate calligraphy. It doesn't help that I have developed a tremor in my right hand- the result of all the stress the trial put me through. They have tried to stop me from harming myself; clipped my nails as short as they could, but the pain is a release for me. A release from reality. This reality where I am sentenced to life for my mistakes.

And the birds, they cause me pain, but it's a different sort of pain. They like to tease me; I guess it's justified. I know I don't deserve the freedom they own by birthright, but sometimes I forget that. They chirp and sing every morning, louder than I ever heard them when I still slept in my own bed. They sometimes fly up to the small window above my bed (for I am fortunate enough to have a cell with a window) and I can just about see them through the bars. Taunting me. They have two things I don't; freedom and music. They can sing as they like. I get threatened with violence by the other prisoners if I attempt to sing. Maybe it's because I'm not a great singer, but I doubt it. Music reminds these prisoners of all the things they can't have. If there was one thing I could wish for in here, it would be a record player. Maybe the music would make my days better. For every day in here seems to be an eternal hell. On those bad days, I retreat inside my shell, into my own personal paracosm. But I must remember; I am not the person inside my head. I am the person here, in the flesh, now, alive, breathing. The scratches in the walls help me remember, the bloodied tips of my fingers don't let me forget.

They don't let me forget the nights where the blood on my hands was not mine, the days where the pain I inflicted was not onto myself. The days where I didn't have to carve happiness into my body; it came naturally to me. Those were the days when I didn't have to keep track of days by scratching at stone.

Before, as you now know, I used my hands more for pleasure than for pain. There was pain involved but it was not mine, and therefore did not concern me. I felt pleasure in watching others suffer; hopelessly fighting against my strength to no avail. Once, I had been strong, and with that I became powerful. But now, locked away behind bars, I am reduced to bones. Bones that protrude from my paper-thin skin like the bones that protruded from the black bin-liners that filled the yellow skips outside my house. It's an ironic thought, that the body that causes me so much pain these days echoes the bodies which brought me so much pleasure before I wound up here.

I don't miss my freedom as much as you would think. Freedom is merely a socially constructed concept that they've force fed us throughout our lives. None of us are truly free. I am as free as you are, even though I'm laying on the cold stone floor of a prison cell and you are out there in the fresh air. You are safe from me; that is the point of my incarceration. You are safe from me; but there are plenty others just like me, hiding in plain sight. For all I know, you may even be one of them. Though I severely doubt that you, after all this time, are like me. We are similar, yet not in that way. We both have an appreciation for art, music, and literature. If it weren't for my own literature, I would never have been referred to you in the first place. How strange a world that would have been. I do believe that without you, Luella, I would have descended into madness much faster than I inevitably did. And a lot more people would have gotten hurt in the process. I wrote a few sentences ago that you are now safe from me, but that is wrong. You were always safe from me. I posed no danger to you; I liked you. I respected you. I still do, despite you turning my notebooks over to the police. Don't worry, for I have forgiven you for that. You were doing your job, as I was mine. Only your job saved my clients from their fate which seems so inevitable to me. But that's you summed up. A changer of fate.

Do you wonder what your life would be like now if you had accepted my invitation to dinner? It could have been so different, and though I don't hold you accountable for my actions, there was a convenience to our relationship that I wanted to keep. Had we been closer, God forbid, I could have continued to be free out there. We could have been free together. Because you are incarcerated too, maybe even more so than me. I have come to accept my actions- I am no longer racked with guilt. You are, I know you are. You blame yourself- why didn't you spot the signs sooner? Maybe you did, and maybe you ignored them because you liked me.

They have just told me my “writing time” is up. I guess they don't want me to be in possession of such a dangerous weapon like this pencil for any longer. So I shall end the letter here. It was a little all over the place, but that is what my mind had reduced to. I used to be so great, and look at me now. Bones and thoughts. They're all I have.

Stay safe, and wish your children well for me. I will be thinking of you.

Most sincerely, Aristotle J. Parker of cell 134, block B, HMP Dorset