I Am What People Make Me…
Have you ever wondered, when the nights drew on and the days blended together, at the sobering solitude of existence? As individuals we carry on through our diurnal burdens with single minded, but entirely thoughtless determination, as if anything we do truly matters… as if everything we do has purpose, or meaning.
I happen to believe that's a load of self-righteous, sanctimonious shit.
Nothing I've ever done has amounted to anything I'd consider to be remotely worthwhile. True, I could blame that on any manner of horrible and foolish life decisions I'd made during the myriad of unpleasant experiences one could sum up to be the totality of my life. But it wasn't like I had the easiest of options.
I was born, if that at all matters, to a poor family in a low income housing complex on the outlying province of a world that was far away from the cradle of my species. Humans, violent and war hungry as we sometimes tended to be, found it hard to distance ourselves from our history. Even the vast expanse of the stars could not curb our desires for conquest; not even discovering that we were not the sole inheritors of this universe could shake us from our barbaric nature.
At least it hadn't for long.
Do not take my seemingly misanthropic views to heart. I'm sure my opinion has been formed entirely from the biases of my childhood and early twenties. I can confidently state that there are people out there with nothing but good in their hearts and love in their souls, but I am not one of those people. Life as I knew it, to reiterate a previous thought, was rough and deprived of most common luxuries afforded to those of high elevated status. My family could not afford healthcare for all their children. As the eldest and only son, I shouldered most of the burden, so I was sick often, and usually dangerously so.
The neighborhood I lived in was dirty, and infection traveled quickly through the crowded tenements. I didn't mind much, as long as my sisters were saved from the pain of disease.
But somehow, perchance from my tenacious desire to not witness what comes after death, I lived. More likely, it was because I inherited many of my father's better traits, like his impressive constitution, unusually brawny physique, and mayhap not so luckily, his calm demeanor. Surely, one might ask, what could possibly be so unfortunate about keeping a level head?
A fool might jest, but a wise man knew better.
My father was not a bad man. Conrad Wolfram worked hard and loved both his children and his wife.
He was, by all accounts, a good man.
His fatal flaw, if one could call it that, was that he always tried to be the sensible voice of reason during a fight. He always tried to be the mediator. He might have made for a decent policeman or even a bodyguard.
Yet fate was cruel.
At fourteen years old, weak and sickly after enduring a particularly tenacious bout of pneumonia, there was a knock at the door of our apartment.
Conrad Wolfram, age 43, had been killed during a simple dime store robbery after attempting to calm the gunman who was holding a family hostage.
My father was a good man.
A month later the trial was over. The gunman had been a kid, not a year older than I was, just some poor mutt wanting something to quiet the ache in his stomach; guilty, forty-five to life, little chance for parole. And, as the recently convicted shooter was led down the steps to the waiting police cruiser, I stepped out from the crowd and I put eight rounds into his chest.
I am not my father.
That was the first time I ever killed, and my first, but probably not last visit to a government prison.
The district court was sympathetic to my case. I was only a distraught adolescent who had just lost his father, my family barely able to survive after his passing. There was no reason to suspect it was premeditated, that I had spent thirty days planning that one crucial moment.
I won't lie to myself by expressing any guilt in what I had done. Sure the pup had been hungry, and he would be right to believe that the government did not care about those too poor to contribute to society, but so was my family. However I would admit to the disgust I felt at myself, at the… satisfaction, the sheer sense of vindication, I felt as I watched the kid fall in a pool of his own blood.
He took from my family, so I took from his.
That was how I learned life worked.
I spent nine years in federal prison. The jury may have taken pity, but they had still tried me as an adult. And that was okay. At least my mother didn't have to pay for me while I was away. No. That was the government's responsibility.
I walked out of those gates at the age of twenty-three, a man more comfortable with the rigid, but reliable lifestyle of an inmate, than the chaos of the outside world. Things just made sense, when I was in there.
There were rules, there was a hierarchy, and if those guidelines were broken, if you disobeyed the established status quo, the justice that was metered out was cruel, but fair. Life behind bars was simple, gave me a lot of time to think about my future, and where it was going. I knew, even back then, that I wasn't meant for the life of my father. I possessed his patience, but not his forgiveness.
I could not stand by and watch the injustice inflicted upon the meek and powerless. I could no longer turn a blind eye to what happened around me. I had seen a lot of that before I had been imprisoned, street gangs extorting small business, even if they could not afford to pay protection. I witnessed brutal muggings and things best left unrepeated. And when I was a child it had been easy to ignore, but the murder of my father had torn the veil of innocence from my eyes, exposing me to the hard reality of existence.
Life was pain.
But perhaps more important than that revelation, I had decided, on the third year of my sentence, that I would do something about it. Admittedly there may have still been some child in me that thought of superheroes when I came to that decision. Nevertheless, I was committed, and had the strength of body to try.
In some harsh form of irony, I was healthier inside the prison system then I had ever been out of it. After all, inmates benefit from free healthcare, and with nothing else really to do but hone my body and my mind during the endless days, I was quite the fearsome sight in my final years. Of the five years of my original sentence, an extra three were attached after I beat three inmates half to death in the yard for trying to start something with a new arrival.
Once again my sentencing was light in consideration of my reasons.
That was also, interestingly enough, the day I met my first real friend I would ever make.
At fourteen he had attacked and killed his drunk of a father after he tried to assault his own wife. Unlike me however, it had been merely an accident, during the scuffle his father had fallen down a set of stairs, his neck broken in three places once he reached the bottom.
Given the situation presented he had been acquitted of murder, but charged with involuntary manslaughter in its place, three years, no parole.
I don't know why the kid stuck to my side, more importantly I don't know why I let him. Perhaps it was because I saw myself in him, at least in the way that he had been willing to lay himself on the line for his family. He had protected his mother. He stood up for her when she couldn't.
And possibly, deep down, his father had loved his mother, but I knew for fact that my mother loved my father, and his death had hurt her irrecoverably.
And I would not stand for that.
I made the choice to get her the justice she wanted, I walked to the pawnshop and bought that gun, I waited five hours outside the courthouse for my opportunity. I… I looked that kid in the eyes as I placed eight holes in his chest.
Unlike me, he had killed his father.
I avenged mine.
Maybe that's why he stuck with me. Maybe he just wanted someone that would understand why he had made his choice to act. I was admittedly older than him by a good five or six years, so I didn't think it was out of a desire for friendship. I had saved him from the very same hazing I had experienced on my first day, and I had extended my own neck out to help him. And for that he became the only connection I ever made
It was a nice arrangement though.
I had a friend to keep me company and make the days a little less dull. And he had someone to watch his back in the showers and out on the yard. And when I wanted to take my high school equivalency test, he had been there to help me study. I didn't know if I'd ever need it, but it didn't exactly hurt to try.
After all I certainly missed the rest of my traditional schooling.
The first three, of the last four, years I spent in prison were different now that I had someone to talk to. They went by faster, and happier, then the others. We talked shop, did cards and pool, burned a couple cigarettes in the back of the laundry, and played part to more than a few scuffles when the guards weren't watching.
I'll probably never know the real reason why, but he followed me everywhere I went, like a lost puppy. Those in the ages of ten to fourteen can be quite impressionable, and I felt guilty that maybe he wanted to follow me around because he had imprinted on me.
Cornerians are weird like that.
Sometimes I almost forget how much they are like the animals they so remarkable resemble. And then out of the blue I get a stark refresher. And no matter how many times I think otherwise, it always catches me by surprise, the unnerving pack mentality, the way they are so prone to giving in to their emotions.
It's kind of fascinating in a way, at least to a human stuck in one of their prisons, a man uncomfortable with the notion of falling sway to sentiment and fitting to a crowd.
The alphas ruled at the top of the ladder, distributing laws and metering out justice with swift retribution. I learned quickly that it was unwise to mess with the paradigm already established, and I had no aims to aspire for anything but the position I already occupied.
I mostly kept my head down and my arm on my shiv.
Aggression was common in the prison, after all territory had to be monitored and protected, especially for a species who valued it so highly. And penitentiaries were not accommodating to those who liked space. I made a name for myself, mostly as someone who it would be foolish to fuck with. I didn't want any part in their games, but I was willing to lay down my hand when they included me in their plans.
I made sure to keep my companion away from that as well. It was a good way to get a young person killed. And they would have had no qualms in throwing him into some cheap skirmish like used goods.
He didn't deserve that.
I kept him clean, away from the drugs and the gangs and as much of the futility of the violence as I could.
Unlike me, he still had a future.
All he had to do was keep straight and narrow.
Fate decided otherwise.
A month before I was to be released, and six days before he was going to be out on his own charges…
I sigh even now to think about it.
One thing I could never shake out of him was his sharp tongue, and that time I wasn't there in time to get him out of the trouble he was quite proficient at causing.
Outside in, it was a relatively harmless thing, just a few words spoken in jest to the wrong crowd as he lounged across a bench in the yard.
I had looked away from my game of chess with a rather burly bear, to see an assortment of figures in bright orange crowding around last where I had seen him.
Pawns and bishops, kings and queens, rooks and knights, they all flew from their posts as I sent the board flying in my anxiety fueled haste. I had seen this before, many times. They were obscuring the view from the guard towers. To this day I remember the exercise yard's doors bursting open as a squad of prison guards stormed out in full riot gear, no doubt having seen what I had that day and recognizing it for what it was.
All the same I had arrived first.
I punched through the huddle like a sharpened spear, sending several inmates sprawling to the ground. And then I had seen it, my companion bound to the bench with a multitude of hands, and the leader of the gang sitting on his chest, a rusted knife digging through his prey's left eye socket, clear fluid streaming down the lupine's muzzle, wide open as he howled his misery.
Fear and rage both hit my gut and my fists at the same time, I remember shaking as I dropped low, fist clutching tight to the sharpened hunk of slate in my pocket. My following actions were fluid, guided by experience and intent. All said it had been over quickly, not five seconds passed and the canine dropped to the dirt, clutching the bleeding gash in his throat.
Three seconds more and the riot squad arrived.
My friend had been taken to the infirmary, hurt, but alive.
The gang boss had bled out before the paramedics arrived.
Once again I had found myself under the purview of the warden, but evidence was scare, and I had become rather liked by the guards. With no inmates willing to testify and be included in the investigation, I only had one more year tacked on to my sentence.
A small price to pay in my modest opinion.
Six days later and my friend left both the infirmary, and the prison system.
He came to visit me before he left, making promise after tearful promise that he would be there when I was released, but I had suspected he only felt guilty about my predicament. I had smiled and eased him with platitudes, though I had not waited on bated breath for that day. I fully anticipated that he would go on to live his life, and that would have been just alright with me.
My final year passed in solitude and silence.
And when my own time came up, I stepped out of those gates, an uncertain frown twisting my lips as I reaffirmed the duffle bag across my shoulders, within a small assortment of credits, clothes, and whatever idle things I had carved in the passing time.
I took a handful steps towards the bus stop, not knowing where I would go or what I would do now that I was out again. I had been just a kid when I was admitted, I had no job experience, no prospects or contacts to help me find my way, all around a rather foreboding disparity between myself and the general population as well as a signifier to the thoughtless nature of the public justice system.
It was then that a familiar voice made itself known to me.
"Lance!"
Unused to hearing my name aloud, I rounded towards the noise, a small, disbelieving smirk tugging at my expression as I took in the sight of the eyepatch laden lupine leaning against the hood of a street car.
So… he really did come back for me like he promised.
Gratitude was a new sensation to visit me that day.
The moment I was close enough, the lupine swept me up in a bone rattling embrace, the fur on his muzzle tickling the stretch of skin across my throat. I was honestly quite surprised at how exuberant he was to see me again.
"Hello Wolf." I greeted him with a warm, albeit thin smile. Memories arose unbidden of the teasing I levered against him for his name. And I realized that I did, I really did miss the young pup.
"Not my fault, my father was a drunk." He retorted with a sniffling laugh, his one good eye gleaming with unshed moisture. Then, he frowned, a conflicted rictus of guilt tearing across him.
"Look, Lance… about what happened."
I shushed him with shake of my head before he could go any further.
"Don't worry kid. It's all in the past, my fault I didn't get there fast enough." That was the way I saw it, and that was the way it would forever be.
He nodded hesitantly before wiping his eye. "Right, of course. You always were the knight in shining armor, just like I remembered."
I rolled my eyes at that.
I considered myself anything but a hero. A hero would have prevented what happed to wolf, and a hero would not have killed someone for it. Way I saw it; I was just a man with little qualms at ending a life if I had to. And that was anything but heroic.
"But that's not important." Wolf continued with a sad smile. "I know you don't have any place to go."
Yeah… he was right about that.
My mother passed away two years ago, from what I read from my sisters, she'd never been the same after my father died and I had been sent away. After that, the both of them had gone off planet, for a new colony and a new life. I didn't blame them for leaving, I was just glad they had the means to get away from this life.
All the same that left my living situation somewhat uncertain.
I had resolved to find a motel for now. I did have enough cash from my prison job to sustain myself for a little while at least.
"Oh no, don't even think about it." The lupine growled as he now doubt noticed my expression.
"You're staying with me, and that's nonnegotiable."
"I'd rather not inconvenience your family." I knew that while I did care for Wolf, I was not part of his family, his pack. And I had no intent on intruding upon his household. Besides, I'd rather be alone for a while. It had been a long time since I could have the privacy away from the populace I longed to have. The world had not been kind to me, and I had little reservations with keeping the sentiment mutual.
Wolf's teeth snapped together as his face darkened. "Damn it Lance, you are…" He sighed, shaking his head as he pulled away. "Come on man, just come home with me. Please."
His petulant visage, reminding me so keenly of the feral quadrupedal animals of his race, made me realize that there were some things about this world I did not mind seeing. A sigh of my own slipped past me as I nodded hesitantly. "Alright Wolf, I'll come with."
Honestly, it was not a difficult decision to make.
The smile I received in answer was enough for me.
This will probably come as a surprise to my readers, but I'd been pondering over this for a little while. I am still not entirely sure where I'll take this, and originally I had no intent to post this. But I thought some people might be interested to read my test-bed for first person narrative and a more serious, down to earth tone unlike my other works. Unlike most things I am working on, this could be updated with any frequency, either often or not at all. That being said, I'd love to hear your opinions, as this will be my first serious attempt at trying a new style.
Drake