itsjustastory

[itsjustastory]

Hazel

January 2018

It's strange, I don't know what to write. I practically begged for this pen and paper and now look, I have nothing. What is there to say? I don't know where I am, or how long I've been here. But I know exactly why I'm here.

I'm here to die.

I'm chained in some rancid basement, sitting on a cement floor, waiting to be killed by a man I didn't know. He told me his "name" who he was after a few days, he said he's the Cleaner. Someone people call when they need something cleaned up, like it never happened. Like it never existed.

I keep replaying my last day of freedom over and over, trying to see if there was anything different I could've done to avoid...this. But the truth is, it wasn't anything I did on that particular day. I'm just unlucky. Always have been.

My bad luck caused me to leave work later than normal one night, my bad luck placed me on the sidewalk right as Dario Bonetti was performing an execution on a rat, my bad luck let him see my face illuminated in a beam of light from a streetlamp. My god damn bad luck. So, he called the Cleaner. For me.

I just wish I knew what was taking so long. Why won't he just do it? It's been days, possibly weeks. My daughter probably thinks I'm dead, my mom too. And I can't help but to wonder...if they'll ever know how long I sat and agonized over them before I finally did die. I've been looking for that special connection people say parents have. The one that tells you if they're ok or not, alive still. But maybe it's not for me to feel because I'm the one missing, cuz I don't feel anything. I think and think so hard about Melody, I remember her smell, the way she puffed out her little lips when she was a baby, her first day of school, but no matter how hard I think, I can't feel her.

The things I can still feel, well, I dunno. I accepted a long time ago that my wires were crossed. I wasn't normal, not as a kid and not now as an adult.

I got the Cleaner to talk a little the other day. He seemed...almost normal. I have stitches on my head from trying to escape. It was a stupid attempt, and it failed, obviously. Well anyway, when he brought me breakfast that morning, he checked my head. I tried not to laugh at the absurdity of it, and he asked me what I found funny.

"You. This. Why do you care about my head?"

He didn't seem to have an answer right away. He was crouched down in front of me, he withdrew his hands and for a moment he just stared at me. He didn't look so scary then. Down at my level, even with his grey eyes appearing black in the dim lighting, he looked human.

"I'm a lot of things, but negligent isn't one of them."

That was all he said about it. The few times he did speak that was how it went. Short, to the point. But I dunno...it was different that time. The way he looked at me. It felt like there was something there It made me think maybe I wasn't going to die.

But that's stupid. Of course I'm going to. He was hired by the Bonetti's for fuck sake. There isn't a way for him to not complete the job he was brought in for.

I read once about the stages of acceptance and how they were similar to the stages of grief. Denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and finally acceptance. Am I still in stage one? Am I just denying the inevitable and seeing things that aren't there?

Maybe I'll write more later, I hear him upstairs. I guess it's noon.

𝓗𝓪𝔃𝓮𝓵 ♡