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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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The Crow Calls Guilty - Entry #5

I don’t know much more about the victims than any other Rosewood citizen, which I find ironic. People talk to me like I’m in the center of a hurricane when really, I know nothing more than what the press has said. So far, only 2 out of the four ‘deceased’ have had namedrops: Professor Donan and a student called Dallas Slater. Donan rang no bells, but Slater was crawling somewhere around in my jumbled thoughts.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time scrolling through my (ex)church’s website. They haven’t updated for a good 5-6 years, so there wasn’t much to go off of. Eventually, though, I did confirm my suspicion: I knew the name Slater. Dallas and his family turned up in multiple photosets from different annual celebrations that took place in the church.

I eventually came across an album titled “Christmas Pageant” and the year it took place in. I smiled when I found photos of me with a girl who still went to the same school as me. Her arm was slung over my shoulder as we both laughed about something impossible to ever remember. My heart stung in a way it was a lot recently -- with a sort of longing. I missed times like those.

Continuing to click through the photos, there wasn’t much that peaked my interest. The photos appeared to be taken mostly during one of the Pageant’s practices; it must have been one of the few dress rehearsals, as things like the Virgin Mary nonchalantly talking to her friend the Angel Gabriel could be seen.

The moment I came across a photo with the three Wisemen, my heart simultaneously stopped beating and fell to the pits of my stomach. On the right was an obviously younger Arlo. His mouth pulled with a smirk like he knew something no one else did. On the left was Dallas, who smiled brightly and had glossy eyes, the kind you get after laughing so hard you think you may cry. And between them stood my now infamous brother, Seth. His eyebrows were raised, and though he didn’t smile, his arms were wrapped around each boy beside him. Seth’s elbow was tucked against Arlo’s neck, and his hand made an inverted ‘peace’ sign.

I exed out of the tab and didn’t touch my laptop for the rest of the day.

#the crow calls guilty #entry 5 #tccg entry 5 #original fiction #am writing #my words

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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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The Crow Calls Guilty - Entry #4

These mornings, I’ve been waking up to all sorts of notifications; there are the general news headlines reminding me the world is slowly ending, but I also get too many missed calls and texts to count. Most are numbers my phone doesn’t recognize, and I’ve learned not to answer those calls. The prank calls reminding me I’m a murder apologist or that my brother is the devil incarnate get exhausting. Of course, I have linked some of the condolence texts to family members I haven’t spoken to since last Christmas; without the Facebook profiles they’ve spent years perfecting (and that include mobile and home phone numbers), I don’t know how I would have done it.

Last night, when I was writing the post before this one, I got a text from a number my phone didn’t recognize, but my brain did. It was one of those times an old memory hidden in the back of your head rises from the dead and starts screaming and begging for attention. His number was one that I wanted to forget, yet couldn’t seem to.

The number belonged to a boy named Arlo Gradus. He’s a Junior in high school now and used to live in the house at the end of our street. Arlo is right between mine and Seth’s age, as Seth is graduated while I’m still suffering in the 9th grade. Still, the three of us managed to get along beautifully, many years ago. He came from a family that was a little more broken than mine.

Arlo moved away when he was about to start high school. He had spent most of his childhood living with his father in a nowhere town in a nowhere state, while his mother was out in New York making a name for herself. I think the finishing of middle school was an awakening of sorts for him, despite being ‘so young’; Arlo said that for years, he’s known there wasn’t much of anything keeping him in Rosewood. So, he did what the three of us had been planning for years: he packed up and moved away.

Seth was bitter for a long time. For the first year, he hadn’t even mentioned Arlo’s name, yet was somehow constantly angry with the boy. I couldn’t blame him -- I spent more nights than I care to remember crying over the loss of my one true friend. Still, we moved on. Both of us did. ‘The one thing we’ll always have is each other’, Seth once told me.

What a load of crap.

Anyways, Arlo’s text said ‘I’m back in town. I know what happened. Come over if you want to talk’. I haven’t responded yet. What am I supposed to say to that? ‘Good for you, I have volleyball practice, but I’ll come over after’? This isn’t two years ago. I don’t know how to talk to him anymore, how to act normal.

#the crow calls guilty #entry 4 #tccg entry 4 #original fiction #am writing #my words

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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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The Crow Calls Guilty - Entry #3

People come together in tragedies, or so I always thought. Sadness bridges the gaps between social divisions: it unites people with even the starkest differences. Everyone can see it around Rosewood. There are posters advertising memorials, crosses and flowers on the University’s corner, and even graffiti protesting the deaths. My family gets the worst of the graffiti, I think. My dad has lost count of how many times he’s scrubbed ‘house of horrors’ off the garage door, or removed the words ‘white trash’ from his car.

My mom moved back from Los Angeles. She moved down to become a hotshot ER nurse less than 6 months after my dad got back from deployment. Even though Mom sent us money, Seth was convinced her and Dad would finally get over themselves and just get a divorce. Unlucky for us, they never did. Unlucky for me, because I’m the one who has to live with it.

I think Dad mentioned something about their marriage making it easier to get a lawyer. By this time, I’m surprised there isn’t a fleet of firms stationed outside our house, crawling like ants without a hill. Apparently, though some have offered great deals, like no required pay if the case is ‘won’, meaning a minimal sentence. Some people will do anything for a little publicity.

It was my father who proposed the original idea of pleading insanity. He’s a man that has seen war -- seen true evil --, and he said that Seth isn’t it. He’s close, maybe even a front-runner, but not the embodiment. At least, that’s what Gordon Pax will tell you.

I’ve looked into pleading insanity; it’s not as cut and dry as most people think it is. There’s a space between ‘legal’ and ‘mental’ insanity, one that’s not so easy to cover. Someone can be declared mentally ill by a doctor, yet a knowing criminal by a judge or jury. The only way to be ‘innocent by reason of insanity’ is, basically, to be decided that the illness is what drove the crime. The person on trial can have all the psychiatric problems known to man but still serve a sentence in prison.

One is justice, the other is an out.

#the crow calls guilty #entry 3 #tccg entry 3 #original fiction #am writing #my words

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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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The Crow Calls Guilty - Entry #2

I’ve been lucky enough to have never lost someone I love. My mom’s mother died when I was five-years-old, so I don’t remember much of her. Seth does, though. He always said she was one of the kindest yet most stubborn women you could ever meet. I think I would have liked her.

Maybe it’s selfish to think of my brother as dead. I guess it makes the lives he took in vain, to consider him passed while he’s still breathing. No matter how much I tell myself this, I’m still not entirely convinced; it’s not Seth’s death that would be a tragedy, it’s that he is still alive.

I really do think at least some of him is deceased. I said it before but… Seth Pax didn’t kill WSU students, and definitely not over something so petty. A loving brother and an obedient son would not steal his paranoid father’s pistol right from his nightstand drawer. Someone -- something -- took the shape of 19-year-old boy and did something unforgivable.

That must be me and my insensitivity.

Admittedly, I am desperate. I don’t want to give up the memories of my brother. I don’t want us laughing, living, and loving to be replaced by crying, dying, and hearts breaking. I want the good times back.

I want my life back.

#the crow calls guilty #entry 2 #tccg entry 2 #original fiction #am writing #my words

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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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The Crow Calls Guilty - Entry #1

It is believed that death is an inherently sad thing. And, initially, it’s easy to understand why. A death takes life, yet leaves so much behind. A life is gone, but the ruins are left for those alive to do with however they want. But why is that considered a bad thing? Why should a person’s death be sorrowful if they had lived a fulfilling life with a loving family and passed peacefully? Who would mourn the demise of a hero who saved thousands before their fateful end? If the right people and circumstances are present, why should a death be sad at all?

My name is Lia Pax, and my brother is a convicted mass murderer.

I think the thing I get asked most is if I saw it coming. The answer, in it’s boring entirety, is no. I didn’t expect it, I didn’t think he was capable, and I didn’t see it all in a dream. Not even the night terrors I had as a kid could come up with something as horrible as this.

It was a relatively small shooting, actually. It didn’t break any sick records, and it didn’t gain very much attention. The entire state of Washington was shocked and awakened, yes, but my friend on the East Coast only heard about the whole thing through me. I find that sad; The entire country seems to care more about a bigger victim count than about the Rosewood branch of Washington State University.

Another frequent question I’m asked is why. ‘Why did he have a gun?’, ‘Why didn’t he stop after the professor?’, ‘Why would he do such a thing?’. My dad is a veteran with PTSD, it was about misery, not one man’s death, and I don’t know. I don’t know what he thought killing the teacher that failed him (and subsequently banned him from being a student-athlete) would do. I don’t know what compels someone, anger or not, to kill. I just don’t know.

But I do know that this isn’t who he has always been. The man sitting in isolation in the County jail, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time, is not my brother. He’s not the person who gave me piggyback rides around the backyard, who taught me how to play guitar, who drove me around for hours when we waited for mom and dad to stop fighting. He’s not the kid that sold candy bars for his baseball team, or spent his childhood saving up for a car he would never own.

That man is not Seth Pax.

He is a monster.

#the crow calls guilty #entry 1 #tccg entry 1 #original fiction #am writing #original work #my words

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thebookishbutler · 7 years

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