Ch. 1- Notepad

“I said I didn’t want no priest.”

We were in a small room with a plastic table and a few stools, everything was green; sterile astro-turf green: the table, the stools, the linoleum, it was suffocating. He was wearing a orange jump suit with a few letters and numbers on it, Starke Federal was branded in fading black lettering on the chest. He looked through me with monstrous blue eyes under his see through white eyebrows, the colors were all so dizzying. Or, at least, that’s what I wrote on my note pad.

“I-don’t-want-no-priest.” His face was made of granite with a little bit of human warmth left in it’s bright red nose. As he spoke it was as if his jaw were two rocks grinding against each other.

“I’m not a priest.” I said with my eyes still on my note pad.

“You balding.” His face stayed so obscurely still as he spoke. “You look like you just seen a dead man.”

I guessed he thought that was what a priest looked like, maybe they do, I don‘t know. “‘Seen a dead man.’” I looked up from my note pad. “I can’t say I have.”

“I seen ‘em” His hands were on the table, a pile of loose appendages, like they were just an accessory for his handcuffs.

“That’s why I’m here Jack.” He looked at me with conviction, as if it weren’t my place to speak right then.

“How old you boy.”

I stopped to think. There was a certain age where most people didn’t really ask you how old you were anymore, somewhere between the point when you could give an adorable answer on your fingers and a morbid one in your eyes. “Thirty six.” I said and then looked back at my pad.

“Mr. Fraise then.” I heard the tonalities of a dispute outside the room where the other inmates were being held.

“Very civilized.” I said. “Pruitt” I shook his dead hand.

“So if you no priest what are you.” I scribbled something useless about how cold the room was with this madman in it, then I looked up.

“Reporter.”

“Real civilized.” He looked past my head through the Plexiglas wall into the re-grouped line of prisoners walking past the tiny room.

“You killed a man.” I was very factual. He had killed a man. My note book said that He had “killed a husband who was going to be a grandfather of two.” He had “killed a man who loved his wife.” He had “killed a man who had been real and alive, who had conversations and blood in his veins; who watched cartoons with his children when they were little.”

He just looked past me, still as a statue.

“I killed lots of men.” He looked through my eyes again, it was as if; whether he was looking at me or past me, there was always something behind me he was really seeing.

“I know about your service Mr. Fraise, but I want to know about the man you killed when you came back to the states.” I wasn’t entirely sure he had ever really come back to the states, maybe that’s what he was always looking at behind my eyes.

“There’s a police report for that.”

I stretched a little and my stool creaked a jittery creak. “I just need an interview for the article.”: I just needed to feed that note pad. Then I could be out of here; I could be somewhere else, anywhere but here.

There’s something scratched out here and I can’t quite make it out; maybe something about the way he rested his head in his hands, then looked through me that way he was made to. “I can’t tell you .”

“Why not.” I was a little upset but not particularly. It was a minor inconvenience really: I didn’t absolutely need to have an interview, it was just something that it seemed to me would really tie the piece together.

“Because I’d have to tell the whole damn thing. You don’t got time for that do you boy?”

I wanted to say no, no I don’t have time because I’d like to be at home right now but he wasn’t making sense.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’d have to tell you I was born in Jacksonville Florida in 1949, I’d have to tell you my mother’s name was Elizabeth, I’d have to tell you that in that box in the room where they keep all our s**t there’s a letter from Kyle Martin who was 19 when he died in what had been combat fatigues. Because I’d have to tell you I was human once.” That’s not in my notebook, but I remembered it for whatever reason I was compelled to.

“And you just told me all of that, but that’s not the story.”

“Bullshit it’s not the story.” There was a pause in which I remember putting my notebook down on the table.

“You didn’t kill your mother, you didn’t kill Kyle Martin: that’s not the story.”

“Don’t be a smart a*s” I leaned back in my chair and there was an ambient linoleum hum broken only by the silence between squeaky black prison guard footfalls.

“Does that mean you going to listen.” I was curious, the man had a way a drawing you into his stories it seems. I nodded my head then shrugged.

“Sure.”

Author's Note

Not Completed. Reveiws are still welcome.

Reviews

[Angie Diane♥&hea..]

I thought it was very interesting. I can't wait to read more. I really like it though. It is very interesting. :)

[Eclipse of the Rising S..]

Nice beginning, you start to feel what the reporter(if thats what he is) wants. I'm looking forward to reading more, please continue. Personally, I like these stories, the ones with thought. First person is hard to write and you are doing an excellent job. I'm looking forward to more.