Pure Fiction
By: Kyley Shinead Eagleson
Father,
By the time you read this, I should be long gone and living under
a new name. I know I’m supposed to do
this in person but I’m also supposed to ask for forgiveness, and I have no intention of doing that. So I say we forget the technicalities.
Firstly, I must tell you Father I have most definitely sinned. I need to tell you a story and I guess the
best place to start is the beginning…
Over the next few days stories will probably start popping up in
the newspapers about a man who’s gone missing, a man named Richard Slone. He’s 79; lives lived in that big white
house on the outskirts of the city. If I
had to guess, the police will hope that he just wandered off somewhere and that
they’ll find him soon, confused, just sitting at a Denny’s in a few days. That’s not going to happen though; he won’t
be at a Denny’s or at an IHOP, or even at Mama’s Waffle House in town; so don’t
try to look there.
His family will come in from California after a few days. Well, he’s just got the one son. He never visits. But he’ll come in for this. I’m sure he will. You should give him this letter; it might
help him to have it too.
I was Mr. Slone’s caretaker.
I lived with him out in that big white house, making sure he took his
meds when he should, making sure he didn’t
wander off to Denny’s. It would have
been two years next week that I’d been with him. He was a character, I’ve got to give him
that, he was a real character. But I’m
off topic; I need to get back to my story.
I woke up yesterday morning and went down the hall to help Mr.
Slone get up and ready for his day, same as I’d been doing every morning for
almost two years. Slone was a former
military man; he liked consistency and a schedule he could count on. I’d never been that kind of person but I
could appreciate his need for order so I went with it.
Downstairs I set to work making his breakfast while he sat down at
the table. As the eggs sizzled in the
old frying pan Mr. Slone pulled his kit towards him and started getting it
ready to check his sugar; same old routine.
He was running a little high already so I went to the fridge and got out
a new bottle of insulin. Rolling the
vial gently back and forth between my hands to warm it up, I walked towards
him.
If you’d told me five years ago that someday I’d be shooting up
into an old mans arm, I’d have laughed you into the next county. I’ve tried everything, acid, crack, heroin; I
never even thought about it. It was a
compulsion. I never planned to live a
long life.
I learned in rehab that most junkies are looking to escape from
something. But me, I just had to know
what it was like.
But back to the story, I’m still not sure where the idea even came
from, maybe I watch too many crime shows.
All I know is one minute I was drawing up his usual insulin dose and
then I just kept going. Slone was a
little needle shy so he never watched me inject him. Never saw it coming.
It happened pretty quickly, in a relative sense, a couple hours. He was fine for a while and then he
wasn’t. He got sweaty and confused and he
couldn’t speak, it was like he couldn’t find the words. But then he just nodded off. It looked like he was sleeping but I knew he
wasn’t.
You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this Father,
honestly, I’m wondering myself, all I can tell you is that it seemed like someone
else needed to know, I guess you’re just lucky.
Now this is what I need to ask you to do. The police aren’t going to be able to find
the body, but I’m going to tell you where it is. When this all gets going, call in and tell
them to go to the Kirkwood Cemetery.
There is a woman buried there named Regina Zimmerman. She died a day before Mr. Slone, but she was
buried a day after him. They had no
shared connections in life, but now, well now they share something kind of
important.
Like I said in the beginning, I’m not asking for forgiveness, all
I’m asking for is your help in getting some closure for the others
involved.
Thank you,
Finn W.
