The Letter From The Grave

I’m afraid to die.

I have sat in this cell for most of my life. Sat with blood on my hands and eyes half closed. The law couldn’t save me. I never had a chance. The gun they used was my gun. My prints were on the trigger. That was enough to get me in the courtroom. They had no other options. It was me, or the man whom everyone had so loved would die unavenged. In blind pursuit of justice, of that fabled, intangible, yearned-after concept of morality, after a trial that lasted no more than three days, the jury convened for twenty-five minutes.

I remember. I had not even risen from the bench before the door swung open and they filed back into the room, their faces full of a grim sort of triumph. That was the day I was sentenced to death.

I will never forget that moment. It lingers, it is haunting, terrifying. It catches you when you least expect it. It grabs you by the shoulder and pinches your flesh. It dances before your vision, it turns your legs to jelly and your mind to mush. To hear that your life has a date of expiration, to hear the zealous confidence, the righteous rage that boiled so near the surface in that jury of my peers. When the gavel banged down, I remember turning to stare, in numb disbelief, at the throngs of people who had come to watch the sentencing. Insults were hurled my way. Fists shook with the glory of justice.

I remember falling to my knees, staring at my cuffed hands, mouthing the words ‘I didn’t do it,’ relentlessly, painfully aware that my mouth had gone paper-dry. I could feel the blood rushing from my face. My head was full of this incessant buzzing. My throat didn’t want to function properly - there was a sharp pain beneath my Adam's apple, the pain that often precedes tears. My neck was flushed. I was having difficulty breathing.

Two pairs of rough hands grabbed me and pulled me to my feet. They dragged me down the courtroom, past dozens of smiling people out through a side door. I remember little more than a blur of faces. I felt a profound disconnect between my mind, my very essence, and my body. I felt both an inordinate amount of freedom as well as a sense of entrapment greater than any I had before experienced. Never before had I felt so imprisoned by my body. This physical caliphate that tied me to life, that tied me to death. I prayed then, for the first time in my life, I prayed a coward’s prayer.

I prayed for one of those viciously joyous people to pull a gun from their back pocket and empty the chamber into my head. I prayed for blood and death. And I prayed for it to happen swiftly. My body was screaming at me, screaming for life. My heart was tearing at my neck, my eyes were staring, sightlessly, yet staring still at the walls that were closing around me. I knew, in that moment, that if I lived another second knowing that I was destined to die in prison, on a table, with a needle in my arm, that I would go mad.

But there were no saints in the crowd that day. No deranged souls capable of committing that heinous act that they claimed I had committed. No one so utterly twisted by their perverted version of justice that they would end it right there, in that courtroom, before the judge.

When they loaded me back in that police cruiser to return to the prison, I begged them, I begged them like a starving dog begs for scraps. I begged them for mercy. I begged them for a bullet. They just laughed and let my words curl out the car window with the smoke from their cigarettes.

When they pulled me from the car, I made my move. I threw myself on one of the officers, tackling him to the ground. My hands were cuffed and chains connected them to the cuffs around my ankles, but I could move enough to get to his gun. I got it midway out of his holster when hands grabbed my shoulders and threw me onto the ground. They beat me then, the two of them. Beat me until my eyes were swollen shut, my lips were split, and I could barely walk. I was a pulp, a raw, bloody sack of flesh. But they didn’t do it. They didn’t answer my prayers. They beat me within an inch of my life but they didn’t end it.

They threw me into my cell - I curled into a ball on the ground and began to cry, like the fool that I was. Because I knew that if they didn’t kill me then, I would have to wait. Death would still come, but it would come slower. The torture, the punishment, that was in the waiting. And any courage I had, any last vestiges of that brave, cowardly readiness for death, it was gone.

I was nineteen.

That was forty years ago. And still, the fear has not abated. It has not lessened even slightly. Perhaps if the life I had led was a full one, perhaps if the life I had led had followed the course it was supposed to follow, I could greet Death with pride, dignity, and acceptance. But I was robbed of my life. Robbed on a lie. Robbed by misplaced justice. I will turn sixty tomorrow. Then I will die. And I am terrified of it. Terrified because I know, in my heart, that God is either a myth, or has neglected us. I know that I will never see again. I will never breathe again. Will never run my fingers along the strings of a guitar, smell the history in the pages of a yellowing book. Never again will I think, never again will there be joy or sorrow or pain. I shall never dream again. Never hold a woman in my arms. I will die the way I have lived. In chains and deprived.

At least I am alone in my cell. Alone like I have always been. Like I will be tomorrow. Like I will be forever. Alone with thoughts that have darkened and soured further every day I have spent within these walls. Alone with the pen and sheaf of paper they gave an old man out of pity for his wasted life. I begged them for it, I begged them and they provided for this one final request. A pen. A real one. A beautiful work of craftsmanship, lines of silver and gold ending in a slanting point with seeping black ink dripping on its felt tip. The paper was old - brittle and yellow - but it would work. I will beg again, before my heart slows to a stop, before the arms of Death take me in. I will beg that they take this stack of paper, this journey of word and heart that is my very soul, and give it away. I will beg them to beg someone to publish it. For my life cannot stop tomorrow. My name cannot disappear tomorrow. I will force myself into a prolonged existence. My name will be uttered, with pity and regret, and people will remember who I am, and all the things that I have not done.

I have not spoken to my Mother or my Father in decades. I was not allowed to attend either of their funerals.

I have never seen an iPhone, or listened to music from after 1977.

I have never driven an automatic.

I have never leapt from an airplane, played cards with my friends, or lost money gambling.

I have never finished college. And so I never got a chance to get that job I wanted, as an editor at a publishing house. I wanted to write books in my free time.

I have never brought a girl home, nor have I ever been in love or been loved. I have never sunk to one knee, holding the hands of the woman who was my entire world, and asked her to marry me. I have never known the joys of a life where I was not alone. Never known the joys of raising a child.

I have never learned to play the violin.

I have never seen Venice, eaten Italian gelato, or ridden on the Tube.

I have never been to sea.

I have never joined the army like I had planned on. Never bled for my country like I so wanted to.

I have never been loved or respected. I have never been anything but a figure of controversy and hate.

And I did not kill Ben Smolsky.

The night he died, I was attacked by a man in a mask. He wore gloves and sunglasses and held a knife to my throat. My life, he said, or the gun that was protruding from the back of my jeans. I turned, let him take the gun. He tipped his hat at me, thanked me, and vanished into the night. I called the police. I told them what had happened. They said they’d send someone to look for the thief. A call they struck from their records when Ben’s body was found the next morning. He was the mayor of our little town. A good man. A kind man. And he was dead. Killed by my gun. But not killed by me. I have no reason to lie. The one thing Death grants you is honesty. I want it known that I am innocent. That you may all have been robbed of your mayor that night, but I was robbed of my entire existence. I want you to read this and to tremble. I want you to shake and scream and cry and beg your god for forgiveness because you have sinned.

I want you to suffer, as I have suffered. I want the guilt to rend your soul from your body. I want you to look at yourself with nothing but scorn and hatred. I want you to feel so acutely every breath, every beat of your heart. Because that is all I have become - an animal who counts every heartbeat. An animal that has been waiting for decades to die. An animal that has lived without hope, the one thing that separates humanity from the rest of the world.

I look out at a gray world between iron bars. If I close my eyes, I can picture beauty. But it is jaded. Because I have never seen it with my own eyes. My image of the world is a collection of movies and pictures. My life was never a life. How I wish I could inflict that on one of you.

They’re here already. The cell door is opening. I can sense freedom. They won’t take the pen from my fingers. I will spill my soul until my hand stops moving. My heart has never beat so fast, so valiantly. My mind is beginning to grow numb again. I have had forty years to find my peace. To accept the inevitability of it all. And I have failed. I never professed to be strong. I always knew I was a coward. But now I know that cowardice is innate to humanity. No man craves death. All men fear it. Yet still men send their brethren to burn. There is a sick sense of irony that subsists within the very concept of morality and justice. It is not lost on me.

My hand is moving feverishly, though my eyes are beginning to blur. I am both cold and warm at the same time. My stomach feels like it has become a bottomless pit. There it is. The altar upon which I shall fall. Faster, faster, faster. I will not go soft. I will not go easy. I will be the most foolishly courageous coward there has ever been.

The moment is gone. I am on the table. Writing though I cannot see the words I am scrawling onto the page. I can see people watching through the glass. A needle punches into my arm. I’ve always hated the sight of blood. There it goes, the anesthetic. Strange, weightlessness. I feel like I’m falling.

Maybe I -

I don’t want this. I feel like a boy again, though I am old by most standards, old and shrivelled and gray and moments from forever.

I am afraid.