Blog 10 (story continued)

I didn't give a damn what the cost was, really.  I mean, I was ill. I was terminally ill. But, in a twisted since of reasoning, at that moment in the doctors office, I was free.  Free from the confines that hold us back day to day. From the bills, the chores, the daily struggle that people call "living" (1. SERIES OF THREE ITEMS WITH ONLY COMMAS). No, I was finally awake. I was alive.

I knew what to do with this new found freedom.  I had to pinpoint it, focus it to something that could make a difference.  I had to leave a mark in this town. I needed to be remembered. Those who lived here -who'd made the daily struggle to survive that much more unbearable- they were my focus.  They forced my hand. The men whom had taken what they'd wanted from those who could not defend themselves. I would come for them. I would be their king.

Don't think me a fool, though.  I knew what I was doing and I knew the risks.  I am a man of logic, after all. But, when policy fails and your left with only your head and your death sentence, logic becomes a burden.  Then, in the vast wasteland of fear-ruling and intimidation, only there can you find out what happens when logic fails. Ruthless, unorthodox, beautiful.

I did not wait long. For the first few weeks I only observed.  Gathering insight to the ways of the black market.  These dumb kids had no idea they were being watched. Or, so I thought at the time. This world was theirs, more than I knew.There was one kid in particular, Davis.  A punk adolescent, maybe 17, I never really asked.  He enjoyed his time within this world (8.Simple Sentence). It was Davis' attitude that eventually got the best of him; I do not tolerate taking more than ones earn...(7. Apostrophe for a noun ending in -s). I think it was his arrogance, really.  He had the audacity to sell to mere children - maybe 14 or so- and we do not sell to children, not ever (10. Complex Sentence).  So I made a promise to the little punk, and he was the first to leave (9. Compound Sentence). Everyone talks big and it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble.

It ends up being the sheer power of whose ready to to risk it all over a minor disagreement that is the deciding factor in who will walk away. If it is your instinct that you rely on in a confrontation, than it's yours that may eventually fail you, as mine did. 

Blog 9 (story continued).

         As bad as it looks, as bad as it really is, with the drenched bus ticket and pathetic suitcase,  it’s not as if I had never been through something terrible before. I have. My whole life I had been walked on.  Used and abused, as it were.  So has everyone else in the world, really.  Everyone wants to find the source of the problem in their lives, something that it all leads back to. As if one could really pin point all the crap in some one’s life, all the mistakes, the bad decisions, and tell them with a confident voice that it all began when the mean kids called you names in first grade. Give me a break (7. Long sentence followed by short).  These people with college degrees and fancy houses and white picket fences are so unaware of the world around them it’s almost embarrassing (2.Simple Sentence with Compounded words).  Living in a blissful state of ignorance and reality TV, they never realize that right outside their neighborhood is a whole world beneath the cracked surface that hides in plain sight. 

          As my hat begins to drip the built up rain off its rim I lean back and close my eyes, remembering.  I was one of them, before that damn doctor appointment.   I even had the white picket fence and a family dog.  True, I was happy then, but I hadn’t yet seen the light, the clarity that is brighter than the sun (6. Then and than). So how did it all go down, I am sure you must be wondering. It’s simple really but to answer that you would have to ask yourself, really ask yourself that is, one thing – what is worth it all? (3. Dash for emphasis &  4. Rhetorical question)

 

         This isn’t a story about justification for actions, however, it’s about revenge (8. One sentence paragraph &  1. However).

Blog 8

          As I sit, weak and fatigued, I pondered to myself: how could this be?  Everything I have worked for, everything I have earned. Now, nothing more than fits within a suitcase- a droll, poor amalgamation of a life once lived- sitting beside me on a park bench (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY DASHES).  Everyone says the same thing, too: “You should have stopped while you were ahead.” But they don’t know. How could they? They’ve never tasted desperate. Never have they felt the power of gaining everything one could want simply because there was nothing to lose.  It’s a sense of accomplishment really. Feeling the cold air brush my face as a single raindrop pattered on my hand, I knew: this was real (PARTICIPIAL PHRASE & APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY a COLON).  

        So I got greedy. I started to interfere with new grounds, new territories. Though, as I have mentioned, the power that comes with this business. No laws could have brought me down. Only the laws set by those in the business, the ones that could be enforced (if you had the manpower, the bite behind the bark), and even then I thought myself to be untouchable (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY PARENTHESES).  I liberated myself from the mundane repetition that is life.  Sometime things are left to be untouched, though. I was a fool. I know that now.

         And as that damn first rain drop trickles its way off my chin, I look down to see it drop onto my bus ticket, how the ink smudges as downpour slowly begins to blanket the street. The ticket becomes less and less legible. And the all too familiar feeling of what a single drop of liquid can begin to skew a clear message.  That how it all began, really, a drop of liquid, red and dripping down the piece of paper titled “REASON FOR APPOINTMENT” as I coughed in an all but empty waiting room (APPOSITIVE SET OFF BY COMMAS). In that room, in that moment, I was freed. Clarity finally had its day. 

I knew what was inside me. Not the illness, I mean. But the animal, awake after years of slumber. Conscious, faint but growing, was the animal becoming (ADJECTIVES OUT OF ORDER). Everyone says it’s a dog eat dog world.  It was time to bite back.