The Silencing Of Waking Things

The greatest adventure in life, the actual living part is about to be documented. Fasten your seatbelts… No seatbelts? Well than fasten your guarder belts… No guarder belts? Me neither. Just hold on. Things all started a long time ago, or just yesterday. What? My mind gets fuzzy. That’s the real problem. How can I be punished for crimes that I must admit I feel fully capable of. But can by no means recall ever happening.
Multiple manslaughter they called it. Manslaughter, even if it is a girl. Really? What is it to slaughter a man? A human. True human power, at its gravest potential. I know I get angry often. Things just seem to bother me in a really deep way. I want to be more social, and like people. But it’s all the talking they do. I just can’t stand all the talking. All the questioning, all the wanting. They all seem to want something. To be heard, to be loved. They say the same thing all they time, “I just want to understand you.” What is there to understand about me? I’m just a girl I can’t save any of them from this life. My therapist says I’m anti-social. The judge said I was a sociopath. When I asked him did he mean like the Joker. He just stared at me like he didn’t even know who that was. I was just trying to grasp the term, and understand in what way he thought it related to me. A sociopath. Just because I don’t like all of the talking? I think they all expect me to want to talk because I’m a woman. If I where a man, I wouldn’t even be here right now. And they wouldn’t have said that thing about me not having any remorse for the crime. I said I was sorry, and didn’t remember everything. But honestly, I can’t. I just remember the talking.
*
` My name is Marley Jacobs, and I was a file clerk. I worked for the city of Los Angeles in the welfare department. Being a file clerk is a thankless job, but it’s quite. I like that. The quite. My job consisted of me working in a large room in the basement of a five story building. It’s not an exciting building. It’s old, and green, and full of social workers, and their colorful clients. I had to get searched by security guards every day before work. For my own protection of course, I may have a gun, or axe hidden on me I didn’t know about. So every morning on the first floor of the building I’d be searched alone side my co-workers, the social workers, and their clients. All on the same level of scum. Until we filed ourselves away to our different departments. The clients to the waiting room, where their children scream, and they waited to be degraded for a small fee. Me to the peace in the basement, and the social workers to the backrooms, or the upper floors. Where you hear their heels clacking the floors. Smell their over priced alcohol based perfumes. And of course the nonstop taking.
I worked with Kimber Larson. You know one of the girls they say I killed, or manslaughtered. Even though it was a girl. I guess I liked her. I means she dressed nice, and all. She was always asking about the basement, and my job. You know why a girl like me wanted to work as a file clerk. When I could be anything I wanted to. People think just because a woman looks nice, and dresses nice she should wants to be seen all of the time, or something. I told her I groomed myself out of boredom. But people can’t just seem to get it. I didn’t get out much, and fashion was my connection to the world. I wasn’t like her I didn’t want all of the attention, or the talking.
*

Every day she would come into my office, or the basement as it was really called while I was going through my files. And she would begin. The talking.
“Hey Marley. Did you watch Project Runway last night?”
I’d say, “Yeah”. Then the talking would go on. She always liked the worst designers. I have to admit I hated her for that. It’s a simple thing, yet we are all simple things. She’d go on for what seemed like hours about the show, and fashion magazine’s fall preview issues. Sure I liked fashion too. But like I pointed out before, we where different. She wore a mask, and I made masks. Could this be a reason to kill a person?
I’m not sure. I think any reason is a good enough reason to kill someone. The question is. Did I kill someone? Did I kill Kimber Larson? Was she really all that bad?
They say they found her body in the basement near the “F-H” section. Beaten to death. With a serious blow to the head, and burses all over her face, and upper torso. The blow to the head was done with a blunt instrument. A metal lunch box. My metal lunch box. My Star Wars metal lunch box? Really? Could I have hated Kimber, and her bad fashion sense, and insistent rambling that much? I mean I don’t really know. No one ever came into the basement. I heard people say they thought it felt creepy down there. I often wondered what made them fell that way, me, or the basement. I mean now that I think about it Kimber was the only person who ever came down. Not including Chuck the Janitor. He liked the quite also. He said it was a nice place to have lunch, and read. I also thought that. I liked Chuck he didn’t do a lot of talking. He was at the trial they asked him about me. He said, “She seemed like a lonely girl, like she had too much going on in her head. I always thought she was nice looking, but she had trouble expressing her self.” Chuck thought I did it. He said, “It was a very heinous crime, and Marley was a dark girl.” A dark girl. He should talk. He looked like one of those old guys you just know watches Japanese snuff films. They acted like they never even suspected Chuck. They said it had to be me because of the lunch box. “She always carried that lunch box. And she never had lunch in it she always caused the metal detector to go off with that thing” Yeah, well now that I really think about it I hated all of them. Especially Chuck. Why didn’t anyone think he did it? He was always foaming at the mouth over Kimber. He’s perfectly capable of this crime. I wasn’t the only so-called loner at work. Was I? Was I the only person who couldn’t stand the talking?
*
There where two other so-called victims. Michael Vincent. One of the security guards. I always called him Vincent Van Gogh. And he would look at me like he didn’t even know who that was. I hated him for that. They also found him in the basement. Stabbed to death with my Hello Kitty letter opener. I always wonder if you could kill someone with that thing. I guess there’s no question about it now. The second victim was Latonya Johnson, or Tonya as every called her. She always wear these yeast infection tight jeans to work. I mean she was bound to die of something some day. She would never stop talking about her wanna be gangster rapper boyfriend. I mean really is that even a clam to fame. A fake gangster rapper boyfriend? She also had really stupid taste in music too. Nelly, Trina, and Trick Daddy. Whatever. They said they found her in the second floor bathroom. Her head had been smashed into the porcelain sink, and than the mirror. No open casket for that one. They said they found my blood in the bathroom too, along with some of Kimber’s, and Vincent Van Gogh’s (who didn’t know who that was).
I just want to point out I hated both Michael, and Tonya for their stupidity, and do believe they deserved to die. I just don’t think I did it. I was nice to them. I would make Tonya mix c.d.’s all of the time. You know to help her see what real hip hop was, in hopes of saving her from her fate as a life long idiot. I even told Michael about the Van Gogh exhibit at LACMA, and the Starry Night song that was written about him. I really love that song it makes me cry every time I hear it. It just does not seem fair that great artist like Vincent Van Gogh should have suffered through life. And Michael Vincent should just continue on living like everything is just grapes. Only a real dumb ass would get stabbed to death with a Hello Kitty letter opener in my office anyway. They didn’t even offer to replace my metal lunch box. And that was a collector’s item. They just blamed me for the murders, and carted me off to Twin Tower’s women’s facility. Like I was Hannibal Lector or something. Like it’s a crime to hate the people at work. I bet some of you reading this hate some one at work right now. Well be carful because if they ever come up dead at work you may be carted off to prison also. They say I separated myself because in the five years I worked in the office I never ate in the break room. It’s called a break for a reason. So you don’t have to see anyone from work. I never bothered them they are the one’s who wouldn’t leave me alone. I wonder if they found me dead at work would the courts have blamed one of them. Probably Chuck. Then I could have been lead witness in his trial. And said all that stuff about him being anti social, and strange, like he said about me. And I would have brought up the Japanese snuff films as well.
So the state of California gave me one hundred and twenty five years for my crimes against humanity, and my co workers. They weren’t that great a group of people. But apparently people liked them. Go figure. What I really want to figure out is if I am really a multi murderer. I can’t remember having done anything wrong to any of those people. I went to work that Monday morning as usual. I saw Vincent Van Gogh in the lobby along with his other friends in the Gestapo which is L.A. County security. I got my usual search, and seizer of my box cutter. Which I couldn’t bring to work but I had it in my lunch box anyway for some reason. I also saw Latonya in the lobby that day. She gave my black, and white striped stocking, black Doc Martins, and pink mini dress the same hatful look of envy she gave my choice of clothing everyday. I just want to point out my supervisor Ms. Jones had recently sent me a memo about my “unorthodox” attire. And it’s inappropriateness in the work place. She should talk she wears patent leather Dolce & Gabbana rip off hills from Payless. And polyester in the summer time. Not that is the offence, polyester is just wrong anytime. Anyway the point is I had a felling that Latonya was the master mind behind my wardrobe complaints. She acted like she was so offended by my post apocalyptic punk rock wardrobe. Like she had never even seen the movie Tank Girl. Now that I think back I really did hate her. Do you know she had fake hair? Not Beyonce fake hair, but cheap swap meet fake hair. It looked real bad, and she would lie and say it was hers. She always lied about stupid things. I can’t see why anyone would have liked her. Let alone the people in her family who came to the trial crying and making things worst for me. Some one should go, and kill all of them too. Where is the baby cart assassin when you need him? I bet he would not have let the state give him one hundred and twenty five years. And what kind of sentence is that anyway? Do they even expect me to live that long. Like if I die will my spirit have to go to prison? What a bunch of rednecks. The public defender told me he had saved me from the electric chair due to my insanity. You know being a socio path, and all. What did he want me to say? Thanks I’d much rather sit in a psycho ward for the rest of my life, good looking out. I can’t believe he is still living. If I had one more day of freedom I’d go to his office tie him to his chair, dash him with petro, and set the whole thing ablaze. I’ve always wanted to do something like that you know. Burn someone alive. I wonder if you could smell the flesh, or would the wood burning over power it. Oh well I guess I’ll never know. I did read somewhere once that you could smell burning flesh, and the writer described it as the worst smell she had ever smelled. Pretty cool huh? I wonder if burning fat people smell like the Farmer John factory.