Complete the Story: 5 of 198

"How did you know?" I asked, not sure I wanted the answer. I thought I had been careful. I thought she had been oblivious this whole time. I suppose after a while, you get confident. That confidence turns into assurance. That assurance turns into laziness.  That laziness turns into ineptness. I had been doing this for such a long time. I thought by now I could get away without going over every detail.  That I had gotten to the point to where I was so good at what I was doing, that there was no way I could make a mistake. I suppose deep down inside I knew a time would come when my luck would run out.  Regardless, I lived as if it wouldn't.

"Insult." She answered. "You've always had trouble spelling that word."

She didn't have to give any further explanation. Papers I had written in high school and papers I had written in college often had ink as red as the blood of my victims marked around the word. For some reason I could never get it through my head that the u came before the l.  If I went back and reread what I had written, I'd catch it. I'd see inslut and I'd correct it. 10 years, 8 murders and of all things to do me in, a simple spelling mistake.

I held the phone in my hand looking at her through the glass partition. I tried to imagine what was going through her head. In love for nearly two decades and now she looked at me, her husband of 15 years and the father of her three children as if I were a stranger. Someone she wondered if she even knew at all. I pictured her reading the newspaper and coming across the letter I had written the editor. Seeing that damn spelling error and beginning to contemplate that maybe I had something to do with this.  I'm sure she wanted to dismiss the fact that the Toledo Torch and her husband both misspelled insult as a simple coincidence.  But then I imagined she read about how the last victim has been poisoned with rodenticide and how I had recently bought some even though we didn't have a rat problem. I imagine she began to wonder what I had bought it for.

I imagine that's why she had notified the police. Why she took the kids on a road trip to her mother's, only notifying me after they had been on the road for three hours. I didn't think much of it until Detective Vince Johnson and Officer Carl Sutton showed up at my door.  Looking back on that day, I wonder if I should have lied. I can't be the only person in Toledo, Ohio to misspell insult and there probably isn't a garage in the city that doesn't have a bag of rodenticide.  Yet I told the truth because I already knew the one thing they had that would convict me. The only thing they had. My blood.

My first victims were an accident. Or at least the first one was or so I'd like to think. I didn't go in with the intention of killing either one of those boys.  Was it fate? Was what I did that night and what I'd do sixteen times again my destiny? Was it a matter of circumstance?  I think about that night every day.  What if I hadn't have been there?  What if I had never seen those kids torturing that cat? Would I have became the Toledo Torch? The psychologists all say I would have. The television reports all agree. According to them the Toledo Torch as they came to call me, I,  John Ray Dennis was born to kill.

They were teenagers.  Both football players on the local high school team.  Kenny Roberson a fifteen year old sophomore and Bryant Coolidge a seventeen year old senior. Rich kids, with nothing better to do than to bury a cat up to its head in the dirt, while one held the camera and the other started the lawnmower.  I saw it from a distance. I still had on my gloves from work. I hadn't taken them off yet. It would later make it seem like a premeditated murder, but having the gloves on that day was nothing more than luck.  I ran out of my car yelling at the boys to stop.  When I arrived at the scene, I expected the boys to be afraid.  For Kenny to stop filming, Bryant to turn the lawnmower off and for the two of them to begin apologizing profusely. Instead I was met with the one yelling at me to get off his property and the other yelling at me to mind my own business.  I began to dig the cat out of the dirt when Bryant shoved me, knocking me over sideways onto the ground.  I had dug out enough  for the cat to escape as Kenny yelled out in frustration of its getting away and Bryant began to reprimand me.

"Your lucky my father isn't home!"  The tone of his voice set something off inside of me that I had forgotten existed. This little entitled bastard had the nerve to try and treat me as if I were doing something wrong. I kept telling myself that the cat was now safe and that's all that mattered. It was time to go. There was nothing I could teach either one of these young punks. If they had it in them to torture a poor, defenseless cat the way they had planned, nothing I said or did would knock any sense into them. I should've walked away, but I didn't.  It was the word "father" that  filled me with rage. I thought of my own father as I tried to picture Bryant's. I pictured him, the way my father had been, an insensitive, cruel, cold and callous man. The type who would condone such behavior. Celebrate the torturing of a cat and think anyone who opposed a pussy. Had Bryant Coolidge not mentioned his father, I do believe he and Kenny Roberson would still be alive today.  But he did mention him and I walked right up to that boy grabbed the handle of the lawnmower and yanked it out of his hand.  I then thrust it towards him, narrowly missing his foot.

"What in the Hell are you doing you crazy..." Before he could finish I threw the lawn mower against the fence as it busted apart.

"I hope you know I got this all on film."  It was the last words Kenny Roberson ever spoke.  I rushed him knocking him to the ground and as I grabbed his head and began to beat it against the cement.  Bryant had come over trying to pull me off, but I was in such a rage I didn't even notice.  He had hit me in the face twice, bloodying my nose. My blood on the middle phalanx and knuckle of both his index and middle fingers of his right hand. I'd like to think that maybe my intention had only been to teach Kenny Roberson a lesson. To put some fear inside of him, but I know better than that. I knew he wasn't knocked out. I knew he wasn't simply unconscious.  I knew he was dead, long before I ever stopped beating his head against the pavement.

Bryant stood in shock as I should have been too, looking at his dead friend. The only thing that shocked me was my own behavior.  It was as if I had suddenly become possessed.  Bryant began to scream for help, but advantage was mine. This home was out in the country. Outside of city limits. Two miles west of the factory I worked at and three miles south of the city. No one could hear him.  He hesitated for a moment, I suppose contemplating on whether he should stand and fight, or make a run for the house to the phone.  Had he gone right away, he might have made it, but the hesitation gave me just the right amount of time to reach out and grab him by the foot as he turned to run.  To describe what happened next would only be speculation on my part. I blacked out and when I came too, the body of Bryant Coolidge as did the body of Kenny Roberson lay lifeless on the ground.

My thoughts and my feelings as I stood there, the blood of these boys on my shirt and on my hands, contradicted one another. I wanted to feel panic. I felt that I should feel immediate remorse. If anything distress.  Instead I felt calm, uncomfortably calm. I didn't even breathe hard.  I dragged both boy's bodies to the fire-pit in the yard, grabbed the can of lighter fluid and put it all over them.  I noticed a bulge in Kenny's pocket as I reached in and pulled out a lighter. It scared me how as to how helpful the atmosphere and environment were. I hadn't been prepared for any of this, but everything I needed, it was all right there.   It's as if something knew I was coming and what I would do.  I lit them on fire and walked out of that yard and back into my car as if I had woke up on a Sunday morning and walked outside to casually grab the paper.

On the way home I thought more about my father and of how he had always referred to me as a gutless sissy.  He wanted me to be a man's man, but after a few attempts of converting me into his macho indoctrination, he gave up.  He took me out hunting when I was eleven years old.  I pointed the gun at a doe that day but I couldn't get myself to pull the trigger. That deer hadn't done anything to me.  I saw no need to do anything to it. My father hit me in the eye, a wound that later required two stitches, with the butt of the rifle. He told me I belonged in the kitchen with my mother and then he shot the deer right in the chest as it fell to the ground. He made me watch as he ran a knife across her throat and told me that he was ashamed of me and would only give me a ride back home because he knew if he didn't, he'd have to listen to my mother bitch about it.

I had many nightmares about that day. At first they were pretty much as the events had played out. I pointed the gun at the deer and I was never able to pull the trigger.  They would always end with me waking up in a pool of my own sweat at the thought of that deer being shot or my father slitting her throat. Then the dreams changed.  The deer was no longer in front of the gun when I put my finger on the trigger.  It was now my father and this time I pulled without hesitation. I'd even wake up with my index finger bending back and forth in convulsion.

It was a nightmare I hated having. There were times when I'd wake up in the morning and slowly walk into my parent's room afraid of what I might see. Those nightmares were too real and I had to see my father, snoring in his bed before I could convince myself that it was a dream and I hadn't really killed him. What frightened me most was how satisfying it was in my dreams to have shot him. How good it made me feel. Even more frightening was the disappointment I tried so hard to suppress, at the realization that he was fine and unharmed.  I did everything I could to block those thoughts out of my head.  I was terrified because I think I even knew then that they were the first signs to indicate what I was capable of. What it is that one day I would end up doing.  I had silenced them to the point to where I thought I had defeated them.  But now they were back, and this time there was no getting rid of them.

We talked about the murders once they had become well known around Toledo. I made sure to be a part of the conversation.

"I can't imagine someone doing that to one of my kids." I said. "I'd kill him."

My friend Wayne said to me, "I hope they catch that piece of shit."  I responded that I agree.

When the news-reporter said that after examining the charcoaled bodies that blood not matching Bryant or Kenny had been found, I accepted my fate that it was only a matter of time before it eventually caught up with me. I knew that if I were ever a suspect, they'd take a blood sample, the DNA would match and that'd be all they need.  It was the one vital mistake, the one I couldn't undo, that I could not deny. It was the only one I ever made but it was also the only one I ever needed to make.

"Did you ever think about killing me?"

 I came to after day dreaming, examining the question my wife had just asked me.  It caught me off guard.  I thought of the many times I had lied to her about where I had been and what I had been doing. All those lies and each time she had believed me. Now I was about to tell her the truth. The most honest thing I had said to her in years and I knew as she looked back at me that she doubted what I said.

"No."  It was all I could manage to get out.

The idea of ever harming my wife, my kids, anyone I cared about had never crossed my mind. My lawyer informed me that my neighbor Jeff Fowlkes had recently been interviewed. He said that he had known me for fifteen years and he had never once felt threatened by me.  He wondered now if it had all been an act. As if he had only been one time away from saying the wrong thing or doing something wrong.  As if it was all in good fortune that he hadn't pissed me off and ended up a number himself.

"I thought about coming to you and asking you first."  Her voice weakened as she spoke. "I really did."

I looked up at her at that moment.  I hadn't been able to look her in the face until then. I could see the truth in her eyes, as well as the pain. There was a sense of guilt. A sense of sorrow. She took the responsibility for why I was in here. For why I sit in a jail cell awaiting trial, which will undoubtedly lead to a guilty verdict, and a sentencing of being put to death.

It was then and only then where I felt regret. Not for myself. Not for my victims, but for my wife. I had been asked if I had been sorry for any of the lives I had taken.  I wasn't.  Each person earned what I did to them.  Molesters, abusers, animal mistreaters, con artists who had screwed people out of thousands of dollars. I am no more sorry for what I did to them, than will be the people who eagerly await the day the state of Ohio pumps 500 mg of hydromorphone into my blood. I'm sure the fathers, the mothers, the sisters, the brothers, the sons, the daughters, and the friends of those I killed won't be sorry. If anything they'll be as I was when I took the lives of those they loved. Satisfied.

I don't feel sorry for myself.  I feel sorry for her though. I do regret what my wife and my kids will go through.  My 12 year old and what he'll endure at school from those who are old enough to know what I did, but too immature to understand that he is not me and he had nothing to do with it.  My eight year old. Too young to even begin to comprehend any of this.  My three year old, who will one day ask his mother who will have to explain to him what Daddy was and why he was executed.  Do I hate myself for what I did?  Yes, I do. Or at least a part of me does anyway.  Only for them though. My wife doesn't deserve the ridicule and shame that she'll face.  She doesn't deserve the turmoil she'll face.  She's no longer Angela Dennis.  She never will be again.  My kids aren't  Christopher, Cassidy and Casey anymore. They're now the wife, the sons and the daughter of John Ray Dennis, The Toledo Torch. And for that I am sorry.

"You did the right thing." I knew I had to say something to her. It wasn't fair to sit in silence after she had said something to me that I knew took a lot of courage. I knew I couldn't comfort her. I couldn't say anything to make her feel better, but I also knew I had to try. It was the least I could do.

"Did I?" She responded.

She had the same thoughts I had, but for different reasons. I won't deny my selfishness, but her's was more out of fear. For reasons I've already mentioned and for those I haven't.  She would have to leave Toledo. Change her name. The kid's names.  I was the one with the job. The money.  How could she support three kids without me?

"You did the right thing."  I repeated it again.  I wanted her so badly to believe it. 

I had tried thinking about what would happen to her and my children a few times throughout the years but I blocked it out of my head before I ever got to far.   After a while it never even crossed my mind at all.  I wouldn't allow it too.  I had convinced myself of what I needed to do and I wouldn't let anything deter my mission.

The officer came in a few moments later and informed us that visiting hours were over. She left that day having came in looking for answers, only to leave with more questions. I haven't seen her since. I might not ever again.  I know I'll never see my kids again.  She won't allow it and I don't think if I were asked, that I would allow it either.

I sit here now. The newspaper my lawyer had gotten me that I now hold in my hand.  The very one where the journalist had the audacity to call those eight innocent. Innocent?  It still boils my blood. No, they weren't innocent. None of them were innocent.  They were all guilty and they all paid a price.  Kenny Roberson and Bryant Coolidge paid a price for tutoring a cat.  Clancy Green paid a price for molesting his daughter.  Heather Lane paid a price for purposefully infesting others with HIV.  Tony Timm paid a price for conning dozens of people out of tens of thousands of dollars. Lacy Pederson and Aaron Jeffries paid a price for running an illegal dog fighting ring and shooting those that didn't perform well in the head.  Paul Hines paid a price for hospitalizing his children.  I know I was wrong to write the paper a letter.  I know I was wrong to write it and send it in without proof reading it first.  I had taken the time to find an old type writer at a garage sale. I had taken the time to drive all the way to Pittsburgh to mail it.  Yet I couldn't take the time to proof read the damn thing.  To see as plain as day, "To call these people innocent is an insult. An insult to me and an inslut to anyone they ever hurt."   I see it now and I keep seeing it as I read it over and over and over again.

Complete The Story: 4 of 198

I've lived in this state my entire life, and most of the time that's fine by me. But in late fall when the sky fills with birds migrating south for the winter, traveling thousands of miles, I get homesick for places I've never been. Places like southern California. In my life I've had two friends of mine that spent a significant amount of time in Southern California.  Dennis Doderer who has been one of my best friends since I met him in 2007, lived in Southern California from 1973 until 2003.  After graduating from City High in Iowa City, he attended Michigan State from 1967-1971. He moved back to Iowa City for a year, working a few different jobs, one of which included laying black top roads around Sharon Center, Kalona and Hills that always make me think of him every time I take them.  He decided in the spring of 1973 that he wanted to try his hand at making it as an actor and writer in Hollywood.

I live vicariously through a man who was a year and a half older than I am right now the day I was born. He tells stories of the life he lived living in various parts of Los Angeles, including South Pasadena. I'm sure he over exaggerates for dramatic effect, but I can't help but notice the glimmer in his eyes each time he reminisces about his experiences there.  Getting to meet and mingle with celebrities.  Getting to walk his dogs or go for a jog in the middle of February.  He never woke up to eight inches of snow like what we have now.  Sure the traffic sucked and the crowds could be overbearing but if excitement and adventure were what you craved, there was never a shortage.

I think to myself that maybe it's not so much the location I desire as much as it is the situation.  Des Moines is a neat place.  A place that does a piss poor job of advertising and promoting itself, but still a community with fun and interesting things to do, if you know who to talk to and where to look.  I think if my life were to ever get to a point of financial stability that I would find myself enjoying what the state of Iowa refers to as a city.  Yet I also wonder if I am to forever be one to struggle in terms of economic standing, if I'd enjoy living paycheck to paycheck in a warmer environment.  The bitter cold, with it's crappy driving conditions doesn't appeal to me at all.  I like the idea of being able to walk the dog or go for a jog 365 days a year.  I'm sure my bicycle would rather be used all fifty two weeks, rather than getting shut up in the garage for nearly half the year. 

My friend Steve, who I haven't seen in five years lived somewhere along the coast line.  It wasn't a city I am familiar with and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it.  Steve never had a cell phone and the last time I tried to call him, I found out that he had moved.  I'm not even sure if he lives in Coralville or not.  All I can remember is that he longed to one day move back to California, if the opportunity ever came up again.

He loved living there every bit as much as Dennis did, but for much different reasons. He didn't live in the hustle and bustle of L.A. He lived in a quieter area.  One where he often went fishing or for a boat ride on the lake he lived near by.  While not a swimmer, Steve loved the water.   During spring and summer in Iowa City, he seemed to think Iowa was an okay place to be.  Whether it was the Coralville reservoir or just going out and admiring the river from a bridge, he made peace with his surroundings. During the winter, when the water froze over, he'd cuss the cold with every breath.  He hated heavy jackets. He hated gloves, he hated winter hats.  He even seemed to hate the fact that his car had a heater.  Not that he wasn't thankful for it on our joyful negative 22 degree nights, but bitter at the fact that he lived in an area where it was so desperately needed.

I have a goal to be out of Iowa and to live in a warmer climate before the clock strikes midnight on the 31st of December, 2023.  I'll be an old man, nearly forty and maybe that's a blessing in disguise.  I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't resentful, because I am.  I always thought succeed, fail or something in between that I'd always make a real go for it as an actor and a writer myself.  I never saw myself as a leading man or anything even remotely close to it. People hear me say that I wish I could've gone out to Hollywood at some point in my life and they get this idea in their head that I think I would have been a major star or something.  I suppose I am that confident as a writer. I do think screenplays I've written are good enough to be box office hits, but I never thought of myself that way as an actor.  What I pictured was sharing an itty bitty space with another dreamer, working odd jobs, having that one episode of FRIENDS where I was on screen for 15 seconds in a 23 minute long episode.  Maybe I would've gotten lucky.  Maybe I would've became something. I don't know. I never will.  Instead of getting to go out and try, I ended up being imprisoned by student loans that kept my feet cemented within their cell here in Iowa. I think that's another reason I want to get out so much.

Anymore, California doesn't excite me as much as it used to.  I still believe and for that matter still work on my end as a writer. The chances are slim, but I think it's even more ludicrous as well as ridiculous to give up than it is to keep trying.  I get where the quitters are coming from.  It is highly unlikely that I ever walk into a cinema to watch something that I wrote. The day I attend a play in New York City, it most likely won't be to watch characters I thought up of in my head.  I'll continue to write novels and novellas, and I'll be lucky if I ever get any published, let alone see them on the top 25 best seller lists.  I get that.  Yet, this is what I want out of life. This is who and what I want to be. To me it is insane to give up and be content with it never happening.  To have but this one life, this one and only opportunity and to not at least try? That may be something most people get and understand. I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't want to either. 

It's funny to me that in all the years of dreaming of making it as a big time writer and as an actor, that I always pictured myself in California.  I guess New York has always been a bit of a turn off for me.  For one, I've never had any close friends from New York.  While both seem overcrowded and overwhelming, Los Angeles has always seemed more friendly and welcoming than the Big Apple.  New York is also theatre, and theatre in comparison to film, seems to be more musically inclined.  I can't dance. I CAN NOT sing and I sure as Hell can't write music to accompany a script.  The thought of being ostracized by some little prick that can't write dialog or structure a scene to save his life, just because he can sing, has always been a major turn off to me.  And frankly, why I put New York out of my head over twenty-five years ago when these dreams first began to enter my mind.

When the time comes for me to move, I'd love for the current project my friend Jason Janes and I are working on to take off.  We have developed a television series entitled WE HAVE EVERYTHING. Thus far we have six screenplays intended for hour long episodes.  I've written five and Jason's written one.  Which is perfect because he envisions himself as a director and post production editor where anymore, my entire focus is as a writer.  The episodes of WE HAVE EVERYTHING will most likely never go beyond the page.  A handful of people will read them and that will be the entirety of their exposure.  Nevertheless little brings me more to life than when I write an episode.  We send in our ideas to various markets. We had Amazon actually give us a call back once on another idea that we worked on three years ago.  Granted we only had one call back and one request to do a rewrite but it was still a call back.  A call back that proves that maybe having these dreams and these lofty goals isn't as far fetched as some would like to believe.

If that were to happen, then maybe California is still on the list.  As for now though, I'm beginning to long for Atlanta, Georgia.  A city that from what I see is affordable and welcoming to writers, actors, directors, ect with opportunities to boot.  Great weather and while nothing compared to Iowa, a decent amateur wrestling presence.  High schools in the area including Marietta and Shorter college with a competitive team only an hour's drive.

Tennessee is a state that I really enjoyed visiting.  Been told by others that parts of Arizona would be appealing to me as well.  Really at this point with exception to Mississippi, about anywhere where it doesn't get drastically cold, icy or freezing appeals to me at this point.

Complete The Story: 3 of 198

Regrets.  We all have them. Those things in life we did that we wished we wouldn't have. Or in some cases those things in life we didn't do, that we wished we would have.  Regardless of what they are, or how many we have of them, we all have them.  One of mine is the way I treated a girl in school. Looking back, I was a real jerk to her. I shouldn't have been and I wish I could take it back.

It started in junior high. She said something to me in health class that really ticked me off. Rather than get her back and call it even or heaven forbid let it go, I decided to make an Everest out of a Wycheproff.  I had been swatted with piece of toilet paper and decided the best way to retaliate was with an atom bomb.  Being the writer I am, whit can come rather natural to me in times of need. When I want to, I can come up with the most clever of insults. I can tear someone apart with my words. My offense is vocabulary.  Seeing that she wasn't as keen on using the English language as a weapon as I was, her itinerary plan was strictly physical.  Punched, kicked, slapped, I think there was even a time she headbutted me.

Truth is, she was the one that tried to make peace. I can distinctly remember twice when she was the bigger person. The one who stuck out her hand and tried to end the war that she had never really wanted to start in the first place.  In math class our teacher had finally had enough of our back and forth and demanded that we each say something nice about one another.  To her credit, she came up to me and complimented me on the performance I had recently given in a play I had done in drama class. I responded to her that I couldn't think of anything nice to say about her but I'd appreciate it if she'd make something up and tell the math teacher that I did.  The wind left my body, almost as quickly as she did, as her fist connected with my gut and she ran up to tell our math teacher that I had made out like George Thorogood, having done let the deal go down.

To be completely vulnerable I was terrified of her. Terrified of what I thought she might know and what she might do with that information. I was a depressed and unhappy teen. I'd like to at least pretend that I somewhat did a decent job of hiding it from the rest of the world. That I kept it well hidden.  And maybe I did. Or maybe others just made me think that I did.  Either way, she saw right through me, and it scared me to death. I hated that she knew how depressed I was.  I hated it with such passion and the only way I knew how to deal with it was by being as cruel, cold and mean to her as I could be.  My reasoning, although flawed was simple. She had discovered something about me that I wanted no one else to know. I figured that if I was malicious enough, I could turn her curiosity into disdain and she'd give up on her exploration.

With a tough exterior skeleton there is no way she would ever admit that anything I said ever got under her skin. I wasn't important enough to have ever had that much power.

As much of a prick as I was to her, two of my favorite high school memories involve her. There were two times during teenage years that she made me feel like a million bucks.  Once, she even brought me to tears.

Creative Writing class, junior year of high school.  On our last day of class we had to write a story, recapping our experience and what we got out of the class.  I'll never forget what she said about me.  "I can see myself one day in a Barnes and Noble, and on the shelf will be a best seller written by Stephen Stonebraker.  Or maybe one day I'll go to a movie with my husband and kids, and written by Stephen Stonebraker will flash across the screen."  Here was a girl, that essentially didn't even like me. Someone who on other grounds in other capacities thought of me as a loser. And yet here she was so confident in my ability and so sure of my talent that she came right out and said it. There are times when writing a novel or a screenplay, the thought of giving up often crosses my mind.  I get so frustrated and angry that I haven't gotten anywhere yet.  I feel like tossing my keyboard across the room, watching it smash into a thousand pieces and saying the Hell with it forever.  Then I'll think of her and think to myself if she, someone who didn't even really care for me as a person had to admit how talented I was, then maybe someday someone else might too.

Monday February 16th, 2004 is a day that sticks out in my memory.  On Saturday the 14th of February, 2004 I had placed third at the sectional tournament at WACO high school.  In the state of Iowa, in order to qualify for districts you have to place first or second.  One match.  One match shy of qualifying. It was one of the worst days of my life. One of the worst feelings I've ever felt.  I went into zombie mode and didn't even set my alarm clock Sunday night.  For the past four years I had gotten up around 5:30 a.m. and got up to run three miles.  On this particular Monday morning, I didn't even wake up until around 9:00. 

When I got up, I was in no hurry to get to school.  I lounged around the house and watched a little TV until the phone rang.  I let it go to voicemail and listened as a school official left a message for my Dad asking where I was at.  I deleted the message and went right back to watching T.V.

I don't know how my Dad found out but about an hour later, he came barging into the house yelling my name almost in a frantic scream that I can only describe as morbid. When he saw me sitting on the couch watching a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show he took a second before he said anything.  What I needed at the time was a Dad to sit and talk to me about everything that I felt. To let me express myself and maybe make sense of all of the pain that made up every thought, feeling and emotion that I had. Instead, I was given a royal ass chewing, told to get in the shower and to get my ass to school.

When I got to school, I guess Randy Stonebraker wasn't the only one who thought that maybe I had decided to end it that day.  There were a lot of people at school who were very careful with me that day. Treated me as if I were a fragile piece of glass, ready to break at the slightest wrong word. My English teacher even came right out and said it.  Others thought it, but she was the only one to actually say to me that she worried that because I hadn't won that I might have killed myself.

I was numb. I began to wonder if losing out on this goal that I had worked so hard at for so long might have completely drained me of emotion. I had scared my Dad into leaving work, speeding home and worrying himself nearly to death that he'd find more just an open gun cabinet when he arrived home.  I had sat on a couch, listening to him reprimand me.  I came to school, heard my English teacher admit that she and others were worried that I had done something to myself.  And I had seen my entrepreneurship teacher and my guidance counselor who had both taken me aside to let me know that they both wished things would have turned out differently for me.   All of this, all of it, still left me without much feeling. It wasn't until psychology class, when I finally felt something again.

Somehow or another we got on the subject of me and there she sat, giving her opinion. She said that her and her family had learned that I had fell one match short of qualification and they talked about it for a bit over dinner that night.  She said she remembered seeing me run all over town, always saw me in the mornings lifting weights or working on moves. Said I was the one of the hardest working people she had ever known and that she felt awful that things hadn't worked out for me.

A girl made me cry that day, and probably not for the reasons she would suspect. Yeah, it felt good to know that someone cared about what I was going through, but my tears were more so out of guilt and regret than they were anything else. If anything, here was someone that should have rejoiced in my failure. Someone who had every right to dance in victory upon my defeat. And yet for a reason I'll never understand, she did just the opposite.  She poured her heart out to me that day and all I could do was sit and think about how much of a jackass I had been to her for all that time.  She had no reason to, in fact she had every reason not to, but for some reason she gave a damn about what I was going through.

There's nothing sexual here, nothing intimate or romantic. It's nothing like that at all.  Matter of fact, there's little to no chance that we would have ever have been friends. We're two different people.  She's an extrovert. Popular and preppy. The type that adheres to all of societal expectations of fitting in.  I'm an introvert.  A loner who couldn't care less what others think.  What it comes down to is this.  No, we weren't ever going to be friends but we didn't need to be enemies either and it's my fault that we were.

I've since forgiven myself and life has gone on.  It's not something I hold on to or something I let eat away at me or anything like that. It's simply something I thought of upon the opening statement, and something that if I had the chance to go back and redo, I would.

Complete The Story: Story 2 of 198

Perhaps it was a dream, she thought. Perhaps if she pinched herself, she would  wake up. But she didn't want to wake up.  She wanted to stay in this dream world where she was pretty, popular and NOT fat. Her mother, Geraldine, liked to speculate, often through verbal ridicule that her daughter often slept as much as she did due to depression. Which in partial was true. Reality for Brittany Haselrig, sucked. Actuality for her was Southeast High School, in Hartwick, Texas, where she often found herself the butt of Mary Lee Clayton's insults and painfully unnoticed by Nick Wilson, captain of the football team.  If she opened her eyes, before her she'd see an old farmhouse, chipped and stained.  A neglectful stepfather, who married a woman strictly for her good looks (which Brittany did not inherit by the way) not to be outdone by his trophy wife, who in turn only married him because of an inheritance that she was almost certain he would one day get.  Seeing her mother usually only took notice in materialistic things, she was surprised that her mother took as much interest in Jerome Grossman as she did. It didn't make sense to her why a woman wrapped up in her own shallowness would ever want a balding, fat man, who didn't seem to have much in life.  Then one day it all came together when Brittany learned that her Stepdad's father was part owner of farmland, his share worth somewhere in the neighborhood of nine million dollars. They'd have to wait until his death of course to collect, but for that type of money, her mother didn't mind being patient. Brittany on the other hand did.

Not that Brittany resembled her mother in terms of avarice.  For Brittany it was more a matter of timing.  She was a senior in high school, already through half the year. Only a little over three more months to go. She hated herself for hoping one day she'd hear about her stepgrandfather's death, but she forgave herself as to why.  She had nothing against the man she had only met a handful of times. He seemed a nice enough. Much like Jerome himself, J.R. as they called the Grossman patriarch, preferred to be left alone. At 90 years old, Brittany often imagined she'd come home from school one day to see her Stepdad in distraught, and her mother going for the academy award to act just as upset, at the death of J.R.  She imagined as Jerome would eventually be left to grieve alone, that she would listen to her mother damn Uncle Sam to Hell.  Inheritance tax whatever it would be, would still leave them with more money than they ever thought they would have, but her mother wanted all of it.

And who was Brittany to judge?  She liked to think of herself, at least on a moral level, to be better than her mother, but was she?  That she questioned.  She wanted that money. There was no attempt at false modesty here.  Maybe not as much as her mother did, but she wanted it.  And furthermore, she wanted it now.  Maybe Mary Lee Clayton would still think she's better than her, but Brittany would have the fancier, more expensive clothes. She'd out do Mary Lee Clayton in terms of jewelry and most importantly she'd outdo Mary Lee Clayton with the most expensive car her mother would allow her to buy.  It was bad enough that Brittany had to drive a Geo Metro to school.  A car that Mary Lee Clayton referred to as "the turd."  The teasing and bullying were about all Brittany thought she could handle, until the Geo one day blew a gasket.  For two solid weeks, Brittany, a senior in high school, had to ride the bus. Humiliating enough as it was, Mary Lee Clayton made sure to remind everyone as often as she could. Oh, what Brittany would give to roll into school in a Bentley or Porsche.  See what Mary Lee Clayton would have to say then.

And then, there was Nick Wilson. It was funny as much as Brittany loathed the superficiality and cursory demeanor of Mary Lee Clayton, she secretly hoped that Nick Wilson might be at least a smidgen that way. She knew that there was no way, as she was, that he would ever want to be with her. She was middle class, unpopular and unattractive. Money, she dreamed, might make the difference.  Even if it would never blossom into anything other than a one time get together, she'd invite him on a limousine ride to Houston to the most elegant and sophisticated restaurant she could find.  No way would he turn that down.  And if he did, then she'd invite him to sit in box seats at a Houston Texans game.  An offer, no Texan, other than a Dallas Cowboys fan, could ever resist.

It was quite the fantasy.  One Brittany found herself in whenever she closed her eyes and dreamt.  A world where, even if it was pure imagination, she for once got to be better than Mary Lee Clayton.  Make her feel small. Make her feel for once in her stuck up, better than thou art, maleficent ways inferior to someone else. Brittany felt an enormous guilt at the resentment she felt for J.R. for being as able and healthy as he was. She repressed the thoughts to the point of subconsciousness, but even at that point, she could not deny the feelings.  He'd live well past her graduation date. Well past the opportunity to have those days, those moments, to where it'd finally be her turn to look down at Mary Lee Clayton.  Resentment she found to be stronger than guilt or regret.

She tried her best to only dream of the future. Something that had the ability to change. The past, as much as she yearned for it, would never be again. She thought it illogical and furthermore detrimental to think of yesterday but it crept its way into fantasy anyway.  In her dream Bobby Haselrig, her father was still alive. He hadn't died those years ago from mesothelioma. He wasn't buried in a cemetery in far away New Mexico. He was still alive and they still lived Aztec. She still attended Vista Nueva, where she still wasn't popular, but at least she had friends.  And better yet, no enemies. No Mary Lee Clayton.

As the alarm clock rang a third time Brittany debated in her mind which fantasy she enjoyed more. The one where she had money and she could up Mary Lee Clayton or the one where she was back in Aztec, and she didn't even exist.  Suppose it didn't matter which one was better, neither was the option she'd have when she opened her eyes.  Instead she'd open them, shower, brush her teeth and hop in to her "turd" for another day of torment at the whits of Mary Lee Clayton at Southeast high.

"I don't get why you let that alarm clock go off so many times!" Her mother yelled unable to fathom why her daughter always seemed to stay in bed as long as she could. She didn't know why they had to go through this every morning. She knew her daughter heard her, same way she heard the alarm clock the previous two times it had gone off.  Maybe only if she could see what Brittany saw, maybe then she'd understand why for as long as she could, she would keep her eyes shut.

Complete The Story: Story 1 of 198

At first, we thought the black liquid was oil, that we'd struck it rich and that we'd be able to retire and live in leisure. We actually started writing down all the ways we'd spend the money.  Our first choice was of course to make the 150 mile trip from Hannibal to the small little piece of land near Martinsburg, Iowa we simply knew as "Granddad's Farm."  Pa had taken a job on a packet steamer five years prior. We came to Hannibal in 1866, the Civil War still fresh in the minds in those who had fought it. Especially those who had lost. Pa had avoided the draft, mainly due to the fact that Ma succumbed to a fever right as I was getting to know her and long before Jack was even aware of his own existence. Let alone her's. We were Yankees in a land that still thought, behaved and lived as confederates. Bitter at the loss of slaves, reluctant a word not near strong enough to describe the utter hatred at the thought, now a reality of being part of the union. We mourned the death of President Lincoln. Something as Iowans that made us normal. Something as Missourians that made us different. Drastically different.

When Pa mentioned going back to Iowa, there was only one word I didn't care to hear him use.

"Visit." He had said.   Go back and "visit" Granddad.  I hated the word visit. It suggested that after the three day journey to Iowa and spending sometime with Granddad that we'd eventually make our way back to Hannibal.  We were rich now.  Pa didn't need the Packet Steamer anymore. Why make the trips back and forth to St. Louis and Keokuk if he didn't have to? He could buy a plot of land near Granddad's, farm it and spend as much time with Jack and I as he wanted.  Pa didn't see things that way though.  He valued education and be it a cruel and unreasonable fate, Hannibal had built its first on the corner of north and sixth.  The building stood tall, firm and beautiful.  As far as Pa was concerned, especially with the money we'd now be getting from the oil he'd discovered, if I wasn't the first, I'd be one of the first girls to ever attend. I had just turned eleven. Always happy to turn a year older, the idea of fourteen, now three years away, I dreaded. I dreamed of many things I'd do when I'd get older. I dreamed of getting married. I dreamed of having children. I dreamed one day I'd travel further south and see the great ocean that Granddad had told me about.  Funny enough, I even dreamed of one day being a school teacher myself. I taught Jack the alphabet and his numbers, and I read to him at night. Yet one day entering Hannibal High School as what might be the lone female freshman, was no dream of mine.

"It's a shame that the railroad isn't complete yet." I can remember Pa saying.

 The railroad had came into Hannibal the same way I had came into Martinsburg, Iowa in the year of 1859. Peculiar enough the same year that oil, real oil unlike the kind we'd discovered had been found in western Pennsylvania.  It'd be a long time before the rail would connect to Ottumwa. A town Granddad went to once a month, to get food and supplies. A two hour journey compared to the 18 hour journey it'd take us over the course of three days on horse and buggy.  I was 45 years old in 1904, the first time I ever saw an automobile in person. Pa had shown me one in a drawing years prior and had referred to it as a horseless buggy.  The man at the fair had said to all of us in the crowd that it was six times faster than any other form of transportation known to man. That anyone in their right mind would gladly trade in their horses for one. I only wish Pa could have been there to have let that man clearly know different.  Neither Pepper or Salt, our two horses were thoroughbred but to Pa, Jack and I they were better than anything Karl Benz or anyone else would ever invent.  We weren't going by train on a rail line yet to be laid nor were we going in an automobile yet to be built. We were going by horse and buggy, but we were going, and that's all that mattered.

Pa got me excited at the thought of getting my hair done like the fancy ladies we'd sometimes see. Jack's teeth had already began to rot at the thought of all the candy Pa told him he could now get when we visited the general store.  He tickled himself something pink at the thought of dressing like one of the sophisticated gentlemen he'd tell me about when the packet steamer made its trips to St. Louis.  I even caught him in the stable later on that night explaining to Salt and Pepper all of the carrots, oats and apples they were now going to get. When I teased him about it saying that the horses couldn't understand him, he begged to differ that they could.

"How bout I put some hay on one side of em and some carrots on the other." He said to me. "Then you tell me if they don't know the difference."

That night I slept better than I ever had before.  Than I ever have since for that matter.  The idea of being rich and being able to do what we pleased when we pleased was very appealing.  I dreamed that night of seeing Granddad. Of telling him all about the oil and of how I knew that between the two of us, we'd somehow convince Pa to forget about life in Hannibal and stay in Martinsburg.

Pa had Jack and I in Church at Trinity Episcopal every Sunday and I suppose if I thought hard enough I could remember a few other sermons throughout the years. It was the one the Sunday after we found out that it wasn't oil we had discovered after all, that I'll always remember most.  Reverend Stevenson, who spoke with such conviction talked to us of how the true depth of happiness could not be found in wealth. As much as I usually revered Reverend Stevenson, on that day I thought of him a dunce.  I sat in the pew, my arms folded, my face frowned. Money meant getting out of Hannibal. It meant getting to see Granddad. It meant getting to eat steak at the fancy restaurant where the politicians and other important people ate.  Maybe to Reverend Stevenson none of that seemed all that special, but to me, it was.

Granddad died before we ever saw him again.  Pa promised that even though the oil deal hadn't worked out that we'd make it back to Granddad's again. Someday, he always claimed. Someday, a day that would never come.

With the railroad now making its way all over the country, it wasn't long before Pa left the Packet Steamer and joined the light and power plant.  Of all the plans Pa had set forth the night we thought we'd discovered oil, I'll be damned if the only one that came forth was me entering Hannibal high school in the fall of 1873. I graduated in 1877 and attended Hannibal College the following year to study law.  Arabella Mansfield may have been the first woman admitted to the Iowa bar, but she was also thirteen years older than me. Another one of those of many, "nothing you can do about it, out of your control" things.

The year is now 1912, I am 53 years old. Far from the 11 year old girl I was in 1870.  Jack who celebrated his forty-eighth birthday in February has spent the last six years in Belfast, Ireland. He wrote to me to let me know that he'll be making his way home in April.  He'll go from Belfast to Queenstown, a journey more than 100 miles than that of Hannibal to Martinsburg. Then he'll board what he says the world is calling the finest ship ever built.  The Titanic they call it. Finished in May of last year.  Supposed to arrive to New York on either the seventeenth or eighteenth of April.  He wasn't sure of which day.

In all of these years, I've still never seen the ocean. I would have seen Jack off when he left six years ago, but I was busy with a case in St. Louis. Even though I told him that I'd be waiting for him right here when I arrived, I think I will travel to New York and meet him at the port.  The last I saw him his hair had started to grey. He reminded me so much of Granddad. I can only imagine he looks more like him now than he did then.  After all this time, I still like to close my eyes and imagine what Granddad's face would have looked like had the oil been real and we'd have gotten to pay him a surprise visit.  I'll know what his face would have looked like when I see the surprise on Jack's face when he sees me this April in New York.

We have all sorts of plans.  Visiting Pa's grave, visiting Ma's and visiting Granddad's. I want to show him the courthouse I practice in here in St. Louis.  Take him around this great city, I have come to call home.  I suppose he'll probably want to venture back to Hannibal. He always liked it more than I ever did.