Epitaph
Date Friday, March 29, 2024 - 04:22 AM PST
Topic Experiences


I've been gone for awhile...at least a month or two by my count, it's been hard to figure time lately. Anyways, I'll keep this as to the point as possible. This is an Epitaph to someone who will never have one, this is a remembrance of mine about someone I knew and cared for that isn't around anymore, and I write this out here...because this is the only place where I can find people I think would understand her, and maybe give thought to her in a good way.

She's a Jane Doe now, killed by one 9mm. round to the head. She was found in the desert, stripped of everything. She'd been out there long enough to feed a few animals. She was taken in, and labeled unidentified. The nameless victim of a murder that was just to random, sudden and clean to be solved.
 I knew her, a friend of mine who worked in the morgue she was in called me. There wasn't much to recognize except a tattoo of a cross across her shoulders, and even that was fucked up.
 Her name was Kelly...though in honesty I'm not sure if that was her first or last name. She wasn't pretty, not in the conventional sense. She was a tough woman, mean too when she got to drinking. I met her when my parents got divorced, it was a bitter and nasty affair...and like a lot of kids who believed themselves truly capable of independance, I ran away.
 She found me in an alley way, dumpster diving...and gave me a meal and a place on the couch in her apartment. I didn't stay for long, she wasn't friendly, not in the way I was used to...but she was definately different.
 I went back home, and back to trouble. Mom was a wreck, dad had found Jesus...I ran away again, but this time I was full of violence and hate, I had an urge that really could only be sated by one thing...and all the movies tell you that you can never really sate it at all.
 I found Kelly again, and told her what was going on. I was a kid still, and a loudmouthed one at that, but she laid down a few rules and told me a few things. I stayed with her for a couple of months this time. I had always guessed that my folks had gone crazy with grief and maybe had gotten back together after I had ran away, shit...turned out it was just more fuel for the flames.
 I found out what Kelly did for a living, from the way she left and came home in different clothing, from finding things in the kitchen no one normal would ever have. The dentistry kit was what tipped me off. She was a murderer, and when I asked her about it...she didn't hide it, she just made a distinction. She didn't murder people randomly, or for any religious reason...it was for money, pure and simple. Someone with the right connections would get in touch, pay her off and she'd go to work. She'd been doing it for a couple of years. Being a person who wanted nothing more than the exact thing her job provided, I asked...begged to be let in. The flat out answer was no, I was way the fuck to young, didn't know what I was getting into, and still cared about shit. I wore on her though...and after a few days she consented to teach me a few things. How to disappear was the first lesson, how to guage a threat, how to look for someone in a big god-damn place, what I should use to make someone up and die, where I should put them, what I should do to them to make them lose their name...it was only a couple of months, but I was a damn quick study. I never got to go with her, but when she'd come home, she'd tell me bits and pieces. She was the strongest woman I had ever met. I never asked her why she took me in, then, I didn't think it was unusual. But she gave me a place to stay, as long as I needed it. She taught me things.
 When I finally went back home I was a bit more capable of handling myself. The war between my mother and father still raged, so I told my mom how to ditch him. And we ran away.
 When I got into my late teens, I finally hooked up with some people...and before long, the stuff Kelly had taught me was a bit more useful. What money I made, went to my mom and sis. After she met and married a new man, a good one, I stopped that shit and settled down...joined the fleet...and well...thats another story.
 I always wondered about her though. Missed her. She was a wetworker, or maybe she just said she was. Maybe she was a prostitute who watched a lot of hitman flicks, maybe she worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken and hated her life so much she had to lie to make it liveable. Maybe she was just a runaway. I don't know. But she gave me space to stay, and she taught me stuff.
 After finding her in the morgue, I went out on town and started looking. It took me a few days but I found the guy. In my mind, if Kelly had been a wetworker, she would have been the best. You know, the kind you see in movies and read about in books...so good they were untouchable, the type that only die in some spectacular, cinematic fashion. One shot to the back of the head robbed her of her mystique and stole away a death that should have made headlines.
 I found the guy. A fat loser with a hell of a lot more money to spend on alcohol then he usually did. We got around to the usual mysogonistic bullshit, and he confessed that he had finally had enough of a certain bitch and did her in. I didn't ask more about why he knew her...I didn't want to know...but I asked about the tattoo across her back, her cross to bear and he confirmed.
 Part of me wanted to torture the guy...forever. It wasn't just Kelly, it was a lot of things...I've been carrying some serious Violence with me for a while, and he seemed the perfect outlet. But another part of me just wanted to go home and cry.
 I sort of settled in between I guess...

 Theres a grave in a stupid little desert town marked Jane Doe. No one knows her, no one cares. She might have been a whore, an addict, a murderer, a soccer mom, a clerk or just a criminal. But she gave a runaway a place to stay.



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