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Submitted by Magicaddict (View user info) at 2005-07-14 18:50:58 EDT
One action can change someone's life. It can make them think, in which case they will change in due course; it can make them respond on reflex, whereupon they realise what they are doing and change forthwith; or it can grant them epiphany, causing them to change instantly, as if their new ethos were second nature and had never differed from its current state.
Such an action often happens at a moment of crux, where quite unbidden by its protagonists a choice presents itself, and whichever tangent is followed - normally on reflex - precipitates the action that causes the change.
However, the moment, and its subsequent choice and action can be part of a greater whole - the entire package can be the consequence of another such action in the past.
The moment involved Simon Jarvis appearing to charge at me out of a back alleyway behind the Stump and Divot, on the now infamous Saturday night in deepest, darkest Worcester. My choice was to pull the knife that, due to my apparent lack of pretence and normally reasonable demeanour, he hadn't known I was carrying. The precipitate action changed his life in the most emphatic way it was possible to do so.
Sixteen times.
What caused these things to happen? Were they part of a bigger chain, either leading back into the annals of history or pointing forward to more moments, choices and actions to come?
Don't worry - if I weren't planning on telling you, I wouldn't be letting you read this, now would I? In addition, given that I started this decidedly inappropriate internal monologue with some self-righteously profound comment on the nature of fate, it should follow that whatever caused me to knife someone in cold blood was, in my opinion, a consequence of previous actions, and would shape the future in the same way as it was forged in it's own right - with a line drawn under everything preceding it.
I first met Simon Jarvis some twenty-one years ago, on the first day I proudly stepped through the gates of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester. Wearing over two hundred in uniform, carrying myself as though it were two thousand and feeling for all the world like a couple of million, I was determined to make the very best of the opportunity I had received. Most people never got the chance to attend a school with as good a record as this, and after the dreary monotony of primary school surrounded by underachievers and plain flat out idiots, this was fresh and new - a different world of education where the teachers were called Sir, walking on the grass was strictly forbidden, the pupils were all male, and all of a sudden I wasn't the one under pressure to push the envelope of achievement. Simon was a new recruit like me - very recently introduced to this world and every bit as eager to make his mark on it as I was.
Our meeting, two fresh faces with a mutual background, was the moment. The choice was to become friends. The action set us on a course that would change my life in a manner akin to tripping on the kerb next to the gates of heaven and falling headlong down a manhole straight into hell.
You see, little did I know it beforehand, but Simon was a sadist.
He was also very, very good at hiding it. His pleasure came from the mental torture of those weaker than him - I suppose it was partly my fault for actually being weaker, but it was no excuse for what he did.
Thinking back to what happened over the course of those six years - during which I was bullied in ways I never thought imaginable for simply being an innocent with something resembling a good heart, had my hopes over various things built up only to be dashed in what turned out to be quite deliberate physical bathos, was belittled, dragged down, and generally pounded on until I was down into shadows of shadows of what I used to be - it's amazing how often his face crops up. Not doing the bullying, but always being close by, playing the worried friend - the concerned one who would suggest never telling, ignoring it, pretending it didn't exist. Even though my life was being put through a meat grinder each and every day, he was actually able to persuade me to bottle it up and never let on it was happening. With hindsight, it seems so obvious why, but at the time I must have been blinded by the fact that he seemed to be the only one who cared about the situation. I still fail to understand, with the benefit of experience, how I could have ever been so naive. I never will, and gave up trying to quite some time ago.
But wait, I feel you thinking. So the man was a bit of a stealth ringleader, and good at it. That caused you to kill him? Dude, you're fucked up.
Wrong on both accounts - you started reading this, let me finish.
Another moment occurred when we both met Sarah, about eighteen months before we were due to leave. It was my choice, however grudging, to let him have her (she had made her choice in the same direction anyway). His subsequent actions caused me, that same eighteen months later, to inform him quite calmly and rationally that the next time I saw him, I would kill him.
Simon, you see, had a masterpiece up his sleeve. It tied in my criminal unpopularity among my own colleagues with my inherent shyness around the opposite sex, providing my personal hunters with supply of ammunition that kept them well fuelled for the remainder of my career at that school. I thought I was in love - it's easy to make that mistake when you're seventeen - and he and Sarah had realised things weren't going to work out. Knowing that if it ever got out about how I felt, my life would not be worth living, I had received a promise from Simon that while it was necessary, my secret was safe with him. So, there I was, thinking my opportunity to indulge in a little moment-choice-action of my own couldn't be too far off, and right on time, he starts arranging parties wherein she can properly meet his friends, my friends, our mutual friends, everyone else's friends...in fact, over the course of the two months after they finished their relationship, it is entirely possible that he either introduced or re-introduced her to just about everyone we both knew.
Except, of course, to me.
On the day she announced she had begun another relationship with one of those mutual friends of ours, the closely guarded secret of my feelings for her that Simon had so vehemently promised to keep under lock and key was suddenly circulating the school with speed that in a student body pushing a thousand, had to have been deliberate. Let's just say that if it had been open season on me before, it now became open warfare.
There isn't much to say about the remainder of my time at that dive that they called a school - two suicide attempts (thankfully kept quiet, on the whole), at least one nervous breakdown and any number of teachers suggesting I see a psychiatrist for depression explain it in much more detail than I care to go into. Suffice to say that at the time, my statement to Simon that the next moment we saw each other would be his last was neither a lie, nor was it taken as one.
I never thought, after six therapeutic years of university and another diametric change in my outlook on life - back to something resembling what it had been beforehand but with the benefit of experience - that I would actually follow through on my promise. Neither did he, which is probably what got him killed.
I had never trusted the city of Worcester after what had happened to me there, and whenever I returned there had taken to keeping a small flick-knife in my pocket. Illegal, yes, but it didn't seem to matter.
The reasoning behind it was never fully worked out. It was rationalised as generic self-defence in a rough city, but that could be disparaged by the fact that Bristol was a larger and decidedly rougher city and I walked round there with no worries whatsoever throughout my university career. No, what it must have been was the subconscious knowledge that somewhere out there, just maybe walking around in the same place as me, could be Simon.
In hindsight, his running over to greet me, having not seen me for those six years, was one of the more stupid things he could possibly have done, and yes, it got him killed.
My next moment came in the courtroom, whereupon I made the choice to plead guilty to murder while the balance of the mind was altered, leading to the action of my serving nine years of a twelve-year sentence for second-degree manslaughter. What can I say? Good behaviour and working towards "recovery" can work wonders for parole hearings.
So here I now stand. The prison door is open, and I have a long road ahead of me. Rehabilitation beckons, and I will have to re-engage my academic skills in order to begin finding a job, but for the first time in my life, I feel a sense of fate almost smiling on me. Twenty-one years after the first line was drawn under my past, I am about to draw another. Is this a moment? Most certainly. Do I have a choice to make? Without a doubt - I choose a fresh start, a clean slate. I have nothing in my life worth looking back on, and everything to look forward to. My action...?
Well...we'll just have to wait and see what I get up to, now won't we?
User Reviews
Submitted by kimosabi (user info) at 2005-07-17 15:53:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-07-15 11:31:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by steph (user info) at 2005-07-15 10:16:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Hirilnara (user info) at 2005-07-15 07:23:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The muse help anyone who comes up against you - this was an amazing piece.
Why does the rest of Uber have to be so talented???
Submitted by indigogecko (user info) at 2005-07-15 06:58:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
revenge is sweet. Good luck!
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-07-15 06:32:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Sir, this post has captivated both my mind and my admiration.
Submitted by Chinaski (user info) at 2005-07-14 21:27:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Quite good.
Submitted by shadowofthedivine (user info) at 2005-07-14 20:52:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good luck man
Submitted by Ducky (user info) at 2005-07-14 20:34:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really good...I wish more people were rating it for you.
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-07-14 19:34:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Why are you being ignored?