Come Undone (Prologe and Chap 1)
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Prologue
My name is Nicholas James Bates and this is my last will and testament. Maybe that is not accurate, after all I have nothing left to bequeath, no legacy to leave behind, and no one to leave it to if I did. Let us call it instead my famous last words. Or perhaps we should call it what it truly is, the need to think of something other than what it is going to feel like to have electricity course through my body until I am dead. The desperate need to make sense of it all even now at the bitter end when truth or reason no longer matter if they ever did. Cynical, you say? Well yes I suppose it is. But then I am on death row for a crime I did not commit. I know what you are thinking, I see it in your eyes, you think me guilty, and after all every man on this cell block would proclaim his innocence. But in my case I swear to you it is the truth. Perhaps I should tell you my story then? Is that not why you came? It is long in the telling, but after all I have nothing but time.
It all began in … well I am not quite sure where it truly began. How do we know what events in our lives seal our fate and place us on the path to destruction? Perhaps for me it was the day I met Leann. Had we not met that day by a chance meeting a college café would she still be alive today? Would I still be sitting here in this dank cell waiting to die? These are the two questions among many that haunt me the most, for they can never be answered.
Chapter 1
Yes I think that is where my tragedy began, the day I met Leann. But I will not take you back that far. I shall begin four years after I met Leann. We had both recently graduated college, I with a Masters in Psychology and she with a Bachelors in Art. We had taken a small but cozy apartment in the city. Funny how residents of Manhattan always refer to it simply as “the city” as if everyone on the planet automatically knows to which city you are referring. I had found a job with a small research facility though my true dream was to work as a criminal psychologist. You know a profiler like you see on television. But at the time I felt my dreams could wait. The money was good and I did not want Leann to work. She wanted to be an artist and artists needed time to create. She painted, I worked. We were happy then. In fact those were the happiest times of my life. Leann was the love of my life, my soul mate. I loved her more than life itself…I suppose I always will. Funny how quickly things can change. One minute...More >>