A Criminal's Journal

June 23rd

A sharp-witted jailbird. The low scums of Azkaban have nicknamed me, branded me as prison’s child. The smartest and wittiest of the lot, but not so as I repeatedly end up back in my lone corner behind bars. I take no part in there evening chatter, loud guffaws and choking bellows. I sit alone in my cell, caught in a moment of deep ponder.
Tomorrow at dawn they will cut the chains off my sore wrists, free me out of this disgusting atmosphere so I can gain back my freedom. It should’ve been the past month that I prepare an infamous prison breakout, the way a sneaky, teenaged youngster would like to be remembered for. But no, that will not happen again.
My days of vanquishment have gotten me thinking, for a fella has nothing else to do in these isolated cellars. I have escaped Emertawe Prison four times, and this is the fifth time I got caught for a crime. Ten more guards added onto my security each time, like they were keeping track of a list.
Not every breakout end in a fine manner, for there are always more police going after you, as you are still an un-prisoned prisoner. It has been fifteen long years, after my crime of poisoning the prison warden’s daughter, and they let me out tomorrow. Only a few more hours, before dawn breaks and my soul can finally feel the morning sun. Crimes are to be made, and criminals, especially us jailbirds, have the definite job of making it simply— happen.
I remembered now, an elective class I took in Wayward High School, Mississippi. The image of the teacher was a blur, but his words were infinite in my mind. “What is Art?” The children answered something about creativity and passion. If you asked someone whether thievery, criminality, and murder is considered art, most answers would be a straight-forward no.
As for me, a criminal cannot earn the name “sharp-witted” without the mind of a true artist. My every plan, step, detail is scrawled into this journal, and one would know a part of my thoroughly insane mind as they venture through these parchment pages.
Every time I leave jail (escape it, as I must say), I abandon a few pages of my journal written unto the next victim I shall descend upon. Following it, the after-effect is always the same. The police come late to find the blood-soaked parchment pages on the floor, the victim killed and the scene folded into oblivion. No culprit, no fingerprints, but somehow government has gotten a little smarter in the department of tracking down outlaws these days. Curse ‘em all.
But my plan would be different this time, and it starts from one thing: human suspicion. The guards and the prison warden have expected for me to break out of jail again, but my release date is tomorrow, and I have endured this dark hell for fifteen years already. I will be released tomorrow, no cuffs binding my hands and feet, and even though suspicion would be in view, nobody has the right to keep an eye on me unless I commit another crime.
Of course, a criminal is no criminal if he does not commit a crime. And this is where my plan comes in.




September 24th (ripped out of Keiser Remedeus’s Journal)

As soon as my bare feet step out into the warm sunshine of freedom, the world will begin crying in agony. Because this time, is no joke anymore. The only result I expect from this particular plan is success, and that includes not going back to jail.
The fifth of October was my best friend’s birthday. She wanted to go to a Broadway’s show since she was an aspiring dancer who wanted to see professional choreography onstage. After all three shows I had taken her to that day, she proclaimed, “There is no art in their dance. There lies no heartfelt commitment, nor passion into every single move they make. Lack of spectacles, wonders, miracles. I see no true beauty in their creation.”
So from that day forth, she made the choreography of her lifetime. In her own dance, she could outshine the best of the best. It wasn’t of her skill that made the scene so sensational, but that she put her full effort and emotion into it, making it a divine art of its own. Amiree Fallon died of lung cancer at age twenty-seven, never showing her work to the world.
I think God left that job up to me.







October 5th

Happy Birthday, my dear Ames. May your legacy of choreography remain in the world forever.
I have dropped a can of chemical ‘reaction’ into the private waterway system Broadway uses, so that every person who would be performing onstage would be under full manipulation. Every show would be only a little part of Amiree Lou Fallon’s unforgettable choreography. Audiences would gape, applaud wildly, (scream a bit in the end, more on that later) and video it so it could stream virally around the world.
Every Broadway show I would control this day; the performers’ dance instincts switched to Ames’s choreography. I mean yes, this is a crime. The difference is that this time, I have committed a crime worthy of admiration.
If she could see her dance live, tears would began to well in her beautiful green eyes until it rolled down her pale cheeks. Amiree always danced with no props, because she believed that tools only distracted audiences from what was truly important—the dance itself. At the end of the day, I went to Broadway and entered the Mackinel Theatre show around the east bend.
The theatre was much more packed than usual, since the news of the best choreography in the world appeared here, today, in Broadway. I watched as many people of different cultures, countries, sizes, ages came to see any show they could get a ticket of. New York Times pronounced it to be ‘the greatest extravaganza in Broadway Shows, unreal with the performers looking like they were sleepwalking with their eyes wide open, but a true fascination for humankind on this date.’ BBC News broadcasted ‘researchers have analyzed that it may have been some scientific substance that connects all the Broadway shows to one dance, or that all shows have agreed to this performance, even though every one looks entirely different.’
The show started at 9 pm sharp, with a willowy woman wearing a white dress taking the stage. She seemed to be looking at the audience, but her senses were not alert, not humane. If anyone looked close enough, they would see that it was the work of science mesmerizing the brain and overwhelming the nerves.
The music began, playing softly in the background as the woman started extending her arm out into the air, so slowly, so powerfully. I remember that Ames could move her delicate figure in such a graceful way, adding such emotion and power to her actions that it made the people who watched her immobile to anything else in the world. The performer twirled and flipped across the stage, her mouth partially opened and her eyes looking like they were on the bridge of death.
It was a mix from ballet d’action to freestyle, classical to corrida, cultures and countries expanding from conga of the Africas to alegrias of the Spanish gypsies. Her eyes stiffened, dry and bloodshot, but of course nobody noticed that.
Truthfully, she’s dead. It depends on her immune system, if it is strong enough to keep her alive or not at the end of this show. If she survives, she would be paralyzed from the neck down. Sad, isn’t it?
Today’s miracle would turn out to be a tragedy, a universal disaster to be precise, though I wouldn’t exaggerate it. Half dead, half paralyzed, a minimal percentage of people still ‘alive.’ Those that wake up from this terrible nightmare would, ah, let’s say have some mind demons for the rest of their lives.
The performer glided and ended in à terre, sinking to the floor. Her eyes stared blankly into the ceiling. Her arms lifted in a final stand. Cold blood trickled down her face, turning the blush on her cheeks into a dead white. And the girl never moved again.
A silence overtook the busy performances of Broadway, sudden death taking everyone in pure shock. Inside the crowds of different minds, each person felt the collision of art and catastrophe.
In the theatre, the maelstrom of an audience peered at each other, confusion marking their faces, some clapping innocently and others stuttering incoherently. In a blink, I disappeared from the scene, from Broadway of NYC, from the world altogether, because I knew my legacy was finally complete.