“Entry 73:
I dreamt again… Jet-black starry night, the Chevy speeding through the everlasting Chicago skyline, adrenaline escalating throughout my veins as I feel the cold revolver concealed in my pocket. I am seated at the back seat in a dark suit, my hat tilted, my eyes staring dead into the merciless rain. The city belongs to me, as I belong to her. I look into the lights that give life to her, the lights that shine for her, that shine for who we are. People forget who they really should be but they always remember who they are.
The Chevy suddenly screeches and slides vigorously on the wet and jagged road till it comes to an abrupt halt in front of the house where I catch a glimpse of them watching a local broadcast in the darkness of the unlit room. I signal the thug to get me the .22 caliber with a nod, and he immediately gets me the rifle as I walk towards them, my hands reaching out to the revolver. The entirety of my body is rigid, my blood rises, I feel exasperated by the heat and I loosen my tie from the choking grip it has on my neck. As I take the rifle from the hands of my thug, I understand this is my way out, my only way out.
I am approaching them, my steps slow and constant, and the voices of the monochrome television travel around the room. My neck pulsates, it hinders my breath, my mind corroded with voices, ones which I cannot comprehend but seem to understand. In what feels like a lifetime, the revolver is enfolded in my hands.
The room is now lit by fluorescents and I am standing above them waiting, waiting so impatiently to do the deed. As I catch a glimpse of her looking into me, I shoot her point blank and falls ever so gracefully to the floor, lifeless. As time stands still, they rise in horror; I gradually set my aim towards them as they reach out to me, her weak hands trembling, her fingers pointing out to me. I fire towards her, watching her as the bullets pierce through her futile body. She mumbles shattered words to me, I tell her to keep quiet and continue shooting till she can’t mumble anymore. He is now crawling on the floor, heading towards the kitchen. As I rearm, cocking and loading the rifle he tries to hold onto the door, I take my aim and I keep on shooting. I can see the bullets fragments being collected on the wooden floor like drops of rain, smoke coming out of them rising to the cold air disappearing with it. There is no life left in him, but I cannot let myself stop till I am out of ammunition and breath.
I head towards the door, stepping over the bodies that lay on the floor and the red stream of the blood that runs throughout the room.
I then find myself bound in cold steel handcuffs looking over the Kansas river as the sky cries for me and the crimson tears cleanse what I have done and yet I am left undone. “
As Gordon Dale Chappell closed the diary, he remembered Lowell Lee Andrews, the heavy young kid whose appearance suggested that he wouldn’t even imagine stealing from a drugstore let alone slaughter his own family. It saddened him that Andrew had decided to get rid of his own family and life for something that felt so unreal and out of reach. Andrew’s solemn and exaggerated character made him a topic of constant debate, “That Andrews kid lost his melons reading all them books. You can’t blame him, a nice boy like him could never do this, wasting his life and the ones whose lives depended on him” It was never really clear on why he did it, and it never would be.
After all these years in the department, Gordon Dale Chappell had never been so lost in translation in the complexity and perplexity of human emotion and intention through an inmate. Unlike Andrews who was always so polite and reading his books, Hickock and Smith would sit in the courtroom and joke and look out the window at the pretty girls and act like they didn't have a care in the world. Gordon found it hard to believe that such a soul could commit such a crime. He could not stop thinking about Andrews and his family, he wondered why, what seemed as such good grace and intentions turn out to be so dangerous that it lead to the wastage of his family’s own lives. When Gordon heard about the execution, he could not stay in the premises as it was too unreal for him to believe that Andrews was to be executed.
There stood Andrews, before the hangman’s noose as the falling rain echoed throughout the deafening silence of the hall. He was unmoved and unbothered to what was inevitable. However, just before his final moments of life, he managed to gather a smile.
Chappell was told that Lowell Lee Andrews had no last words.
by
empireofrepine (student)
