© Copyright 2000
UNINVOLVED
By
Marti Stapp Linder
The
television blares before her sleepless eyes, a flickering blue light in a
bedroom filled with comforting pillows, stuffed animals and velvet drapes.
She is too old to hug a teddy bear, but she needs the solace. From beyond
the pale, I watch and within the woman's wretched mind, I replay a scream she
will never forget. I know I'm becoming an evil spirit, but I don't care.
Haunting her is my revenge.
Across town,
a man prepares a midnight snack. I am with him too. My sobbing
reverberates in his head, keeping him awake. I make sure his being alive
is as pitiable as my dying.
In another
city, an older couple huddles together as if their lives depend upon it.
It is actually their sanity that hangs in the balance, for they must
admit to continually hearing my screams. Night after night.
I am Kitty
Genovese. I cried for help as I was attacked three separate times beneath
the windows of a huge apartment building. Nobody bothered to call the
police and now those people who "didn't want to get involved" are
alive and I am dead. Wherever they live, as long as they live, I shall
continue to haunt them.
Winston
Mosely, Convict #64A0102 at Great Meadow State Prison in Comstock, NY knows
better than anyone else how relentless I have become. I learned it from him the
night he stabbed me to death. He hears my shrieks in all his dreams.
He is afraid to close his eyes.