| Story Three: Regret | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 1 2009, 03:23 AM (251 Views) | |
| Darkom | Nov 1 2009, 03:23 AM Post #1 |
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Life isn’t all “Us and Them”. You may not get it now, but it’s all Us. People are the same wherever you go, they want the same things. Sure there are differences in cultures and customs, but people basically want to grow up and work and have families. There’s always bad seeds around the edges like me who take the easy way of stealing the work of their hands for quick gain. It’s always best to learn life’s lessons before they crush you with firsthand experience, but there are these bastards who won’t learn. I had every example available. From those old circles I came from nearly everyone is in hiding, or dead, or rotting in a hole somewhere still alive. When you take too much freedom, you get your freedom taken away. I’m not sure you can say it begins innocently. There’s always a taste of excitement to handle your ill gotten goods when they’re new. I’d take something simple and praise myself for my quick hands. I’d plan to take something difficult and admire my skill and determination. It’s foolish reinforcement, but I understand it. When it isn’t right in your eyes to begin with, you justify. And justify. And justify. When you’re on a roll you can make anything sound noble. You heard this man beats his wife; he doesn’t deserve his new saddle. To punish what he did, I’ll just take it. It’s not that wrong when the person you steal from is on morally tender ground themselves. Or if they have a lot of things and won’t miss too much from their stash. Or if you just don’t like them. Screw their sensibilities! You need these things to continue! You’ll move on you’ll say, and never see those schmucks again. The grass is always greener and the suckers are always new in the next town. It’s false. Be sure your sins will find you out. There’s no justifying yourself to a bloodthirsty jury. They won’t kill petty thieves, but they will take something from you. For me, it was years of my life. Into the camps I went, digging ditches for palisade walls or providing support labor for the next project. There’s no end to the work you can accomplish when a whip is your master. The freedom of taking what you will and moving on earns you the confinement of being tethered to your trenching axe. The camps won’t end you; in fact they’ll remake you. You come out different to be sure, better in fact. You know how to live with less and you know you have to hit the job harder to get anywhere. In the clink I was always with a gang of guys who had been doing the same things I’d been doing. Then you hear about the harder stuff. Knocking over shipments, confidence games, armed robbery, wrecking ships to gain their cargo. Not that I didn’t know about these things, but the guys inside showed me how to get away with them. A new beginning. A harder edge. I hit the plans with a purpose. You get a couple guys in on it with you, and everything runs smoothly. One guy holds up the front guard, one gets the back, the last takes the wagon. If you get in quick and hit your marks, you can keep violence down and returns high. Hell, you’ll even get sponsors paying you to get them stuff or see that things don’t arrive. It’s a lie. I wasn’t even justifying things anymore; I was just living high on the fat of society. Who knows what they could have done with that dough? Built their carpentry business or something, and now they’re just dejected and standing on the side of the road. I’d just piss away the money. If you’re going to be getting weekly or better stops with profit, there’s no reason to save. Get it out there. Support a stripper on odd weekends, buy out a liquor cabinet. Get all that crap you wanted to eat as a kid. What happens to tomorrow? Getting old doesn’t occur to you, you can do this forever, right? I’d have to change out the guys now and then, and of course move to a new location. I’d still just go steal stuff. It’s not a habit you break easily. There’s a power in it. The armed robbery too. It’s a power you have when you walk into a situation and you dictate how it all goes down. Ahh, they’ll tell you crap about some Thieves Guild. Maybe they do something here and there, but they aren’t out here in the country. They sounded like the sissy boys of petty theft, and even if they came out here we wouldn’t take em’. We thought we were tough. We were full of [censored]. Life may take me, life will break me. I got a little reputation and I got caught again. Stealing from a bank. Bank robbers are just angry customers trying to get their money back. Like I had anything to my name. Back on the old gang I taught the younger guys and got away with this or that, but I was just killing time till I could get out there and going again. This was even a new place that didn’t know my past deeds, I wouldn’t stay in here for too many years. It’s amazing how little changes on the outside. Someone’s always around to get you rolling again. Back to the old ways I said, life rolls on. A strong box was supposed to be on a family wagon heading through my area. These are jackpots, the families bring everything they have with them. We catch em’ in broad daylight on the road when they think they’re safer. It was a man, his wife, and their daughter. One man holds them off at the side, one man checks the wagon, and I would stand at the road to watch for traffic. From where I was I could see the man at the wagon going through the girl’s things. A flash caught my eye and the girl broke away from her parents. She had a kitchen knife, and she rushed toward my pal at the wagon to stab him. I ran after her and tackled her halfway there. We fell together on top of the knife, and it pierced her side. She just kept bleeding. I couldn’t stop it. She was a little girl, ten years old. You take their property; can’t you just take their life too? Oh God, you can’t put it back. You can live sorely without your money, but the look in their face when you take everything from them… I cried for her. I sat their holding her while her parents stared at me in horror. My guys took the money and ran, but I couldn’t join them. You can’t go back from this. The parents didn’t know what to do, and they ran down the road. The patrols came and found me just like I was. I’d wish to God I wasn’t there that day. Why am I even holding up traveling families? There’s no justifying taking from normal people who haven’t done anything to you. There’s no justifying taking from people who have wronged you! It isn’t right to take and take! I never did a damn bit of good with it, for all the misery I’ve caused. I’m a wretch on the edge of society that everyone would love to see killed. They work hard and achieve, while I play the villain. Life comes around. Those boys I’d work with, you can see them in gibbets. Others try to hide, always fearful and paranoid. Some are mutilated by the law so all will know. I am among those last few. They’ve taken my hands, and they’ve taken my ears. They couldn’t prove that I wanted to murder the girl, so I was left with what I got. They couldn’t treat me to the easy way out with what I’d done. The merciful death was too good for scum like me. Now the sum of my life is knowing what I’ve taken. And living with myself in the pain. |
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7:07 PM Jul 11