The
night had settled in and a full moon emerged placing itself against a deep
black sky on a hot summer’s night, like a precious pearl mounted in the most
natural of settings. While a galaxy of stars surrounded it like a thousand
sparkling diamonds, it cast its inquisitive eye upon the bedroom window of
Francis Bobbie Jackson, who stood in a corner motionless, like a shadow plastered
against the bare wall. Her face screamed a tale of being haunted, while a pair of
bloodshot eyes sought refuge beneath their lids, as if they were retreating in
the face of defeat. Hidden beneath a thin, light blue nightgown, her frail body
wept, as the sweat it rapidly excreted, became the tears that signal her
surrender. Her mind no longer embraced
the magic of dreams, because to Francis, an emotionally deceased person does
not dream, they just exist within the realm of nothingness.
During the calm that existed with the late night hours, a trembling hand
slowly opened the top drawer of a second hand oak-stained dresser that stood in
a corner by itself. While the moon
watched, peaking through tiny holes in the dull, dingy curtains, covering the
room’s only window. Francis pulled from
between two neatly folded sheets, a faded black book. On its cover in small gold
letters were the words, Memoir of a Tortured Soul. A tiny tear fell onto the hand written words
on the first page of the small, thirty-two page, hardbound book, like a fresh
drop of spring rain. Then the skinny
fingers of an unsteady hand pulled back the curtains of the opened window and
hooked them around a rusty nail, so the moon could illuminate the room with its
exploratory beam of light. Allowing the
emotionally distraught woman to see clearly the words her ballpoint pen was
about to scribble in black ink on a fresh page.
“Final Journal Entry
Today I have taken drastic steps toward
freedom. While my husband lay dying
on the floor of our living room, I wait for the overdose of pills I’ve ingested
to take effect and end what has been the most miserable period in my thirty-one
years of occupation on this planet we call earth.”
As
her vision began to blur, she paused to give her hazel eyes a chance to
refocus. Her mind raced back to reflect
on the events that led her to this tragic moment of desperation, where murder,
suicide was the antidote to neutralize the devastating effects of a cruel,
abusive, venomous, womanizing snake like her husband George. In addition, the struggle with the loss of
her two children, seven-year-old April and four-year-old Justin tormented her
daily, with the sleepless nights being the worst as the lack of proper rest
began draining her mentally and physically. The two children lost their lives when an
inebriated driver who had, had too much to drink, lost control of her car and
slammed into the young girl and her brother, crushing them between a blue, four
door sedan that was parked in front of their home, killing them instantly. Paramedics from Engine Company 41, a Fire
Station located just three blocks from the area where the accident had taken
place, had pronounced the siblings dead at the scene. Francis was devastated and blamed herself;
the kids were trying out roller skates she had brought them for Christmas, when
the accident occurred. However, when
she found out that the police officer who responded to the fatal crash only
charged the driver of the vehicle that struck and killed her son and daughter with
a DUI, she was outraged. The officer had
determined that the children were at fault, when they skated off the sidewalk
into a busy intersection, as they
