The Death Sentence, Chapter One

The Death Sentence:    
A novel of letters, lines and numbers    
By    
Daniel Christensen    
   
**    
   
Chapter 1:    
Sequitur - before she passes on.    
   
She often listens to music. These are good days.    
   
She busies herself with cleaning. She fixes her hair. She puts on her lipstick. I got it at a local discount store, the kind of place where they sell little bits of everything for around a dollar. I try to find her the brightest red, or something near to it. Perhaps a crimson or dark pink. I work with what is available to me.    
   
I find it hard to believe, but I have met some few poor souls who will adamantly insist that they bear no love for music. Her longtime companion was one of them. I find that it also follows those who hold no love for music, have a plentiful lack of love for many things. You see, what I find hard to believe about someone like that is, there is music in everything, if you listen for it. If you place your fingers just so, and tune your instrument. You can contribute a few notes; you can join the orchestra.    
   
She is of an age now. That is a way of saying, she has gotten older than in fashionable. Indeed, fashion does seem obsessed with youth. She often listens to music. She finds her smiles there and those smiles restore her youthful vitality, in subtle ways, more easily discerned by someone who knows her, like I do.    
   
Her smiles compliment her lips, far better than the makeup does. She rearranges the contents of the cabinets and finds something she had been hankering for.    
   
She suggests I use the dustpan, rather than the shovel, to gather the fallen leaves into a trash receptacle. It was a good idea. The shorter handle facilitates the chore, it goes by quickly. A twig tears a hole in the bag, near the bottom. I pile earth and leaves into the top, they trickle out the bottom. Makes me laugh. A laugh of no mirth. I fall into introspection.    
   
Music seeps through the walls, slurs drunkenly, beats fall like heavy footsteps. Neighbors drive by, I make a less than half hearted gesture of acknowledgment. I imagine that, in poor neighborhoods like ours, we keep to ourselves, but it is just a sign of the times. Rich or poor, our friendly relationship is with our media devices now. Jules Verne saw this coming, along with many other things.    
   
I spend a couple hours with her each day. She cycles through her tales. Not the same ones every day. I think her moods dictate.    
   
When she was 17, she sang on stage with Paul Anka. It was her senior prom. Her boyfriend took her to the Copacabana club in Manhattan. It was the crowning jewel of her life.    
   
She wanted to be a singer. She has a fine singing voice. Anka told her, this is a tough business, if you don’t have the passion, the perseverance, I’d advise you not to pursue it. She didn’t.    
   
When she was 32, she worked as a bartender in Sheepshead Bay.  She got her sister a job there as a waitress. The place was robbed. She had noticed them casing the joint hours before, now near to close, they returned. They locked her sister in the bathroom. They told her they were going to rape her. She fled to a walk in freezer and locked herself inside. She found out later, those same two hoods had been hitting bars all over Brooklyn. Robbing, raping and killing. She was pregnant at the time, with me.    
   
She got back in touch with her old boyfriend, from those many years ago. She talks to him in the evenings sometimes. He reminds her of the prom, of her singing with Paul Anka. She is delighted that he remembers.    
   
We live together. We watch game shows in the evening. I do the shopping, she puts away the groceries. She cooks, I do the cleanup. She tells me that, when she is alone, she weeps for me, for my solitary life. When I am alone, I do the same for her.

Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Christensen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.