Killing Chris

The End

As if you didn't see it coming...Finally, the end is here. My timely escape from the train yard was the beginning of the end. From there you know the story, I make it to Louisiana reminisce, rethink, reroute all the way to Georgia where my fugitive state ends. From hunted to caught in almost the blink of an eye, there isn't much left to tell... only explain. This will be my last chapter from the present time, I'm afraid after this it's all over for the Chris that was caught sneaking through the alleys in Georgia.

Think of the rest of the chapters after this as simple prequel events leading up to all this...The explosive finale. The best thing about being on the run by myself is that when your by yourself, you can only hurt yourself. No careless collateral damage for the people you love.

yesterday I was sat back in front of a judge for my sentencing for the second time in my life. Unlike the first time, there was no sympathy extended to me this time. By the time I was caught the deaths had risen to a number higher than thirty. There's only one fitting punishment for a person who they thought had killed over thirty innocent humans...Death.

So when the judge sentenced me to death I wasn't... I don't know... I wasn't surprised. It's the same punishment I wished for myself. Nothing this evil should be allowed to live among people who cry when turtles die on the national geographic channel or adopt orphaned children. I guess the thought behind the death penalty is to burn any trace of the person from the earth. I was alright with that in the end because ashes make the phoenix. Burn me down to nothing...only dust, so that something new and beautiful can take my place.

In the beginning, I was innocent. Victim to a spree of crimes that forced me to do things that tipped the scales. By this point in the story even If the real killer was caught, I was still a criminal. my life was still over. Consumed by my rage, and vengeance I let the killer bait me into criminal acts by dangling himself in front of me. I thought If I just do this one thing I'll be able to clear my name. Then another, and another, and people ended up dead and hurt.

I plan on writing one short little paragraph on a piece of paper for someone to put at the end of my book but if it never ends up in the story ill just mention it.

When you're younger... Like in high school you are told that your friends are temporary. That when college comes around your last generation friends fade into just fleeting memories and that it's okay cause they will be replaced by new ones.

It's all a lie.

What Lake, Margo, and I had was... I don't even know what to call it. I don't wanna name it even because naming it would make it small... It was truly infinite. Hold on to what you have with all your strength because in the blink of an eye it could be gone. People literally die in the pursuit of love and companionship but allow true friends to slip away. Just for a second think about your best friend from high school.

How much fun you guys had, how you tackled the barriers of the social hunger games together. How you grew together, entangled only at the roots. Maybe you stayed in contact for a little bit into college, but somewhere you lost touch. Shrugging it off to "we both have our own lives" but not realizing you both share such an amazing part of your life, stemming off of the life you built together. We are all living on borrowed time only truly surviving in the memories of the people we have impacted.

Let this be a reason for you to ask that friend how they've been. We only truly feel the impact of deprivation when it's no longer there. When it's there we tell ourselves we can live without it... but only because we have the option to regress to it if we need to... Like a safety net.

Note from execution day

Welcome back, if you've read the entire story you now know the real me. Every step I took on that rocky mountain to get here. Right now I'm writing from my cell, by this time tomorrow I will be dead. As the hammer of capital punishment falls heavily on my head I go knowing that in my final days I was honest, even if no one else believes me.

If you're here then I know it took a while for you to get here, there's no amount of gratitude in the world I could give you to make up for that time you spent learning my story. I hope in the end you could see the big picture of the whole web of events from a non-biased view.

Don't forget me.

From the very beginning of the story, I urged you to question the reliability of any narrator, through my time in the psychiatric hospital I shared with you my condition of forgetting and suppression. My time on the run still has its lesson to teach if this note is posted in the right spot by my trusted source.

For a while now I've hinted at the truth... The real me.

Were you paying close enough attention?

So for my final closing sentence, I want to let you know that forgiveness eluded me, up to the bitter end. Man...was I wrong. The people that we love most don't steal pieces from us, I thought there was only one way to get those pieces back. I thought having those pieces returned to me would fill my broken soul back up. But it never did.

Instead of broken glass, we are more like stars, independently emitting light, and energy. Together stars produce a greater amount of light and energy when their paths are intertwined.

Together we are brighter.

Together we are stronger.

Together we are...infinite. Chris Logged off

For whoever this next part may help, in Chris's final note to me he asked me if I could write down the events of the day in which he was killed. I don't know why he did what he did, I never understood him. the harder you tried the easier it was to get lost with him. Whatever dangerous psychological dungeon he was trapped in, there was no escape.

I read the full story, it wasn't how it really happened but I believe it was really how it happened for him. Read it all, understand it all. On the day Chris died, I was only able to watch him through the glass. I sat on a bench alone, his only spectator. I watched through the thick glass as Chris walked up to the chair, sitting down calmly.

He looked me in the eyes like he was searching my soul. Looking for the one thing he never found. What that thing was is anyone guess, was it forgiveness? Understanding? Did he long to be remembered? Loved?

In the face of death, Chris didn't waiver, not one bit. He greeted it as if it was an old friend. haunted by death his whole adult life he longed for the battle to be over. In his last few seconds, I noticed he looked over his body, scarred by the pain he had absorbed his whole life. Physical and emotionally he was tattered.

He looked down at his dog bite, which was now a faint scar. He looked at his chest, then he closed his eyes. opening them only in his last second to look at me. Nodding slowly. later that day in my motel in Atlanta I sat at the min kitchen table. Starring at a piece of paper I had folded into a tombstone.

"Sorry buddy, this is the best you're getting," I said out loud to myself

The tombstone read:

Here lies:

Chris

Friend, Twin, Amazing psych hospital roommate...

January 28th 2002-February 5th 2024

"In hopes someday we may find the truths that matter"

"Momento Mori"-->"Remember you must die"

Before I go though, let me give u a reason to keep reading. The thing Chris was the most wrong about...was the identity of the killer.

Rhys Logged Off