THE IONIA INCIDENT
The one main problem with being a writer is when life is dull and there is nothing to write about that is exciting. The writer personality in my mind would wish for excitement and surprisingly the wish was always granted.
It happened twenty-four years ago that I was working with my husband as a bottle dropper. Our job was with a water softener company and we drove all over the state. We had to stop at each house and put a clear bag with an empty bottle for water samples and a paper for potential customers to fill out and leave on the mailbox for us to collect. Our route at that time was out in the country and we had to stop at each mailbox.
I took my daughter to the babysitters that morning and then my husband and I proceeded to go to work. We were to ride together that day and drop off bottles in Ionia County.
Ionia is a good size city, and on the outskirts of town was a prison. The country surrounding the city was mostly fields, and the houses where we had to stop at the mailboxes were far and few between. Ionia County causes you to feel isolated from the world.
We reached Ionia County without incident; it was just like any other sunny, spring day. As we drove the countryside, I noticed many target ranges and at first thought it was strange but then I remembered the prison. I realized they must have been for the guards to practice their shooting skills. I soon put it out of my mind and enjoyed the warm sunshine. That was my last peaceful memory of the incident, from then on I think of it as a never-ending nightmare that lingers in the normal personality in my mind.
It all began with the gunshots, three gunshots to be exact; I said to my husband, “they are out practicing early today.” Remembering all the target ranges, I had seen earlier.
As we were nearing a curve, an eerie sound pierced deeply into my soul. It was a noise so unnerving that it penetrated your mind and left you breathless. It was the prison siren. My husband and I glanced at each other but could not say a word. Up ahead was the curve, on the other side of it, was the backside of the prison.
We were in full view for only minutes but to me it was an eternity. It all seemed to go by in slow motion, even though my husband did not slow down too much. The first thing I noticed was a car parked beside the prison fence and the driver side door was wide open. On the ground was a figure, we drove on toward the backside of the prison, in the distance behind the fence I saw cars heading to the scene.
As we neared the car, my writer’s senses took complete control of my mind. My eyes wide with anticipation, knowing deep in my heart I was not going to like what I saw but was prepared to take it all in, even against my own will. My eyes and mind took in the whole scene, studying and remembering everything it saw. The writer personality was jumping for joy at the exciting find it was witnessing; the gore of it all revolted the normal personality, of course, the normal personality can never erase the image seared into its mind.
The figure on the ground, I believe a man, had pools of blood surrounding him. He lay on his back, his legs straight out ahead and his arms out from his sides. He had two holes in his chest, his ripped t-shirt moistened red. His head was there, and you could barely tell that his hair was brown, with all the red mixed with it. His face was missing, though. All I saw was an empty space where his face should have been, I could even see pavement through the gap the hole made.
Neither one of us spoke; my husband drove on with both hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. He looked straight ahead, so pale as if he saw the person stand up dead before his eyes.
Then my husband stopped and turned the car around. I asked, “what the hell are you doing?” He told me that, “we had to turn around and go to another road.” Our route on that road had ended and we had to, god forbid, backtrack.
As we drove by the second time, nothing had changed, except the police were now there. One of the plain clothed officers gave us a dirty look, which I could not understand at first but now I know differently.
True, that horrific scene will play over in my subconscious mind forever, but that massacred body was not the true horror for me, anyway.
The question that played repeatedly in my head was, “what happened?” The writer personality reared its ugly head and implanted in my normal personality what might have happened. The thoughts that ran through my mind were that a prisoner had escaped and flagged down a car. He killed the driver but did not have time to jump into the getaway car and drive away. Therefore, he ran off and now was out there hiding.
As I said before, we stop at every mailbox in secluded areas. Therefore, every time we stopped I kept thinking that he would jump out, shoot us and steal our car. At each mailbox, I would look around slowly, then roll down my window, quickly drop off the bag and then roll the window quickly back up. The whole time my heart pounded, my pulse raced and the vision of my husband with a hole in his head invaded my consciousness.
That was what it was like for me until we got out of town, about thirty minutes later. That half hour was my true real-life horror.
Later that night we watched the news, and then we found out what ‘supposedly’ happened. A person was throwing weapons over the fence and then he shot himself with a shotgun. That was when new questions emerged; the writer personality took over again. What they said happened, was not logical to what I saw and heard.
There was three shots and they said only one shot was fired, him shooting his own head, so where did the two holes in his chest come from and who fired them?
The angle in which he laid from the car, the shotgun he shot himself with would kick backwards into or near the car. I saw no weapons of any kind in the whole area.
The body was not the only thing I viewed intently. Why did the news lie? What was the purpose? What was the police hiding? The writing personality was going nuts with excitement.
My wish had come true, the questions and the events that had happened made me realize how important writing is to me, the story idea that comes from this experience are amazing. I have yet to write this story and I plan to add my theory as to what might have happened that horrid day.
I usually loved the excitement that came soon after my wish, except this one time was more than I could handle. The Ionia incident has remained in my mind; it still haunts me to this day. I swore that I would never step foot in Ionia County again, twenty-four years later and I still keep that promise to myself. In addition, I do not allow the writer personality to crave excitement anymore.
THE EVIL THAT WALKS
The moonbeam stares down
as the carcass is slaughtered.
The witching hour of night has come.
Now is the time to perish.
The yearning shows us
no gratification.
all is lost to the shadows
of the dead.
The sacrifice still waits
for his sensual delight.
No one is to live
tonight.
The rot of the lifeless
has taken its toll.
The scatter of his blood
has filled the sacred bath.
She awaits in the mausoleum
her longing is holding.
The victim goes to his death,
an embrace of savage
ecstasy.
As the passion dies,
he meets an eternal rest.
The soul is held onto by
Satan’s hand.
The mortal remains decompose.
The apparition floats away.
He knows he must stay.
She had bewitched him.
He lost his soul to a
seduced passion,
a tormenting vex.
Now he walks during the
killing time,
looking for a woman craving
sexual delight.
Then he steals her soul,
so that he won’t
walk alone.
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