Introduction:
Setting the Mood
Writer's Note:
The novel, entitled: "Flowers For Timothy McVeigh," presents itself as a cautionary tale of a young woman with a history of mental illness who unwittingly stumbles upon a virtual online hornet's nest. Introduced to the Internet for the first time----her parents had no computer, so Lisa relied on friends who were quite adept at surfing and collecting information. As she begins her freshman year as a Fine Arts major at Toronto's York University, Lisa Schultz is, at first, transfixed and in complete awe of this brave new electronic wonderland. Excited and happy at first, meeting people her own age from all over the world and learning all she can about the vast and far-reaching cybernetic community.
However, joy would eventually turn to tears of pain and despair, as Lisa stumbles upon a group of Internet predators who begin to insidiously worm their way into her conscience and her every waking moment. Unpreparted for the pure evil in which she became enmeshed, Lisa begins to tear apart at the very seams of her sanity.
This story begins in the year 2002 and comes to a crashing end in December of 2003. As an impressionable 18-year-old, Lisa became submerged in the disturbing and controversial political activism surrounding the death penalty in the United States and then begins writing to a man many considered the poster child for capital punishment. During her last year in high school, things heat up when Timothy McVeigh declared to the world that he was now ready to die and requested a speedy execution date--which he got.
Lisa was torn between her strong relationship with Jesus and the appalling knowledge that she had become more and more infatuated with McVeigh and had traveled to his hometown of Buffalo to protest the death penalty with some of her American friends.
To summarize, Lisa and her activist buddies were ecstatic and jubilant when McVeigh got a stay of execution on May 11, when the red-faced Federal Bureau Of Investigation failed to hand over thousands of papers relating to the man's trial. But the joy was shortlived when, on June 6th, 2001, it was declared that Judge Matsch had denied McVeigh another stay and he was sentenced to die on June 11th.
After that fateful summer, Lisa's online relationship with a small group of McVeigh supporters morphed into a virtual hell on earth. For now, I am posting bits and pieces that will later culminate into a finished work. Again I want to emphasize that this is a work of FICTION and does not depict anyone living or dead.
The following paragraph comprise the book's introduction and will be further edited and changed as time goes on. What you will read here on this site are the first three chapters of the book. As a work-in-progress, "Flowers" represents itself, in the final paragraphs, as a very dark and unsettling look at how the Internet and some of the denizens who dominate it can actually drive someone to kill themselves.
As night was falling, with its dark shades of indego and dark navy spreading slowly and lazily over the city, Lisa Schultz sat at her computer, staring blankly into a flickering monitor and letting her mind gradually unclutter from a day's worth of virtual abuse. She had no idea what time it was---for time seemed to have ceased moving forward and had settled uncomfortably deep in a pale, emotional chasm Or perhaps she had. Never, in the eight years this young woman had spent online, surfing the Internet and opening up a vast, exciting world within a world, did she ever know of such a crushing mixture of fear, despair and revulsion. Never had Lisa's tears flooded her keyboard as they had at this moment. Couldn't someone have warned her about the pitfalls, the brutality and the extreme emotional abuse? Did everyone eventually reach the same dismal conclusions? It appeared that life had, for twenty-eight-year-old Shelli Alexandria Blaine, come to a deadly and groaning halt.
Lisa had taken one of her father's rifles upstairs, wrapped in a beach towel in case her parents or siblings saw her. When she got to her room, she quickly stepped inside and closed the door as quietly as she could. Shelli had never fired a gun---not even in target practise with her grandfather and two brothers. She despised these potentially lethal weapons for their deadly ability to quicly and tragically put an end to life. But now, cradling the rifle in her lap and examining it carefully, Shelli Blaine knew that this gun would liberate her forever from a life that had turned ugly and cruel for her. Sweet oblivion was what she craved. Nobody would miss her. Her parents ignored her for the most part---neither her mother nor her father spent any time with Shelli, primarily because of her younger brother's debilitating illness which meant that he needed constant care and attention. Saddled with muscular dystrophy, seven-year-old Colin couldn't play like other kids, was unable to attend school or even feed himself. He had been able to do some walking, but he fell a lot and grew very frustrated. He was keenly aware of the fact that both Shelli and their ten-year-old brother, Timmy were robbed of a great deal. But there was nothing anything anyone could do about their dystrophic sibling. They did not want him to feel guilty and did their best to hide any negative feelings about their sick siblings.
Now, after Lisa had checked the rifle to see if it was in working order, she carefully lifed it until the barrel was snugly set under her chin. She was not certain how to shoot the gun so that it's blast would render her dead. Kurt Cobain had put the barrel into his mouth and fired. The shot had been lethal. Shelli had watched films about suicidal kids and recalled that the teenage boy had put the gun to his left temple and fired. That had been a successful method of checking out of a life turned from happy and healty to an ugly prison for which there was no escape but death.
Putting the rifle down, Lisa remembered that she hadn't written a letter for her family to read after she was gone. She began writing down everything that had contributed to her suicide. There was a lot to say and Shelli knew that she wouldn't get another chance. She had to remember everything and perhaps her loved ones would understand and be sympathetic. She was painfully aware that what she was about to do was incredibly selfish, but she could not let any feelings of guilt and remorse get in the way of causing Shelli to have second thoughts.
Why had the Internet become so dismal and frightening to her? How had she let perfect strangers affect her to the point where life was no longer worth living? Why hadn't she just walked away when things careened wildly out of control? Her best friend, Georgia Garret, had told Shelli that she was "looking for trouble" by returning over and over to her website's message forum to be verbally assaulted over and over? She hadn't been able to just walk away, because these people were right about her: She was, in short, a patheticly desturbed and deranged person who deserved to be reviled. That was Shelli's tragic self-portrait. She was no longer worthy of living.
She then cocked the trigger and prayed to God for forgiveness. Did she have the courage to carry out her plan? Could she successfully block any residual feelings of guilt? Suicide was the ultimate act of selfishness. Shelli knew this. But right now, she was ready. She'd rehearsed this most of her life, it seemed. There was no hope left. There was no alternative plan. "Dear Father, forgive me!"
She held the rife tight against her throat. "It's over--it's finally over", she said, a firm sense of resolve hard as granite and lethal as poison. She took a deep, cleansing breath and closed her eyes so she didn't have to watch herself twitch, drool and be blown to pieces when the bullet pierced the back of her throat. Had it really come to this? After all those years of pain and despair? How could she have arrived at this point? Was there any last-minute plan to continue living?
There wasn't.
If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are
---Sting--"How Fragile We Are"--
