Hello, Little Sparrow by Jordan Jones (the reading list .TXT) 📕

“Does that have to do with what happened to your shoulder?” she asked. She was still unaware her father was tracking a serial killer.

“Yeah, something like that,” I responded, then I unfolded the paper.

Chapter Nineteen

Hello, Little Sparrow,

The lilies have sprung today…and, although they’re not native to our part of the world, they sure seem happy to be here. Who am I to judge one’s happiness? Who am I to change one’s happiness into an abyss of stagnation…guilt…confusion…and innocence? The latter your truest form. Your dandy demeanor and frantic frolic across the yard helps me get through the most trying of days. My muscles ache and grown any time I try to stand, making me think they are one with the bed. What impostors are these?

Where did they come from?

The doctor said the remedy is working well and that my body will ache, yes, but there was a certain sadness in his eyes. I knew he would only tell me what I wanted to hear.

What is “going well” if it didn’t mean the total eradication of my illness? I’ve called it my own for the past few days now; I guess it helps me accept my fate. I only hope it allows you to accept yours, Little Sparrow.

Ah, what am I saying?

You must glide, Sparrow. You must go on with your life. Though your young body can handle the excruciation of what this world will muster, your feeble mind cannot.

The sweetest of sweet.

I am obsessed with thinking about you, Little Sparrow. I hear your voice in the meadows, screaming, yelling, laughing and I dare not look.

I couldn’t even think it.

To look would mean to remember you, as you are…when all I want is to remember you as you were. A Sweet innocent Sparrow, gliding its wings through a forever-blue sky in search of its next adventure.

Fly, fly, fly.

You have fallen to the ground and have hit it hard. It’s disrupted your life more than you could ever imagine. More than I ever imagine.

In fact, I can’t stand the sight of you because I don’t want to imagine.

What has the ground done to you, Little One? You are dirty, yes, but what more has the moldy ground done?

You have become something I wish I could’ve changed. If I could have taken your place, I would have a thousand times over again. I have been there before, and I dare not go back. My aches and stabbing pains are enough for me to battle with now.

They cause me every bit as much contempt as the ground causes you. All we can really do is get up and fly again.

What do you say?

I’ll stand on this bed and spread my wings as far as they go, only to float into the deep blue. The deep blue is all I can see out of my window from this angle, but it’s all I need.

Just the deep blue and the laughter of a dangerous facade. One that will have to cover up the wounds of a hundred stings. I wish the bees would buzz away.

Your ground and my aches present themselves in the same way: hated and angry. Do away with him, Little Sparrow. Let the anger guide you throughout your own universe into what it will take to see him take his last breath.

Also, the other Little One needs to be protected at all cost. His potential is unfathomable. Both of you are incredible.

But the monster…

I don’t care what happens to him, to be honest. I used to.

Those were different times; these are not.

Oh, how I would love to lie in the grass.

Chapter Twenty

Tick tock.

The clock on the wall was the loudest thing in the room and that included the woman carrying the baby, nuzzled and sleeping deep in her arms.

Brooks wanted to see the baby’s face, but the mother was busy rocking it gently into a dark abyss called sleep. Brooks was also tired after the long drive it took him to get to the prison.

The waiting room was full of anxiety; people paced in circles, even when the correctional officers told them to sit. But, not Brooks. He sat quietly staring at the stained tiled floor, waiting for his turn to enter the visiting booth.

The room wasn’t made to be comforting; it was made to invoke anxiety. It was made to make the visitors dread coming to see loved ones. Brooks thought the woman with the baby was there to see her boyfriend who was in for God-knew-what.

What a life.

The baby’s first experience with Daddy would be behind an inch of plexiglass over a corded telephone. Brooks felt for the child as he always did. He wanted to take the child out of the prison and let it free in a field so it can make its own way. The current state of affair in its life would be no better than that.

Brooks chuckled at the idea of a baby working a full-time job to make ends meet. His mind was in no shortage of jokes at the baby’s expense. He stretched his neck out and his gaze met the woman’s in an awkward moment.

He smiled and nodded and she reciprocated, though her’s was much more forced. Brooks even wore his good button-up for the occasion. The last time he visited Angela, the officers treated him poorly, and he didn’t like the feeling he felt after leaving.

This time he didn’t like the feeling he felt, but it was mainly due to being surrounded by law enforcement and he’d killed two people and stabbed another.

I