This is one of those stories from my creative writing class that I mentioned in my previous post. For this assignment we were supposed to look up a name in the phonebook and write about them. We were supposed to list their basic info. first, such as gender, age, physical description, etc. I started just jotting down my characters basic information but quickly became carried away by the story. Which is why this story starts with his basic information. Also, I decided to change his first name, I think it was Roger or something like that, because I did not think it sounded Ukrainian enough.
On a side note, this story is loosely based off of my great grandfather. When he was a teenager he snuck onto a ship bound for New York. That's right, my family is a bunch of illegal immigrants! Hopefully the newly formed Department of Homeland Security will not deport us. Upon his arrival in New York he scraped a living by selling and collecting scrap metal (not in that order). But without any further ado, here is my little story
Alex V. Ziesing
male, 37 years old, scrap metal collector, tall,
skinny, stubble, short thin black hair, pale skin,
blue eyes. He is a Ukrainian immigrant.
He has no pets, friends or family in America. He
lives life alone and on average only speaks with one
person throughout his day, the man at the recycling
plant. He earns a living collecting scrap metal and
turning it in for cash. His apartment is in a slum of
the Glendale area in New York. It is populated mostly
by other immigrants from Albania and Poland. He does
not speak english or the languages of his neighbors,
so he can not speak to anyone. He has, however,
picked up bits of English from his brief encounters at
the recycling plant.
He does not own an automobile, his primary
transportation is an old brown bicycle which he can
attach a home made trailer to when he needs to haul
scrap metal.
His apartment is a bare and dingy studio. His bed is a
mattress that he found in the alley behind his house.
He only has one thin blanket to keep warm at night.
There is one light in his studio and is in the center
of the ceiling and can be flipped on and off by a
switch that is by the front door and makes a loud
"click" sound when it is flipped. To pass the time he
will flip the switch on and off. He does this for
hours on end late into the night. It is the only
thing he does beside collecting metal, eating and
sleeping. He likes to watch the light continue to
glow in the darkness even after he has switched it
off. When the light ceases to glow, he turns it back
on and then quickly off again.
His primary form of nourishment is potatoes which he
peels and boils whole. Sometimes if he has extra
money he will cook the potato with an onion. But
usually he will only eat a potato.
After he is tired of flipping his light switch he will
go to sleep, usually on his mattress, but often he
will fall asleep while staring at the light slowly
fading in the darkness and will spend the night
leaning against his front door. The nights that he
sleeps on his mattress he will not dream, he will only
close his eyes and then he will reopen them in the
morning. But the nights that he falls asleep propped
against his door he will always have vivid and
colorful dreams. He dreams of his childhood in
Odessa, a large city located on the coastline of the
Black sea. He dreams of going to the soccer games and
cheering for his favorite club, the Chornomets. He
had once aspired, as most young boys from Odessa did,
to be a star defender for the club. His dream, also
as most young boys from Odessa, would never become a
reality though. In his dreams he walks through the
streets of Odessa and looks at the old Mediterranean
style architecture or at the boxy cement buildings
that linger from the soviet occupation like black
cadillacs outside of a funeral. These old buildings
are often adorned with the soviet hammer and sickle,
the symbol that was supposed to promote hard work and
bring equality to those that gazed upon it, but
instead brought fear and oppression.
His dreams are not always pleasant though. Sometimes
he will have nightmares of the night the KGB came and
took his parents away. One of his neighbors had
reported his parents of being American sympathizers
and moles for the American government, a very serious
crime in any soviet country. His dreams will be
haunted with the sound of the door being broken down
and his mother screaming out in pain. He will hear
the sound of his mothers fingers being broken. He
will hear the sound of the crow bar smashing into his
fathers knee caps. And he will hear the sound of his
parents being dragged away while their cries of pain
and agony reach only his ears. In his dreams he
remembers feeling useless and unable to help his
parents. He recalls just lying in his bed, paralyzed
with fear, not being able to lift his finger. He
wakes from his nightmares that same way, paralyzed by
fear, the screams of his mother freshly calling out in
his head. It usually takes him a while to realize
that he is not in odessa, that he is safe in America
now. That his parents are not being tortured anymore,
they are by now and no doubt have been dead and put
out of their misery for several years.
After dreaming this he will switch his light on and
off and watch the bulb glowing orange in the center
of his room.
