Alex V. Ziesing

     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.