Grandpa's Machine | Teen Ink

Grandpa's Machine

December 16, 2015
By Anonymous

Author's note:

I thought doing a book in a journal entry type setting would be fun.

Journal Entry 1: November 29th, 1914. It was my 13th birthday. Presents, cake, and people inhabited the room; the exciting chants of kids filled my ears as I ripped through the thin layers of wrapping paper. I opened all of my presents, ate all of my cake, and said farewell to my “friends” a couple of hours later. They were just kids I knew from school, I wasn’t familiar with most of them, I only invited them so I felt like I was at a real party. My only true friend was Scotty. He knew exactly what I wanted and got me a Laser Lion action figure; it came equipped with projectile firing action! I will admit, this gift is what made this day such a wonderful one. It’s a shame how it had to end so soon though. I was lovin’ life so far; I had an amazing best friend, good grades, lenient parents, the triforce of a fun teenage life. However, my parents had hidden my presents in the garage, and to this day I haven’t stepped foot in there. I still don’t understand why I can’t go in... I know grandpa used to live in our garage before I was born and passed away when I was much too small to remember, but I barely know anything else. He apparently died of a heart attack, and it must have been pretty traumatizing, too; my mother always hesitated or drifted off into deep thinking when I mentioned grandpa, and my father would always suggest a different topic. I wish I had gotten to know him.
Journal Entry 2: December 8th, 1914. My parents were gone on a business trip for a couple of weeks and I had to tend to the house by myself. My mother left me with enough money to last until they returned, and they knew I was old enough to be home alone. What a lucky break, right? *Note: High-five yourself every once in awhile for your outstanding luck.* Anyway, the house was always so quiet without my parents around. I sometimes visited Scotty, but I wasn’t allowed to have him over due to a lack of supervision. The days in which he was busy were often lonely, and I had to spend most of my time with my dog, Lenny. Dogs are great company but after hours of playing with him, I either got bored or worn out, so the cycle reset. Scotty being busy, me being lonely, dog being crazy, etc. etc. I can’t wait for my parents to return.
Journal Entry 3: December 11th, 1914. Two men in suits walked up to my door today to deliver bad news. The plane my parents were on had crashed while flying to Germany. They told me that everything would be okay and that they would take me to a foster home in the morning. So now I’m just trying to absorb the fact that my parents are dead… that they were gone. Never to return. Never to be see them again. I don’t know what I’m thinking at the moment, all I feel is aching pain in my heart and chest, like someone just ripped out a chunk of both. What makes it even more painful, was the last thing they said to me. “We’ll be back before you know it!” I’m going to end this here, my tears are making the ink run.

Journal Entry 4: December 12th, 1914. The men came back today and tried to take me to the foster home, but I hid. There was no way I was going to that place, I’d rather die. They looked around for me for about an hour and gave up. I think one of them said “we’ll be back tomorrow kid, you can’t hide forever” and then they left. But to be honest, I CAN hide forever. Do I really need to do anything anymore? What can I do? I have no parents or--oh, the doorbell just rang, but the suit mens’ car isn’t there. It’s Scotty’s car!
Journal Entry 5: Same day, same year. So Scotty is moving away in the next week. I’m going to try and hang out with him as much as I can before that. When he’s gone, I won’t have anything left. Everything I truly loved in the world would be gone. I’m not going to dwell on it now, though. I need to be happy for Scotty. It’s what a good friend would do. He’s waiting outside, we’re going to go play baseball. I hope today never ends.
Journal Entry 6: December 21st, 1914. I’ve successfully hidden from the suit men for a few weeks now. There’s a hole underneath our porch that leads to my grandpa’s garage I found out, so I’ve been going in there to hide since the door is boarded up. There is a large… thing in here, but it is covered with a tarp. I don’t want to take it off--my parents would be ashamed of me if I did that. At the very least I want to pretend they’re still here now that Scotty is gone to give me a sense of security. A sense of acceptance. A purpose. At least I still have my dog.
Journal Entry 7: December 25th, 1914. It’s Christmas day, but no celebration was had here. I went back into the garage to hide, and the more I was alone, the more I dwelled on it; the curiosity building up inside of me was going to overflow. I couldn’t hold in the temptation anymore, so I took the tarp off. It took a good two or three minutes to take it off, the thing was so large, but what was underneath was… shocking to say the least. Maybe even morbid. I found out it was a machine that executed vigilantes that were sentenced to death, sort of like a guillotine or an electric chair. However, I found an easel that had the blueprints for the mechanism, and what made it so bizarre is that it had a Plinko game built into it--the ball decided how the machine would kill the one hooked up to it, like a randomizer. There were five ways to go: decapitation, bullet to the head, electrocution, suffocation, or lethal injection. In the very rare chance the ball falls out of the Plinko machine, the vigilante got to choose himself. A very interesting machine indeed… maybe it was a good thing I didn’t know my grandpa. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but these all seem like pretty good ways to go.

Journal Entry 8: January 6th, 1915. I’m slowly going insane. That adding to my extreme depression doesn’t mix very well. No matter how hard I think about it, I can’t find a good reason to be alive anymore. The feeling is unexplainable, but it’s definitely a horrid one. Sometimes I laugh for no reason… even when I’m just sitting there. Hahah.. hah..
Journal Entry _: ______________: I don’t need to document these anymore, no one’s going to read them anyway. Why do I care when I wrote these? It doesn’t matter, nothing matters! I’ve ran out of food, I’m completely alone, and if I try to leave, the suit men will find me. I think I… no, I need to get a hold of myself. I’ll be okay.
Journal Entry_: _______________: The pain never goes away, it just keeps building and building. I can’t remember what day it is, and I smashed all the clocks in the house. I was going mad from all the ticking, ticking, ticking. And for some reason, knowing how long I had left in the day drove me more insane than not knowing, so they had to go. My dog ran away a few days ago so nothing is around to keep me company, nothing to show me I was cared for. No one from school ever came up to ask me how I was, not even my neighbors! Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m alone in this world and nothing about me in any shape or size directs me to think I matter. I only have four pages left to write in this journal, and now that I think about it, maybe, you know… that machine doesn’t sound too bad now.
------------------------------------------: I scratched out the journal entry segment, seeing it angered me. Over and over again with the documenting, and for what? Just to remember the days of my suffering? Gah! But that’s beside the point. I am writing this from inside my grandpa’s garage. The suit men caught me and were going to bring me to the foster home, but I asked them if I could go and retrieve something from my room. They told me I had five minutes. I assumed this was enough time to whir up the machine and maybe give it a test run… hahaha, you know, to make sure it still works! I am currently strapped into the machine as I write this. I thought maybe if I strapped myself in I’d get a better experience. The lever to activate the Plinko ball is far away, but I thought I could throw this workshop hammer at it to lower it... and funny enough, it worked! I hear the ball falling through the pegs, yes, it’s working! Hahaha, after all these years it still works! I will finally be at peace with myself! Maybe I’ll even see m

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