Prelude:
As I sit here in my darkened apartment at around 2:00AM, my eyes are tired and strained, and my fingers are beginning to struggle to find the correct keys under the dim light of the computer screen. It has been the longest and most terrifying few months of my life, and tonight I have added the finishing touches to a project which I know is going to be my only real chance of ending this nightmare.
I’ve sat here many an hour, usually when I can’t sleep and peer out of my grimy, streaky apartment window onto the New York City streets and I find it difficult to come to terms with what is happening in my life right now. It’s almost like the same streets which birthed and nurtured me have turned into a dark and mysterious monster set on reclaiming me before my time - or at least, before I’m ready.
Divorced for around 5 years, my ex-wife and my two children now live across the country, and I have lived alone in New York City ever since. After the break up, I felt so alone that when I eventually got used to it, I thought the whole experience had rendered me impervious to feelings of loneliness forevermore. Little did I know of the even greater depths of isolation and loneliness which were destined to greet me 5 years on. I have never felt so alone and so scared in my entire life as I do now, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
On my first ‘unofficial’ day on the run (I am not in the federal Witness Protection Program, I am on my own therefore nothing is really ‘official’), for a brief moment when I woke, before my brain engaged and my eyes adjusted to the then-unfamiliar apartment, I’d forgotten what had happened to me, where I was, and who I was running from. I can honestly say, that was the only moment of true peace of mind I have had in the past couple of months since I ‘disappeared’. Of course, this lasted only seconds before the searing pain of my shattered arm returned, accompanied by an almost overwhelming fear and panic: ‘OH GOD, WHAT THE HELL AM I GONNA DO?’
It’s amazing how you can come to miss the smallest, simplest of things in life so much. Things you’ve taken for granted and never truly been grateful for until they are eroded or taken completely. What I miss most is the freedom to walk down the street without looking over my shoulder and without the constant accompanying fear and knowledge that somewhere - perhaps just around each corner - there are people out there with orders to bring my life to a violent and abrupt end. Even the freedom, or birthright, to be able to hold out my hand to another human being and say: ‘Hi, my name is…’ without having to give a false name and feel insincere because I’ve lied to them about who I really am. I find it quite hard to explain this feeling, but I think a persons name has so much to do with who they are, that upon trying to become another person - even in name - it’s almost like losing a part of who you are… and I hate it.
For the past few months, I have been forced to use pseudonyms to protect my real identity, and the people who ‘know’ me in the flesh, know me by a different name to the one I am giving you, for obvious reasons. Although, unlike you, they know absolutely nothing of who I really am, my problems with the Mafia and my ‘real-life’, so when it comes down to it, you know me more than any person who sees me in the flesh, who chats to me in the apartment building, on the street, at the store, and so on. Continue reading »