A story I wrote for class, based on the Finnish legend of Kullerwoinen.
Photo by roberthuffstutter
Kalen was cursed. He was cursed since birth. He was cursed in everything he did. Or at least that the way he would tell it. In reality, Kalen was a blue-collar worker living in New York. 25-years-old, barely having finished high school and still living with his parents, you could say he was a bit of a late-bloomer. Or he could just be “slow.” In any case, he was plagued with incredibly bad luck. Ever since he was a baby he could never seem to do anything right. He was born prematurely, a breech birth, and almost died in the action. His mother was young. Too young to have a baby, and too righteous to have an abortion (or so her parents said), and thus the baby was given up for adoption.
He was adopted by a kind couple from Buffalo, where he lived an uneventful and similarly unsuccessful childhood. A ‘C-‘ student, he skated through, and in school. And despite losing many-a-skateboard to the principal, he managed to pass through elementary and junior-high school. Then on July 7, 1977, his birthday, a knock came at his adoptive parents door. It was his mother. Older, not necessarily wiser, but just as caring and devoted as before. She pleaded for the return of her son. He was 14 now and preparing to enter high school. His adoptive parents left the decision up to him, and he decided to return to his birth mother. She still lived in New York, but now had a husband, another son, and a daughter.
He eventually found a job as a construction worker. It was here where his life went from merely unsuccessful to “cursed.” He had been working at the construction site for 7 months time. He was a crane worker and they were placing the beams for the next floor. He began to lower the beam carefully onto the structure. – The cable snapped. The beam fell. Two were killed.
He always had blamed himself for this, for not double or triple checking the cable, for not swinging the beam away before it fell, for not saving their lives. He held himself responsible for the deaths of his friends. He worked at the site for only 2 weeks more. He could not overcome his guilt .
It was now 3 years and 4 months later and Kalen had gotten a job as a miner. Going into a more dangerous profession perhaps as repentance for his grief over the crane incident, perhaps as a way to punish himself. The miners were setting dynamite, preparing to blast the tunnel onwards, wiring the explosives in neat order. Kalen, the blast director, shot the charge off. The rocks crumpled under the weight of the explosion, falling and filling the tunnel. A perfect blast.
Kalen and the others went to admire their work. They approached the rubble and began to remove it. – A second blast. Unexploded TNT. Five were killed. Kalen was standing behind one of the other miners, a friend of his, who took the shrapnel, and now lay motionless on top of him. He quit two weeks later, citing emotional stress.
Now growing bitter and jaded from his constant misfortune he packed his bags and traveled to California, figuring he had nothing left to lose, a dangerous thing in such a desperate person.
Hoping to start anew he got a job pushing papers at a corporation in Silicon Valley, land of the golden microchip. He figured he couldn’t possibly cause any damage here. He made his life in California. Quickly climbing the ranks of the company ladder. He was wise to get in when he did; he made his fortunes here.
He had every Saturday off and it became his ritual to drive to drive south to spend his earnings at the casinos. Why not? He was rich. Life was good. What did he have to lose?
It was on a Saturday the raid happened. The CEO was arrested as the leader of a money-laundering scheme. Kalen’s money was never real. He was left with $1,000.
Disheartened and angry at the world, finding himself cursed with this strange affliction of bad luck, he went to a local bar to drown his sorrows. He stayed there for hours. Drinking and contemplating the world, his history, as his vision got blurrier. He spent his money, losing himself in the warmth of the bar. Closing time. He leaves. Following the kaleidoscope of lights down the street to his house.
On the way he crosses paths with a girl, she catches his eye and he approaches her. Fumbling in his drunken stupor, he tries to get her to come home with him. She refuses and pushes him away and runs down the street. He spies another girl, another chance, he tries, she escapes. Finally another, she too refuses, he has had enough: enough of the world, enough of his luck, enough of himself. He grabs her and pulls her down an alley. He offers her all the money he has left, $920.52. His fortune for one more night of pleasure. Fearful of her life, she accepts.
The next morning, in bed, she asks him where he is from, New York, the same. She asks him where he lived. The answer stops her: the same. His sister. She tells him. Stunned. She says she needs to be alone. She lays herself on the kitchen floor.
A fugitive, he has turned against the world, as the world has turned against him. He returns to his home, to New York.
His mother, shocked. Her daughter, gone. Not wanting to lose another child she pleads with him to flee. To flee to the Midwest, to flee from his life. He obliges, reluctantly.
He moves to North Dakota. He is there not 1 month before DNA results come back in California and he is arrested for the rape of his sister. He spends the next 6 years in a California prison, forced everyday to realize how dismal his life had become, and to ponder why he was chosen to have this misery brought upon him.
Prison sentence done, he returns to New York. He has made a decision. He tells his mother he is going to join the army, to fight in the war, it’s where he belongs. His mother begs him not to go. Who would take care of her and his father and his brother? “You can go to the nursing home if need-be, they will take care of you,” he says. He then asks his father and brother if they would care if he died. They refuse, they’ll find another, more worthy. He then asks his mother. She will always care about him, no matter what happens, and she would mourn him if he died.
War. Far away from home, far away from reason, far away from the luck he left behind. He is victorious in battles, perhaps found his niche, found his niche in killing people. He concluded if he was destined to have the people around him die, that he would be in control, he would be the killer. He received the medal of honor. The war over, he returns home.
Nothing. There is no one to greet him, no one to welcome him, no one to congratulate him. He returns to his home. It is empty. There were riots. His family is gone. He walks slowly around his house, touching the cold stove, feeling the cold hearth, contemplating his fate. He concludes, perhaps it was not that he was not that he was destined to have those around him die, but that he was never meant to have lived. He joins his family. It is 2-14. He was 43.
