THE CROW
Cantney Gessner

If I had an identity, it would be David Jonathan Bass. That's who I wanted
to be. Not to have the life he had, but to have the life I wanted him to
have. He knew who I was. I was the young man he wanted to kill. He had
always watched me and desired to do things to me only he kept to himself,
as I'd appear to him throughout the years he was raised by his new daddy,
and his wretched mother. He did kill me. And I was glad for it.

Jon Bass had a fascination with squirrels, because everytime he would see
me in the distance, I'd be toting a squirrel that obeyed my every command.
One day, he saw that squirrel in the woods by his house in Greensboro I
watched without his knowing. His new daddy would never allow him to own a
gun, like he wanted, but with his pecker-toy B.B. gun, he aimed and shot
that squirrel. BAM! He scored. The squirrel fell over and crawled, wounded
in the gut, but not dead; a gasp suddenly grabbing his regretful heart, he
rushed over in his army surplus garb to save the nut collector to bring
home and dress himself in his surgeon gown, with twitching hands. His
friends were knocking on his bedroom door, laughing at him, as he
explained the situation of having found his victim like this. There was no
saving the gray squirrel, he would simply call, Gray. It was slowly dying,
and all his friends continued to laugh at his seriousness, because he
didn't have the heart to be the bad guy he was. He had killed me. And I
was glad for it, as he stuffed me in a box and buried me in the woods. The
only confusion Jon Bass had was that where one squirrel was, there were a
thousand more to take its place.

"Jon-a-tha-a-a-an!" his mother named Peggy Jo pamperingly cooed him from
his sleep, one morning, when news broke out that Brandon Lee was dead. The
young Actor was killed by a gunshot to the stomach, on set of The Crow, in
Wilmington, North Carolina. I knew Jonathan would get really worked up
about that, since he was on the verge of receiving his black belt as a
Japanese Samurai (one who serves with absolute loyalty-even to the death)!
It would entirely transform his staunch pursuit of acting he had begun, by
his recent auditions in Wilmington to become some big-time Movie Star.

"What is it, Mother?" he asked, as he took the bowl of soup she had made
for him in bed. Jo had always preconditioned in him that he was sick since
he was young and had been known as 'Huck' on the pig farm in Christmas
Town, N.C. (aka: McAdenville), where I first met him.

"I just got the news that your cousin Marcus killed himself. Committed
suicide by shooting himself in the stomach. They say he did it because he
was 'gay'," she emphasized with hushed carefulness.

Jon could barely remember this cousin Marcus, who was David Huckaby's
youngest sister's son-David being Jonathan's real dad. It was only a vague
memory of a bleary cousin, with blond hair and blue eyes, whom Jonathan
would constantly see in the corner of his eye. A squirrel on an equally
tall and lanky strut of a familiar boy's shoulder, pretending to be musing
in his own lost thoughts, while wandering in the background. Marcus was
only 24-years old. That's when Jonathan woke up, just 17-years old, when
he ignored his mother's reminder of the estranged cousin-turning on the
news, instead, to the unexpected and sad death of Bruce Lee's son,
Brandon.


Cantney Gessner is a writer living in California.