I, Cyborg

12^th April 2012

Dear Cassi,

I think you may recall Turtle Nose speaking of a story I worked on back in middle school that stayed with me to mid high school. I have but fragments of its evolution in my mind now and so little was ever written down with all the obstacles in my way. Many were the nights … or days … or evenings maybe, I can no longer give account of such things, that I would sit imprisoned in my mind unable to sleep but too weak to move.

       

My wandering thoughts would spin yarns for me in that hell that gave me what play I could have at eleven. The darkness of my life was lit only by my stories as the spark of light I had to cling to in keeping my sanity. I called my hero Claw as hands had then been useless to me. Those people from where Claw came I called Clordonians. They were a race of Cyborgs things made of machine and flesh.

       

So, from where did the Clordonians come? The face I took from the Terminator and the body was that of a toy soldier that lost a hand. The ship I saw them fight across space with was a toy gun that came with the soldier.

       

In my head and with bits a bobbles I constructed a thing I would dream to become because of my depression. The Clordonian was a being that had suffered terrible wounds and could still live. Wounds like those on my heart from my mother’s death. The beings arms could move by servos and by flesh and so it could feel no pain or fatigue.

       

These things of my imagination were the engineers of a world where my pain would end. They were the saviors from my privet hell, the guardian angels I wished I had. They were the grim smile that kept me alive in this world.

Find your smile, little sister; it only needs to shine for you,

Richard Leland Neal