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I can't go back to where I used to be...

((OOC: This is a character journal, created for archiving ficlets etc. based on Johnny Depp's character in Dead Man. It's in journal form, from his pov, and is only very vaguely based on the character since much of it deals with his unkownn past. This is my version of his backstory, and might explain why the character we wee in the movie is so timid and jumpy, but also how he slowly breaks down psychologically as well as physically. Read it if you like. Comments are appreciated but not expected. The lyrics in the title of the journal and the icon are from Wolfsheim's 'Childhood Cruel'. Good song, good band.

Oh, and just as a Warning the majority of these entries are of a rather sexual nature in some form, others are just plain unpleasant (you can't have a journal name like this and have too many happy entries). Also, many of the sexual situations young William finds himself in are with his adoptive mother, so they're not blood-related, but I dunno. I suppose it'd still technically be incest, just not in its purest form. What a contradiction in terms. The next portion is pretty essential to the understanding of the journal...so read it! ^^))

This journal has no real chronology to speak of. I write about what I feel like, when I feel like writing about it. Right now, I am alone, living mainly in the wilderness and only entering civilisation when mandatory. I have been killed several times and I have lost count of how many lives I have actually taken in proportion to those murders which I am wanted for. My new life began five years ago. I am almost certain I would trade it for my old one in a split second, though I know I can never go back.

I did not really leave Cleveland after having just buried my parents as I told the fireman on the train (to avoid more uncomfortable conversation, you see), but in order to prevent the necessity of doing so. My mother, at least, was diagnosed as very ill and in need of medicine which neither of us could afford. I've never had a father.

Shortly after her diagnosis, I was offered a position across the country in a hitherto unbeknownst to me town called Machine, at Dickinson's Metal Works. I spent as much money as we could spare on a train trip there, but when I arrived, not only was I virtually penniless, I was now completely without a job. It had been taken no more than a week previous to my arrival, even though the position had been guaranteed to me by Mr. Dickinson, personally.

Disappointed, depressed and completely unsure of what I should do, I wrote a letter to my mother explaining what had happened. I did not send it, though, for I didn't have the money for stamps...but the real reason I hesitated to mail it was because of my shame at having failed. How could I possibly tell her about this? How could I ask for more money? Money we didn't have?

The town was small and the tavern was very easy to find. I bought a drink and tasted alcohol for what seemed like the first in my life. I hated the stuff, but I was so angry at everything, so hopelessly devastated that I didn't care.

Then I met Thel. I. Did. Not. Kill. Thel.

I did, however, kill her fiancee, Charlie (who, I later found out, was the son of my would-be employer, Mr. Dickinson), who had burst into Thel's room, found us together...he'd said he was leaving, Thel said that she'd "never really loved him, anyway," and then he shot her. He'd been aiming at me, but apparently he was so hurt by her words that he just didn't care when she moved in front of me, because he fired anyway. The bullet went clean through her and embedded itself deep within my chest, just above my heart.

I am killed for the first time.

From that moment on I was considered a wanted man, a dead man walking, a fugitive. Things proceeded to go downhill from there.

Some time later, was supposed to cross the great Mirror of Water, where the sea meets the sky in the boat that Nobody had prepared for me, but somehow I did not. I lived. I still live, but I'm not really sure you could call it that. But for whatever reason, it was not my time to leave this earth. Is there some unfinished business I've yet to accomplish? Is it as punishment for all of the wrongs I've committed that I am being kept from heaven? Am I too good to go to hell, yet not yet worthy of paradise? Perhaps I'll find out, perhaps I will never know.

My name is William Blake, and my poetry is written in blood. Do you know my poetry?

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