Journal

I am writing this both as a schedule, and as an elegy. I don’t know if I will survive the coming days, but I’m going to face my fate. Two weeks ago, I led the police to an IRA safehouse, but only after stealing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars from it. Today I’m going to try and get the money from where it is hidden, and flee the city with it. As soon as I step into the bank to go to my safe deposit box, I’m sure the bank is being watched. My fear for what could happen if I stay here has driven me to this decision. I can’t stand the paranoia that I don every time I walk the streets. I will take the money and run. Maybe I’ll move to South Dakota. Although, if that happens, I might as well just turn myself over and ask for the quick death that South Dakota could never give me.

Tomorrow, I think, I will stop running. Running from what? You may ask. I haven’t written about it because I was afraid. Well shit, I’m still afraid, but if I’m done running from the most frightening radical political activist party I’ve ever seen, then I might as well write it down, right? Think of this as my living will. Or my eulogy. Something along those lines. Regardless of the outcome, I don’t think I’m coming back to this room, or even this city.
I have never agreed with the terroristic tactics of the IRA, but as a member of the Irish community, it is an expectation that you will follow the norm and support the IRA. I don’t know what led me to finally revolt against this norm, besides a random act of drunken stupidity, but the fear and the paranoia have become determination. Maybe this neighborhood has changed me. I see all of my neighbors living their lives while I sit here and try to hide from mine. The regular people worry about the cold weather, the normal folks get angry when the fire alarm is pulled, those people, not me, have jobs, families, and issues to deal with. Me? I have a renegade ant to take care of, and a terrorist organization to hide from. Where is that normal?
Well, anyways, here’s the plan: I’ll go to the bank. And really that’s where this whole thing falls apart. Depressing, no? IF they aren’t already watching the bank, I will officially be the luckiest man alive. I will walk out of the bank a made man, and I promise you, I will not look back. However, the likelihood that the IRA isn’t watching the bank as about as likely as Charley escaping his ant farm. In other words, I’ll go to the bank, get the money, proceed to be jumped by a gang of IRA hitmen, and if not killed, then dragged back to whatever is serving as the IRA’s HQ to be flayed alive. Sounds fun.
Charlie C. O’Charley