i was an
orphan and this was, for some reason, a
crime punishable by death. i broke into the basement of a house i found to try to hide from the
police. it turned out the house was occupied by the salpino family (who raised me during my
teenaged years while my mother was in various
mental institutions and whose youngest
child,
christopher, died on
may 5, 2000). the basement had a
dirt floor and board walls like a barn and there were
horses.
i wandered around until i found the family and explained my predicament. i was suddenly in
danger of being put to
death for not having a family. they helped to come up with a
solution.
i was to "steal" one of their horses, and some of erica's (the oldest
daughter)
personal belongings. i would ride down the road in a frenzied hurried pace, at which point the police would inevitably
stop me. i was to tell the police that i was erica, but they were not supposed to believe me. they would accuse me of attempting to steal her
identity. the law would allow the
victim (erica and her
family) to choose to either
punish me with
death, or pay $1000 to buy me as a
slave. They promised that they would buy me.
i went back into the basement to prepare the horse for riding. it was skittish and didn't want me to put on the
saddle. during my attempts to do so, mr. salpino called down the stairs to warn me that someone was coming. i hid. unfortunately, the person who came downstairs quickly determined what was going and i watched mr. salpino
kill the man by
cutting his
throat. mr. salpino told me to go gather some of erica's things while he took care of the dead man and the horse.
i gathered some of her belongings and went back into the
basement. christopher was there and had just broken the legs of the horse so that we could not continue on with our
deception. i wasn't worried so much that i was now probably going to
die because of the
laws... i was more upset that christopher must have some really
negative feelings for me to have gone so far as to
hurt a horse to bring about my
death.