character :: Dave Niemann
David Niemann was born in Houston, Texas to Jacob Niemann and Kendra Land, a forklift operator at a chemical company and a physical therapist who provided a nice enough home for their son. Jacob and Kendra were self-made Americans, turning hardship into progress, and they instilled this intense work ethic in their son as early as possible – by the time David entered high school, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be a Chemical Engineer, and he hops right into college where he’ll meet the love of his life. April puts David (now going by his nickname, Dave) on cloud nine. Before long, April has a shiny new notebook (just like his!) t that plans out every moment of every day; and it’s kind of endearing. But, sometimes, things don’t go according to plan. It threw Dave’s careful planning into a tailspin every time she was late home, and so he began amending April’s behavior with some gentle guidance.
She deserved it, really. Dave did all these things to make her life easy, and she bucked him at every corner. He quit her job for her and demanded that she stay in the apartment he provided – he worked hard as a lab assistant and dammit if she didn’t act as if she was owed the world. Dave had to do something to control her behavior; and like magic – alakazam! – she listened to his fist. Dave was in control, and he got high off of it. He also found relief in a little brown paper bag that his friend passed him in Calculus – the dizzy escape from his own micro-management was incredible and it took him no time to get hooked.
is the enemy -the one that's absolute,
the one that wants control of your mind
not just your actions.
Right around the time Dave’s graduating with his associate’s degree, April has fantastic news: she’s pregnant. It’s not nearly the exciting news for her as it is for Dave, and he’s got some big promises as he’s apartment shopping far away from her family in Houston, and they move just in time for the baby to come. May is three months old when disaster strikes. The fight begins again, and this time when Dave can’t take enough of April’s attitude and he pops her in the eye, she goes down and hits the corner of the stove, knocking herself out. She did it to herself. So when April comes to and Dave is back in the bedroom, emptying a can of baby blue spray paint upside down into bag, she doesn’t think twice before grabbing her purse and the baby and getting her ungrateful ass into the car he bought her and speeding off into the night.
Dave’s lost control. The mental break that happens here leads to some behavior that he didn’t know he were capable of; hundreds of voicemails on April’s phone, thousands of text messages. He leaves class without a word and moves to April’s hometown, a few cities over from his own. He leaves her presents and tries to woo her back as she’s moved back in with her parents, but in return that bitch everything to get him in trouble. He gets many stern talking-tos by the police, but they understand. They nod and approve when he tells them that she’s blown it all out of proportion; anti-stalking laws in Texas, enforced by sympathetic small-town officers, are a joke. Dave knows that and uses it to his best advantage.
He finds himself relying more and more on inhalants as he eventually gets himself some dead-end retail job in order to stay close to his daughter. If anything, it’s endearing how hard he’s working to be near her. April’s nagging has resulted in his weekly visit becoming a supervised visit…but it’s funny how quickly a social worker will give up the fight when tied down and held at gunpoint. May is scared at first, but eventually she cheers up…after all, it’s alone time with daddy and mommy’s been mean so they don’t get to do this a lot. The two go on a carefully planned roadtrip to Southeast Texas, and for the first time in a long time, Dave feels happy. His daughter does everything he says (she’s such a good little listener!) but unfortunately, a diner recognized the two of them from the news and before long, he’s back in jail and May is back with April. Well, she had a blast, didn’t she?
you'll never have a moment
free of the thought of me
Dave doesn’t spend long in jail. Despite April’s meddling with the police, he spends about a year to mull over what he’s done. When he leaves prison, he’s realized that there’s an error to his ways: he got caught. So for the next two years or so, Dave lays low, careful to send his text messages from a disposable number and wiping his fingerprints from the loving gifts he left his ex-wife and his daughter. If anything, April is the one being inflammatory with her father pointing a double-barrel shotgun right in his face at least twice after catching him on the family’s front porch. That’s okay, she’ll get what’s coming to her. Dave begins a new journal with new plans down to every minute, and these will surely go off without a hitch. So he thought.
April finally moves out of her family’s home when May turns five, and Dave’s careful planning and nearly around-the-clock surveillance is shaken when he lays eyes on the new man in April’s life: a new man. His name is Connor Marks and he’s divorced with partial custody of his daughter Nicole who get along with May well enough when she comes over from Friday until Tuesday every week. He’s a retired Marine with six years on the police force that ended after a spine injury left him wheelchair bound. Dave knows where Connor’s parents live and the locations of his best buddies from the force. He also knows that Connor is smart enough to cover every base and now Dave can’t even look into the home’s windows to watch his daughter grow, raised by some bastard.
What Dave does next will change the lives forever. What is usually a man of careful planning and meticulous record-keeping will melt down into a jumble of disorganized and gruesome chaos; and the effects of his actions will ripple through April’s family like an atomic bomb. Some say that the wake of a forest fire brings hope as the seedlings will someday sprout again; but this is not a forest and these were not trees. Sometimes, words can only go so far – maybe someday the world will go on as if David Niemann were never born.
