There are so many things to say.

However I have been granted a limited time to write you. (It seems the warden has made an exception to his long standing ban on letters from inmates. Don't ask me why... I wasn't allowed to even look at him when I was called to his office.) So read carefully.

Remember when you started going to that youth group at the church on Baker Street? You came back and started to tell me all about how excited you were to finally meet some good friends. I scolded you and told you that religious people were to be avoided. I said that guy who supposedly rose from the dead was a myth and a crutch for the un-educated. I can still see your face after I told you they were just pretending to be your friend, what they really wanted was your money. You were angry at them and joined in my disdain.
Remember when your mom and I split up and I told you she became a religious zealot, one of those "holy rollers" and I could not abide in the same house with someone who was such a hypocrite? I can still see your eyes then, too. But I told you to be strong and that you could still love your mom, it's just that she has problems with religion and if you were strong, you could avoid the same fate.
Son, there were so many people you and I met over the years that tried to "convert" us. But I helped you stand strong. I told you that if you became one of those religious people who believed in that guy who died and lived (for some reason I can't bring myself to write his name) that we couldn't relate any more. That we couldn't pal around, get drunk at the club, go skiing on Sunday morning, or any of that stuff.
By the time you were in your 1st year of grad-school, you had independently confirmed everything I had told you. You even helped Tracy understand that churches were institutions of oppression. When you brought her home to meet me, we briefed her on your mother, telling Tracy to be careful and avoid any discussion on religion. We laughed out loud when you told me about how she excused herself from the table when your mother started to pray for the meal. (I still don't know how your mom got to her, though.)
As hard as it is to believe what I am about to say, I think its best that you don't end up like I did. Let me tell you about this place...
After the Judge confirmed the verdict, I was placed in shackles and loaded into this portable cage called "the basket" by the driver. (He had such a sinister laugh that it caused me pain, just to hear it.) While in the cage, I was accompanied by others who were sharing my same fate. They all looked like I did, depressed and devoid of all hope of ever seeing the light of day.
My cage was brought to a way-station where it was loaded onto a train. The train was ominous and dark as pitch. It belched out smoke from its stack that was yellow and left a taste of sulfur in the air. When the hundreds of other cages were finished being loaded onto the train, the train began to move. The train gained speed and steadily made its way around mountain and then descending into a valley. Just before we arrived at our destination, the grade began to steepen, going into a tunnel.
Fear was now gripping me and this train load of inmates. I was afraid, we were all afraid, because it was getting darker and hotter. As we descended the heat became so intense, the cloths I was wearing when I first came to the court room were starting to smolder. I couldn't close my eyes, they were so dry and tearless. The soles of my shoes were melting as the bottom of our cage began to softly glow with a radiant heat. Everything now, around me, was an angry orange color. By this time, my cloths were on fire and being consumed. The clothing of the others, in my cage, were also now being engulfed in flame. I couldn't breath, I couldn't close my eyes, and I couldn't move away from the heat, it was all around me. I bit down hard, so hard, in fact, that my teeth shattered. I tried to grab onto the gate of the cage, but it was even hotter than the air around me and I reeled from the pain.
My sentence was now becoming more real than I could have ever imagined. The guards on the train began to howl with each passing junction. The one guard that was on my car, looked at me with a grin of unspeakable cruelty. "This is your stop, Bob!" The gate to the cage flung open, and the guard motioned to the door of the cage and cursed me. For some reason, the flames that were licking my flesh, were now all around me, in my lungs, lapping at my face, my legs, my body... I was tossed out of the cage, off of the moving train, and I tumbled though the air onto the jagged rocks jutting up from the floor of the cavern. I hit them at such speed that I was torn asunder - and yet, miraculously, was whole again, in an instant.
THEN, as I stood, I looked around to survey my new surroundings. Everything was glowing with a sparkle of heat and gas. Just beyond the rocks where I stood, was a small clearing, a flat area where there were others. As I headed towards them, my eyes beheld the faces of the (*)(*)(*)(*)ed - souls lost in their sufferings and lamentings of things unspoken.
Then to my great satisfaction, I discovered I was not alone! There he was! MY FATHER! Your grandfather. The man who told me this place didn't exist!
I was moving now, over the jagged crags and towards this man I once held in high esteem. Trying to ignore my agony I rapidly descended to meet the man who brought me here.
But before I stepped foot onto the terrace I was met by a tormentor. A winged, red-skinned devil with horns and a beak, yet was neither man nor beast. He razed his sword as if to hack me in two if I moved one foot closer. So I faced the tormentor and begged him for his smaller sword, still sheathed. The tormentor withdrew it from it's sheath, and thrust it into me like I was a cooked turkey. Ignoring the fact that I received no mortal wound that would end my suffering, I withdrew the blade from me and began to advance towards the man who gave me life in this place of eternal death.
Standing in front of him, with the guard's sword in my hands I looked at my father with a hatred that seemed to soften my physical suffering. The more I envisioned attacking him with the tormentor's weapon, the temperature inside what was left of me, was soothed. So like a man near death from lack of water, I ran towards this oasis and drank from the pool. With all my might, I caused that blade to flash from above my head to the skull of my father. Just as his unflinching head was about to be hewn in two, his hands rose up from being clenched fists on his sides to completely halting the fate I intended for him. His hands, pancaked on either side of the sword, I could not move, the blade seemed as if stuck in stone. The tormentor laughed. "Your blade, Bob!" it said as it walked away howling in even louder laughter.
Robert Sr. was a formidable man in life - ruthless in business, always managing to play the game better than his opponents. Standing just over six feet tall and with a booming voice, the board room was his personal play ground and his associates were all pawns to be played as a small orchestra. If he liked you, he would promote you to a place that best suited him. If he didn't like you, then he would make it obvious that no one else should either. And if you didn't go away willingly, then soon going away was the only choice you had. That man, that power house of unflinching ambition, was now a blackened form of charred remains, like I - seemingly lifeless.
But lack of comely form or slightest motion doesn't mean the snake isn't ready to strike. When he clasped the sword, I stood there for a moment, and gazed upon my father like a man looks when he turns on a light in a darkened room and finds he's unexpectedly not alone. The gritty sound of his movement as he stood, was the same sound logs make in the fire when moved with a poker. As he rose, I expected his eyes to look at me, but there was no light, only fire in those sockets. And now fully erect, he ripped the sword from my clasp and quickly thrust it into the rock that was beside him.
He began to speak, with a raspy voice I recognized as my father's:
"Hate me?! Despise me?!" The coal that seemed to be fueling his bowels erupted into a slightly brighter flame, from within. (Cont Next)

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"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." March 4, 1869, Grant's First Inaugural Address