Tag: Fiction

Short Story: The Proverbial Hand-Grenade

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Private First Class, Benjamin Harrison; named for America’s 23rd president that Ben’s father found an inexplicably queer fascination with. Why, no-one by the elder Harrison was sure. Even then, it was doubtful a sufficient explanation could be gleaned from the man’s meticulous, daily research and record-keeping of the long forgotten president. What is a matter of public-record however, is the intense sense of duty and honor in the young Private.

All through his life he was teased; from his rigid-postured, vegetable-eating youth, to his JROTC, fatigue-clad teenage years. Life wasn’t a living hell for Ben, at least not between the off-school hours. Otherwise, for his first decade of schooling he suffered the curious ire of his classmates that somehow formed insults from the half-historically honored words of “President-boy,” “Chief Harry-son,” and even “Army-man.”

Such is the crude humor and reckless abandon of youth that these insults, formed of prestigious titles, turned to weapons of psychological warfare. In their way, they were harmless to all, but Ben wasn’t everyone. He was a person; living, feeling, and with a sense of duty and honor that only made him feel worse when he’d decided to devote his life to protecting and serving his country. Unfortunately, grade-school and junior-high were made all the more intolerable by the occasional history course or class that focused on US presidents.

Each year, Ben’s father would dutifully speak to classes about former-president Harrison. As part of a locally-famed historic society, and due to his knowledge of the aforementioned, he was called in without fail to give small lectures each year. Generally occurring just after the winter break, it made Ben loathe the month of January even more than the normal boys whom were simply peeved at the return of scheduled classes.

Thankfully, most of that subsided in high-school. Joining JROTC gave Ben a sounding board of peers with whom he could sympathize. Having been groomed to follow in his father’s boots and join the service, finding others with a similar goal made life all the more bearable. But again the fickle nature of humans eroded much of his enthusiasm. Contrary to intuition, a boy clad in camouflage fatigues was easier to see in the halls of an American High-School than a sore thumb.

Ben and his JROTC-mates were often the targets of the vile underbelly of the school. Being six-foot tall, crew-cut, and peach-fuzzed didn’t help. He was already gangly, lean, and looked weak; perfect prey for the undesirables that even the ‘heads and jocks disliked. Fortunately for Ben, most of the bullying was done on a psychological level– that curious battle-field seemingly isolated to schools, distant war-zones, and clearance shoe-sales.

The only, minor incident that turned physical could not have come at a better time for Ben, nor ended more favorably. The bully, clearly insecure about his vertically-challenged stature, taunted and tormented for a week before he got physical. He’d cornered Ben and a pair of JROTC girls against a locker. The girls were the usual JROTC types; slightly more butch than the others, average-looking, and one more pudgy than the off-brand, preppy-girls that roamed the halls like packs of parental-wallet succubi. As a result, their confidence was less than stellar, their protests shot down with quick, monosyllabic insults masked as swears.

The aggression was met with a firm tongue, and more rigid posture than Ben had ever manifested. He made himself a target, threw himself on the proverbial hand-grenade to shield his friends from the explosion about to be unleashed.

Indeed, Ben’s quick quip back drew the bully’s attention. He spat a swear with a shove at Ben’s chest. Ben was more limber than he appeared, like a cobra raised up and ready to lunge. The second shove only connected to give Ben his opening. In a flurry of arms and the thrust of a fist, the boy flipped through the air. He landed on the ground, hands clutched at his throat, to gasp for air. Ben’s first girlfriend was the pudgier girl present that day. They lasted all through high-school, her hero and his love.

That proverbial self-sacrifice was repeated years later in a middle-eastern desert. On sweep-and-clear orders, PFC Ben Harrison and his unit came under heavy fire. Cornered inside a bombed-out brick building, laid out like a series of low-hurtles and half-walls around them, they exchanged fire with native insurgents. That day was hardly Ben’s first taste of war, but unfortunately, it would be his last in-country.

They spent over a thousand rounds, pinned down by surplus-Soviet AK fire. The irony that these bullets had been stockpiled to kill Americans during the Cold War was not lost on Ben so long as he thought about it. That day, he did. In fact, he thought about a lot of things; home, his first love, sex with her, beers, smokes…. Everything good and bad seemed to trickle on a steady IV drip through his body while Russian weapons sang songs of middle-eastern pride.

Even so, nothing could have prepared him for what came next. Biggs, the guy with the 249-SAW, was encamped just below a rise of destroyed brick and mortar. He had just enough room to roll to his right, sit upright, and slap the SAW around to reload its box-mag. By the time it finished screaming “Die Motherfucker Die!” Biggs was already sitting up to reload.

That’s when it happened. Even then Ben saw it in a play-by-play. He was holed up a few paces down from Biggs, in a piece of wall still tall enough to stand behind. He peered out, saw one of those assholes across the way had detached to rush along side a fuel truck in front of them. It was a stupid place to take cover in a fire-fight, even Ben knew that. One stray round, a spark; that was all it would take to ignite the fucker, blow it and everything in a few hundred feet sky-high– assholes included.

But this particular “insurgent” wasn’t thinking about that. Instead, he lobbed an old-war pineapple grenade through the air. Ben was already in motion when it landed beside his left foot. He dove through a hail of gun-fire, tackled Biggs further sideways. It wasn’t enough for the would-be savior.

To say he walked away from the war would be a misnomer. In truth, he was wheeled away. While the majority of his unit had survived largely unscathed– Biggs the victim of minor shrapnel and facial burns– Ben lost his legs. Both of them. His lower limbs had been torn, shredded to bloody-wet, fleshy nibs by the pineapple. Then, whatever was left had been char-broiled by the heat, the left-over bones pulverized by the shock-wave.

He left for war over six-foot tall, returned two shins and feet shorter. There was a purple heart that came by mail, a lot of doctor’s visits and surgeries, and eventually, some nimble prosthetics that– with therapy– allowed Ben to walk again. There was no welcome home ceremony, no parade, no politicians commending him for his service or sacrifice. Just his parents and extended family; the only ones to notice he’d left, returned, or the pain he’d endured.

One night, he walked into a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes. He waited patiently in line, posture rigid as ever, behind a man that fidgeted and scratched like a meth-head. In his little town, this particular disease was becoming rampant. There were too many two-bit meth-makers living in trailers on rural land, brewing up cat-piss and chemicals. It had been hard enough to return home half a man, but returning home to this was worse.

It was no secret to any casual observer that this particular man was ready to crack. He needed a fix, would get it however he could. So, of course, he decided to hold up the gas station. And being the man he was, of course Ben dutifully kept his cool, waited for the man to turn away with an arm full of money. Ben stuck out a single arm that clothes-lined the man as he made to sprint. Then, he was on the ground from a hit to the throat, unable to breathe, money fluttering to the ground all around him.

Ben retrieved the gun and held it on him while the clerk called the police. His metal leg pinned the man to the ground as their eyes met.

“Ben?” The junkie asked through his balsam wood teeth, and pale, scabbed skin.

Ben stared at the man for a long moment. It took time, and a firm, prosthetic foot to stir the images in Ben’s mind. Before long he realized this wasn’t the first time he’d bested the man before him. Ricky was the same punk-kid he’d laid out all those years ago.

“You’re going to Jail, Ricky,” Ben finally said.

Clearly Ricky wasn’t right in his mind, too focused on the prosthetic that held him in place, “What happened to ‘yer legs, man?”

“War happened, Ricky,” Ben replied.

Ricky descended into a mental fit that concluded the conversation with incessant rambles, a mental state akin to psychosis. The police finally arrived to thank Ben for his quick thinking and service. A moment later, Ricky was escorted out to a cruiser as he wailed back at Ben.

“I’m sorry, Ben. Sorry for everything. Shouldn’t’ve…. shouldn’t’ve picked on you.” His head was shoved down, his body forced into the cruiser, “You’re the better man, Ben.” The door shut and he screamed through it, “You’re the better man!”

Ben watched the car roll away, Ricky still screaming that tell-all phrase. Ben had heard it all his life, been told it by everyone he knew; be the better man. When faced with bullies; be the better man. When angry or fuming; be the better man. When called to war; be the better man. When life shits on you; be. The. Better. man.

All his life he’d been the better man, lost friendships, love, even his legs ’cause of it. But something about watching his old bully, now turned to a fiend and junkie, being hauled away gave him perspective. If that mentally disturbed man could, in a moment of clarity, find peace in Ben’s betterness, the man himself had no excuse.

In a decisive moment, Ben turned away from the gas station to climb into his car. He didn’t care about smoking, killing himself slowly by the hit. Instead, he was ready to be finished proving himself– both to himself and the world– and start living. He’d thrown himself on the proverbial hand-grenade for the better of others, but was not ready to do it for himself. That needed to change.

He put his car in gear, and drove for home, chasing a setting sun and a better life.

Rehab: Part 8

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

11.

It was past noon when they made it to the office, the traffic heavy from the lunch-time rush. Even so, Chuck would be there until late into the afternoon as he laid out neat stacks of files for the coming week, combed the surfaces with white, latex gloves for any dust the cleaners had missed. It had been his Sunday routine longer than Carol had known him.

Suddenly, the thought now about what she may have to do bubbled within her. She’d never known Ed or Chuck to carry a weapon, but she’d also never known either of them to be amoral businessmen who stole lives and released monsters onto the streets. In fact, that was the polar opposite to what she knew them to be. Everything about this seemed out of character– an assertion she was forced to question as they made their way through the vacant lobby for the office.

Would Chuck be waiting for them? Had Babcock or Greene betrayed her? Could she trust, if things went South, that Sherry would be prepared for the worst?

They reached the office door, the firm’s name stenciled on its frosted glass. The radio inside was muffled behind it, near-silent given the thoughts that rampaged through their minds. They looked to one another, uneasy. Carol reached for the knob, hesitated, but Sherry nodded her onward. The door was thrown open wide, Carol’s pistol out in a flash. Chuck stumbled backward into his chair with a pant, surprised.

“Christ, Carrie you scared the hell outta–” He stopped short at the sight of the gun in her hand. “What’s this all about?”

“You tell me, Chuck,” she growled.

Her head was tilted down at an angle with a vicious, primal fury. It infected Chuck’s veins with ice. He shuddered, sighed. He knew it now– why she had come. With a speed she thought him incapable of, he reached beneath his desk. In a flash, metal gleamed, rose. Her gun echoed a single round that slammed his heart. The revolver flew sideways, hit the floor with a thud. Chuck slumped back, already dead.

Carol was cold, empty. Her eyes were narrow beyond a barrel that still smoked before her. Sherry turned sideways, doubled over, and vomited into a trashcan. Carol ignored it, moved to Chuck’s body to rifle through his pockets for his house keys.

She turned for the door, “Come on, we need to finish this.”

Sherry dry-heaved, groped her way up the wall to her feet, “You…. you–”

She hesitated at the door without a look back, “I killed him. He’s dead and this building’s empty until tomorrow. We need to go, finish this before it gets worse.”

“Carrie, I-I.. don’t know if I can… do this anymore.”

Sherry’s eyes were tilted down, avoided Chuck’s body, his blood still wetting his button-up shirt. Carol looked at her, “Sheryl, you have to understand what’s at stake here. If he’d have killed me for knowing, he’d have killed you too. You saw what happened. It was self-defense, my right.”

A tear began to slide down Sherry’s face. Carol watched it, numb to its attempts at stinging her. In the beginning, she’d drawn strength from Sherry’s persistence and support. Now, Sherry was hollow, too terrified for anything more than the autonomous regulation of her body. Somehow, Carol was still strong, as though the strength had transferred from one to the other imperceptibly. Sherry was haggard, pale, as if too long without sleep.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta’ go.”

Sherry ambled mindlessly from the office, followed Carol back to the truck. When they arrived at Ed’s house, she handed over Chuck’s keys, “If I don’t make it, you have to finish this.”

Sherry nodded, incapable of making eye contact. Carol began the short trek from the street to the doorway, thirty-feet and a million miles to her racing mind.

Why do this? What was the purpose behind all of it? Was it really just money? And what did Greene mean about being an opportunist?

She wasn’t sure, but she knew the last of her answers lay behind the gold-trimmed, maroon door, of Ed’s red-brick house. Whether he gave them to her, or she pried them from his cold, dead hands, was up to him.

She stepped to the door, ready to kick it in, tried the knob first. It was unlocked. A strange sensation flooded her as she stepped inside, pistol at the ready. The faint aroma of whiskey clung to the air. She listened carefully, heard nothing. She stepped right, toward the dry bar and recreation room, her feet light on the hardwood floor.

“You don’ ‘ave to creep around in here, Carrie,” Ed slurred across the room.

He was drunk enough that his smell burned her nostrils even at the distance. She raised her pistol, watched him gulp from a half-empty bottle.

“’M unarmed Carrie. ‘Nless you… cosider thiss-sshit a weappn.” He raised the bottle, chugged. Carol was silent, her feet planted, legs braced, and the pistol high, steady. “Well? What the fuck’re ‘ya waitin’ for?” He bellowed, flung to and fro from the force of his words.

In all her years of dealing with Ed’s occasional drunkenness, she’d never seen him in such a state. It was obvious he knew her intent, knew she’d learned of the rehab program. That much would’ve was assured after they’d been followed between the rehab centers. She thought for a moment, her eyes on the drunken husk of a man.

She lowered her pistol, holstered it to step forward.

His drunken sway worsened, “What? Whadda’ya–”

She charged, slammed him backward. The bottle flew as he was knocked to the floor. His head hit the floor with a loud thud that morphed into a cry. She balled the hardest fist she could, straddled his chest. He struggled to breathe against her weight, drunk, confused.

She struck him– once more. Then three times. Four.

She lost count. Her fists pummeled his face. Ed was too dazed and drunk to struggle, barely able to breathe. She was far from killing him, but began to shout.

“You prick!” She screamed with a blow. “Bastard… Backstabbing… Son of a bitch…”

Tears streamed from her eyes. Her hands ached, bruised, bloodied from gashes on them and fresh wounds on Ed’s face. An unassailable sadness melded with her anger.

She struck harder, “I trusted you! You let him go! All these years! I-I trusted… you…”

Her anger exhausted with her strength. She fell to his side, wept into her hands. Ed had been a second father– albeit a distant one. Though she never voiced it, she trusted Ed to aid her in her crusade. Her entire life’s work and purpose had been to save women from men like Evans. Now her greatest ally, closest friend, was even worse than the people she’d tried to put away.

In one simultaneous instant, she questioned all her hopes and dreams, recalled her deepest regrets and failures. She welled with anger and joy, sorrow and happiness, at all that she had aspired and succumbed to. Her heart and mind overloaded with guilt and loathing, love and happiness.

She reacted without conscious thought, felt the gun lift from her holster. She knelt over Ed, his face bruised and bloody, but his wounds superficial. He might yet live, but he might also die. The dilemma only worsened as the pistol pressed his forehead. The duality of life climaxed in her mind; success and failure, love and pain, good and evil. Each side tugged at her, forced her thumb down on the gun’s hammer. Her mind fought her heart’s pain and anger with steel logic as it questioned which action led to what consequence.

She’d already killed Chuck, but that was self-defense. This was murder, plain and simple. Was she ready to take that chance– become the person she’d fought so long and hard against?

The question echoed in her mind while her senses screamed at her, body ached from the convergence of dreams to nightmares. The couplet of bullet-trains collided at Mach speeds to explode, fog her vision as her finger slid over the trigger.

Her arms were locked, her body poised. The moment had come. It was up to Ed now.

Her body trembled, her voice shook, “Why?”

The word echoed through her into a deafening silence that rang with the war-drum charge of her heart. Ed’s left eye was swollen shut from the beating, but his right focused on her beyond the barrel.

“No one… was ever supposed to know,” he replied quietly, sobered by the beating. He exhaled slow, his breathes labored from her weight. “Chuck and I felt the recession… started doing patent work on the side. One of the inventions that came in… was a machine, intended for memory loss. The client died before the patent was finalized. We took some capital, built it… We only had the best of intentions.”

Carol’s lip twitched. He’d chosen. She rose from his chest, the gun still poised on him. His breath returned. He pushed himself into a sit. She allowed it.

“It’s bad now, Carrie. I-I know that. But it… it wasn’t always this way,” he assured her. “When we first created the program, the state didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But they let us try it. All of the cons we experimented on… they were lifers looking for reduced sentences, parole.” He shook his head in disgrace, “The device failed so many times, left dozens brain-dead. Chuck and I pushed to keep trying. It was impossible not too. All we needed was to discern the specific regions of the brain that caused the behaviors. That was it.”

He hung his head, quiet for a moment. When he looked up again, there could be no doubt of his sincerity. Even so, it made Carol’s stomach churn, her skin crawl.

“It got out of hand. But one day… one day, something happened. It permanently erased the person’s mind, but kept them alive. They were child-like, docile– but alive!”

Carol watched him with a knife in her chest. She wasn’t of anything more than its incise and his words.

“Babcock could tell you more about it, he was the… tech, guy. He learned how the machine had done it, manipulated the process. He learned how to read what chemical imprints meant which types of memories. It became mathematical, a formula we had to get right. We found something… something that differed between the genius and the layman. It was a certain set of chemical and genetic markers– the reason we’d failed so many times was its absence in those patients.” He swallowed hard, “It wasn’t long before Babcock was manipulating specific memories, wiping others to clean slates, creating new ones. I-I’d tell you how, but it’s too technical for me.”

She believed him; Ed could barely work his smart-phone most days.

A corner of her mouth twitched with spite, “How could you do it, Ed? How could you let Evans go?”

“I’ve had to let dozens of guys like Evans…go,” he admitted without remorse.

“How could you do it to me!” She spit, wounded.

“I didn’t do it to you, I did it to him— to all of them… for you.”

Vertigo overcame her. The room began to spin. His next words were muffled by a confounding guilt. Everything that had happened to Evans– all of the people whose lives had been taken from them– were taken because of her.

She hastened to a realization as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Everything Ed had done for her, the reason he’d hired her, was a result of his own mental illness– the meticulous workings and rationalizations of a mind obsessed with his own crusade. He’d spent so many years repressing guilt for stealing lives, letting murderers, rapists, and pedophiles be reformed, that he used her past trauma as the reason and rationale for all of his victims. In due time, his “success” was endorsed by the state, country even.

Finally the fractal-like image was revealed in all of its complex and deluded splendor. The rehabilitation program, instituted by Ed and Chuck, had been a vision of grandeur and hope– stolen from someone much brighter and tainted by their lack of morality. They’d failed at making the machine work for its original intent, re-purposed it, and removed all claim to its moral responsibility in the process. After years of growing guilt, nightmares, and remorse, Ed found a victim he might redeem himself through.

But it all fell apart that day Ed met Greene in the restaurant just before Evans’ sentencing. He’d come in his usual disguise, but as a courier to inform Ed of Evans’ chemical markers. Ed’s redemption was impossible then, but he still needed to rationalize, keep his conscience clean. It suddenly became Carol’s repayment, and when Evans was reformed, his drunken binges began. Either consciously or not, he’d been drinking, waiting for either it to kill him or Carol to suss out the truth and finish him herself.

The spinning stopped. She pushed through her haze, tried to discern her next course of action, but couldn’t. Ed’s words continued on, incessant ramblings of rationalizations and justifications for the atrocities he’d committed– all in her name, to honor her. It made her sick.

With what little strength remained, she pushed herself up, stood over him. There was only one logical resolution; Ed was a criminal, mentally sick and amoral, but no less human. She wasn’t a murderer, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be a victim to anyone anymore, much less the scapegoat for a lunatic.

“Get up,” she ordered. He didn’t respond. She kicked his foot, holstered the pistol, “Get up god damn it!”

She drug him to his feet, got behind him to steer him, stumbling, out the door and to the truck. She threw open the doors as Buddy growled at his stench. She silenced him with a word, threw Ed into the backseat. He toppled in, once more adrift in a sea of drunken confusion. Sherry looked across the truck with a question on her lips, her face once more colored, but still oily, sweat-covered.

Carol shut the door, climbed in beside her, “Call Mike. We need to get him there before he comes out of it.”

They pulled away from the house, the front door still wide open. Sherry made her way through afternoon traffic to the police station at twice the posted limit. They fought to carry Ed up the steps, for him into an interrogation room and wait for him to sober up.

Mike met with the two women in the observation room beyond the interrogation room’s two-way mirror, “What the hell happened?”

For the first time since the day had begun, they looked at themselves. Sherry was unscathed, save for her exhaustion, but Carol’s clothing was disheveled, her hands and knees bloody, bruised. She looked frightening, as though she’d been at war for the last two days, had fought her way through the trenches to uncover the truth. In the small amount of time she’d been afforded rest, she’d chose instead to drink herself into a stupor. She wasn’t sure whether to be proud or sick with herself.

She decided she didn’t care, launched into retelling the events while Sherry corroborated. She’d be damned if she was going to let Ed skew the truth any further than he already had, made up her mind to come clean about everything, perfectly at ease with whatever consequences she might be due.

EPILOGUE

When attorneys Carolyn Switzer and Sheryl Hunter relayed their story to Detective Mike Boone, Carol took the blame for the death of Charles Henderson. Simultaneously, aspects of their story, corroborated by various parties (including Dr. Henry Babcock and Edward Mordin.) placed them at no fault in the use of The Ohio State Investigative Act. Edward later went on official record during the trial of State of Ohio V. Switzer and Hunter, testifying that he knew Henderson had stashed a loaded thirty-eight revolver beneath his desk. According to his testimony, it had been there since Zachary Evans had been sentenced to rehabilitation, placed in fear of retribution in the event that Carolyn ever discovered his secrets. Mordin also assured the court that Henderson kept the weapon loaded with the safety off.

To the surprise of everyone involved, Edward produced security tapes from hidden cameras secretly installed in the office, and went on record to say, he too, believed retribution might some day come, but suspected Henderson would make the first move. A series of cameras were placed at angles which gave full, 360 degree views of Henderson’s desk. When the tape was reviewed during the trial, it was immediately determined that although Switzer drew first, Henderson’s prior actions and his reaction therein, negated any charge of murder.

The case was dismissed following an innocent verdict on the charges of first and second-degree murder.

A subsequent trial, State of Ohio V. Edward Mordin revealed that the defendant had been guilty on fifty-four counts of first degree murder, and seventy-one counts of felony criminal battery against State Penitentiary inmates. On the advice of a separate, expert witness and testimony by one Carolyn Switzer, it was recommended that Edward Mordin be sent to an upstate, mental health facility for rehabilitative therapy and life imprisonment without chance of parole.

When the evidence of Ed’s actions came to light in open court, both Leon Greene and Doctor Henry Babcock were arrested and tried by attorneys appointed by the state’s deferment laws. The attorneys, on expert advice of witnesses Carolyn Swizter and Sheryl Hunter, sought the maximum sentence of criminal neglect and felony assault. Henry Babcock’s sentence was reduced on appeal however, when he gave up several, senior members of his medical staff to authorities. Each was subsequently tried and found guilty for criminal neglect and malpractice against some two hundred and thirty seven former rehab-patients.

The media’s field day summarily exposed the state’s rehabilitation program, shedding light onto a dark corner of the criminal justice system. The resulting public back-lash forced the specific form of therapy, known as Cognitive Reassignment Rehabilitation Therapy, to be suspended indefinitely despite its success. The US Supreme court later found CRRT to be unethical, instituting a nation-wide ban on its use. However, various rumored reports have relayed that its use has continued in secret both in and out of the United States.

As for the two women, having garnered fame and public praise from their revelation, they became sought out as high-profile attorneys. Their careers took off, allowing them to open their own practice, Hunter and Switzer Law. In addition, Detective Micheal Boone was awarded a Public Safety Officer Medal of Valor for his service and willingness to risk his reputation to fight injustice.

Shortly after the media-circus subsided, Anthony DePaul received the following letter from an anonymous source:

Anthony DePaul,

I send you this letter in the hopes that I may assuage my own guilt for actions against you; though they were never of my own accord, nor by my own hand.

It’s no doubt you’ve heard of the incident regarding Edward Mordin and Charles Henderson that resulted in the losses of memory in two hundred and thirty-seven criminals sentenced to CRRT by the state. All of the files have been released to the local police departments and FBI to be done with as they see fit, save an unknown two hundred and thirty-eighth victim.

This man, intentionally obscured by my hand, is Zachary Evans. His crimes were unspeakable in nature, copious, and cold. Mr. DePaul, I’m sorry to inform you that you were once this man. However, he died when you were born. Your memories are be fabrications, your personality manufactured, but they were done so to bring out the best aspects of your character, keep buried the worst. I tell you this because of an event that took place roughly two weeks before this all began; a woman bumped into you on the street, dropped her things and stammered like a fool. You were kind to her then, sincere and apologetic.

In that moment, I met you, Mr. DePaul. But in that moment, I also felt the specter of a man I loathed. The quest to understand led me to lay to rest a great injustice. It is for this reason, and this reason alone that I have kept your former self from the press. You have been given a second chance. One, I feel, you deserve because of the injustice done to you. You are Zachary Evans, but you are also Anthony DePaul. As the latter, you may live your life in blissful ignorance, or pursue what you will to know more of your former self. In either case, you will atone for the crimes of a past life, because it is ingrained within you to do so.

Enclosed is a flash-drive for you to keep or destroy. It contains all of the information on who you were. What you do from here on out is your choice, but believe me when I say, that to follow Evans’ path is to erase the soul you’ve been given.

I gained much more from our encounter on the street than a mere letter could tell. Now perhaps, you may gain as much in knowing that you were given a second chance, and have been living it to the fullest. I hope you continue to do so.

The files you hold are the only copies. No one can speak of Zachary Evans and link him to you. Please, for your own sake, destroy the file. I can not bring myself to do it and it is not my right to do so. I unintentionally wronged Evans, and in turn, you. Though his crimes were unspeakable, so too is the breadth of your chance to make up for them. I hope this atones for my part.

Anonymous.

Upon finishing the letter, DePaul removed the small drive. He stuffed the letter into the inside pocket of his jacket. In one, simple motion, he dropped the drive to the floor and smashed it with a booted heel. He keeps the letter on him to this day, intent on using every chance he has to atone for a past he cares not to remember.

100th Post Bonus Story: Tearing Down the Wall

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Riven was a seventeen year-old kid. He had that Berlin-punker look that had been lost sometime in the 1980’s then re-discovered decades later by a new-wave of punk and rebellion. He was all decked out in leather, denim and flannel with studded shoulder-pads and three-inch spikes gelled into his bright pink hair. The term Misfit might have fit him, were he not usually surrounded by a crowd of similarly-clad punkers like him. Like them, his face was a perpetual sneer, accented by gauged ears and piercings any where they’d fit along his face. It was said he had more metal in him than an android.

It had become commonplace in the last couple years for the more counter-cultured youth to trend toward Riven’s lifestyle. In itself, it was the pinnacle of excess; an extension of the peaks of great rock-icons and their most offensive acts. But where Townsend trashed hotel rooms, and thirty-years later, their cultural offspring like Cobain smashed guitars and live-sets, Riven and the others took things to their logical, next step. Riots were common wherever the neo-punkers gathered, usually dispersed only after days of wild amphetamine and booze-filled destruction.

It was admirable, in a way. The kids like Riven had been threatening to “fight the man” and “bring chaos to the system,” since roughly time began. That was the way with teenaged rebellion, a sort of cataclysmic byproduct of the child-ego learning it wasn’t special, and its dreams more than likely weren’t coming true. Where most would have sunken deeper into hormone-fueled angst though, Riven and the others like him did something astonishing; they suppressed it into a ball, formed a core of outrage against the wrongs in the world. Most importantly, they unleashed it at the people they felt were most responsible for it; cops, governments, men and women on Wall-Street in suits.

The targets of their rage were often society’s elite, the upper echelon of what humanity had to offer even if it seemed lame in comparison to its aggressors. Those elite though, were cowards. They were too concerned with profit-margins, power-trips, and corporate bottom-lines or banging their secretaries and bosses to fight the aggression first-hand. They were weak, fawns to the proverbial wolf-pack that Riven represented. Such is the nature of the strong, the truly powerful, to prey upon the weak.

“Tearing Down the Wall” was a movement arranged by the few, level-headed anarchists inside the neo-punks. A reference to the literal end of the Cold War, a conflict fought for the minds and hearts of the two-greatest super-powers’ citizens with words and clandestine actions rather than all-out war. It seemed apt to the metaphorically minded. With little more than word of mouth to spread the date and time, a few thousand punkers– Riven included– managed to form a new-age Woodstock in the center of wall-street in New-York.

For a while, things were peaceful. The NYPD couldn’t help but shut down the trading buildings, cordon off the area, and let the mayhem inside carry on in its drug-fueled, screeching distortion, and sex-crazed way. Wall-Street became freak capital USA in mere hours. People from all around the world showed up over the course of a week to party, fuck, and fight. NYC’s mayor, too afraid of a riot to risk dispersing the crowds, gave orders for the police to hold their lines and not break ranks. They were smart enough to hold to his orders, for a while at least.

The various news stations played vids and on-site reports of the chaos along “The Wall” night and day. The twenty-four coverage drove their ratings through the roof. Advertisers scrambled to pay higher fees to have their commercials show-cased at the peak ratings hours. The media corps made out like bandits, and the advertising agencies nearly bankrupted more than a few, major companies whose marketing budgets rampaged out of control.

Then the unthinkable happened– or rather, the statistically-obvious happened.

There was something to be said of the new Woodstock and how, despite the untold numbers of drugs and genitals used, the anarchists managed to contain themselves as long as they did. In retrospect though, everyone on both sides knew it couldn’t last forever. The stock markets had already taken a nose-dive, and more than a few people had lost more money than they could stand to live with. Most ate the ends of pistols or full pill-bottles before the week was out.

It was the night of the sixth day since they’d begun to tear down the wall. Riven and a few pals were doped up, boozed-out, and smoking near a line of riot-gear clad cops. In as few words as possible, one of those cops was a hot chick who’d more them more than a look or too. Anarchy is that way for some, especially the ones embedded in the system. It’s like a drug, even more-so than the drugs themselves. It was a dangerous and rampant, youthful energy that most neo-punkers embodied. It made them appear as immortals, each a high-lander ready to die by the sword for the cause. More than a few men and women outside joined their ranks for even small tastes of the power they exuded.

That cop joined too, broke ranks when Riven and his pals pulled and coaxed her out to the chaos. Either from fear or jealousy, one of the other riot cops didn’t like it. Cue the melee as the hot-chick’s colleagues rushed Riven and the others with batons and shields. It didn’t take more than a minute, literally, for the crowd along The Wall to surge, break its melange of insanity, and join in the brutality.

Tear-Gas was launched, but most were so drugged it didn’t matter. Nothing could stop the madness that had brewed, waited for just this type of even to explain. Before the end of the night, Wall Street was a bath of blood, fire, and rage. There were never any official numbers released, but it was well-known that hundreds on both sides were dead. It was even more well known that somehow the National Guard had been called out to contain the situation. Thousands of drug-crazed, insanely-righteous and pissed off people were given a literal keg of explosives in the form of a National Guard convoy.

Like most, Riven made it out of The Wall a few days later, more broken and bruised than before. The intervening time and its effects though, made it all the more worth it. No-one’s quite sure how, though their always prepared to point fingers elsewhere, but The Wall was torn apart. Literally. The anarchists had managed to secure a load of non-lethal explosives from the Guard convoy entrenched on the outskirts with guns at the ready. Combined with some convenience store products, and good, old-fashioned know-how, they constructed real, lethal bombs.

At roughly five AM on the seventh day, a half-block of Wall-Street was collectively leveled from detonated, home-made explosives. There hadn’t been such carnage seen in NYC since the Towers fell decades earlier. The hundreds dead and wounded from the destruction joined the victims of the brawl with the riot-cops and the Guard. Before the end of the day, The Wall was unrecognizable. Not a single building escaped unscathed. And just as they had arrived, most of the punkers– bleeding or not–filed back to the woodwork and disappeared.

Among them were Riven with his hot-chick cop, and couple buddies, bruised and bloodied from the brawl, but alive– the damage wasn’t anything more booze or drugs couldn’t handle.

In the end, the US market crashed, the Global economy tanked, and most if not all everyone felt it. In the midst of the chaos that ensued, those sophisticated, Elitist humans became more animal than anything. Meanwhile, spurred by the Punkers ways, the rest have took to their own kinds of anarchy, where a curiously-peaceful, almost Utopian coexistence has arose.

Funny to think all it took was tearing down the Wall.

Rehab: Part 7

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

10.

Carol awoke the next morning to a skull-splitting hangover. Her limbs were lethargic, heavier than usual. She could already sense her shortened fused. Sherry still snored from the couch, Buddy now across the room, splayed out between the coffee table and television. Carol reset the recliner, sat upright to hug her head. A murky version of the night returned, the day before it frightfully clear.

During their binge, Carol had silently resolved to seek out DePaul. She wasn’t sure what to do or say, but she would wake Sherry, inform her, then attempt to find a way to DePaul. Carol fell to her feet, shuffled to the kitchen with Buddy groggy at her heels. She let him out the door, made her coffee, then woke Sherry. After a fashion, they discussed her decision over a cup of coffee.

While he was well known, DePaul wasn’t a celebrity like Evans had been. He’d be relatively easy to contact; a business man for hire that they could meet under a false pretense. In the meantime, Carol hoped to discern the point to it. Babcock had said his patients retained none of their memories or personality. Carol had to be careful to test him without making him suspicious, find some way to discern if he’d truly been changed.

The ride to Sherry’s to shower and re-dress was infected with yawns and Buddy’s whimpers in the truck’s back seat. It was a risk taking him along with his weak stomach, but Carol felt more comfortable cleaning up barf than leaving him alone. The brief intermission at Sherry’s was followed by a stop at a fast food joint for more coffee.

Sherry inched them along the drive-through’s queue while Carol’s eyes rose absently to the side-view mirror. A blue sedan maneuvered into a space a few cars back, the man in it only just visible. Her eyes narrowed, the truck rolled forward. Sherry’s voice sounded, honed Carol’s vision. She grappled a coffee handed to her, suddenly recognized the car: She’d seen it at the rehab center just outside the city. The man inside was on his cell-phone again, as he had been when she’d first seen him.

She spoke at a hush as Sherry cranked up her window, “Someone’s following us.”

“What? Where?”

“Don’t make it obvious. The blue Ford, five o’clock.”

Buddy’s ears perked up in the back seat. He sniffed at the air, caught their scent, began to whimper louder. Sherry pulled forward, took her time to let the car follow. She adjusted the side-view mirrors with a subtle hand, pulled onto the avenue.

With a clear view of the restaurant’s exit, they rolled into the far lane, stopped at a light. The sedan reappeared, hesitated. The light changed, the truck started forward. The sedan waited a moment longer, eased out into the morning traffic to settle a quarter-mile behind them. Carol gave a few, precise directions, weaved them in and out of traffic. The sedan fell in line behind them, weaved carefully, disappeared again only to emerge moments later, nearer by. Carol tested the car, made errant turns for no discernible destination.

Sherry was agitated, her knuckles white over the wheel, “What should we do?”

“Can Mike help?”

“I doubt it,” she replied, her voice higher than usual. “Even if he could, I don’t think he’d want to be involved in this.”

Carol surveyed the gridded streets; there were plenty of places to park, leave the truck to hide in. On the other hand, Buddy couldn’t follow them, and she wasn’t going to leave him behind. Moreover, hiding only prolonged the inevitable. Whoever followed them likely had orders from someone, possibly even knew where they lived. There could be no end without some confrontation.

The weight of the holstered pistol at her side comforted her, Buddy’s quiet, helpless whimpers swallowed little fear she had left. Her eyes closed on a mental layout of the city to study it. To the North was an old, abandoned train-yard that would give her room to move in– If the car followed them that far. The truck’s digital compass read out “NE” from below its rear-view mirror. Her mind raced, connected her destination to a side road ahead.

“Make a left.” Sherry’s face rippled with confusion. “Just trust me, make the turn.”

Sherry winced, maneuvered the truck off the four lane avenue onto a smaller, two lane side-street, “Wanna’ clue me in here?”

“Not yet.”

The truck’s compass shifted to “N.” They kept forward, moved with the speed limit through sparse traffic that revealed the car behind them still followed. They were blocked on either side by high office buildings, but would soon pass through older, residential districts before the road made a ninety-degree left. She tried to map the road in her mind; the turn would lead them north-west, then the road Teed off. A right at the T, then a left, and another into the train-yard.

She watched the sedan, “Right.”

They turned, the sedan disappeared. A moment later it curved onto the road behind them. She glanced at Buddy in the rear-view mirror; he moaned, fidgeted. She knew the behavior well, encountered it each time they headed for the Vet. This was different though, more intense. All of his instincts told him to run. She sympathized.

She looked to Sherry, directed them through the next left. The train-yard began to sprawl out beside them. Sherry’s knuckles and fingers had turned purple. Obvious terror formed sweat on her forehead and upper-lip. Carol winced. She didn’t blame Sherry for her fear, she was a twenty-eight year-old, sex-fueled workaholic used to the fast paced, metropolitan lifestyle. She could’ve never been prepared for this, doing what they had to survive, right wrongs. For that matter, Carol wasn’t sure she was any different, but had led them here all the same.

“Left,” Carol directed at the yard’s small access road, the sedan far behind on the empty road. “Carrie?” She squeaked.

“Pull in to one side. If he follows us in, we’ll pull forward, block him off at the gates.”

Sherry’s sweat doubled, her face drained of color beneath the oily sheen. Carol’s violent reaction and confrontation with Babcock had struck too quickly for Sherry to react. This time it had been a slow slow build that allowed her nerves to get the best of her. Buddy’s whimpers didn’t help. Carol reached back with a hand, rubbed Buddy’s muzzle without turning. She couldn’t afford to alert their pursuer.

They rolled along the short entrance to the train-yard, the chain gates wide open with one half hanging from its hinges. It rolled past the passenger window. Sherry immediately veered right, parked parallel to the gate. They would have precious, few seconds to block the man in once Carol gave the word.

The truck came to a rest beside an outcrop of stacked box-cars that lined a rusty, barbed-wire chain-link fence. The yard was massive, a maze of rusted steel and worn rail-roads with stacks of weathered ties every few hundred feet. Carol’s heart pounded, her breath ragged. Buddy flattened himself against the seat, each breath a high wheeze of terror.

Carol soothed him, “Quiet down, Buddy. Please.”

He went silent, albeit not without a reservation in his eyes. Carol slouched in her seat, made herself as difficult to spot as possible. Sherry followed, her breath laden with fear, terror. Her hands tight, purple fists.

Five minutes passed, then ten. No car appeared.

“M-maybe he’s out there, w-waiting for us,” Sherry stammered at a whisper.

Carol rolled in her seat watch see truck’s rear through the side-view mirror, “Maybe. Either way, we wait.”

Fifteen minutes and Carol was disheartened; twenty and she already had another trap planned. She wasn’t giving up, letting this man try to silently hound them. Before she had threatened the doctor, she wouldn’t have given his presence a second’s thought, but she sensed more at work now. They’d arrived at the first rehab center with the man already tailing them. Someone had wanted them followed even before they’d learned the truth, there was no reason for them to stop now. She suspected someone had intercepted Mike’s request for DePaul’s records, had been watching for any inquiries about him– someone on the inside.

How high does this go?

Carol moved to speak, suddenly stopped. A movement in the mirror caught the corner of her eye as a man inched his way toward the rear of the truck. They flattened further, invisible, but Carol caught a glimpse of him. His shoes crunched gravel, headed away from the truck, but she didn’t hear it. She was caught in utter shock.

“Son of a bitch!” Carol spit at a hush.

“What? What’s going–”

“Back the truck up, but stay in it.”

She threw open the door, drew her pistol. The truck started as the pistol’s sights zeroed in on the man’s head. He turned, startled by the noise. Carol’s teeth ground together.

“You son of a bitch!”

It was Art Warren, the state-man that dealt with Ed and Chuck– the one that so peculiarly resembled Pee-Wee Herman in his tweed and bow-tie. Both gone now, replaced by fresh-pressed khakis and a windbreaker over a button-up shirt. Even the Brylcreem slick in his hair had been washed away to a spiked, jet blackness.

“Warren, you son of a bitch! Talk!” She yelled.

He cocked a smug grin, shouted back, “What makes you think I’ll tell you shit? The gun? You won’t fire it.”

He began to step forward in time with Carol. She fired a round into the ground in front of him. He flinched, smacked by gravel that dusted the air.

Carol’s steps were slow, deliberate, “What the hell’s going on! What’re you doing here?”

The state-man shook off the shock, resumed his steps to continue closing the distance. He no longer needed to shout, “Yeah, big girl with a gun. Didn’t really think you’d make off with those files so easily, did you?”

Carol made a mental calculation, the gun at eye-level. A single bullet whizzed past his left ear, ricocheted off an over-turned rail-car and into oblivion.

Warren froze, his smug superiority fell away to a shaky calm, “What d’you want to know?”

“Who the hell are you?” Carol said as the truck’s door opened and shut behind them. Sherry stepped for her side as Buddy woofed and howled in the truck. Carol judged the situation, awaited the man’s reply. By his smugness, it was clear he was armed. His only problem lay in accessing his weapon. It was clear between them that she wouldn’t miss again, but Sherry was in danger now. On top of that, Buddy was an easy target. If she lost the upper hand, some one would die.

He took a few steps forward, and Carol’s aim landed on his head, “Close enough.”

Sherry squinted beside her, refused to believe her eyes, “Pee-wee!? Art? You’re following us?”

He considered his options, replied in earnest, “Leon Greene.”

“Who d’you work for?” Carol demanded.

“When I’m Art Warren, it’s the Ohio State Government. Unfortunately, public service doesn’t quite pay well enough, so Leon Greene takes some matters into his own hands.” His eye twitched, “But does it really matter? You can’t expect to walk away from this.”

“It matters to me.” Carol said, her aim steady. “I’ll offer you the same deal I gave Babcock; you tell me what I need to know, I’ll let you go.”

He considered it with a tilt of his head, “It’ll only add to your confusion, send you in the wrong direction. But I’ll give you what you want.” Carol allowed him a few steps forward, “Your bosses aren’t the philanthropists they appear to be, but they’re more opportunists than they let on.”

Confusion trickled into the back of Carol’s mind, “I need more.”

“What the hell’s he talking about?” Sherry whispered.

Greene took another step, spoke casually, “Mordin and Henderson employ me under the table to … clean up, their messes.”

Carol finally saw the last, hidden pieces of the puzzle revealed. She still wasn’t certain how they fit together, but at least now she could affix them given enough time. Greene’s words lent a certain kind of sense to her bosses’ success in such a weakened economy. If they had major investments on the side that Greene kept track of, was involved in while retaining his hand in state affairs, the firm would receive as many deferrals as it would need while for the firm to avoid formal inquiry. In the meantime, Ed and Chuck would be getting rich off whatever it was they’d invested it. The only thing left was how the rehab centers fit in to it. She gathered Greene wouldn’t know that.

“So you’re… what, some sort of spy?” Sherry asked.

“I suppose you could call me that, I consider myself more a P-I.”

“Pee-Wee Herman gag’s a bit much,” Carol scoffed.

Sherry agreed, “Yeah, makes you stick out, not blend it.”

He laughed, “You’d think so wouldn’t you? Fooled you though.”

“This is ridiculous,” Sherry said dismissively. She shot a look at Carol, “You really believe Ed and Chuck’re behind all of this?”

Carol’s grip on the gun tightened, “How do I know you’re not lying?”

Greene shot her a disappointed look, “You question it now? After you’ve already figured it out?”

She blinked off the ridicule, “I need evidence. Physical proof.”

“I can’t give you it,” he said earnestly. “But I’d assume its not to hard to find, if you know what to look for.”

Carol eyed him, “What’re you saying?”

His head bobbed subtly as he explained, “This kind of operation’s not something you make public, but it’s also not something you keep track of without leaving a trail. I assure you it won’t be hard to find. There’ll be paperwork, ledgers, computer files. I’d start there.”

He was right, she knew it. The evidence would be simple enough to find now. Ed and Chuck both suffered various levels of obsessive compulsiveness, a disorder that required they keep meticulous details of every thing in their lives. It was a curiously fortunate coincidence that had originally brought them two together as friends. Now, it would undoubtedly condemn them, reveal their involvement in the rehab program. There friendship may have even been the catalyst to their schemes.

While some things still required an explanation, she was satisfied with Greene, would keep their deal, let him go.

“Drop your gun on the ground, and go.” He reached for it under his jacket. “Other hand. Good. Slow.” It fell to the ground. He stepped forward. “I ever see you again, and I won’t hesitate. Get lost.”

Sherry returned to the truck, pulled away from the gate. Greene stepped within arm’s reach of Carol as she lowered her gun.

“I trust you won’t say anything to either of them,” she said, eyeing him.

He gave a laugh and smiled, “Wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve been waiting for this cluster-fuck to blow up in their faces for years. Always thought I’d go down with them…. Guess not.”

“We’ll see.”

His smugness returned, “I know.” He explained, “My name won’t come up, and even if it does, I’ll be gone. I got paid well and that’s what mattered.” He stepped away, “Good luck.”

She holstered her pistol, “What if I need more?”

“You won’t,” he shouted as he disappeared past the gate.

Carol sighed, retrieved Greene’s pistol, and returned to the truck. She handed it to Sherry, pointed to a lever on one side, “Safety on.” She flicked the lever. “Safety off.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Just don’t aim it at any of us and you’ll be fine. I’ll help you learn.”

She attempted a weak smile, “Okay, whatever you say.”

Sherry backed up from the train-yard, Greene and his sedan already long gone. Carol scanned for him, sensed their deal would be kept.

“We need to find Ed and Chuck,” she instructed.

“Ed’ll be home, and Chuck’s probably at the office getting ready for tomorrow.”

A corner of Carol’s eye twitched, “Let’s go see Chuck then.”