Seppuku: Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

In the growing humidity of the night, a viscous silence seeps in through the walls saturating the room and fermenting the air. My pulse ticks quietly in rhythm with the clock in the kitchen as beads of sweat slide down the barrel of the loaded 9mm at my temple. My finger cautiously tests the trigger. Fifty years. It feels like an eternity. It’s been long enough.

I like the dark. It’s where I belong: immersed in a black void of nothingness. It prevents me from seeing my own reflection too clearly when I pass by the mirror. In the dark,all I see are shadows. Strange shadows, that move, grow and conspire. They exist and yet don’t seem to suffer existence like people do. I like my shadow much better than my reflection.

I squint through the blanket of cigarette smoke in the living room. The moonlight filters in through narrowed blinds cloaking the furniture in dusty pinstripes. The clock says it’s one o’clock. I don’t trust the clock. Never trust anything that costs a buck. It doesn’t matter anyway. Time is insignificant to a man who wants to die.

My glass is empty. I reach across for the bottle sitting on the edge of the coffee table. It’s empty too.

“Shit... I could use another drink.”

You’re losing it, old man. What difference does it make? What do you need another drink for? Just blow your brains out and be done with it.

“I need some time to think.”

About what?

“About my life. Isn’t that what people usually do before the end? Reflect?”

You’ve been doing that forever. Where’s it gotten you?

Where has it gotten me...

I try to think back to a better time; twenty-five years ago, when I joined the police force. I was a rookie then, fresh out of the academy and newly married. Emily was expecting Johnny. Everything was right then. Everything was perfect. How did I fuck it up?

You know how.

Emily was right. I’d never thought about anyone but myself. Still, I loved her. I know that now. But I was never there for her, and she put up with it. She spent twenty-six years being married to a man who was never around. She once questioned me about it and I blamed work. She never said a word about it again. But I knew it was all a lie. The other cops had families and they seemed happy.

They were happy. It had nothing to do with the force and everything to do with you. It was all about your principles. What were they again? To serve and to protect? Who were you serving and protecting, old man? Emily? Johnny? The public? Or yourself...?

Where’s that bottle? I know I have another one around here somewhere. I stagger to my feet and stumble over the coffee table. Where’s that fucking light? I grope around blindly for the switch.

What have you come to?

I look around at my apartment. It’s a mess with clothes strewn all over the floor, empty liquor bottles and cans everywhere. That half-eaten egg sandwich has been sitting on the dining table since yesterday and is starting to stink. I set my 9mm down on the table and grab the sandwich.

Phew!

I stagger over to the kitchen and dump it in the trash.

“Now where did I put...ah, there it is.”

Are you going to drink yourself to death?

“May as well. It’ll save a bullet.”    

On the news this morning they said it was going to be a special night tonight. An ‘astronomical marvel’, they called it. You’re supposed to see two moons in the sky. Well, not exactly: the other one’s Mars - or Venus, I can’t remember. Everyone’s excited because they say it isn’t going to happen again for another two thousand years or something...

Who gives a shit? People these days will get excited about anything. Anything that’s different in their pointless lives. Show them a dog that can stand up on two legs or a celebrity who goes into rehab and they get excited. What’s it all come to?

I walk over to the window and draw the blinds. I scan the sky but find only one moon.

The truth is you’re no different from them are you?

“Truth is - I’m not. The only difference is that they carry on living their lives in a state of blissful ignorance.”

And what is it you know that they don’t?

“That it’s all pointless.”

It wasn’t always like this. When I was younger there had always been a point. As a kid I always knew I was going to be a cop; ever since the age of ten. I remember that day well...

It was the last day of the summer break. Mom took me out shopping to buy me new clothes before my first day of school. The shopping I didn’t mind, it was the dentist’s appointment afterwards that I wasn’t looking forward to. I hate dentists. I haven’t been to one ever since.

Dad was a businessman. He had some people over at home that afternoon and was working on some sort of business deal. My mother, knowing how important this deal was to him, had planned for the two of us to return only later that evening.

The waiting room at the dentist’s was crowded. Also, it was hot. A tired old ceiling fan circled excruciatingly slowly. I remember wondering what the point of that fan even was. Mom sat reading a copy of Time magazine. It had a picture of JFK on the cover and a caption titled “Man of the Year”. I didn’t know what that meant but it sounded pretty good. My father liked JFK. He said he was a great president and I thought so too.

An old radio crackled in the corner of the room. It was the 4 o’clock news:

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the local news at four o’ clock... (Intro music)...The headlines today: Is Mayor Jim Preston finally ready to resign...? President Kennedy says that he is committed to increasing the presence of American troops in Vietnam, but his critics call it a grave mistake...It’s the summer carnival’s final day: Hear what Organizers have planned for the closing ceremonies ...The Cornwall High football team is getting ready for a new season, can they make state this year? ...But first, we have some breaking news. A fatal shooting has occurred at a Water St. residence. Police are on the scene and early reports suggest that five men were found dead on site in what appears to have been a bloody massacre. The house: No. 119 Water St. has become the scene of one of the most gruesome crimes in...”

I turned to my mother, “But that’s our house...!” Mom sat frozen in her seat. Her eyes seemed to have glazed over...

I pour myself another drink and light a cigarette. They never found who did it.

So you’ve been avenging him ever since? This whole wasted life has been one long vendetta?

“Maybe. Who knows. But there has to be justice in this world. At least that’s what I used to believe.”

You believe it now?

“No.”

How could you? Was what you put Emily through, justice? And how about Johnny? Where’s Johnny now, old man?

I cringe. I hate thinking about it.

I reach for my wallet and pull out a scrap of paper. My fingers tremble as they unfold this frayed and fragile note I’ve read a thousand times. It’s a poem and it reads:

Them and I

Together we were, them and I

As we splashed playfully, Among

Ocean waves

On the surface we remained, where

The sunrays glistened off the surf and off our backs.

And there we all lived, them and I

On the Ocean’s surface, we’d swim

Elated

Our heads above the water, while

Our bodies twitched below trying to stay afloat.

It called me one day - only me

The voice called me away from them

I listened

Closer to hear its message, then

I turned to them and knew that they had not heard it.

And so I left them, departing

The blue Ocean’s surface, sinking

To that deep

Silent world of echoes that spurred

Me on lower, lower and even lower still.

Now darkness around

Now stillness around

The rays of the sun did not grace this place

Now coldness around

Now numbness around

My mind full of fear, my lungs of water

Yet, the depths kept calling...

I turned my gaze up, towards them

The them who were my past, but found

They had now

Become a distant memory

As distant as the surface of the Blue Ocean.

Together no more, forgotten

By them - lost as they are in the

Infinite

Moments of sea breeze and surf, with

Their heads above the water, their lungs full of sunshine.

Alone in the depths now I live

Where all truths are revealed, and where

Existence

Is unbounded and the Ocean

First began - here do I live on forever.

And here do I weep, forever

It’s for them that I do, as they

Splash and twitch

The sun’s rays gleaming off their backs

On the surface of an ocean born of my tears.

J.M.

I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again. I try to fight it but it overwhelms me. I feel my body convulse, my face contort. I can’t help it, can’t control it. I run my fingers through my scalp and clutch desperately at my hair. A tear falls onto the page smudging the ink in the title. I blow on it feverishly then put it away.

When I found him, he was clutching that piece of paper in his hand. He’d been dead for two days. His body hung limp over the side of the bed and his face was the color of ice. The coroner said that he had probably lain there dying for several hours since only one of his wrists was slashed and he had bled slowly. He was only twenty-three.  

“Why did you do it, son?!”

Nobody knew why. No one had seen it coming. Johnny was a regular kid. He’d graduated college and was working as a consultant at some firm. Everyone always said he was smarter than his dad. It made me proud to hear that even though I never told him. He didn’t do drugs. Johnny just wasn’t that kind of guy. It wasn’t a girl; he didn’t have a girlfriend at the time. It wasn’t money; he wasn’t in any kind of debt. He was a good kid. He loved writing poetry.

Did you read any of his poetry?

“No...”

The poem he wrote before he died was the first one you ever read, wasn’t it?

Emily left me soon after. She filed for divorce and took everything I had. I didn’t care. The way I saw it, I owed her for all the crap I’d put her through anyway. She blamed me for Johnny’s death. At the funeral she burst into tears and slapped me in front of our guests. I haven’t seen her since.

“Where’s that gun...?”

I try to get up but I can’t seem to feel my legs. I reach for the glass but find it empty. I throw it across the room and watch it shatter against the wall as shards of glass rain all over the living room carpet. Then I grab the bottle and begin chugging until I choke and spatter the booze all over myself.

“Early retirement?! I gave you bastards twenty-five years of my life! Hey Grimsby! How about another black eye? Or a bullet to the head...even better! Haha! Early retirement? Fuck you! Fuck you all to hell!”

Johnny died a year ago. A week later I was back to work. It was the only thing I could do. It was all I’d ever known. I worked constantly – all day, all night. A homicide detective is never short of work. There’s enough to keep him busy for the rest of his life. Which was exactly what I’d intended to do. But Chief Grimsby had different plans for me…

We’d butted heads ever since he’d been appointed to the position three years ago. I don’t respond well to authority, never have. But I’m good at what I do. Every Chief I’ve ever worked for has always known that about me. They hated me, but they tolerated me all the same. I got the job done better than any other detective on the force. I knew they didn’t like me and I was fine with that. Being a homicide detective isn’t really a popularity contest. Sure, there’s always politics. They say a smart man always plays the right politics, but I’ve never been one for that kind of game. I think it’s a waste of my time.

When Johnny died, Grimsby pounced on the opportunity like a scavenger waiting on a fresh cadaver. He wanted me out of there so bad you could see it in his eyes. But he couldn’t fire me. Not without just cause. You don’t just can your best detective and a decorated officer at that. He needed a reason and I gave him the perfect one.

In the months that followed Johnny’s death, Grimsby began to scrutinize my work. Every investigation, every report, every case I worked on went under his microscope. He called me into his office every day and questioned me about this and that. He said I looked tired, like I needed a break, a vacation, something. He said he felt terrible about what had happened. He said he knew what I was going through. He said the stress was beginning to show in my work.

I took it. I took it all. I gritted my teeth and never said a word. I knew that one false move on my part could end everything. I knew I couldn’t let him get to me.

Every man breaks at some point. I broke too. It happened in his office one morning. I’d spent the night tossing in bed and hadn’t slept. All I could think about was Johnny. When I walked into his office, he was holding a report in his hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“What’s this?” he growled.

“What’s what?”

“This report? What the hell is this?”

“It’s my report on the Carter homicide case,” I said.

“It’s nonsense!” he seethed. “I don’t understand a word of it!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! Type it up again!”

I clenched my jaw and snatched the report from his paw and turned to leave.

“Listen Moby, I don’t mean to be difficult,” he said in a suddenly sugary voice. “I know how hard it must be after that poor boy killed himself.”

I spun around, grabbed him by the collar and yanked him over the desk. Hearing the chaos, a couple of officers came bursting through the door to restrain me but not before I had thrown a punch that caught Grimsby right in the eye.

“You’re finished, Moby!” I heard him scream as I was dragged out of the office. “I’m going to make sure you never work here another day, you sonofabitch! You won’t know what hit you after I’m through with you!!” I didn’t care anymore.

Of course, he didn’t press charges, although, I’m sure he wanted to, being the vindictive kind of guy that he is. But there were others in the force, some pretty influential people, who convinced him otherwise. It would reflect badly on the force, they’d said. And so I was asked to “voluntarily” retire. I have one week left.

The room’s beginning to spin. Everything seems blurry. I squint to see the time but have a hard time even finding the clock. I sit slumped over for a while and try to take another sip but just end up spitting it back into the bottle.

“Early retirement! Haha! That’s what I’ll be called from now on! Detective Syd Moby, Retired!”

My eyelids droop. The bottle slides from my hand and lands somewhere on the floor. My head rolls forward onto my chest as the room begins to spin out of control. Somewhere from within the maelstrom, I can hear Johnny laughing.

Lights out.