Prose: Smalltown Breakdown (Warning:- Adult Content)

Shad0r

I wrote the following piece for a creative writing magazine here in the town I live in. The issue was themed "A Small Town Breakdown" and what I wrote kinda came out darker than I had planned.

As usual constructive criticism is welcome.

Small Town Breakdown

1. – Wed, 24th – Morning

Sometimes I feel at the peak of my game. I can literally move the world on those days; accomplish anything. But then I remember the horrors of the past, the evil that has plagued my life with a recurring hellish nightmare for years. Afterwards I always sink, deep into the murky depths, the lowest of lows. Rock Bottom has begun to adopt a familiar feel to me, like the sensation of putting on one’s most comfortable shoes.

Much fewer are the times these violent dreams invade my slumber of late –time is a great healer they say- but there is still the depression. ‘The downs’, as my mother used to call them. The downs do not need nighttime to walk freely amongst the atoms of my body and mind. They can, and do attack at any time, without warning or consideration, like a pack of hungry rabid dogs, feasting on my sanity.

It is at times like these that I have dark thoughts. I don’t want them and I have tried over and over to make them stop, but they don’t listen to me. They do not need anything, lest of all my permission. Shortly after I hear them coming, I get tired and need to sleep. This is what I do know.

What I do not know is why they come or, more importantly, what happens between when I pass out and wake up. I do know that something must happen because the last time it occurred, a full week passed before I regained consciousness. Without at least water I would have died. Yet I am still alive to write this, so who gave me water? Why didn’t I wake up sooner? The possible answers to those questions scare me all the way to the fire infested gates of hell and back, so this morning, one full day after my return from the last blackout, I have started to write this: an account of what is happening to me.

The shrill ringing of the phone interrupted my musings on the current situation, much to my annoyance.

“Hello”, I barked.
“Hello, I was hoping to speak to Mr. Curtis Carter”. Mister Carter! The man was reading my name, a sure sign that this conversation wasn’t going to be one I wanted.
“Who’s speaking please?” I asked irritated, feeling the plight of everybody who’s ever received a telemarketing phone call, resting on my shoulders.
“This is Detective Toker calling. Is he there?”
“Oh no, sorry he’s actually just gone out. He didn’t say where he was going though…do you have a number and I’ll leave him a note?” I figured it would be better to wait until I knew more about what the cops wanted before talking to them, as myself at least.
“Yes okay, my number is 4647”, small towns like the one I live in have phone numbers that all start with the same three digits, thereby alleviating the need to say all seven.
“And who am I speaking to?” the detective added
“Oh, I’m Curtis’s roommate, Johnny”, I quickly fibbed, “Is Curtis in some sort of trouble detective?”
“Not at this time son. We know he was at the Honolulu on Monday night so I’m hoping that maybe he just saw something out of the ordinary. You’ll pass on the message?” My blood ran cold.
“Of course. Have a good day detective”, I somehow managed to hold my **** together until I had hung up.

My suspicions had been confirmed: If the cops were right, then I wasn’t completely privy to everything that was going on in my life. The receipt of this news did not bring me the satisfaction I had been looking for when I started my little investigation. To the best of my knowledge I was here, at home, passed out on my couch for the last week. Monday night had been two nights previous and according to the cop I had been in town at a local nightclub, The Honolulu.
“A taste of the tropics”, was the clubs slogan, painted in big gaudy letters over and beside the entrance. Every time I read it, I always wondered if the club’s owners were really unoriginal, or whether they were just covering their bases with regards to the lack of air conditioning within. Inside the club there was bamboo hut after bamboo hut, for people to sit in, or buy drinks out of. This club had a shoe, as well as a coat check. Above it, hand painted in irregular letters, read a sign: No Shoes Aloud. The patrons all partied barefoot on the sand that covered every conceivable square inch of floor. I had been there many times before, but none recently.

Or so I had thought.

2. – Wed, 24th - Evening

When I woke up yesterday morning on the couch in my room, I was laying there, naked, not a single piece of clothing, dirty or clean, anywhere in my room. I felt like I’d finished running a marathon rather than feeling rested from sleep. Groggily I had eaten hungrily and then gone back to bed for more rest. My sleep, all sixteen hours of it, was thankfully dreamless and I awoke this morning rested, but with lots of questions. For example: where the hell did all my clothes go? As I sit writing this now I’m wearing the only clothes I could find in the house: an old pair of running pants, an even older t-shirt and a sweater so infrequently worn, I’d forgotten I had it. The whole thing had the feel of a bad frat party prank.

The lack of clothing question was only a small bump in the landscape of my life however. As the day went on I saw new bumps appear –after the call from the cops a bunch popped up- until my life was a range of the question bumps, so vast the Himalayas would have been proud. On the fridge door in the kitchen I found a note, held in place with a magnetic blue frog. It read:

Thanks for last night, I had a really good time.
Call me, 9385436.
Candy
xxx.

More bumps: who is this Candy person? Am I ‘baby’? It seemed unlikely that I had slept with ‘Candy’ as the note’s undertones suggested, and subsequently completely forgot about her. Nobody else had been staying here –as far as I can remember– so maybe Candy stole my clothes? But that didn’t make any sense either: who would steal a person’s clothes –enough of a question on its own in my book– and then leave their phone number so they could be tracked down? I knew her number was a cell phone because she had written seven digits instead of the usual four that were indicative of a local landline.

Phoning her I got her answering service but did not leave a message.

Four years ago I had been the deputy chief editor for a large men’s magazine in the city. I was very successful and had a beautiful loving fiancé. We were to be married that spring, while the bump of Megan’s pregnant belly was still unnoticeable. It was an unusually hostile January night when we put the latest issue of the magazine to bed. The printing presses were in full swing when I left, later than normal, to go home. My memory of the rest of the night is very patchy and these days I’m not at all sure of what I remember, and what I’ve filled in from what other people have told me, after the fact. The exception of course being the image that is always at the centre of my nightmares. The image I will never be able to forget.

The police told me that three men had escaped from the maximum-security prison that resided about 8 miles north of our home. The detective had added that it was his opinion that they had run what they felt was a safe distance and then looked for shelter from the savage winter night. They had been wearing the light orange jump suits that were standard issue to the federal prisoners convicted of heinous crimes. They had found Megan, home alone and each had their way with her repeatedly. Our elderly next-door neighbours phoned the police when they heard her screams but the police were too late to protect her.

They didn’t manage to protect me from that night’s evil either, although I gave them no choice. I had to see her, to know what had happened in my home.
When I entered the kitchen, in a panic because of all the squad cars and vans with flashing lights outside, and police everywhere inside, I saw her. Draped backwards over the dinner table, legs spread wide, clothes ripped and torn. Her face was a bloody, beaten mess creating a nauseating mixture of black, blue, purple and red all over its surface. Her ripped bra was on the table, her breasts loose and mauled. An ugly raw laceration traced its way across her neck and buried up to the handle in her chest was the large kitchen knife we used for chopping vegetables.

A police photographer was taking pictures of the panties that were by her feet, in a massive crimson pool on the ground. There was so much of it everywhere that it took me a full moment to realise that it was blood. Short seconds after this I heard: “Hey someone get him the hell out of here” from a voice to my left, I simultaneously needed to vomit and faint.

Megan was dead. Our unborn child was dead.
The world went black for me then.

Shad0r

3. – Thursday 25th – Evening

Today I spent the day in my study writing furiously. I have not written as prolifically since my second book six years ago. It was quite successful, thankfully, and the money from it allowed me to move here to start a new life, one far away from the evil of a big city. A small town is a much safer place than a city, not that I cared for my own safety anymore. After all what had I to live for now? Still, I couldn’t bear to live there when everywhere I looked were reminders of my loss.

When I went to save my work another bump appeared in the Mountain Range of Unanswered Questions, which by now has been better explored but has lost none of its substantial size or mystery. The bump came in the form of a word processor file and it scared me at a level deeper than any of the other recent revelations, at a depth I didn’t know existed. It was called Epilogue.doc and intrigued I opened it and began to read:

With eager eye and crafty hand Johnny surveyed his work, giving it a final inspection. A proud smile broke onto his lips, happy with his efforts. Everything had been arranged for the final ceremony. Everyone had been stripped of their sinning clothes and wore now only the relevant clothes of righteousness, and of course the small ink admission stamp of The Honolulu on their hands. The paedophile wore only boxer shorts and gloves; the slut wore, winter clothes from head to toe. Her filthy mouth was gagged, she would never again suck dick or break up holy matrimony. The man who was suspected of strangling his infant son because the child wouldn’t stop crying wore a sport jacket, his hands had been removed from his arms at the wrists and he wore them, in his pockets. The paedophile’s balls had also been removed and placed in his gloves, where he could feel them. Men like him should never be allowed to procreate, Johnny had seen to that. Around the outsides of the room were mounds of clothing and bed sheets, towels.

Grabbing a can of barbeque fluid from a shelf in the shed, Johnny began to soak the clothing of the righteous. He would clean the earth of the offending parts of these offensive, evil people and introduce them –before their deaths- to the blazing licks and kisses of hell, where they could safely expect to live for the rest of eternity. There was a muffled scream from the murderer of little boys, as the lighter fluid soaked into his new clothing and stung his gaping wounds.

“There’s much worse to come for you murderer”, Johnny said with a knowing chuckle.
Tossing a match over his shoulder, the shed instantly became a raging inferno with a sudden woooosh. The crackle of burning timber intermingled with the muffled screams of the damned souls inside. They had been judged and they had been punished accordingly. As had that cheating slut four years ago. Pregnant, engaged and still ****ing everything with a heartbeat and a cock. Well she had paid the price, hadn’t she? Just as all the others would…

4. – Thursday 25th – Night

I couldn’t read another word, the marrow in my bones had dropped below zero degrees and I was completely unable to move. The character in the story I had started to write today was also called Johnny but that wasn’t why this foreign piece of prose freaked me out. Johnny was the name I had given to the cop this morning as my alias. It was also my middle name. I didn’t need to check the shed out back, I knew that all I would find were its charred ashes and scorched earth.

From outside I heard a bullhorn.
“Curtis Jonathan Carter, aka Johnny Carter, Kurt Johns and Jon Cartwright: come out with your hands behind your head. We have the building surrounded. I have a warrant here for your arrest on 28 counts of murder in the first degree. C’mon out now son, it’s over”

I wanted to go out and explain but I could feel the dark thoughts coming.

dod

I enjoyed reading it a lot- good stuff. Well done.

Battlesnake

I enjoyed reading this so much.
Let us all know when you get published!

Shewhomustbe...

That was great.

Will you be continuing it or using it for a book?
It's the kind of thing I love to read.

Shad0r

I actually had a completely different short story, with, what I feel, is a much better storyline, that I was aiming to get published in a local creative writing magazine. However after spending countless hours trying to shorten it (silly magazines and their word count limits) , actually I had to cut it in half, I realised I had revised it to death and no matter how I tried the piece was NEVER going to be a 2000 word document.

It was so refreshing to start writing something new that I wrote the whole piece in one sitting. Revised it a couple of times the next day and what you read is the result.
It caused a bit of turbulence because of the "Adult content". The whole story, here4

That particular piece is, and shall remain, only a short story.

byte

Great piece of work Shad0r.

Keep it up