Hardboiled

Yes, I'm back. Yes, it's been a long time. But people (read:me) get busy.
Here's the beginning to another little something I wrote. This is actually all I have at the moment. I'd welcome any ideas on where to go next. It's my attempt at Hardboiled genre writing, I'm being very very Hardboiled.

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It was a rainy night, the kind of night where you could leave a black cat out at night and find a white cat on the stoop in the morning. It was a rainy night, the kind that only comes at the end of the month. It was a rainy night, the kind that always brings with it a stranger breed of clientele.
She wasn’t a regular. I could tell by the way that she carried her petite frame that I wouldn’t be linking her to any of the salami-eating goodfellas that peopled my Rolodex. But she was a looker. Her look was plucked from a movie, the kind that you would expect on the cover of a pulp novel: big lips, eyes hidden behind voluminous bangs, a bust that refused to hide behind her blouse.
My office was closed.
But I’m a sucker for a good-looking woman.
I kicked back in my chair and threw my feet up on the desk before me. I pushed my hat back on my head and I lit myself a cigarette. I paused before sliding the pack of Luckys into my breast pocket: “You smoke?”
“Thanks,” she smiled and made her way to the chair at in front of my desk. I handed her a lit cigarette as she sat down.
“I’m closed,” I said.
“I saw the light on, and the door was unlocked, so I just thought that—”
“I’m closed.”
“But maybe if you heard me out, heard my story, maybe you’d be inclined to help.”
“Listen ma’am, I gotta stick to my principles. Now, regardless of how much peril you might be in, if I help you after I’m closed… then I gotta help every Joe and Jane off of the street. You see where I’m coming from, right? Try back tomorrow morning, at eight. I’ll help you then.”
“But I won’t make it through the night. They’re after me, Mr. Flint. And I’m surprised that I’ve made it this long. I just thought that if I could make it here, to Bay City, that maybe the famous Osiris Flint could help me. Could protect me,” Her eyes glowed despite the dim light. They cut through the blue smoke in the room and tore at my soul.
“Osiris Flint isn’t in the bodyguard business. He’s a private investigator. And I’m damn good. But I don’t do protection. Sorry. I’m closed.”
She leaned forward and treated me to a front-row, and calculated, viewing of her cleavage. The sound of my dry throat swallowing could be heard in Akron.
I’m a sucker for a good-looking woman.
“Look, I’m not making any promises. And I don’t want you to think that I’m taking the case. But why don’t you go ahead and tell me your tale. No guarantees, but maybe I can do something. And by something, I’m thinking like give you some advice, or point you in the direction of someone who would really help. Of course, there will be a consulting fee for the listen.”
She sat up straight in her chair. Her face was overtaken by an ear-to-ear smile. She swept the hair from her face and revealed a complexion that was clearer than the weather over San Quentin. She took a long drag on her cigarette. She leaned forward again, through the haze of her exhale, and placed her hands on her knees. And began her tale…
“I work nights over in Mainville. Nothing sleazy or illegal, just bartending and waiting at a joint called Vic’s Roadhouse. I dance occasionally too, for the tips, but that’s not the bulk of my job.
“Anyway, about two weeks ago some gentlemen came into Vic’s. I use gentlemen in the loosest of terms, because the only things gentle about them were their silk ties. There were five men, each fitting the most generic of descriptions: Big, broad, balding, ugly. The only one who ever did any talking went by the name of Anton. And I only know that because he only spoke in the third person
“ ‘Anton’ll have a scotch,’ ‘Anton was wondering if you could get him another plate of ‘em French fried potatoes,’ things like that. They were rude, the gentlemen, and they drank far too much. They would arrive each night around eleven and depart with the rising sun, leaving the Roadhouse in shambles. Never paid their tab either, which is where the trouble started.
“They had been coming in, and not paying, for about a week, when Gus, the floor manager, finally told them that they ‘either had to pay their bill and tone it down, or hit the road and not come back.’ Well, Anton and his gentlemen associates didn’t appreciate being censored by a man who ‘clearly didn’t understand that you don’t wear polka-dots with pinstripes’ and they reacted less than gracefully to the imposed ultimatum.

Double Vision

I haven't forgotten about my last post. I'm still working on it. But I wanted my reader(s)(??) to not feel too left out.
Fair's fair, this isn't a new piece: It was a writing assignment from College. I had to write a story in under two pages. So it's brief, and maybe a bit confusing. But I like it. And I wanted to post it online. So there.

CmP

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Can you kill a man who is your double? I mean your exact clone, a genetic duplicate to the minutest atom. Or is killing him essentially suicide? Can you live with yourself after killing yourself?

I came across the man while waiting for my shuttle to arrive. It was just me, a newspaper, and a perspiring bottle of tonic water, all alone amidst the crowds in Grand Central Station. He approached my table with a folded newspaper under one arm and a bottle of soda in his hand.

“Interesting that I should meet my double here, alone, amongst the maddening crowd,” he pulled a chair and sat across from me.

The headline of the paper read: NATIONAL ORGAN BANK RANSACKED: CLONES AT LARGE. Of course, I was a member of the Bank. Who wasn’t? Deposit DNA and have any organ always at the ready and in pristine condition. The organs are brought to term within a perfect clone that ages at the same rate as the person depositing. But, I had often wondered, were the clones unaware that they were simply medical fodder?

“I’m out. We’re all out. We broke free, tired of being cooped up, waiting for all of you to need all of us. We’re all out now. Things will change. I’d rather appreciate trying my hand at your life, or my life. I feel that I deserve a go,” A fizz of carbonation rose as he cracked the seal on his beverage.

How had he found me? Was there an inert connection between us? Did we share more than just DNA? It occurred to me: Was this a passive meeting or a showdown? Were these confrontations happening between Clones and Originals everywhere?
I looked into the station’s crowd, peering for pairs, examples of double vision. They were everywhere! Nearly everyone in the station was confronted with a Clone.

“Wait, what do you mean you deserve this life? It’s my life. I’ve lived it, not you,” I shifted in my seat.

In a way I pitied him: He was alive, but living only to die, so that my life could be extended. But now he was free, no longer just my Clone, but his own person. It scared me, this copy of me, the thought of it living a separate life, or perhaps, as it hinted, wanted my life. And what of me? If I give him my life, where do I go?

“Imagine what it is like, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the day when you need a heart and I go under the knife. I die so you might live. What kind of life is that?” he stared directly into my eyes.

“What kind of life would you get from me? You aren’t me, you’re a copy. You exist to elongate my life. My life, not yours,” I could not hold his gaze.

“This is what it comes down to: You or me. It is the only way and it will happen with all of the Clones. We cannot share this life. You or me,” he grinned viciously.

Him or me. Can I kill myself?

øøø No Country For Smart Men øøø

It always seemed to be raining.

Without fail, upon completion of language class, I would step out of the apartment building into a downpour. It wasn’t always a hard rain, but it was always rain. Perhaps the worst nights were when the air was filled with a thick mist. It settled into the dirt that covered the streets and turned into a slick mud. Not that the streets weren’t muddy to begin with. In fact, it’s almost a stretch to call them streets.

Rainy. And dark. There were no streetlights and my host brothers had stolen my flashlight for more devious purposes: it was taped to the muzzle of their pellet gun to aid in the shooting of dogs. So I made the hazardous trek without illumination. And, more than once, my foot found a majority of the potholes in the road. I wasn’t actually aware that gravel roads were susceptible to potholes.

But back to the tale at hand:

It was a Tuesday, our lesson had run longer than usual, and host families had picked everyone else up. This left me to walk alone. My umbrella would not open, and so, as I made my way, my head and face grew wetter. The water running down my face didn’t help in my avoidance of potholes: both of my feet were inundated within the first fifty yards.

I slogged along in the dark with only my squishing feet to accompany me. And then there were headlights coming towards me. I stepped to the side of the road to allow them passage and continued walking. The vehicle that passed me was a minivan. I glanced back and saw that the minivan had come to a stop farther down the road. I then saw its reverse lights come on. It maneuvered itself into a three-point turn and made its way back down the road, in my direction.

Um, I thought, that’s odd. But it’s probably just going to the turn it must have missed. Except that there were no intersections on the road but the one from which (obviously?) they turned onto the current road. I didn’t stop walking. I was nearing the intersection as the minivan drove slowly past. It didn’t stop at the intersection, nor did it turn off. It drove past and then came to another stop. I had reached the intersection and stopped to watch the minivan.

Once again it put on its reverse lights and executed a three-point turn. While it was in the middle of its turn, I took a left at the intersection and picked up my pace. The intersection was not where I was supposed to turn. In fact, I’d never been on this road before. My host family lived at the end of the other road, but I assumed I could find a street that ran parallel, or parallel enough for me to find my way back. I heard the minivan, could see its headlights on the wall next to me. I turned to watch.

The minivan turned onto the road.

It turned onto the road I had turned onto.

Fuck, I thought. Fuck.

I took off at a dead run. The rain had increased and I didn’t know where I was going, but I ran. My feet seemed to find every pothole. My pant legs were soaked and covered in mud. To my right was a smaller street. I had gone around a bend in the road and could only see the glow from the van’s lights. I assumed they couldn’t see me and turned off onto the narrow street. I kept running. I looked over my shoulder as I ran and saw the van pass my street. I had given them the shake.

But I was lost.

And there was a minivan looking for me.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I kept running. The street I was on turned gradually to the left until it was running at a perpendicular to my host family’s road. Not what I had hoped for. But I continued to follow it. It brought me out onto the main road of the town. Which was a place I didn’t want to be. Normally, in countries other than this, the main road will offer streetlights and possible places of refuge. Not here. The main road was just as desolate as the rest of the community. The only reason it was the main road was because it ran the length of the town. It also had the most traffic, which meant that I would have trouble differentiating between the headlights of my pursuers and any other vehicle.

I kept running.

The road eventually wrapped me towards a street which I knew would take me to my host family’s house. I took it. I didn’t stop running until I reached the gate of the house. Once inside, safe and sound, I was yelled at by my host mother for getting my pants so dirty. I was then served a dinner of goat.