"consequences" - another Bruce Anders story
All Bruce stories are dark. This one is darker than most. Be aware.
The cold metal of the table hurts my lower arms as I sit forward, arms folded. I don't care. The detective is taking a break from his interrogation. I do not have an attorney present. I suppose I should, but as I said, I don't care.
Earlier my hands were swabbed for gunpowder residue. I had no doubt the results would be negative. Unlike Mike, whose hands would test positive, down on the slab at County.
The detective came back in with two cups of coffee. As he patiently continued his repetitive questioning, and I gave my repetitive answers, I wondered if I would be arrested.
But I didn't care.
- - -
We are all meat. Meat on a table. Or meat on a sidewalk. Meat under my hands, ribs cracking as I compress at the prescribed 100 beats per minute. The instructor at the CPR class said, "Remember the rhythm of 'Staying Alive'" but confided in me at a break that 'Another One Bites The Dust' works almost as well.
I already knew that nothing here was going to work. The pool of tacky reddish-black I knelt in had all come from the body of my friend. I had rolled him on his side and tried to cover the massive exit wounds in his back and side with first his shirt, then my own. But when my scrabbling fingers could no longer find a pulse in his carotid, and the bubbles from his front and his side stopped bubbling, I knew I had to do whatever I could.
I loved Mike as a friend. What I did now was almost as intimate than sex, about as disgusting, and about as unlikely to produce life. I remembered a line from a book, "The parody of a kiss ... to shrink from it, beneath contempt." So I kissed my friend, blowing air into him only to see more bubbles rise up from the torso I pounded again a few moments later.
The medics had had to push me aside. They were rushing, jamming a tube down his throat, hooking up IVs, rolling him on a backboard and lifting on the gurney without taking the time to bother with little details like straps.
- - -
I had washed my hands at the police station -- after the swabs. But a little bit on the underside of my wrist was still tacky with a dark spot.
I suddenly understood Macbeth and what Shakespeare was trying to say.
- - -
I was not arrested. I had done nothing wrong. I was a victim of crime, he said, and then the sketch artist asked me question after question, working with her computer program and my scattered memory to try to construct the face of the shooter.
Then she had it. I told her so. She nodded and clicked the print key. The computer whirred and another piece of evidence joined the growing file.
- - -
Everything significant in a person's life ultimately ends up in someone's file folder. Medical records, taxes, divorce, property . . . all have their little folders full of fussy papers.
So do murders.
- - -
I let her hit me. Her fists pounded uselessly against my chest as my friends and her friends stood between, trying to buffer her rage and anger and grief and loss.
I had been there while her son had been murdered. That was all the reason she needed.
I understood. That's why I stood there and took it. I almost felt that I deserved it, except that I had no place in any of this.
I looked down at myself as she hit Bruce again and again. Even when she hit him in the face, I just watched. Glassy. Disassociated.
People comforted her as I watched Bruce walk away. I watched him cross the street, heedless of passing traffic. I saw his clothing balloon from the wind of the passing truck which had almost hit him square on. I heard the blare of the truck's horn.
He just kept walking. No one followed.
- - -
Mike had just gotten off of work. He had a duffel bag with him on the front porch as we sat there. He smoked and drank a beer. I had a diet cola.
We were talking shit. The usual gossip. I'd had my life threatened before, and thought little of it. He had his life threatened every day, and thought less.
He died wearing a white cotton T-shirt and black BDU pants. His dirty uniform shirt at work; his clean ones in the closet.
I'd returned them to his employer the next day and walked away when they tried to give me a receipt.
- - -
"Level III body armor, size Large." Unused, undamaged. It only works if it's on, and it was still on the bottom of the duffel bag when Mike snaked his hand in and pulled out his semiautomatic pistol.
Three rounds in him and he still managed to draw while I sat there with my mouth open and a spilled diet soda splashed down my front.
Mike had fired twice. Two rounds that hit nothing but saved my life when the shooter turned and ran away.
Except that the diet soda was still cold and what was splashed on me was still quite warm.
- - -
Funerals are for the living.
So I didn't go.
- - -
I opened the official looking envelope.
"The People of the State of California Order You To Appear On . . ."
Paper, more paper. Not a word of it would bring my friend back.
- - -
The gleam of a knife in a hand, the hand swings towards me.
I am overjoyed. I freeze up, waiting for the knife to enter me. Will it feel warm or cold?
While I am still wondering, I break the elbow.
He is crying, mewling in pain. It is a horrid injury and he will never regain the full use of the arm again.
He is still in agony when the police take him away, to the hospital and then to the jail ward. I coldly, dispassionately give my statement. There is video to back up my version of events.
I barely notice that there are seven police officers still on the scene as they complete their interview. I've been frisked for weapons, twice. Three of them are standing there with their hands on their belts, on their firearms. All of them are as alert as short-haired cats at a long-haired dog convention.
I don't care.
I have not broken the law. I am free to walk away. There will be no real consequences for me this day -- no arrest, no lawsuit. He was trying to kill me, and I used reasonable force to defend myself. But I know, and they know.
I didn't have to break the elbow.
It is not "if" I snap. It is when. We all know that too.
- - -
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
I am wearing a business suit. So is the suspect. Somehow his family has made bail, although they will almost certainly lose the house as a result. He is looking at life in prison, not the sixteen months in County that is more typical of a "NHI" homicide.
He had been trying to slay me. A little confusion, aimed one guy too far to the left.
I look at him and he looks at me.
He looks dead. I recognize a kindred spirit.
We are the dead, surrounded by the living, as they try to make sense of something that has never made sense and never ever will make sense.
Mike is here too.
Us three dead.
"Mr. Anders!" says the district attorney, calling me back to the land of the living long enough to testify.
What had I seen in the land of the dead? Who would speak for Mike if I did not?
So as painful as it was to return, I made myself do it. I made myself answer the questions, listen to the attorneys and the judge, ignore the jury. "Answer the question that is asked," is what I had been taught so long ago.
So I did.
Mike nodded, approvingly.
- - -
"NHI" -- acronym, illicit, forbidden for use in police work. Initials standing for "No Humans Involved." Applied to a case where criminals victimize criminals.
- - -
I am buying groceries. I don't eat much nowadays, but I go through the motions so my neighbors don't worry so much. I am sick of them knocking on my door, leaving meals for me, bringing me flowers and cards and sympathy.
An armored car crewman is carrying the cash out to his truck. I recognize him, a friend of Mike's. He recognizes me.
He is carrying money. That is his job and his duty. He should do nothing other than go from the till to the truck, watching three hundred and sixty degrees for threats.
He stops, looks at me, puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Hey, man, thank you for what you did for Mike."
He pats my shoulder and moves past, getting out his key to open the truck door.
I watch him get in and the truck pull away.
All the tears of the living will never call back the dead.
- - -
I come home to find a naked woman in my bed. I must have left the door unlocked again.
I tell her calmly and without expression, "Get out."
I saved her life more than once. I kind of get that she is trying to save mine, even when she slaps me and puts on her clothes and leaves.
I just don't care enough to say another word.
- - -
"Has the jury reached a verdict?"
"We have, Your Honor."
I owe it to Mike to witness this, the last act of the drama.
". . . the third count, of homicide in the first degree, we find the accused guilty as charged. On the fourth count, of attempted murder, we find the accused guilty as charged. On the fifth count, unlawful possession of a loaded firearm by a convicted felon, we find the accused . . ."
There are only two dead in this room. Mike has moved on, to a better place.
His murderer will move on, also to a better place. For him.
I remain. I've still got your back, my friend.
- - -
It is 10 AM. I wake up from yet another nightmare, in the middle of my night.
I am dead when I am awake. All my living is in my sleep, in my dreams.
I awake voraciously hungry. I get up, try to pour myself some milk, go out to the dumpster in my bare feet and throw the container out.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
I shower. It's the first time I've bothered in weeks. My piss is dark yellow. I feel weak, dizzy. So I make myself drink four glasses of water as I towel off.
Clean clothes? None. So I do the best I can and stumble across the street to the stereotypical twenty-four hour restaurant.
The day waitress does not recognize me, and I can see her deciding where to seat me. At the back.
Somehow two glasses of milk, a carafe of iced tea and a full breakfast appear on the table.
I came here alone. How is it that I am suddenly sitting with several friends?
They have food in front of them which is somehow sliding its way over to me. Someone to my right is holding my hand. Someone to my left is just there, a quiet brooding presence that comforts me.
In between bites, I suddenly start weeping. Tears stream down my face as I cry unashamedly in the middle of a restaurant.
I am hugged, and hugged again. Then they take me outside on the grass out front and let me weep, sitting around me in a semi-circle.
I blink and try to mutter a thank you.
I am no longer dead. But Mike is still dead and always will be.
I tell a story of him, involving an ice cream truck, a little kid who thought he was short changed, and three angry men arguing over the results. Mike walked between them, bought the kid one of each ice cream in the truck, sent him and his father and uncle off laughing, then discreetly and calmly cut the valve stems off all four tires of the ice cream truck while Mr. Softie counted his temporary gains in the back.
Mike is not dead. Not so long as we remember him.
You can comment here or at Dreamwidth. Makes no difference to me.
The cold metal of the table hurts my lower arms as I sit forward, arms folded. I don't care. The detective is taking a break from his interrogation. I do not have an attorney present. I suppose I should, but as I said, I don't care.
Earlier my hands were swabbed for gunpowder residue. I had no doubt the results would be negative. Unlike Mike, whose hands would test positive, down on the slab at County.
The detective came back in with two cups of coffee. As he patiently continued his repetitive questioning, and I gave my repetitive answers, I wondered if I would be arrested.
But I didn't care.
- - -
We are all meat. Meat on a table. Or meat on a sidewalk. Meat under my hands, ribs cracking as I compress at the prescribed 100 beats per minute. The instructor at the CPR class said, "Remember the rhythm of 'Staying Alive'" but confided in me at a break that 'Another One Bites The Dust' works almost as well.
I already knew that nothing here was going to work. The pool of tacky reddish-black I knelt in had all come from the body of my friend. I had rolled him on his side and tried to cover the massive exit wounds in his back and side with first his shirt, then my own. But when my scrabbling fingers could no longer find a pulse in his carotid, and the bubbles from his front and his side stopped bubbling, I knew I had to do whatever I could.
I loved Mike as a friend. What I did now was almost as intimate than sex, about as disgusting, and about as unlikely to produce life. I remembered a line from a book, "The parody of a kiss ... to shrink from it, beneath contempt." So I kissed my friend, blowing air into him only to see more bubbles rise up from the torso I pounded again a few moments later.
The medics had had to push me aside. They were rushing, jamming a tube down his throat, hooking up IVs, rolling him on a backboard and lifting on the gurney without taking the time to bother with little details like straps.
- - -
I had washed my hands at the police station -- after the swabs. But a little bit on the underside of my wrist was still tacky with a dark spot.
I suddenly understood Macbeth and what Shakespeare was trying to say.
- - -
I was not arrested. I had done nothing wrong. I was a victim of crime, he said, and then the sketch artist asked me question after question, working with her computer program and my scattered memory to try to construct the face of the shooter.
Then she had it. I told her so. She nodded and clicked the print key. The computer whirred and another piece of evidence joined the growing file.
- - -
Everything significant in a person's life ultimately ends up in someone's file folder. Medical records, taxes, divorce, property . . . all have their little folders full of fussy papers.
So do murders.
- - -
I let her hit me. Her fists pounded uselessly against my chest as my friends and her friends stood between, trying to buffer her rage and anger and grief and loss.
I had been there while her son had been murdered. That was all the reason she needed.
I understood. That's why I stood there and took it. I almost felt that I deserved it, except that I had no place in any of this.
I looked down at myself as she hit Bruce again and again. Even when she hit him in the face, I just watched. Glassy. Disassociated.
People comforted her as I watched Bruce walk away. I watched him cross the street, heedless of passing traffic. I saw his clothing balloon from the wind of the passing truck which had almost hit him square on. I heard the blare of the truck's horn.
He just kept walking. No one followed.
- - -
Mike had just gotten off of work. He had a duffel bag with him on the front porch as we sat there. He smoked and drank a beer. I had a diet cola.
We were talking shit. The usual gossip. I'd had my life threatened before, and thought little of it. He had his life threatened every day, and thought less.
He died wearing a white cotton T-shirt and black BDU pants. His dirty uniform shirt at work; his clean ones in the closet.
I'd returned them to his employer the next day and walked away when they tried to give me a receipt.
- - -
"Level III body armor, size Large." Unused, undamaged. It only works if it's on, and it was still on the bottom of the duffel bag when Mike snaked his hand in and pulled out his semiautomatic pistol.
Three rounds in him and he still managed to draw while I sat there with my mouth open and a spilled diet soda splashed down my front.
Mike had fired twice. Two rounds that hit nothing but saved my life when the shooter turned and ran away.
Except that the diet soda was still cold and what was splashed on me was still quite warm.
- - -
Funerals are for the living.
So I didn't go.
- - -
I opened the official looking envelope.
"The People of the State of California Order You To Appear On . . ."
Paper, more paper. Not a word of it would bring my friend back.
- - -
The gleam of a knife in a hand, the hand swings towards me.
I am overjoyed. I freeze up, waiting for the knife to enter me. Will it feel warm or cold?
While I am still wondering, I break the elbow.
He is crying, mewling in pain. It is a horrid injury and he will never regain the full use of the arm again.
He is still in agony when the police take him away, to the hospital and then to the jail ward. I coldly, dispassionately give my statement. There is video to back up my version of events.
I barely notice that there are seven police officers still on the scene as they complete their interview. I've been frisked for weapons, twice. Three of them are standing there with their hands on their belts, on their firearms. All of them are as alert as short-haired cats at a long-haired dog convention.
I don't care.
I have not broken the law. I am free to walk away. There will be no real consequences for me this day -- no arrest, no lawsuit. He was trying to kill me, and I used reasonable force to defend myself. But I know, and they know.
I didn't have to break the elbow.
It is not "if" I snap. It is when. We all know that too.
- - -
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"
I am wearing a business suit. So is the suspect. Somehow his family has made bail, although they will almost certainly lose the house as a result. He is looking at life in prison, not the sixteen months in County that is more typical of a "NHI" homicide.
He had been trying to slay me. A little confusion, aimed one guy too far to the left.
I look at him and he looks at me.
He looks dead. I recognize a kindred spirit.
We are the dead, surrounded by the living, as they try to make sense of something that has never made sense and never ever will make sense.
Mike is here too.
Us three dead.
"Mr. Anders!" says the district attorney, calling me back to the land of the living long enough to testify.
What had I seen in the land of the dead? Who would speak for Mike if I did not?
So as painful as it was to return, I made myself do it. I made myself answer the questions, listen to the attorneys and the judge, ignore the jury. "Answer the question that is asked," is what I had been taught so long ago.
So I did.
Mike nodded, approvingly.
- - -
"NHI" -- acronym, illicit, forbidden for use in police work. Initials standing for "No Humans Involved." Applied to a case where criminals victimize criminals.
- - -
I am buying groceries. I don't eat much nowadays, but I go through the motions so my neighbors don't worry so much. I am sick of them knocking on my door, leaving meals for me, bringing me flowers and cards and sympathy.
An armored car crewman is carrying the cash out to his truck. I recognize him, a friend of Mike's. He recognizes me.
He is carrying money. That is his job and his duty. He should do nothing other than go from the till to the truck, watching three hundred and sixty degrees for threats.
He stops, looks at me, puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Hey, man, thank you for what you did for Mike."
He pats my shoulder and moves past, getting out his key to open the truck door.
I watch him get in and the truck pull away.
All the tears of the living will never call back the dead.
- - -
I come home to find a naked woman in my bed. I must have left the door unlocked again.
I tell her calmly and without expression, "Get out."
I saved her life more than once. I kind of get that she is trying to save mine, even when she slaps me and puts on her clothes and leaves.
I just don't care enough to say another word.
- - -
"Has the jury reached a verdict?"
"We have, Your Honor."
I owe it to Mike to witness this, the last act of the drama.
". . . the third count, of homicide in the first degree, we find the accused guilty as charged. On the fourth count, of attempted murder, we find the accused guilty as charged. On the fifth count, unlawful possession of a loaded firearm by a convicted felon, we find the accused . . ."
There are only two dead in this room. Mike has moved on, to a better place.
His murderer will move on, also to a better place. For him.
I remain. I've still got your back, my friend.
- - -
It is 10 AM. I wake up from yet another nightmare, in the middle of my night.
I am dead when I am awake. All my living is in my sleep, in my dreams.
I awake voraciously hungry. I get up, try to pour myself some milk, go out to the dumpster in my bare feet and throw the container out.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
I shower. It's the first time I've bothered in weeks. My piss is dark yellow. I feel weak, dizzy. So I make myself drink four glasses of water as I towel off.
Clean clothes? None. So I do the best I can and stumble across the street to the stereotypical twenty-four hour restaurant.
The day waitress does not recognize me, and I can see her deciding where to seat me. At the back.
Somehow two glasses of milk, a carafe of iced tea and a full breakfast appear on the table.
I came here alone. How is it that I am suddenly sitting with several friends?
They have food in front of them which is somehow sliding its way over to me. Someone to my right is holding my hand. Someone to my left is just there, a quiet brooding presence that comforts me.
In between bites, I suddenly start weeping. Tears stream down my face as I cry unashamedly in the middle of a restaurant.
I am hugged, and hugged again. Then they take me outside on the grass out front and let me weep, sitting around me in a semi-circle.
I blink and try to mutter a thank you.
I am no longer dead. But Mike is still dead and always will be.
I tell a story of him, involving an ice cream truck, a little kid who thought he was short changed, and three angry men arguing over the results. Mike walked between them, bought the kid one of each ice cream in the truck, sent him and his father and uncle off laughing, then discreetly and calmly cut the valve stems off all four tires of the ice cream truck while Mr. Softie counted his temporary gains in the back.
Mike is not dead. Not so long as we remember him.
You can comment here or at Dreamwidth. Makes no difference to me.