Abrupt Ending

It was not a good day to wakeup, especially because it was actually night; I had slept the entire day. There wasn’t much left of the evening. I was surrounded by the furniture, the long dark walls, the huge living room that had never made me feel at home, some young architect on his way to designing convention halls and airports had made his way through my abode. I was its inhabitant, helpless against the giant artifice, the fireplace was more than seven feet, giant flames would dwarf my frame and unhinge my shadow and embellish with memorable insight against an inconceivable, fainted bleached wood that helped the demonstrativeness against the marble dark walls.

The entire place was an intent to subdue congruence and admonish any intent at aesthetic cooperation. Every wall, fireplace, kitchen and so on was an unwilling participant, their intent was to demonstrate that individuality could overpower unity, that within the scope of one house everything could be in disagreement and yet sustain itself on a foundation. In some way I was an unequal participant too. I was here, this was my home. I lived here with my most cherished friend Aghan Oakly, and with my sister, Phudian Ilsen, I was an Ilsen too, and Phudian lived with her lover Marina, perhaps the only sweet person in the household.

We had no pets, we had a bar with all the liquors the world could produce, the kitchen could feed an entire army, and it served us well as we each cooked our own foods and never dined in the company of one another. We were independents, we told ourselves that we were, we didn’t need each other, when we needed someone we dialed the phone and connected, but otherwise we preferred not to mingle. Aghan kept to himself, he had requested a place to stay; down and out, a laid off engineer from the Boeing Company, proof that the loss of plane sales to the Europeans can have a gruesome effect. He had taken up consorting with the liquor bar, and frankly living off the estate of my diseased grandfather; a man that himself managed to live alone at least the most important days of his many years. Living here everything was somehow paid for; lawyers from Haurfan and Haurfan and Morgan would come by once and month and have sister and I sign off on the expenses. The bar tab was the least of anything, the pool cleaner was getting rich off of us, the gardener was obviously sending his kids to Harvard, and our driver and two cooks, would certainly have no problem financing their wants; Aghan could drink his sobriety away in god company and reduce all those flight of fancy neurons.

The lights were dimmed, the place was mostly dimmed during the day as well, there were a few large windows catering to the intensity of the possible horizon, which was wholly obstructed by a wooden deck, the intent being to prove that the horizon could all be man-made, straight into the night sky, where stars were diminished by the tinted glass, under our feigned power.

My name is Horace Alen Ilsen III, the third though there were many more behind those last three, we were the third we started counting too late, we could have easily counted as many as far back as the AD and BC demarcation would allow. Our family retreated all the way back to the beginning of civilization, before we were monkeys, before we were crawling fish, before we were mere bacteria, protozoa, we were there at the start. There was no part of civilization we could not claim association to, we were there, we are here, we will end here.

Phudian was my dear sister. I don’t know why we never made a sincere connection, I don’t remember us trying too hard, but still one would imagine that after such grueling evolution we would have everything in common including psychic entanglement. We didn’t. It was rough, we didn’t however acknowledge the rough, that wasn’t for us to do, we didn’t have the time to say to each other, “we don’t get along” hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and nothing in common; what we did have was instant disentanglement, we knew we didn’t fit together, the rent was paid, the booze was free, the house was huge, we never had to talk to one another, we could meet each other in the hallways, stretch both of our arms out and still pass without touching each other.

Amplitude is a monogamous friend, our eyes could spend an entire day divining what to focus, we could eat at any time, we could sleep at any moment, we could die without notice, Phudian didn’t try to arrest our insoluble contentedness.

Phudian, you may have surmised was an indolent lesbian, I say indolent because it was happenstance, desire seemed like such an excommunicated attraction that it didn’t factor into her relationship. Phudian was a lesbian simply because she didn’t want to be penetrated, because the idea that a man would cross the hairs was an arcane proposition. When we were young she had many suitors, her attractiveness might have been wasted but it could not be denied; she was this petite attraction of denials, a man could feel that he could do anything with her, there were no limits to her passion arousing godlike smell, her scent was an angelic scent, a congregation of angels, you could sit next to her and smell your desires arousing, and passions unfurling only Phudian, (an obscure ancient meaning, “turned off obstruction”” the double entendre emancipated in the apparition of my sister, “here I am I stink like god and you cant have me!” Sweet!

Phudian had an antagonistic side: Marina. Marina was a wonderful soul, so juicy with intent to please everyone, and yet so abstracted from us, neither Phudian nor Aghan could muster the energy to engage in her fervor, she was one of us within the giantess home, but really we did not care to indulge in caring situations, either way her sweetness would have amounted to great bitterness in the out there world. We gave her a roof, a bed, my cold sister, and plenty of fire, where she could languish in her dreams, unaware that they would never materializ. For instance, she loved my sister, my sister just didn’t want to be touched, Marina fulfilled her own enchantment by believing that my sister was pure. My sister just didn’t want to be touched! She wasn’t pure, she couldn’t be bothered by purity; she didn’t want to be held, she was untouchable, so purely untouchable, and yet Marina held that to be a romantic ideal, she never ceased her zenoic march towards the eternal damnation of love.

Aghan had been married, fortunately his wife left him for another man: they were high school sweethearts, they were both married, they reunited over the internet, they found each other, they forgot each others vices and broke up their marriages to reinvent their childhood sweetheart engagement, and so thanks to the magic of the internet Aghan was left with Drew, his most adorable cotton-faced, curly-haired, ice-cream-commercial-cheeked daughter; alone in a giant house with two large cars, and a dog name Peter, after the son that was lost during childbirth. And then, one day, Aghan took up the vice of alcohol; he could have taken on more serious drugs, but he didn’t like they way they made him feel, alcohol was his vice of choice, and not long after that but not because of that, but rather because the Japanese and the Chinese did not buy enough Boeing airplanes, Aghan found himself unemployed and highly skilled, in other words, in heavy water.

Fortunately, Aghan’s next door neighbor Joan Citrix, an active and concerned citizen realized that if the television was on 24 hours day and going at full blast and through the kitchen window cockroaches could roam during the day, and maggots were beating up the rose bushes, then there must be something wrong with her former barbeque pal. And so she, preferring not to engage in uncivilized confrontation, called the social services department and they duly came over and took Drew away so she could find new horizons in strange new dwellings. Her father then became a more indefatigable drinker until he was impounded, and one day I get this call and find myself taking my old buddy out of jail and bringing him here to my wall-less fortress.

Today has passed, I stayed in bed too long. I open my nightstand drawer, play around with a gun that I find in it. Pretty gun, I am not a gun person, never have been, don’t know that I know how to aim and shoot one. I play around with it, a little, touch the small barrel, it is one of those cute guns, Saturday night specials perhaps. I have heard the name I don’t know what it means. The gun is tiny next to my hand, it seems difficult to imagine that this gun could kill someone. I check it out, take out the cartridge that slides downward from the handle, there are five bullets there, they all have hollow tips, a person that doesn’t know about guns can’t know what a hollow tip is and what it does.. as the bullet travels through the air the high rate of speed, heat and atmospheric friction fall into this frontal caved-in hole at the point, and so warp the bullet’s frame, making it contort more into a hammer head type shape and then slam into an elephant and knock it down from the impact without bothering to penetrate, though from the absurd velocity penetration also occurs, but the jagged tumbling entry ricochets from bone through organs and eventually manages to escape, creating an alternative breathing hole for bloodletting.

I am in the living room now, I walked here with my gun, I am standing by the giant fireplace, my silk shirt is black, my pants are black, Aghan enters through the hallway. I reach into my pocket, pull out the gun, he is making out my motion but expects no harm from it; I aim, arm straight, squinted eye, head in sights, pull the trigger, once and twice and Aghan hangs against the wall, splattering a dance, and caves into the hall, behind a couch where I can no longer watch.

Phudian rushes in, streaking her hands against her face, my handgun hanging from my arm, I turn degrees to meet her sight, and volley a round her way, and two, and no more, two is enough, it seems. She screams more so, her hands masked red, her eyes exposed, her pale face retrieving bullets gone into her neck, and squelched her figure hanged, from air or some strange thousand Gs disguised, she pummels draining herself from the airport and the stadium, on her way to some glorious convention.

Marina is not far behind, she sees me, I move again, so eloquently sight her with the barrel, her face is more subdued than normal, she stares at me but not with fright, she looks long at me and leaves this place, and I track her with my sight perfectly aligned, but still a bullet in the chamber, and I aim but never pull it out of its calm.

I would like to say I felt something but the walls were so far apart. I stood there for a while making good contrast with the fireplace, the marble casing against my silk black slacks and shirt, the black iron on my pearl hand, the indisposed grip.

I went out to the deck, crossed its massive width, walked down the lengthy stairs onto the beach, and tossed high and far into the sea, the thing.

How long do you think it took, for the police to come and spy my doings, and a whole bunch indeed for only four shots to ring.

The uniformed officers came and yellow lined and chalked the place, adding this invisible contour to the place that I might not have noticed otherwise. They regaled in the events, pictures were taken, I saw a lot of writing going on, and then in just as swift an exit as their entrance they were all gone, dimming their presence like the stars.

Three remained one woman and two men. “Mr. Ilsen we have been kind in allowing you a few minutes to compose yourself, we have sent the officers away, but we must ask now ask you some questions, may we please?”

“Absolutely, I am fine! Feel free to count on my assistance in this case!”

The two men were casually dressed, both with bluejeans, one in an oxford shirt the other in a black sweater arrangement. The girl was a blond, very short hair, blue eyes, a most appealing athletic build, she too was causally dressed. She approaches.

“Hello Mr. Ilsen, this is Harry and Shiac, we work these type of multiple suicide cases together. I am Polly, and we are not police officers.”

“You’re not?”

“No, we are psychiatrics, we are here to establish that you didn’t commit the crime, we have no reason to believe that you did anything wrong and so we are here to prove that you are not the one.”

“But shouldn’t a detective be here investigating and determining the cause and effect?”

She sat me down on the couch and sat herself down on our large black coffee table, her legs, unrehearsed, straddle the scene. “Well yes, if you prefer a detective can come here, we are a new thing sort of, a squad of three heavily trained psychoanalysts that in theory should have a greater advantage in assessing the situation and identifying the killer.”

Shiac invites himself into the conversation.

“It’s this new thing, cops investigating crimes seems a bit outdated, they don’t seem to qualify, if you imagine that most people don’t commit premeditated murder then it stands to reason that Sherlock Holmes is probably out of his league, it is most likely that the spontaneity of crime is dominated by infantile, instinctual or emotional charges that when they go off can deteriorate any relationship.”

Harry injects himself.

“We embark on the search for the more genuine aspect of the crime, even if a crime is premeditated it probably has emotional roots, traditional criminology is event driven, it attempts to define everything that wasn’t, and from the possible, everything that was and thus leads to the event, (coolly posing with his arm holding a cigarette that I had never noticed being lit.) We believe the event is just circumstance.”

Polly dangles on…

“Presumably detectives are good at capturing criminals with guns in their hands, the new way calls for people like us, you are actually our third case, it is an innovative approach and as you may imagine there is a little pressure for us to prove the new methodology.”

I pulled up to the bar and poured myself a straight scotch. “Would you dears enjoy some with me?”

Polly “Sure, scotch is fine.”

Harry, “I will hang with my smoke, thanks.”

Shiac, “A glass of red would be fine.”

Me, “Officers that drink on duty, eh.”

Polly, “We are not officers, we are researches, the crimes that were committed here today are not evidence to us, they are merely suppositions, there may be a greater crime that has been committed to arrive at this conclusion, we don’t assume anything, we are scientists of the mind, we think the mind kills after the murder has already been committed in some unimaginable realm or dimension.

Shiac, “What Polly is saying is that tonight’s murders are a consequence, we appreciate that fact, we prefer to get to the real crime, we don’t know what that is. (noticing I was some what perplexed,) we are savage children, today someone killed your sister and your best friend, but that was a result of the real crime that caused this crime, we don’t know what the real crime was, the obvious crime, that your sister and best friend were killed, wasn’t it.”

Harry, “I don’t want to interrupt but you don’t seem very perturbed by tonight’s events Mr. Ilsen.”

Mr. Ilsen, “Yes, you are right, I am not perturbed, someone came in here and killed people that were somewhat dear to me, but I have never felt a need to be demonstrative about my feelings, I am a very private person, and so you have the consequences of that and my conservative upbringing for that, I don’t cry, nor do I dwell, life is full of tragedies, it is poor manners to embellish the tragedy.”

Harry, “Damn good ok.”

Polly, “We would like to begin running a test, if you don’t mind. We know it will be somewhat taxing but then we will go and leave you to your moment.”

Mr. Ilsen, “As you must and justice must.”

Polly, “We are going to ask you some questions, please be as sincere as possible.”

Mr. Ilsen, “Are you saying I don’t have to be sincere?”

“I am saying please be as sincere as possible Mr. Ilsen”

Harry begins, “It is a starry starry night, there are no clouds, a flock of seagulls fly past your window what do you think?”

Mr. Ilsen replyies, “Seagulls sleep at night.”

Shiac protrudes, “In India cows are sacred, you wouldn’t want to kill a cow there, are you a meat eater Mr. Ilsen?”

Uncomfortably answering, “Well, yes.”

Polly, “There are many ways to get rid of lice, you can use olive oil, special shampoos, even certain vitamins will assist you in killing them, which would you prefer?”

“I prefer to live with lice than treat them, too many people have them, they just keep on coming back, it seems pointless to get rid of them.”

Shiac, “You have never married, your sister is a lesbian, are those two factors connected”

Spilling a bit of the third scotch without water, “I don’t see any connection.”

Harry, laughing, “neither do I chap, neither do I.” Proceeding with his question, “If some people are not drowning, but they are in the titanic, do they deserve to be encouraged?”

Ilsen calmer than necessary, “I never thought of that but I did hear of a mother that realizing they were sinking tied her three children together ensuring that the family stayed together.”

Polly seeming a little impressed, “Do you have a gun?”

Without hesitation, “Nope.”

Polly, “Well we are most grateful, we know this wasn’t your standard investigation and so must take some getting used to, but we do appreciate your cooperation. Till tomorrow.”

With that they all did say goodbye leaving Ilsen by himself in the dim darkness.

He sat there in the sea of a black couch and drowned.

RC