Nobody Quits

Saturday night. A slow paced ordeal in this sleepy backwater town. A lazy rain raps listlessly at my window and the cheap coffee in my cup is too weak to keep anyone awake. Apart from the rain the only sound is made by the Freddie Mercury clock sitting on the wall, overlooking it all.

The news pieces in today’s paper are old, having already taken several beats around the net before at long last reaching the printing press. That’s apparently how the world works nowadays, with yesterday’s stories and sins coming back to haunt you long after they’ve been already forgotten by those who once lived them. I read the news pieces anyway, savour them, even. I am able to read subtle truths in the short notices, that I can never find in modern crime novels. However, being in the know is probably the only perk that comes with having led my kind of life -- especially since I decided to leave it all behind.

I have almost reconciled with this isolated, secluded and protected existence. It’s the price I have had to pay for finally breaking free of all the things that once weighed me down. That, and the disgrace of soon standing in front of a jury, testifying against my old allies. But it became too much for me, the violence and the cold and merciless brutality, and if this is the price for breaking out it is a price I will gladly pay. I just wish living within the federal witness protection program was not so goddamn boring.

The rapping of the raindrops on my window is suddenly accompanied by a far more substantial rapping on the door. Freddie Mercury looks just as surprised as I when I turn to him for an explanation. It’s almost midnight, and I expect no visitors. I seldom do nowadays. Slowly I fold my paper and walk towards the door to look through the peephole. I’m not really afraid of strangers, since I don’t think the people who want to hurt me can find me here. But even so, the sight of the man outside the door makes me freeze in shock. I know him very well. In fact, he is my oldest and closest friend -- and he really should not be here. He knocks again. I open the door.

”I see you weren’t expecting me”, he says as he lets himself in.

I close the door. “No”, I say tonelessly, “but I also don’t see how it is logically possible for me not to have been.”

He is wearing a hooded sweater with its sleeves rolled up. His arms are covered in large, dark tattoos and his face in rebellious beads of gleaming metal. He also has a huge tribal across his entire back, and an ugly scar disfigures his left thigh. I cannot see this now, but know about it only because I had that very tribal tattoo painfully removed five months ago, and that old knife wound still pains me after long walks. The rain composes a monotonous backdrop to our silence as I stare at him. As he stares at me. Then he unceremoniously walks into my living room.

”So this sad hole-up is what I’ll eventually choose to sell everything and everyone out for? I don’t believe it…”

I stand in the doorway, watching him as he pulls out my books and scrutinizes my sparse furniture. ”It all became too much for me”, I say. “The violence, the cold and merciless brutality… You will see for yourself in time.”

At this, he quickly looks up at me. ”No, I won’t”, he says. “Because this will never happen.”

I sigh and shake my head. This young man has so much to learn about how reality works. ”How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

”Nineteen, actually”, he says and I suddenly remember getting that snakebite piercing on my birthday that very year.

I nod knowingly. ”Many things can happen in seven years, you know. Feelings change. People change.”

”I won’t change”, he says sternly. ”I refuse to change. I refuse to become… this.” He makes a wide gesture that encompasses the entire room, and it’s not until now that I realize that he is holding a gun. A small, simple thing, the clear surface of which reflects the room, the rain and the slowly moving hands of the clock on the wall.

In sudden fear I flinch and take a step back, but he reacts faster. Much faster. I suddenly stand staring down the muzzle of the cold piece of metal right in front of my eyes, just as intently as he is staring at me. I’ve been in many situations like this, but yet it’s different this time. This is impossible. There is no sane reality in which I could be expected to prepare for this. All I can feel now is fear, and my entire body is starting to shake.

”They told me that I am going to rat on them. That they can’t let me into the organization for real because seven years from now, I will sell them out. Don’t you see that you have ruined everything? I’ll never become anything or anyone, and it’s all because of you!” He presses the gun against the side of my head and forces me to my knees.

I almost cannot breathe, let alone speak, but still I force myself to say something between the panicky sobs. ”But… I am you. For fuck sake, can’t you see that? My choices are your goddam choices. Your future fucking choices, that you’ll make for a reason. You can’t be serious about this. Please…”

”They have given me one option, though”, he continues, as if not having heard I word I’d said. “If I find you and whack you before you go to that fucking trial and ruin everything, they’ll let me in. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Nobody quits.”

I wonder who ”they” are. I wonder if this can really be happening. I wonder what will happen to me, to him, if he pulls the trigger. ”Fucking idiot”, I say as he readies the gun. ”Don’t you rea--”

#

The echo of the shot slowly dies out between the walls of the hidden, anonymous apartment where someone once went in hiding from his past sins -- and where a younger someone later impossibly managed to find himself. Only Freddie Mercury watches on in shocked silence as the impossible unfolds, but being a clock he will never be able to tell anyone what that is.

And the rainy, slow paced Saturday night wears on in that sleepy backwater town, where yesterday’s news stories come back to haunt you long after they’ve been already forgotten by those who once lived them.

Copyright © 2018 Chris Smedbakken