By Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw
“Everyone knows you for what you are.” No one came right out and said it, but the man saw the accusation in their eyes… everywhere. The throngs of people on the subway platform… the cabbie… the bartender… the rheumy-eyed regulars down at the little “hole-in-the-wall” in Old Town, where the literacy rate was close to zero and televisions were a luxury few could afford.
Jake had sought refuge in Old Town, far away from the upper middle-class West Hills neighborhood where he was well known, and would have no peace. But… instead of the anonymity he sought… on every stranger’s face… a contemptuous familiarity… like they knew him… that they knew what he was… that they could see inside him.
~~**~~
The trial was finally over. The “pretty boy” the media had dubbed the “Riverton Strangler” was behind bars… where he would be someone’s “bitch” for the next several decades. The city’s “ladies of the night” were safe once again, although; “safe” was a relative term in a city with a population of almost a million souls… a good number of them not “good souls”… and a woefully under-staffed police department.
~~**~~
Jake looked up from his drink and over to the big mirror on the wall behind the bar…his gaunt reflection staring back at him… even his own eyes seemed to hold the accusation… “Everyone knows you for what you are.” And he felt it… again… pulling at him. Bile rose in Jake’s throat as he slid off the barstool and lurched unsteadily toward the bathroom at the back of the tavern. “Hey, buddy… you okay? You look like death…”
Bent over the filthy sink, splashing cold water on his face, Jake muttered over and over… “Stop it… leave me alone… I don’t want to…” After a bit, he felt better.
Flipping a folded ten-spot to the bartender, Jake walked out into the night. The rain and cold however, soon drove him inside another bar. “Jack… beer back.” He said, hoisting his large frame onto the tattered barstool. The only other patron in the bar, a bleached blonde with more miles on her than the US highway system, gave Jake a knowing smile and ran a wet tongue over her red-painted lips. Jake turned away, downing the shot and chasing it with the piss-warm beer. When he looked back over, the woman had moved and was standing outside the ladies room. She smiled at Jake again, gave her generous breasts a squeeze, and then stepped into the bathroom. After a few moments, Jake slid off the barstool and ambled down the hall.
~~**~~
Jake woke to shouts and a loud pounding. Through the black haze of a splitting headache, he tried to focus on the shape lying next to him… “What happened… where am I?”… and then… as the shape slowly took form… “Oh god! No… not again… no…” Jake started to rise to his feet, when suddenly, the flimsy door crashed inward and the fetid bathroom was filled with uniforms. Jake was knocked back to the floor and handcuffed before his brain had time to register the one familiar face in the sea of blue.
Much later, back at the 12th Precinct, Detective Robert Craven and his captain turned their attention from the man in the small interrogation room, to the television set mounted on the south wall of the squad room.
“In a startling development in the Riverton Strangler case, authorities have arrested Riverton police detective Jake Harriman. Detective Harriman, lead investigator in the Strangler case, was apprehended in the early morning hours at the Bar-X Tavern in Old Town. The detective was discovered in the women’s bathroom… the half-naked body of a known prostitute lying next to him. Police have confirmed the manner of death as matching that of the Riverton Strangler’s victims.”
Breathing a heavy sigh, the detective clicked the television off and tossed the remote on his desk. Entering the interrogation room, Detective Craven settled in the chair across the table from Jake… and just stared at him for several minutes. Finally, Craven spoke…
“Something you’d like to tell me, partner?”
Jake looked up… with something close to gratitude in his bloodshot eyes.
~~finis~~
© 2011 – Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology (Kindle)
Veronica you are one heck of a writer, great story nice and twisty. And a belated congratulations on the Nanowrimo win!
Thank you, Mike… thank you very much!
ONE MAN’s BURDEN is one of my favorite stories… I really like the ‘feel’ of it. This is also one of the few stories I have written thus far, that – if it were possible for words to do so – ‘fell out of my pen’ and flowed down the page.
Thank you very much for reading my story.
NaNoWriMo was both fun and challenging. I am currently working on the second draft of the novel and am giving some thought to self-publishing it. I am looking forward to this year’s competition!
congratulations on the Nanowrimo win! You Deserve it…and I love the way you write, your blog and your engagement with the readers who stop here, we are the lucky ones…keep it up ♥ Jackie
Thank you, Jackie… what a wonderful compliment to wake up to this morning!
Nano was fun… I hope to see you there this year!
In a way, this is the best part of writing… this exchange with readers and other writers… the comments and feedback are wonderful and I have learned a lot.
Thank you for reading my stories… it means a lot to me.
xx <3 Veronica Marie
Veronica, I agree, engaging in the readers. The comments, the wake up and see who wrote what thing! I really admire your talent for writing. I hope to get in the Nano thing too…I have a friend doing it now, I hope she wins too. Was it hard?
Hi Jackie –
NANO is firstly about quantity, not quality. To win NANO, all you have to do is write 50,000 words in 30 days… comes out to about 1600 words a day. The NANO competition runs from November 1 through November 30. If you write, and have validated, 50,000 words by the end of November, you are an official NANO winner. Then comes the fun part!
You go back and look at those 50,000 words and decide if you have a story in there, remembering that you have bled, sweat and cried for the last month (or, maybe that was just me), neglected family and friends to a fair degree (unless you are one of those natural born writers who can crank out 5,000 words a day without breaking a sweat), and on more than one occasion, questioned your own sanity.
Sounds like fun, huh?
The hardest part for me was getting my self-editing monkey to stay out of the room. I have a tendency to edit a lot as I write. In NANO, you can’t do that. You just put pen to paper, so to speak, and start writing! I use Microsoft Word because I can get an accurate word count and it has a decent grammar/spell-checker.
Once November 30th passes, you decide if you are done, take your NANO winner’s badge for your blog, and the bragging rights that go with it…. or you want to go back and start the real work… the second draft, because by golly… you’ve got a better than decent story here, but it needs some work!
I am currently working on the second draft of my NANO novel, because I do have a story to tell. It’s not always a pretty story, but it does have a happy, if somewhat scarred ending. Kind of like life. If you haven’t already read it, I have posted an excerpt of THE STORY OF A GIRL on my blog here.
When I decided to do NANO last year… I had heard about it first in 2010, but did not have time that year… I had every intention of writing fiction; I’d already written a fair amount of fiction. But something happened when I sat down in front of Bella (my laptop and constant companion) on November 1… and in just under 25 days, I had poured out my soul and almost 55,000 words.