Chapter Text
Chapter One: The Gunshot
His mouth gaped open. Burning somewhere deep inside a rumbling sensation like fire dancing freely on skin. Formidable pain, hurt, the eyes of envy child-felt screeching inward. A scrambling thrust of energy, heat, flame, ferociousness deepening, nestling, burrowing in, unwanted, he doesn’t want it, a shrieking thunder bolting out of him. A harrowing glance of the heavens on his flailing mortal vessel, gyration of the head, gliding downwards, purity, innocence gone to die.
His breathing flitted, fluttered, perished wailingly. Tears crumbled, stained, and drunk. The wounds of life’s terror ingested. Brutal hung the mind. When the pain enveloped fully, stretching out limb from fragile limb and to the shakiness of the flung head consumption was embraced.
Stillness. Ticking seconds, forth, one, two, three, breathing labored to shallow waves, hitting with demise. Strenuous was the act of living as blood soaked, tainted the curing time with death’s parfum disseminating.
No words escaped, disallowed from besought refuge in the air, barred from release. Coldly trapped in the indifferent grip of death encumbering, breaths desperately huffed and fell softly into the stillness. His eyes zapped between light sensing and darkness befallen until the heavy arrow of pain made him believe, never would his eyes open again. A final operose wave to strike symphonically! The last laborious breath was creeping up to take its succinct throne and plunge away into the dark unknown.
The spoken lightness, entering inside the caverns of the mind, the body lied tranquilly, strength mustered now departed, he was captured inside a wet chill.
Traversing as a golden thread to the soul’s heart-wrenching desires, the aura of something angelic, love-touched touching the innermost dainties. The cheerful girl silk-draped, her delicate fingers reaching inwards. She whispered luscious words of oozing honey, enough to wrap the clinging spirit in sacchariferous delight. The romantic image…before life travels beyond. The luminescent guide, a hand into the mystère of death, painting it sumptuously sweet, beckoning of the joyous future.
“Come now,” this voice-the tantalizing siren’s song indeed called out dreamily.
“Come now,” a voice of allure and promise provoked. “Shall we go somewhere where beauty and love awaits?”
If a tear could be shed in death then so it had. He felt his entire body tenderly grasped by this ethereal girl. In that moment, he would have given anything to be warm with her. His sentiments shook with anticipation. Nothing more, nothing more did he desire but to dance with her to this convivial dream and be cradled in this fantastical bliss.
“You’re carrying me,” he pushed the words brusquely out of his quivering mouth.
“Why, yes I am! Yes I am!” she replied sweetly.
“We’re going somewhere beautiful, right?” he felt his body being carried faster and faster and it filled him with excitement.
“It’s paradise! There will be so much love there!” That voice of reverie sent chills down his spine.
“I can’t-I can’t see you,” he lamented.
“I know. You can’t see me now but I am here. I’m here, taking you to where you must be.”
“I w-wa-want to see you,” flustered spoke he whilst being toted by the invisible siren.
“I know, but this is the way things have to be now.” The siren’s voice turned unexpectedly colder, like the sudden caustic drop of a nail abîming the bleak silence of a long-forgotten room. The coldness poignantly stung his eager heart, casting him into agonizing uncertainty.
“I can feel you. I can feel you carrying me. We are moving so quickly. Why can’t I see you?” He furrowed his eyebrows, wishing for amiability in her voice to return in the same manner a child who knows no ill wishes for a regal steed to whisk them away to lands of gallant fantasy.
“Shhhh, dearest one.” Her voice sung of affection once more. “Be still and quiet. Feverous dreams shall animate you with passion when we arrive in our paradise. Now I must simply carry you. Be patient and you will feel peace again.”
He snapped into obedience and gave a shuddering inhalation. Such a melodic voice could usher him to feel any feeling and do any deed even in this aphotic place. Wherever he was, it was utterly unbeknownst to him. These murky surroundings were atramentous, a labyrinth, a quiet hush and stroke of nightfall; his faith placed with heart and soul entirely in the guiding voice who emitted an imperceptible light, touching his soul profoundly. From the depths of perplexity to the sparkling heights of cognizance, swam he with vigor—follower of the light.
Then suddenly a jolt of pain rode down his chest to stomach. Convulsing backwards, he strangulated. Gasping, sobbing, paradise drifted out of mind. An army, a fire, springing as if desperate to dance for life itself across his humble, exasperated flesh. An inward tug, an eagle sharply, poetically diving down as a fury raging, STRIKE! Oh! Meager body does it beg now! To thee who hears! Have mercy of the deepest regard! Something slid and thrashed inside him, digging, snapping, breaking, rearranging. He groaned and clenched his fists, gritted his teeth so hard he thought he might break them. Bubbling, quickly brimming with explosive desire was the yearning for this to all stop. The waves stormed, ferociously hitting the rocky shore. His breathing quickened, advanced towards the fire! Kindle! Kindle! Every scream came after the dire smoke inhaled ungraciously. Pain fixated on the paths to trod, to desecrate the hope, to linger seemingly ceaselessly. He wanted it to end. He wanted it to end. To end. To end. Entrenching, his nails bore painfully into his palms. Wild screams erupted from his stretched mouth. Tears spilling from their harvester, the bloodshot eyes of a dying, timid beast.
What to grasp?! What to aussage him?! Grimacing, his mind branched forth to lunge for dear solace, treasured and precious, the placater of the melancholic despairer. HIS LIGHT! HIS KINDLY LIGHT! Sudden movements, his eyes flitted frantically, oh but yes, the solemn noir trickled into his vision and only it. How unresilient he was to the constant darkness that plagued him miserably now.
Was he still being carried? That warm embrace remained purely fragmented remembrances of soft touch. Gone. His salvation, his liberator from harm, had disappeared. The siren was tragically gone. Nowhere to be felt on his body.
Yet, agony did hasten away into a ponderous pain. The fire was watered away, the tears shed away and did not brim again.
His weepy eyes glanced around languidly for the guiding siren and her heart-stringing voice. There was nothing but the darkness, nothing but the dreary, cold, wet darkness.
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Though the morning sprouted of gentle pleasures and promised of gay sunshine, midday belligerent storm clouds overtook the sky unforgivingly. So it poured as if everything had to go whilst a man neither so young but scarcely old enough to be considered agèd in any fashion, tore through bustling streets in a frantic attempt to reach the local hospital.
His lips quivered and his breathing erratically bounced. He was frightened, more frightened than ever before in his most average of existences. He tried to steady his breathing and choke back violent tears. Composure was necessary. He didn’t want to appear like a dangerous madman. What an arduous task it was to withhold his emotion. Never did he think such emotion was even contained inside him but he was combatting something powerful and distraught beneath his subconscious mind.
When the grand hospital finally came into sight, he dashed with fervor towards its doors, not paying any mind to the people he was running into, garnering some hostile expressions. At the entrance, he twisted the doorknob and jumped inside, feet picked up so high above the ground for a second he was flying through. A dozen people were sitting in the lobby and all at once they tilted their piercing gaze towards his rain-soaked body. Nervously, he smiled and proceeded briskly to the secretary stationed directly from the entrance door.
“How may I assist you?” cheered the secretary as she noticed the man approach the front desk.
The man nervously grinned and instinctively sleeked his drenched hair back into its regular position. For several seconds he stood there panting, trying to regain normal breathing after his frenzied running.
He inhaled deeply through his nose and patted down his arms, “I’d like to visit someone if that’s possible.”
“Yes, that should be possible. What is your name?” the secretary grabbed a pen from a holder and readied it to write on a piece of paper already positioned neatly on her desk.
He gave her his name.
“Now, who might you be visiting today?”
He gave that name as well.
“What is your relation to the patient?”
“Uhhh,” he hesitated briefly, “Friend. Yes, friend.”
“Room 206,” she directed him, “Take the stairs three flights up and it’ll be right down the hallway to the left.”
“Thank you very much, Miss.” He swiftly turned towards the staircase.
“Sir-”
Abruptly he turned around, “Yes?”
“Sir, are you crying?”
He pointed to himself with an astonished look, “Me? No. Maybe? Yes? Perhaps? Maybe I am.” He reached his right hand up to his face and touched it. “Hmm, maybe I am.”
His voice fell quickly to a soft whisper and he paced up the stairs, disheveled and heart-racing. At this point, he was so close. So close to that hospital room that darkly slapped him with apprehension. He lost all care for the fact that tears streamed madly down his sickly face.
On the third floor, he shot down the hallway hastily reading the bold numbers atop each door, “198, 200, 202, 204, 206!”
206! Frenzy ahold in his body, he slammed his feet against the floor in an ecstatic halt. He slumped forwards, breath heaving, undelighted and forced himself back to standing normally, not madly, not ill, for he appeared so ill. He supposed he was, all this magnetic furor in his nerves swept into a state of disarray.
He thought his rare desperation would render it all so simple. He’d knock on the door and see if anyone was there to let him inside. It would be all so simple. A quick raising of the fist to frap upon the door. So quick and mindless, done countless times in his lifetime. Merely knocking the door, the brown wooden surface of it; strike it and await.
He stepped towards the door and raised his fist to knock gently but there with fist mid-lifted, he failed to rouse a single knock. His fist remained hovering as his entire figure trembled. A prickling sensation shattered through his skin and kissed his racing mind. His face contorted. Everything shook. He cupped his mouth and shut his eyes. The humane tears wept, flooded out from the eyelids. A sickening drop of fear incarnate traversed his stomach. Throat tightening, that cold propagation of terror in each crevasse unblemished, ripped carelessly into his worried thoughts, corrupting his confidence, yielding the diminishing of his hope, compacting the fear into monumental sadness, decreasing his figure into a pitiful, sobbing, ball.
It was unknown to him if it was seconds, minutes, or hours passed on that glossy, smooth hospital floor. It was known to him that he appeared pathetic and hysterical but the deepest of emotion had rustled and jerked him to a despair enigmatic. Some hollow place where light shined not once through. Where light did not dare purify treacherous miseries. When was it the last he had cried so terribly like this? So gut-wrenchingly, brutally, ugly, monstrously, purely like this? Never. Never.
If time does not heal, it does lessen and the malevolent fear did depreciate eventually. The hospital felt enhanced with a newfound melancholy, a new subtle and terrifying tragedy. The hallway was staid in gray monochrome. The rainclouds outside continued their monotonous downpour. All was a steady pervasive sadness, seeping down to feel all things, groping them into the omnipresent turn of bright joy to dulled sorrow. He felt this was the most pure and natural movement in life.
Somberly arising, he stood before the door once more. Bleeding out from it came something ominous and shuddersome. An ineffable feeling, the man then bit his lower lip, how it tore him apart. He disfocused his eyes and raised his fist again to the wooden surface of the door. Knock! Come on, knock! He screamed internally at himself. The fortifous will of his to see what lay beyond the door forced a flowing command of action. The River of Desire throttled him and he dispersed his creeping thoughts of affliction. Mind coursing emptied, he struck the door three times.
He waited several seconds for a response, unaware he was even awaiting anything. Time itself had stilled to irrelevancy, it was neither a nuisance nor gift, merely a neutral division of the universe, easily ignored.
He blinked the moment he heard the click of the door and the turning of the knob from the other side. Suddenly, he felt his heart beating again and blood rush through his veins.
The door opened and revealed a nurse. She glanced up at the man and said, “Hello, sir. Are you visiting?”
He nodded and barged inside.
“Oh-uh-sir, there is no one here.”
She was right. The hospital room was bodiless. A hospital bed did lay in the center of the little gray room but had no one laying in it. His stomach dropped further and twisted him nauseatingly. Tears brimmed and beckoned for release.
He turned shakingly towards the nurse, lips quivering and hands tremulous, “Is-is-is-is-is h-he al-ali-alive?”
“The patient is in operation,” she responded, her voice soft and sympathetic. “His condition is quite critical. We can only pray he survives.”
He gulped. Sadness hit him with a pang and no more could tears be held back. He weeped childlike and innocently, begging God for a miracle.
“You are welcome to stay in this room. If he survives, he will be brought here.”
“Thank you,” he sniffled and collapsed down on a guest chair.
With that, the nurse left and gently closed the door leaving the man to his misery in the quiet dreary hospital room. So further he wept and drowned in a preemptive mourning. Feeble light drained into the woeful room, dimmed ever-slightly by thin cotton drapes by the windowside. Entrapped was he in a horrid, harrowing state. Fear and sadness became one in the same, amalgamated, indiscernible hellish things tormenting body and mind. It seemed as though happiness would never gloriously return. He told himself he would willingly give hours, as many hours as necessary to stay here and await the prospect of his dear friend’s life. It was torture, but torture self-inflicted and self-desired as to merciful and merciless kinship was he bound.
Hours did he wait indeed, but as said before time was rendered irrelevant, a meaningless creation. He acquainted himself pitifully well with the poignant sadness, lacerating any joyful impulse. Melancholy ravaged and set his mind to a blank repetition of painful sentiment.
All this endless pensiveness abruptly halted when he heard the doorknob twist again and a team of doctors and nurses rushed in, wheeling a body.
The man startled up, eyes widening, he watched carefully with baited breath. Muscles tensed, his trepidation resigned as he saw all these arms and hands meticulously lifting the body up and placing it on the bed. One of the nurses took the clumped blanket at the edge of the hospital bed and cloaked it lightly over the man’s legs to upper chest. Uniformly, they all departed the room after their work was done.
He realized they would know the state of his condition so he chased after them and flagged them down in the hallway.
“Tell me!” he shouted from afar, “Is going to make it!?”
One of the doctors walked back towards him, “We can only hope he makes it through the night. Right now, everything is uncertain but we’ll have nurses check up on him every hour.”
He began to choke on tears and wandered back into the patient room. Pausing at the entrance again, he debated if he should even subject himself to more of the pain, the pain of waiting, the pain of uncertainty, the lingering aroma of death but he went inside regardless for he wished to see his friend and confirm his life.
He approached the still body on the bed. He watched intently, observing small risings and failings of his chest. Tenderly, he reached his fingers to his friend’s nose and waited to feel any heat of air on his skin. He did feel such, giving a sigh of relief, relaxing his shoulders and meekly smiling. He gripped his friend’s stiff hand and held up, “I’m so glad you’re still alive. I hope you make it. I’ll stay here ‘till you make it. I will.”
He could feel the familiar warmth of tears slide down his face and the sadness intertwining with a fresh brittle happiness. He gripped the hand tighter, sobbing passionately, “You have no idea how much I’d miss you if you died. Don’t die on me. Please don’t die on me.”
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Enthusiastic dusk grisly swept the city and echoed upon the hunger of the rats who erupted outwards on the streets to scour for their midnight meals. Deep below the city’s common purview lay the baleful characters, the wounds of urgent pasts drained the empathetic notions from their blackened hearts. They were wretched and despised people concerned with one thing: The accumulation of further wealth.
One of these such people, an ominous man of eerie countenance and ambiance, sat chillingly in his robust, decorated phoenix chair, a symbol of fire and the power he struggled for and now feverishly fought to maintain with cold finesse. He truly was a king of a domain kept hidden away in the hazy shadows.
He peacefully smoked a cigar in the tranquility of his dark office space. He hadn’t a light on but the blinds open on his window, allowing for the moon to reign her illustriousness through.
Suddenly, he heard a tapping at his door. He scowled, he didn’t want to be disturbed so late at night. Nevertheless, he shouted come in and the person opened the door.
“Sorry to bother you sir,” said the voice of a young man, nervousness tainting his tongue.
“What do you wish to tell me at this late hour of night?” said the ominous man, displaying he was clearly annoyed by this disturbance.
“My apologies, sir. It’s just that something wild has occurred and I thought you should be made aware of it,” he nervously stepped forward.
“Trying to gain my favor, boy?” the ominous man grinned.
“No, sir. N-oth-ing like that a-at all,” the young man stuttered.
“It’s quite alright, boy. Tell me whatever it was you were going to tell me.” He reclined backwards, hands resting omnipotently on the chair arms.
The young man inhaled shakingly before speaking, “Well, sir, someone’s got shot.”
The ominous man rolled his eyes, “This is the important news you had to bring to my attention? People get shot everyday. Make this worth my time, boy.”
“It’s someone important, sir.”
“Who?” the ominous man sighed.
“Gatsby, sir. It was Gatsby.”
The cigar plummeted from his hand and died beneath the glowing pale moonlight. Shock arose in his lungs, steaming to heart and stricken head.
“Whatever did he do to receive that?”
“I don’t know Mr. Wolfsheim, I don’t know.”
“Well, is he alive?” he leaned forward with eager ears.
The young man exhaled, “I don’t know that either, sir. He’s been taken to the hospital. Our contacts in West Egg say the police still have his place crowded. I haven’t been able to get any details, sir.”
“I’m quite impressed you’ve followed this so closely. What’s your name? You ought to get a promotion.”
“Raymond, sir.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty, sir.”
Mr. Wolfsheim smiled, “You have potential in this organization, boy. Thank you for telling me this as shocking as the information is. Keep me updated when you find out more. The last thing I want is for poor old Jay to become a liability for us.”
“Of course, sir.” So the young man turned his back on the ominous man, heading towards the door.
“By any chance,” Mr. Wolfsheim had something more to say, “Do you have a cigarette on you?”
He turned back around, “Uhhh-no, sir.”
Mr. Wolfsheim raised his eyebrows in surprise, “Well, boy, you ought to carry some around. They can calm your nerves real good.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir,” and he skidded out the room.
Mr. Wolfsheim’s intrigue faded out with the clouds that overtook the moon’s light and he sat in the still darkness of his office, pondering many things in the stillness of the quiet night.