Ten Tales of the Human Condition - Epilogue (A Crime Novel)

YO STEEMIT!

This is an excerpt from my debut novel ‘Ten Tales of the Human Condition’ – a crime thriller for fans of ‘Fight Club’ and ‘American Psycho’. I wrote this book over the course of 2-3 years and published it around Christmas last year.

SYNOPSIS

Christopher Morgan, a sociopathic drug-addicted New York lawyer has an unfaithful wife, and worse still, she is conducting her affair with Christopher's best friend and work colleague. Fed up with his life and everybody within it, Christopher puts together a twisted scheme to punish those he thinks of as responsible for the downfall of his once perfect existence. He embarks on an exploration of the human condition, putting together the pieces of the human psyche and evaluating the reasons for his monumental vices. Between run-ins with prostitutes, the mob and a nymphomaniac psychiatrist, Christopher does everything in his power to exact the perfect vengeance.

This is the epilogue at the end of the book, however it contains no spoilers for the plot.

THE TENTH TALE - TERMINATE     

1   

A friend of mine died not long after we graduated from college in a motorcycle accident, neck broken. We'd drifted apart by then, even in those few short months, but the whole aftermath surrounding his death left me feeling despondent.  

I think it was then that I began feeling that the human race was something that I was so far removed from that any similarity between their thought processes and mine had been sifted out like grit long ago, back further than I could remember.

I felt grief, but it was temporary, maybe for ten minutes or so, and after that I felt angry - not because he was dead or because a truck driver was doing twenty miles over, and not at myself because I hadn't spoken to him in a number of weeks.  

I was angry with every self-gratifying leech who latched onto his death, riding its coat-tails for thrills and making every word spoken about him: how great he was, how kind he could be, how he made them laugh - about them.  

Whatever direction the conversation took it came back to 'me, me, me', something like “I can't believe he's gone” or “I sometimes still expect to hear his voice when the front door opens” or “I feel sick”.  

These bullshit-shovelling people were everywhere - drinks organised in his memory, online forums, laying flowers at the side of the road, the funeral - they just kept popping up like weeds.  

One of them said something ridiculous like “at least he died doing what he loved”. I almost laughed out loud. Labelling it with 'he lived fast' didn't make it so: he may have loved motorcycles but he didn't love screaming for his mother as he came off his vehicle, smashing his vertebrae and filling his lungs with blood. He wanted to be an accountant, he didn't want his head spun around in his helmet before he had the chance to get married, have kids and make something of himself.  

I did a bungee jump when I travelled to Europe in '99. It was great, got my blood pumping, made every inch of my skin feel like popping candy, but I didn't want to die.  

What legacy would that have left? Existence and consciousness wiped out while I was dangling from a rope, hanging upside down and roaring like a frat boy. What a fucking waste. 

Nobody wants to die, even if they take risks at every turn or insist with every breath that they do.  It's all just a need to feel more alive, cut themselves out of the embryo sac of monotony and claw into the light, to make everything feel more like a wondrous sensory experience and less like a migraine, clouding the world with grey.  

When death is immediate and apparent, we all feel the same: lost, scared and confused.  

What's next? How am I to be remembered? It's always about that: what impact did I have on those around me to ensure that my memory won't fade away?  

What message can I scrawl on the window condensation before it vanishes for good?  

There's not much after the slab, after the moment you're identified by your nearest and dearest with a split in your skull or your lips burned off; after your physical form is eradicated you're just a series of nerve receptors flashing in the brains of others who met you, loved you, hated you. 

It's too unreliable. 

My friend died and everybody tried to give it reason, and once they did they accepted it for what it was - an accident.  

He had been driving towards that turn in the road since he was born, his whole life leading to the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of a broken neck and the skin torn from his back. 

There are turns in the road for all of us, some closer than others. I won't be looking in the rear-view mirror when mine approaches. I'll throttle hard. 

Ben Errington

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