"The Bulwark's Shadow" - A Novel in Progress via Steemit (Part I, Chapter 4)

I'm posting up the chapters of this uncompleted book as I hope the Steemit community might offer up its criticism (which would force me to finish it, honestly). Started in 2008, this was my first foray into novel writing and was my undergraduate thesis required to graduate. The story is about an executioner in the not-too-distant future. Executioners are highly trained individuals with extensive educations built to help them execute their prisoners in the exact same manner that the prisoner's victims died. This is called the law of retaliation or lex talionis; you may know it better as "eye for an eye."

Because I was also getting my degree in philosophy, I wanted to explore the ethics involved. While I feel I'm a better writer now and could certainly expand most of this book, I also really enjoy criticism as I'm usually too close to the work to see what's working and what's not (though in this case, there's plenty that I feel is not working). So please...feel free to criticize the work if you'd like, but be constructive about it. Simply saying "this part isn't good" doesn't tell me much; don't hesitate to tell me why it's not good or offer up possible alternatives to make it better.

Thanks in advance!

---

Previous Sections/Chapters:

The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Part I, Chapter One
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Part I, Chapter Two
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Part I, Chapter Three

---

I have yet to see a bar bathroom look nice. No amount of cleaning or scrubbing can erode the decades of 21st birthdays, belligerent drunken sex, and misunderstood words turned into flying fists that stain the walls and floors. No amount of cosmetic can change it, no amount of nice clothing. Even the seven coats of paint didn’t help to alleviate the graffiti beneath. The floor is dry, but the room emanates piss and shit.

Dirty yellowed tiles, gray and grimy in the grout lines, reflected the already dim light poorly and my reflection in the scummy mirror showed that not only did it need a good cleansing, but that I should probably stop drinking soon. It had been at least 24 hours since my last reflection.

(Bless me Father, for I will sin again.)

I gripped the sink, white-knuckled and breathless, still reeling from the mental barrage of my conversation with Charlie. I stared down into the drain, watching the mixture of water and my sick spiral off to somewhere far away. Droplets of moisture clouded my vision as they dangled from eyelashes splashed with briny tap in a futile effort to somehow purge what I had just found out. Perhaps alcohol was not the best mediator for this kind of bombshell to be dropped on someone. I’ll have to beat Charlie’s ass for that later.

Or not. I can rationalize that he did what he thought was best. I’d like to think I would’ve done the same for him if put in the same situation, but this situation cannot be close to replicated and, should chance grace it, I hope it never does. One last retch and I think I can leave the bathroom. It’s hard to discern which is the better option at the moment, staying in here with the abject, the disgusting, the dirty…or leaving and facing the inevitable.

The vomit comes fast and hard again. This is just the excess getting its last kick in while I’m down. More fluid than substance, my body is racked with the pressure from within, forcing what it considers toxins right back out. Thankfully, I have excellent control over my bowels and bladder or else this would’ve been a lot less pretty.

I rinse out my mouth, dry off my face and leave the bathroom, the door squeaking loudly on my way out. My vision is a bit fuzzy still, but I make my way to the booth. My steps falter a bit as I try to walk sober, proving that I’m not. The light is a bit brighter out here, but still bathes most of the other patrons in a shade of dark so as to keep their faces hidden. I grab my tumbler of bourbon and take a swig, mouth-washing it between both cheeks and effectively ridding my mouth of the pukey aftertaste. Charlie waits for me to speak. He’s not looking at me, but rather fidgeting with the beer coaster, not knowing exactly if he’s done the right thing or not. I can see it in the singular bead of sweat just above his eyebrow and just below his receding hair-line.

“Charlie.”

“Yeah, Brein?”

“Don’t worry about it. It needed to be done. You done a good thing.”

I could feel the other side of the booth flex with relief as he leaned back against the padding. “Man, I didn’t realize…I mean, I didn’t know that you’d…fuck. I’m sorry, regardless.”

“Don’t worry about it, Charlie. Seriously. No harm, no foul. I was gonna find out eventually, right?”

“I suppose so, yeah,” he gave in, chugging the rest of his beer. “I just didn’t realize it was gonna affect you so much. Had I known that, I probably wouldn’t have done it at a bar. Hindsight and all that,” he said sheepishly. He stared awkwardly at the coaster he was playing with absent-mindedly.

“Hey,” I smiled limply and looked him straight in the eyes. Both pairs at this drunken point. “Really Charlie, don’t worry about it.” The waitress was coming back our way. “Oh, Miss! Could we get another round please? And my tab, thank you.”

Charlie folded his hands and laid them on the table. “So what are you gonna do, ya think? Surely you can’t go and talk to the guy. Isn’t that against procedure or something?”

I looked at him through the bottom of my glass as I slurped the last drop down. “It’s not against procedure, but it’s recommended that we don’t. Keeps us from emotionally attaching ourselves to them. Works both ways, see? If I talk to someone I despise, I’m more likely to kill them quicker because of my involvement with them previously. Or they could somehow sway me into believing they didn’t do what they’re accused of doing. Not that I’d be able to change the verdict, but…”

“…it’d cause problems,” Charlie finished. “I gotcha.”

“Yeah.” The waitress laid our new drinks on the table and a bit of Charlie’s amber spilled onto the coaster below. “Although, I almost feel like I have to talk to this guy beforehand. This one never sat right with me, even back in school. Somethin’ about it…” I looked off to the side at the old time jukebox as the music stopped and the machine picked a new 45. We were close enough that I could hear the internal whizzing and clicking of the needle picking itself up off the first record and the machine replacing it with the next selection in the queue. This particular bar prided itself on being as antiquely original as possible. The dim lighting made it feel like a bar, but the old music made it feel right. They even used the old style of rocks glasses that I enjoyed so much, I bought a set of four to keep at my apartment. They felt right in your hand, not like the hard plastic things everyone had switched over to recently. You could feel the glass sweat and that was comforting to me. Most people couldn’t stand the sweating glass. Found it messy or some other bullshit reason.

“You got quite the quandary, don’t ya?” asked Charlie quietly.

“Yeah. I’m used to it though. Probably why they gave me the file first.”

---

More Chapters:

The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Five
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Six
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Seven
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Eight
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Nine
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Ten
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Eleven
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Twelve
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Thirteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fourteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fifteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Sixteen