R.Scott Bakker - Disciple of the dog

Rules.This is how you remember. Rules are what binds you to your past. The content of your life shrivels into a wicker cage of imperatives, where mine is trucked to the landfill.

It’s a paradox, really. Your inability to remember dooms you to repeat things-and here’s the kicker-for the first time. You are imprisoned and utterly convinced you are free. While here I stand, soaked in an awareness of everything I’ve done, totally able to step sideways, to walk perpendicularly to you and your pantomime world-able at any instant to do something radical, something genuinely new…

And knowing, because you’re so fucking predictable, that I would simply run afoul of your rules. That first you would tag me, lest you lose track of me in the absent-minded scrum, call me “crazy” or “troubled” or “pathologically self-centred.” And then you would bag me, dump me into some Secure Housing Unit, or give me one of those jackets with armholes but no cuffs.

So, I try to be a “good boy,” even if I shit on the carpet from time to time. Begging for treats, barking at strangers, not so much feeling shame as cocking my head and watching it.

Whatever it takes to keep the feed bowl full. Take the Holocaust, for instance. I mean, seriously. How, after the greatest, most thoroughly chronicled tragedy in the history of the human race, could a cadre of Nazis take root and blossom in a town like Ruddick, PA?

Fawk. Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?

This is generally what I do when I can’t sleep-rant to the congregation of me. I usually try to take advantage of my insomnia, use the time to relive the particulars of whatever case I happen to be working on. But for some reason I found myself batted back and forth between Reverend Nill and his surreal God Plays Favourites rap session, and Baars saying, “What if cynicism and self-righteousness were one and the same thing.?”I understood the comment this time around: the self-righteous prick was calling me a self-righteous prick-an irony I could appreciate. Condemning others becomes a trifle when you stand condemned in your own eyes. I got it.

Even still. Fuck. Him.

I stared at Molly in the gloom. She lay on her side facing me, her hand out as though braced against the possibility of the mattress tipping. Her hair had been swept back in some accident of restless sleep so that her face lay bared in the dim illumination. Feminine yet strong in an impish, Julia Roberts kind of way. Full lips that I could still taste on my own. I slowly drew the sheet from her freckled shoulder down the line of her arm and along the curve of her waist. Her brow furrowed in dream perplexity. Her top leg was drawn forward, concealing her pussy like a Renaissance nude. Lines of white etched her horizons, from the arc of her shoulders to the long curve of her buttock.

I could see her breathe.

Sasha Lang, that old philosopher girlfriend I told you about, once claimed I was the kind of guy who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. That was January 20, 2001, another bad day, as it so happened. The description struck me as apt enough. Sasha loved to theorize, and I loved to tease-not a great combination given that teasing is so much easier. She had figured it out-Christ, she had an IQ that would make most physicists blush. She understood that a cynic is just someone who believes nothing to better judge everything.

So was that what I was? Just one more pious prick?

Take Molly, nude and unconscious, her skin pimpling in the air- conditioned cool. I understood what made my gaze so ancient, so lecherous. I understood what made her so ideal, so desirable that whole industries had been raised around her. There was promise in her youth, strength in her morals, glory in her naivete…

I understood all that-even as the hour hand crawled along my belly toward the high noon of my navel.

I could see, even appreciate, the value of things apart from all our tacky self-aggrandizing.

And that’s the point, now, isn’t it, Doctor? Here I was, poised on the threshold of something breathless and profound, peering into the mists, straining to make lucid my epiphany…

And all I really wanted to do was fuck. That was about when my cellphone spanked out its riff and Molly’s eyes popped open. She blinked, curled into a shivering ball. Her gaze faltered then focused, first on me, then on my sheet-tenting boner.

“Disciple? What the fuck?”

I leaned back to grab my cell.

She flopped like a fish to her side of the bed, snapped on the bedside light.

I held my hand out against the glare, concentrated on the voice murmuring through the receiver. “Disciple. This is Nolen here. I just wanted to give you a heads-up before I arrived.. “

Arrived?

“You… You…” she said, sitting up with the sheets clutched tight to her neck, squinting and scowling beneath a dishevelled pile of hair. “Ugh! You’re such a fucking creep!”

“Yeah,” I said to the Chief in a rough voice. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry,”Nolen said in an entirely genuine tone. “But I’m kindofin over my head with this one. “

“What?” Molly continued ranting. “Were you… like… beating off or something?”

I clubbed her in the head with a pillow.

“You found something?” I asked.

“Another one. We found another one. “

Molly was talking to herself now, her hands raised in Why-me-God? exasperation, her expression one of abject, mystified disgust. “While I was sleeping? Ah! Ah!”

“What?” I said into the receiver. “Another finger?”

That shut her up.

“No,” Nolen said. “A toe. This time we found a baby toe. “ We were scarcely dressed when Nolen’s headlights panned across the room’s curtained windows. Molly had spared me a couple of scowls but otherwise pulled on her clothes-a white button-up and blue jeans- with her eyes unfocused in that unfinished-business way.

“Look,” I finally said as the headlights flashed out, “I wasn’t whacking off, okay. I was just… admiring…”

“Not now, Disciple.”

“I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t want to…” I added as I strode to the door in anticipation of Nolen’s knock. I pulled the chain-the church picnic had left my nerves a little peckish.

“I’m supposed to be flattered, huh.”

“You make me fat, baby. What can I say? Hi, Caleb.” Policemen typically look intimidating when they darken your door, but Nolen had too much of a Barney Fife aura. He was drawn, taut in voice and manner. “Um, would you mind coming with me to the station?”

He looked like a kid, standing as he did, awkward in the irregular parking lot light, a high school senior suddenly tapped to play lead man in his community’s first bona fide disaster. He had that overmatched mien, face and eyes disconnected lest the fear shine through. Like Bush on the day after 9/11, before prayer fooled him into thinking he was equal to the trap fate had set for him.

“The finger belonged…” he began, “or, ah… belongs to Jennifer. And now with the toe…” He grabbed the back of his neck, blinked skyward. “… we’re almost certainly dealing with a homicide…” he said, letting his voice trail away.

Homicide! his eyes repeated.

I understood-or thought I understood-what he was driving at. “It’s okay, Caleb. I’ll call the Bonjours first thing in the morning.” The guy had enough on his plate as it was. Besides, I had given too many people too much bad news in my life. Practice makes perfect.

And as any private dick will tell you, it pays to collect markers from The Authorities.

Caleb’s relief was obvious and immediate. “Thanks, Disciple… I would really appreciate that. I mean, I know I’ll have to talk to them… eventually. B-but I’m, ah…” His voice pinched about a sob. Apparently he had bigger terrors on his list. “I’m, ah, not so good at, ah, you know, failure…”