Mr. Grandfather

by G!

Note: this is a short story I wrote during a writing workshop a few years ago. I first posted it on another blog in the original form. Due to my creative inability now days to work on any of my current projects, I've taken the time to edit the story a bit and post it here.
Enjoy (or enjoy again, if you've read it already) and comment!

Mr. Benjamin Xavier Grandfather, better known to folks in Grandville as Mr. Granpa, is the smartest old man in Grandville, population 700 and something (what it actually says on the You Are Now Entering sign). Nobody knows in the least how Mr. Granpa’s surname came to be Grandfather, however they do know that he likes the name shortened to just Granpa on postcards and letters, so when someone mails him a letter, it would begin with ‘Dear Mr. Granpa’, like a Christmas letter addressed to the person’s actual grandpa. It may be uncomfortable for some people to accept this name, but they just have to deal with it, because nobody argues with the smartest man in Grandville, at least not the senior citizens. Mr. Granpa is a very smart man, he is a world renowned architect; it was he who designed the local train station, the mayor’s office in Youngsville, and it’s rumored that he had lend a hand in the design of the White House, during its re-renovation. Architecture is Mr. Granpa’s greatest talent, he is also adept in other professions, but architecture is his strongest trait.

In his Mansion, Mr. Granpa keeps blueprints, drawings and sketches, and maps all crowded in the hallways, the unused bedchambers, the vacant kitchens, the silent ballroom, the dusty family room, the leaky den, and finally the twenty or so bathrooms (as an architect and an old man who is at risk of constipation, Mr. Granpa knows the importance of bathrooms in a house). In the backyard of Mr. Granpa’s mansion, there is a 100 acre garden flowering with a strange plant called the Rosebush-Haired Head-plant; they were a present to him from his son Wilfred (he will be mentioned again shortly). The plant was his son’s own creation, Mr. Granpa did not initially want to keep it, because it looks weird among the daisies and roses and violets his hired gardener had installed in his garden, but the plant soon flourished on Mr. Granpa’s over-fertilized soil and ate off all of the other plants, now his garden is full of clumps of head busts with rosebushes growing out of their heads, reaching a meter in height.

Except for this outbreak of a weird plant, the rest of the garden grounds are trimmed with soft grass and ideal for a picnic on a sunny day. Beyond his 100 acre garden is a 200 acre hedge maze. The hedges are grown by Mr. Granpa’s gardener, but each hedge design, each hedge cut into geometric shapes, animals, building, furniture, those hedge are cut by Mr. Granpa himself, exercising his talent of sculpting – one of his auxiliary skills in addition to architecture.  

Mr. Granpa is also an expert on kinesiology; he uses his understanding of human body structure to keep himself fit. Even at his advanced age of seventy-four, he is capable of storming the Normandy Beach on D-Day (and would have taken at least five machinegun pillboxes), wrestling with a Viking (and win), bungee-jumping off the CN Tower (without risk of heart failure), and inventing a magnetic explosives detonator to smoke out all the road-side bombs in Afghanistan (not to mention killing a few terrorists in the process of doing that), if only he can put his mind to it. None of it is really challenging, if one can grasp the full physical and intellectual capacity of the human being as Mr. Granpa so shrewdly does. With his thorough understanding of all this, Mr. Granpa is invincible. He can kick Albert Einstein’s butt any day; if only he can put his mind to it.

The reason Mr. Granpa can not put him mind to any of the awesome things listed above is because of a recent tragedy that struck him hard in all parts of his body, but especially his heart. It concerns the death of his only son, Wilfred Benjamin Grandfather, who never got to be a grandfather as his surname suggests.

Wilfred B. Grandfather was a big disappointment, as Mr. Granpa reflects. It all began when his mother, Mrs. Granpa the wife of Mr. Granpa, died giving birth to him. Mr. Granpa was devastated to learn of the tragedy, he was at work working on building a new skyscraper at the time, and was not there to hold her hand as Mrs. Granpa passed away; he blames this tragedy partially on himself, and partially on Wilfred. Mr. Granpa never remarried; instead he built himself a house at the outskirts of Grandville, and lives there in seclusion, working on endless projects to take his mind off the suffering he suffers.

From there, Wilfred became a bigger disappointment to Mr. Granpa when he learned that his son had not inherited a bit of Mr. Granpa’s talents, nor was he ever interested in architecture. Wilfred was a gifted naturalist, something Mr. Granpa could never understand. Wilfred became dedicated to studying wildlife, and discovered fifteen new species of plants; he had also taken up environmental activism as a hobby, something Mr. Granpa never experienced in his generation, and therefore couldn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Mr. Granpa holds the foolish belief that any work with the word ‘mentalist’ in its name had to be a bad apple; a mentally unstable is what it is, and environmentalist does indeed have ‘mentalist’ in its name. So Mr. Granpa disowned his only son. Wilfred did not however forget his dear old grieving father; every year he would send him a postcard, one from a different country each year, and kept him up to date on his travels and studies. Mr. Granpa didn’t know what to say, he did realize his son was a genius, just not the kind of genius he wants as a son. Wilfred had married, in his early twenties, and married he did to another naturalist, they had a daughter, and so Mr. Granpa became a grandfather true to his surname, all without fulfilling any particular duty as a grandfather he had no idea he should.

Wilfred and his wife died a few weeks ago, and Mr. Granpa was no sooner to receive the news; they had perished in the Amazon Rainforest. They were jumped by poisonous tree frogs while collecting samples. Foolish, Mr. Granpa thought, until he heard the news of Wilfred’s will: his son said he nor his wife wanted to be buried under a rock in a cemetery, they wish to have their ashes scattered over the Alps, where they had met; this news made Mr. Granpa so pissed off at that his son decided not to abide to the traditional way of burial that he was near a heart attack when his only son added that they do not wish to have a funeral because they didn’t want anyone to grieve for their absence; they only returned to nature, the will said. Mr. Granpa came out of the Environmentalist Agency in Brazil as red as a chili pepper and equally hot (with rage). Mr. Granpa, being the sole relative of Wilfred Grandfather and his dear wife, got custody of their daughter, his granddaughter whom he barely knew.

Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is, as the child of two naturalists should be, a naturalist. To her, Mr. Granpa’s mansion is as boring a place as a video game. On her first day living with Mr. Granpa, she asked for a tent, a solar powered flashlight (Mr. Granpa didn’t have one, but he made one and insisted her to follow through with his process of designing and making it, and it took 1 hour but she fell asleep in the first 10 minutes), a rolled up mattress, and a kite. Then she staked out for Mr. Granpa’s hedge maze to explore and has been gone since. Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter, her name he can not remember, although she did repeat it to him five times the first day they’ve met, she asked why aren’t there any pictures of Wilfred around the house, and Mr. Granpa had told her he locked the only picture of his son in a metal chest and threw the key into the hedges, to be rid of the disappointing memories. At this, Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter told him excitedly that she’s going to explore the hedge maze, all of it, and find the key to the chest, as her first favor to her granddad. It would take a few weeks, and she would tell him how far she’s gone with the exploration using the kite to mark where she’s at. What a naturalist! Mr. Granpa thought, more interested in some hedges rather than the grand mansion itself, and finding the lost key in a 200 acre hedge, that equals the probability of finding a needle in ten haystacks! Where had the naturalist genes come from, from Mrs. Granpa? Speaking of which, Mr. Granpa never knew what his wife’s hobby was while she was alive.

When he was young, Wilfred liked to spend precious time in the forest, being fascinated by nature, like Charles Darwin. What Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is doing with her precious time (the same what Wilfred had done), it is doubtlessly true and discouraging to Mr. Granpa that she is every bit the naturalist he was, and his much cherished talent in architecture is also every bit as dead as Wilfred. There is no more hope in Mr. Granpa that his endowment will resurrect in his descendant. The company which he founded himself, Grandfather Architecture Estate (GAE for short), will fall in the hands of the public once he’s passed away (because his granddaughter will surely sell it to buy insect specimen or something like that). The thought of it makes Mr. Granpa grab for the tissue box.

Once upon a time Mr. Granpa could run the Boston Marathon, play a hockey match at the NHL and arm wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger, all in one day. Now days, however (and especially ever since Wilfred’s sudden death and the arrival of his granddaughter), Mr. Granpa constantly feels tired and beaten-down. Even his knowledge of human health cannot abstain his depressed behavior. Since the death of Wilfred, it only took him a month to gain thirty pounds from consumption of TV dinners, grow a medium-sized beer gut from a daily 2 liter intake of alcohol, and let his bushy white beard grow wild without trimming. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead, his walking pace slowed, and he sometimes has trouble keeping balance while standing; all within the time span of a month and almost a week!

Mr. Granpa hasn’t worked on a blueprint in five days, a new record for him for procrastinating; this is the sixth day and counting by hours! Mr. Granpa opens his eyes, lifts his head and gazes out into his 300 acre backyard from his lawn porch, where he had fallen asleep in an easy chair the previous night after some hard, depressing and totally unhealthy drinking.

It is a sunny day, a red and yellow kite is in the sky, the string leading from somewhere behind a hedge cut of the Alp, a sign that Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is still at work, for the third week. Mr. Granpa then remembers that he had gone to sleep yesterday at 12 pm in this same easy chair he’s in at the moment, with an empty bottle of Merlot dangling in his left hand, his beard stained with…vomit, and his pants zipper undone, Mr. Granpa realizes what a terrible state he’s in. Aw, it’s all part of grieving, he thinks, and then another side of him thinks otherwise: com’on, old man, get up and get back in shape already, remember the days – I mean two months ago – when you could still knock out an ox at a Mexican Stampede? You gotta let grief alone now and move on. Your granddaughter will want her granddad to get over it. Look, she’s already over it. Why aren’t you? Get back in shape you old man!

At this thought, Mr. Granpa suddenly sits up tall and straight, and says – loudly but only to himself, because there is no one within his vicinity to hear him, ‘so you’re saying my granddaughter is better than me? Is that what you mean brain? Well think again!’ at this declaration, Mr. Granpa rushes into the mansion, run to the fitness gym, and kicks open the door, causing several blueprints on a table nearby to flutter into the air. That’s when a sick feeling hits his stomach and a newly defiant Mr. Granpa is forced to retreat to the nearest washroom, putting a get-back-in-shape mid-summer resolution on hold for the next 20 minutes, during which Mr. Granpa has to overcome explosive diarrhea, gut-wrenching somersaults in his stomach, and rapid toilet flushing. All this, Mr. Granpa concludes, is the result of last night’s drinking.

Even my stomach is having a hangover, and golly is the hydro bill gonna be big this month, Mr. Granpa thinks painfully as another shot of pain erupts from his scorching bowls. Just focusing my mentality on that this is not the end is using up all of my energy, Mr. Granpa thinks, how am I gonna get through the exercise routine after this? Miraculously, the bathroom stint ended after 20 full minutes of torturous laboring, which Mr. Granpa speculates is nonetheless as painful as giving birth.

After returning from the toilet bow-legged, Mr. Granpa does some stretches, twisting his left wrist and his neck in the progress. Five minutes on the treadmill (set at level one) later, Mr. Granpa concludes that his procrastination efforts for the last month has left him in a much more serious condition than he thought. Mr. Granpa decides to start with small steps. ‘That will have to be all the exercise for today,’ Mr. Granpa says ruefully, ‘I might as well go water the plants.’

It says Tuesday on the July calendar, or is it August already? Mr. Granpa is unable to tell which day of the week today is, or the date, for that matter. Finally he says ‘screw it…I can manage without knowing the date’. Mr. Granpa doesn’t remember the last time the grass in his garden being so slushy and wet under his sneakers, as he goes to water his rosebushes. It appears that the mud under the grass bed has been over-watered, to create a slippery dark brown gunk. From above and afar the grass bed looks nice and fine; a closer inspection is another story.

The rosebush patches are spread out a few yards apart around the house. As Mr. Granpa trudges towards them, he can feel the muddy slush invading the fabric of his Nike sneakers, which once white are now black. Did the gardener do this? Mr. Granpa thinks grumpily, and then remembers. Oh yeah, the gardener went on vacation two weeks ago. He said he wanted to leave Mr. Granpa in peace for a while. Plus, the gardener had said his daughter will tend to it during his absence. The gardener was sure Mr. Granpa’s daughter is gifted at gardening, his eye can tell. Well, Mr. Granpa thinks, he got it sorta right.

Here, Mr. Granpa’s sneakers sinks an inch into the muddy slush, as he gets nearer to the rosebushes he has come all the way from the porch to water. ‘Dingy, dingy, dang! I knew I should have gotten artificial grass for the garden!’ Mr. Granpa curses to himself, trudging on with temper building within his chest. ‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!’ Mr. Granpa loses his footing, trips, and falls face-flat onto the grass bed, which sinks, and his face is planted in the muddy brown slush. Mr. Granpa fumes in his fallen position for only a while, and then standing back up, he looks absolutely pissed.

‘Memory, you have died before me!’ Mr. Granpa bellows into the cloudless blue sky. Several birds change their flight course to avoid Mr. Granpa’s vocal blast of sonic energy. ‘Why did you lure me into this muddy grave without reminding me to BRING MY CANE? Now I have to do EXTRA laundry!’ With indignation, Mr. Granpa trudges and stomps back to his porch to get his cane to lean on, so he won’t fall again once he ventures back into the slippery underfoot of the garden. Having a coat of dark brown mud on the entire front side of his body, Mr. Granpa looks like a recreation of Clayface with extra facial hair. His beard (previously white) is now a dripping mass of dark wet goop that resembles tumbleweed that has tumbled through the sludge of the WWI Battle of Passchendaele.

Mr. Granpa, cursing in sailor tongue as he makes his way out into the garden, suddenly remembers why he had bothered to trudge into the garden in the first place: he is here, covered in mud, to water his rosebushes. ‘Where’s, my, water, sprinkler? MEMORY, YOU HAVE DIED BEFORE ME…AGAIN!’ He roars like a tyrannosaurus rex. A mile away, a retired old couple of former 911 rescue workers are driving down a silent country road, they are so startled by what appears to be the roar of the Twin Towers falling down that the husband at the wheel crashes their tiny Volkswagen into a roadside apple tree. A hailstorm of unripe apples fallen by the impact of the car against the tree trunk later, the husband, dazed, turns to his equally dazed wife and says ‘I think I just heard the Twin Towers falling down, again. Shall we go check?’ They have no idea that what they think they heard is the Twin Towers falling down is actually Mr. Granpa’s roar of anguish over memory-loss echoing through the countryside.

Fuming like a steam engine, Mr. Granpa trudges back to the lawn porch, snatches the water sprinkler in a way that if it is to have feelings it will have cried out, and trudges back out onto the garden grass, dripping with double the mud. His shirt and pants are caking with slush, and some of it has leaked into his briefs. He trudges onward. Mr. Granpa sees the red and yellow kite in the sky, soaring in circles. He loses his footing, tries to stabilize himself with a cane he forgot to bring along with the bucket sprinkler, and falls heavily into the slush. ‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!’ Mr. Granpa lies on his back in the mud that has now completely coated his body from head to toe, screaming protests. ‘MEMORY, YOU HAVE DIED BEFORE ME…FOR THE THIRD TIME! WHY DID I FORGET MY DAMNED CANE!!! WHY!!!’ The water sprinkler is out of his reach for him to beat to a pulp and take out his anger upon, as is the cane, flung down back at his porch. He is now a full-body Clayface.

Mr. Granpa gets up on his feet – he has lost one of his shoes in the process of falling down, and doesn’t even think of finding it in the mud, he just wants to craw back to his porch now–

He loses his footing and falls again, face first.

‘ARRRRRRRRRRRG!’ Mr. Granpa is worn out by all the cursing he has done; his arghs are getting shorter. Panting, Mr. Granpa attempts to clumsily lift himself up onto his feet; and just as he gets his breath back… ‘ARGH!’ with this final argh of protest for the fall he’s forced by fate to endure, Mr. Granpa experiences everything afterwards in slow motion. Mr. Granpa feels as thought he is falling in limbo until his gaping mouth (opened wide to argh just now) is greeted by the dark brown sludge in the ground he presumes is mud. His final thought as his face comes into contact with the brown gunk, some of it will get into my mouth and later I’ll have diarrhea over it.

Having never tasted mud, it tastes awfully like…chocolate. Oh Lord, Mr. Granpa thinks, if the soil in my garden has been turned into chocolate, please let it be low-fat dark chocolate, my liver can’t handle the 40 grams of sugar per serving of milk chocolate anymore! Propped up by his elbows, Mr. Granpa bends his head to have another taste at the dark brown substance…it’s…it’s…LOW-FAT 100% DARK CHOCOLATE! (He’s sure of the flavor; other than being a great architect, Mr. Granpa is also a great chocolate taster.)

‘Surprise!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter, her golden blond hair bathing in the sunlight, her face beaming with joy, gazes down at Mr. Granpa, who has just got to a sitting position to scoop up more handfuls of the dark brown chocolate from the ground to stuff into his mouth. In another time, Mr. Granpa might think it an undignified posture to have his granddaughter find him in, but now, he can’t care less.

‘AH!’ Mr. Granpa exclaims in surprise. A mile away, a pigeon nesting along the windowsill of a penthouse apartment is so startled by this cry that it falls off the sill for 25 stories and lands in the road moments before the wheels of a tow truck drives over it. Where’d you come from?’ Mr. Granpa gets onto his feet and takes a long, sweeping look at his granddaughter that suggests he misses her a lot. Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter is wearing a nightgown covered with stains of mud and bits of plants and twigs. Her bare hands and feet are even dirtier, altogether making her appear as someone who has lived the past month in the wilderness (pretty close to where she has actually been living at).

‘I came from where I went to.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter smiles and says.

‘Why, what in hammers are you doing here?’ Mr. Granpa is still a bit shocked by his granddaughter appearing out of nowhere so all of a sudden.

‘I’m here to celebrate your birthday of course!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter says excitedly. ‘It’s your own birthday and you’ve forgotten about it? Gosh, you are getting old, what happened to the old man who can stop a train in its tracks?’

‘Well, I-I have been slacking off lately…I must admit, and…’

‘Don’t say another word,’ his granddaughter steps over to put a sleeveless arm around a chocolate covered Mr. Granpa, ‘so, do you like my birthday present to you or what?’

‘Why, it’s-well it is WONDERFUL! But-but how did you-what did you do exactly?’

‘I hired the chocolate maker in town and told him to make enough low-fat dark chocolate to replace the soil in your garden with, he did and it was amazing! I also told him not to say a word to you, because I want it to be a big surprise. I think he likes me pretty well.’

‘And-and where did you get the money? This must have cost…oh Lord!’

‘Easy p-easy, I borrowed your credit card. Here’s the receipt, by the way.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter gives him a strip of paper from a pocket on her gown. The grand total has 5 digits of zeros after a 1.

‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear.’ A deep, long sigh escapes Mr. Granpa’s throat. He musters all his will to maintain his composure, and says, ‘Lord, young lady! You took my credit card without consulting me first? You should have asked-I mean-oh Lord!’ with a chocolate covered hand pressed to his chocolate covered bald forehead, Mr. Granpa looks like he’s about to grab for the tissue box.

‘Well…I did think about asking you first, but you never would have said yes then and I’ll never be able to impress you (mind you, dad said you were a demanding father) and it wouldn’t have been a big surprise! Since you never did like dad (he told me), I don’t think you’ll ever like me much either, so I did my best to try to impress you, in secret of course.’

Something awakens inside Mr. Granpa with a pang that feels awfully like guilt; a big, enormous chunk of guilt.

‘That’s not true! I certainly do not not like you. You’re my granddaughter…and I love you…and I always will, I truly do, because you are a part of me. I can’t not love someone who’s a part of me, whatever the differences we have…I’m just…you know…kinda shocked at first that your father never inherited any of my interests, and there’s almost nothing in us we had in common, so I felt disconnected…and I didn’t have your grandmother there to cheer me up…and…I-I’m lost, really, really lost…I lost the understanding of love, it’s not like architecture, there’s no way to design love, to measure it…it just…transcends science.’

A chocolate covered grandfather saying these words is even weirder that an elephant tap dancing while singing Ode to Joy through its trunk, it is also, like an elephant tap dancing while singing Ode to Joy through its trunk, a marvelous sight to behold.

‘Aw, that’s okay.’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter gives her granddad another pat on the back, takes out a cup from a pocket in her gown. She scoops a cup of low-fat dark chocolate from the ground and gives it to Mr. Granpa. ‘I don’t know why you prefer this kind of chocolate though, it tastes bitter to me.’

‘Oh, young lady, you’ll understand once you’re my age.’ Mr. Granpa says, and chuckles a little. ‘Say, I never found out what you liked to do, what do you like to do? I never asked your father that question when he’s a youngster and I sure the heck feel guilty for missing that opportunity forever.’

‘You mean other than exploring, planting plants, playing with animals, camping, canoeing, hiking, flying kites, staying up late, stargazing, sunbathing, ice cream, jumping in leaves piles, watching laundry spin, discovery channel, watering seeds, climbing trees, making sandcastles, swimming, biking, writing in a diary, making flower necklaces, running, dancing, mountain climbing, driving a car, scuba-diving, riding in a submarine, collecting insects, filming nature, recycling, reading jokes, drinking from a stream, watching sunsets, riding roller coasters, mountain skiing, snowboarding, going on waterslides, monkey wrestling, riding horses, racing horses, swimming with dolphins, looking at sharks, getting whales off beaches, collecting litter, collecting leaves, sketching, taking photographs, calamari, daydreaming about going to Antarctica and a few other places, flying kites, flying five kites at once, and a some other things I can’t think of right now?’

‘Err…yes, go on.’

‘I like charting. Making maps.’

‘You do?’

Yeah, I like making maps and drawing and sketching and all that. Oh right, I also like making birdhouses, should have never forgotten that, and harvesting honey, you get to work around bees, it’s interesting, and fresh honey tastes really good! You should try it out sometime…’

‘Wait, wait, wait! You said you have a hobby of mapmaking! Wow, me too, how come you never told me?’ Mr. Granpa suddenly sees hope that some of his talent might actually have passed onto his granddaughter, Mr. Granpa is so happy to feel this glimmer of hope he considers doing the chicken dance in joy.

‘You never asked did you?’ his granddaughter said, raising an eyebrow.

‘I never did. I’m so sorry. I-I should have got to know you better. How could I be so ignorant?’

‘Hey! Now’s my perfect time to get to know you too!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter exclaims. ‘And look what I found in the hedges, it’s a key! Hopefully it’s the right one to the chest you mentioned, there’s surprisingly very few photographs of mom and dad around, they didn’t take photos that much, that’s why I do a lot. Do you have a picture of mom and dad getting married?’

‘Actually I do, it’s in that chest, let’s go now and open it! And then let’s have some breakfast…’

‘Actually, it’s 12 noon, it’s time for lunch.’

‘Oh, alright then.’ Mr. Granpa feels a tiny need to reach for the tissue box. I slept through morning! Oh, the horror! The horror, Mr. Granpa thinks. ‘And I think I’ll have to take a bath, to wash out the chocolate, and so must you, young lady, you look like you came out of a pigsty.’

‘Okey dokey! But you better get out again and get all the chocolate in buckets, there’s a rain coming, so don’t spoil your birthday present!’ Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter skips ahead of him towards the lawn porch, the red and yellow kite under her arms, her golden hair flowing in the light breeze.

About the follow his granddaughter into the mansion, Mr. Granpa remembers something very important, ‘Oh yeah! Can you remind my old brain again what your name is? I seem to have forgotten…’

Hearing his question, Mr. Granpa’s granddaughter turns around and comes skipping back to his side, ‘My name? It’s a long story, lemme tell you all about it…’

The end

The Assassinator Narratives - chapter 2

Gabriel O'Brien

Assassinators come in all different shapes and sizes. There were towering giants like Sean Andrews (but no other assassinator was as towering as Sean – not even thin-as-a-beanpole Donald Richardson, who due to his excessive thinness was theoretically taller than Sean, but only theoretically – because he was the tallest of them all), tiny fellows like Justin Theroux (whose sense of personal dignity was as tiny as his body), and Mr. English’s administrative assistant Gabriel O’Brien in between them. There was also Martin Demme in between Sean and Gabriel, ex-assassinator Dudley Smith in between Sean and Martin, Pablo Escobar in between ex-assassinator Dudley and Martin, and further comparisons.

If all the assassinators at the time of Narrator’s arrival were to be lined up based on height, at the lower end of the line was where Rufus Sewell would be found. Rufus, in actuality, was slightly taller than Justin by the way he combed his straight black hair – long by a male’s standard – so it jutted upward, and this hair, reinforced by a little touch of gel, did not flutter at a strong wind like Stephen Lang’s hair does, but Stephen never bothered with gel anyways.
Although polar opposites in terms of their appearance and personality, Rufus and Edmund Clark were partners-in-assassinations, along with Stephen, who they both considered a genius on the same level as whoever invented the video game joystick and who they often booked to be on their team a week in advance prior to missions, as their technical assistant, solving problems such as jammed sniper rifles and eye-balling a curve-shot angle they should make with their arm to let a bullet turn a corner to hit their target. Stephen was very good at eye-balling curve-shots, considering that he fires a shot only one in five missions.
Edmund Clark, in the spectrum of assassinators by height, would be in the higher end, somewhere between Pablo and Sara Healy (she herself would fall between Edmund and Alec Wagner, who – although he never admits it – was forever Robert Benton’s sidekick, even though Robert was shorter than Alec by a whole inch, but height doesn’t mean anything really). Edmund’s brown hair was also straight and long, like Rufus’, and he kept it without gel, matted against his skull under a red and white baseball cap just short of his eye brows at the front. There’s the difference between them already. Another difference between Rufus and Edmund was that Edmund liked to playfully and menacingly at the same time insult people who are shorter than he (that definitely included Rufus, perhaps most of all, because Rufus was so accessible to him) and are perceived by him to be inferior in all other ways too, while Rufus was obligated to be on the receiving end of Edmund’s insults. However, the most memorable insult given to Rufus – there were quite a few, all of which complimenting his insufferable quality of being annoying as hell (in actuality, Justin was much more annoying during missions, if given Stephen’s opinion, or that of Drake Murphy, who vocally discussed his opinion of each assassinator with his closest circle of friends – especially Sam Shepherd, and later, after Narrator’s arrival to the assassinators, Howard Fast, who in a few months had been accepted to at least one of the cliques in the fraction – and occasionally by accident with members he don’t know very well at all) – by Alan Holmes, who one afternoon after a missions briefing was finally fed up with Rufus incessantly poking him in the side, he turned around and said loudly to Rufus seated behind him holding the ball-point pen in stab motion that was the source of Alan’s discomfort, and said loudly in his intellectual-worthy voice, stop touching me, you tiny human!
Rufus grinned and replied, but I wasn’t touching you.
Well stop touching me indirectly then, you tiny human!
The others around them that included Stephen, Gabriel, Martin and Edmund all heard Alan and the phrase you tiny human stayed in their minds from that moment onwards. It was decided that Rufus was indeed the shortest of the assassinators - whether directly or indirectly due to Alan's remark, nobody had thought about yet - when in fact Justin was shorter.

A Most Bigoted Poem

by G!

I don't like it, that
Murderers are acquitted for murder,
Because of their mental illness.
I like it even less, that
A guilty man is made innocent,
Because himself he claimed unable to control.

I don't like it, that
These mentally ill murderers
Receive wasteful medical treatment.
I like it even less, that
These treatments don't often work
On broken machines that cannot be fixed.

I don't like it, that
In blind justice's eyes, I am
Judged equal to a thug, a drug dealer, a human trafficker.
I like it even less, that
The rights that protect me also
Protect murderers, rapists, psychopaths.

I don't like it, that
Right and freedom is one size
Fits all; one system for all.
I like it even less, that
My right to life is a murderer's
Right to life; fairness seems so unfair.

I don't like it, that
Life is granted equally to all,
Undetermined by the way we live it.
I like it even less, that
A corrupt life is not taken away
Sooner than a life lived well and just.

I don't like it, that
The world is divided equal
Between right and wrong, good and evil.
I like it even less, that
Because it has the same right
To life as good, evil goes unpunished.

I don't like it, because
While we are taught to make
The world a better place,
We cannot, because in this world,
Justice is not fair, it is merely equal.

I don't like it, because
Power is what I want, for good
To triumph over evil; equity is what I want,
Not equality, for in a world upheld
By equality, neither good or evil can prevail.

Everyone has the right to live, but does everyone deserve it?
Does anyone deserve the right to live, for that matter?
Better to say that the deranged gun-toting mass murderer does not deserve to live and neither do I, or to say I deserve to live and so does the deranged gun-toting mass murderer?

Note On the Last Post

You might have noticed that for some time I've taken down the first chapter of the Assassinator Narratives and now it has reappeared. I've rewritten it in a slightly different approach and took out all the quotation marks so there's no obvious distinction between dialogue and description.
Writing without quotation marks is something quite a few authors do for some pretentious reason or other to frustrate the reader. Occasionally I find myself admiring these authors for disregarding grammatical and punctuation conventions (I wish I could do the same in English class). So here I've decided to exercise a bit of my pretentiousness and write this story without quotation marks.
My sincere apologies if you find me doing this pretentious and writing with selfishness just to please myself (I admit that's what I'm doing), pardon my excessive boasting, and if you have read this far, be my guest and just go on reading!

G!

The Assassinator Narratives - chapter 1

Mr. English

 

For one week in a district newspaper of the City, an advertisement appeared in the classified section that also advertised for hookers, drugs at reduced prices and black market merchandise. It's not like the newspaper is legally allowed to advertise these things, well, not the drugs at reduced prices part anyway, it's just that the Chief of Police Aaron Copland's police department is so understaffed, underfunded and underpaid that they can't possibly care about what's being advertised in the newspapers. These policemen, grizzled old veterans or rookies from out of Police Academy alike know that this is beyond their control. In a city plagued by crooks and their crooked colleagues in City Hall, the only thing law enforcement can do is play by the rules of these crooks and pretend everything is under control - their control - which in reality it's not, but who cares about reality?
For one week it was there, one little advertisement, two columns in width, written in Courier New, black and white, and one telephone number at the very bottom:

Are you skilled with a firearm or weapon of melee? 

Do you have a special set of skills that make you dangerous? 

Have you an amoral or immoral conscience? 

Have you ever killed a person? 

If not, are you willing to kill a person? 

Do you want to be an employed “Assassinator”? 

If your answer is yes to any of the above questions, please contact Mr. English by pay phone at the number below…

After one week, the advertisement disappeared. Not many people in the district where the newspaper ran answered to this advertisement despite the high unemployment rate; people were either indifferent to the sinister advertisement and the job it pertained, or they were instead seeking a job working directly for one of the many organized crime syndicates operating in this particular district, and had no interest in a job working for a wet work organization that works for the organized crime syndicates. On Monday evening following the week the advertisement came and disappeared, at one of the piers in the City harbor, Rebekah Wyler and her companion Miranda Isaacman were waiting for Mr. English to finish interviewing Gerard Narrator, the first candidate.
Nobody knows Mr. English’s first name. People usually assume it’s an ancient name in the likes of Archibald or Bartholomew or Ezekiel, names hardly anyone knows are names now days.
Nobody also knows that Mr. English in his advanced age is still a virgin. Sure he experienced the brief flings with relationships in his teenage years like all teenagers do no matter what era human history is in, but none of those flings resulted in him ever losing his virginity. And after his teenage years of what could have been golden opportunity, he entered the very professional trade of the Assassinator and dedicated his full self to the trade, so he had neither time nor need for relationships, and thus remained a virgin all his life up to now.
Mr. English had given vague instructions to each of the callers. They were to arrive at the warehouse on their assigned time and wait for him. That was it. Rebekah was the second caller Mr. English received when the job listing was published. She had called on behalf of Miranda too since Miranda is her life-long companion and she always drags her life-long companion into whatever she was up to. That was the deal they made – to drag each other into whatever each one of them had gotten themselves into – when they were two kids in an orphanage. The deal stuck.
Gerard went into his interview known to Rebekah as Gerard, and came out as Narrato. According to him, no one’s ever called him by his first name and no one ever did call him that. Rebekah was already impatient that Narrator took too long and gave him a look that frightened and baffled him for the rest of their time knowing each other. Though Narrator was slow during the interview, he was hired on the spot, without him realizing it. Mr. English didn’t have to interview Rebekah for a long time. Miranda only had to wait two minutes before it was her turn. She didn’t have much to say, and the girls were hired on the spot, in five minutes flat, just as Arliss Stanton, the next candidate showed up after participating in a drunken bar fight.
Next, Howard Fast arrived, nervous and five minutes earlier than he should, and after him was Ruslan Brockovitch, five minutes later than instructed, and then the last candidate woke up from the garbage pile where he had been sleeping since Narrator’s interview and strolled into the warehouse. Homeless drifter Boris Krazynski was the final candidate.
Before they start working professionally, all Assassinators undergo a month of training to learn the way of the Assassinator, much like a modernized, commercialized version of the way of the Ninja.
Mr. English instructed the seven candidates he interviewed that evening at that warehouse at the same spot he had trained Assassinators at ever since he arrived at the city many years ago. At the end of that month, the last thing he had to tell now-professional Assassinators Rebekah, Miranda, Arliss, Howard, Ruslan, Boris and Narrator were the rules of the way of the Assassinator. There are five rules.
The first rule about being an assassinator, brief pause by Mr. English, speaking in his elegant monotone, is you don’t assassinate children.
Yeah, does that include teenagers? Said Rebekah, bored.
The second rule about being an assassinator, another brief pause, is you don’t assassinate women.
Pfft, he didn’t even answer my question. Rebekah said loudly, under her breath. Miranda shushed her. Miranda is a quiet, soft-spoken girl who rarely talks to anyone except Rebekah.
Unless, of course, if the woman in question is a bitch, then the second rule does not apply, this remark caught everyone off guard, even Boris looked up from his staring at the pebbles embedded in the pavement of the old abandoned lot this was taking place in.
Aren’t you talking about every woman in the world? Arliss the ugly, tough-talking thug hollered gleefully.
Fuck you, misogynist! Rebekah hollered back.
What are you gonna do about it, bitch? You wanna go?
Woah, don’t fight now, listen to the rules, Mr. English doesn’t repeat them, Gabriel O’Brien said, stepping between Arliss and Rebekah, who had both stepped out of line and were within an arm’s reach of each other’s neck. Gabriel is a neat, clean-shaven Assassinator veteran, but he usually helps out Mr. English and rarely goes out on a job.
The third rule about being an assassinator, brief pause as predicted, is you don’t assassinate a person you are not assigned to assassinate, in which case it will be considered murder and you will be charged for murder should you be arrested.
Rebekah and Arliss had stepped back in the line of the seven graduate Assassinators. Arliss was disappointed he didn’t get to fight Rebekh; he could even have tried to tear her top off which would have made his day or even his whole week. Arliss has a sick mind.
By the way, nobody had anything to say about rule number three.
The fourth rule about being an assassinator…
Can’t he just shorten his sentences already? We don’t need the rules numbered for us. Rebekah interrupted and Mr. English stopped speaking. She signed dramatically. Miranda quietly shushed her again. Mr. English resumed speaking.
…is as an assassinator, you must accept all assignments from all clients, without exception, unless refusal to take part in the assignment is a directive from the Assassinator commissioner, who if you don’t already know is myself.
The seventh person in line, timid, rural runaway Howard was writing each of the given rules down in a small notepad. Arliss, who was standing next to him, thought it would be amusing to knock the notepad out of Howard’s hand, which he did.
Howard blinked in surprise and bent down, hand stretched, to retrieve his notepad. Arliss stomped the heel of his boot onto Howard’s hand as it closed around the fallen notepad. Howard cried out and collapsed in a heap.
Rebekah meanwhile had come up behind Arliss. She tapped him on the shoulder. As Arliss turned around to the source of his interruption from making Howard’s life miserable, Rebekah socked him across the face with Boris’ trash picker – which she borrowed from his for the moment without asking – and when Arliss did not fall to the ground unconscious because of his thick skull, Rebekah cracked another blow to his temple, and Arliss was knocked out cold. Boris snatched his trash picker from Rebekah and stuffed it back into his burlap sack which contained all his possessions.
Look what you did. Now he isn’t going to hear all the rules, Gabriel said, shaking his head in disappointment. He stood on the right side of Mr. English, dressed in the same impeccable attires. In his pockets he always keeps packets of hand sanitizer and a spray tin of breath freshener.
Don’t worry, nobody gives a shit, Rebekah said, and gave him a wink. Feeling accomplished, she returned to her spot in the line.
Howard stood back up, massaging his injured hand with his other one. He took a step away from the unconscious form of Arliss, muttered thanks to Rebekah which she didn’t hear and pocketed his notepad, having no more courage to take down the rules.
The fifth rule about being an assassinator is as an assassinator, you are to never assassinate other assassinators. This also goes against the way of the assassinator and is punishable by assassination.
Ooh, what a tongue-twister, the suave, courageous, handsome Ruslan remarked in his suave, courageous, handsome accent. He winked at Rebekah, who replied with a smirk.
That will be all, and also, will one of you be so kind to tell Mr. Stanton the rules he had missed after he was knocked unconscious by Miss. Wyler. That will be greatly appreciated on my part. Now, I hereby declare you seven, Mr. Brockotivch, Mr. Fast, Miss. Isaacman, Miss. Wyler, Mr. Stanton, and Mr. Narrator members of the Assassinators brethren.
I’ll be taking you to our lodgings. Gabriel spoke up, follow me to the van.
When Narrator looked back to where Mr. English had been standing a moment before, he had vanished. Narrator scratched his head in puzzlement.
The other Assassinators were leaving the lot. Narrator hurried to catch up. Gabriel’s van was parked beneath the power lines far out in the marshlands to the west. They were at the outskirts of the City’s industrial zone.
This was the graduation of the assassinators-in-training; they were now assassinators-in-working. The unceremonious ceremony took place on the vast overgrown lot of a factory that once manufactured automobiles residing abandoned in the industrial section of the City on a fine, cloudless day. The sun was shining, and a light breeze accompanied the cooling weather, stirring up trash and fallen leaves in the City’s roads, announcing the coming of winter (always a source of sorrow for the City’s large homeless population; an average of two percent of them freeze to death in the streets each winter).

A Something New

Here is a little bit of a spark of creativity I had around two weeks ago after watching some clips from the Sin City movie and thought, "Gee, it would be cool if I could write something like that." So I did, and what I wrote probably doesn't make any sense to you right now.
After that spark of inspiration, I've gotten around to jotting down some ideas for an extremely complex narrative that has something to do with what I wrote that day, here it is:

The room is black and white and completely square. The whitest part of the room is the single light blub dangling from the ceiling, right center of the black and white room. Technically, this is the brightest part of the room, but for the sake of a graphical novel setting, we’ll reduce the colors to simply black and white and all the gray areas in between. The blackest part of the room are the dark corners of the room, which, for some reason of trick lighting, aren’t illuminated by the bare light bulb even though nothing really obscured them from the light source. The second blackest part of the room is the suave young man with the shiny white sunglasses sitting comfortably, or as comfortably as he can in an old, five-dollar plastic lawn chair (this is indoors; the lawn chair is not in its correct setting). His entire form, shrouded in pitch black (this is despite him sitting right under the light of the bare light bulb) except the glowing white lenses of his sunglasses, is relaxed, leaned into the backrest of the plastic lawn chair, his heads pillowing the back of his head of neatly trimmed black hair. The lighting in the room is so ridiculous and defying of the laws of science that nothing of this young man’s features (which are presumably handsome enough to charm members of both sexes) can be distinguished under the darn lighting; he is simply a shadow of himself, his form only slightly blacker than his background, one of the four walls of the room.

For Stanton, he is having a lot of trouble trying to separate the shadow of the young man from the shadow of the background, since he is shortsighted. Stanton is also a young man, albeit a less handsome looking one, and somehow that warranted him the favor of the room’s lighting, unfortunately. Since his form is not completely shrouded in blackness, he can actually be described; he has quite a mean face, narrow beady eyes, a buzz-cut, and no small quantity of knife/glass/fingernail scars all across his visage. The only damper on this mean street-fighter’s face has to the explosion of acne stretching diagonally from Stanton’s right temple to his left cheek, concentrated around his nose area which made the face extremely undesirable for any parts of the body of anyone else to touch. Even hookers didn’t want to kiss Stanton’s face unless he pays them a bonus. People either get acne or they get freckles, rarely both; Stanton always envied people who get freckles, freckles can be attractive, acne, however, cannot.

I've always wanted to write something in the style of Catch-22, a book I read and admired greatly for the density of its narrative and its endlessly broad vocabulary. I'm no Joseph Heller, and I'll never be Joseph Heller, but I've finally been inspired with an idea that has enough characters to write a story that will make even my own head swim (exactly what Catch-22 did). If you want to see more on this story, or if you have suggestions about where I can take this story to, by all means tell me. Thanks!

G!

Time For Some Uplift

In the wake of bad things happening,
I like to listen to sad music,
And think sad thoughts,
Because it's easy to become pessimistic,
When bad things happen.

After the gloom and the negativity,
I like to dream that one day,
Everyone will have a share of happiness,
Everyone will have fulfillment,
And no one will feel pain,
Then everyone will say to everyone else,
"It's wonderful to be human."

This dream, I'm sure,
Is dreamed by many,
And it's an unlikely dream,
If there ever is one.
But I like to keep dreaming,
And believe in the unlikely,
Because some dreams,
Even pipe dreams,
Are worth believing in.