Coagulopath

[I won’t tell you to read this book or go to hell, I’ll tell you to read this book and THEN go to hell]

Prelude 1 – Entrance to the Inferno…

“I am the punishment of God… If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
– Genghis Khan

New York, New Year’s Eve, 2024…

The white van turned the corner into Times Square and merged into late-morning traffic.

A man lolled back in the driver’s seat—no hands on the steering wheel.

He had touched the wheel of the self-driving vehicle exactly once since crossing the GWB—just a gentle touch, as if to remind the machine of his mastery, and then he’d pulled the hand away.

He studied New York through two layers of glass – the tinted dash, and the glasses on his nose. Rows of billboards, marquees, and coloured lights, all of them calculated to skirt just beneath the edge of the city’s light pollution limits.

A glaze of neon covered the city. Cheap. Thrilling. Saccharine for eyes.

During the day, Times Square had the dead gleam of fake jewellery. At night, it shone like a star too modest to rise into the sky. Even inside the car, he heard the buzz of thousands of voices. Tourists came from everywhere to ring in the new year.

Everyone wanted something from New York – memories, culture, experiences.

The driver didn’t come to New York to take. He considered himself more of a giver.

He pulled in to a metered parking spot and was about to get out when he heard and felt a banging fist on the side of his van.

He turned his head. A NYPD cop.

The big black cop shouted something, and spun his forefinger in a circle. The universal “roll down your window” gesture.

He obeyed. “Can I help, officer?”

“Yeah, buddy, you can. I saw you enter the street without using your turn signal.”

“This is a self-driving car. The computer should have thrown the signal for me.”

“It didn’t. I was watching. Step out of the vehicle for a moment.”

The driver got out. He had a small remote control on a keychain that allowed him to control the van without being inside it.

“Activate your left turn signal.”

The driver tried. The light remained dead. “Hmm. Bulb’s gone. I wonder how long it’s been like that.”

The cop scowled. “Are you the owner of this vehicle?”

“I am.”

“Can I see some paperwork?”

The driver produced his license and registration. The cop unclipped a RFID scanner from his belt and ran it over a microchip on the license paper. He looked over the cop’s shoulder at the LED readout as it checked the NYPD database for tickets, demerits, and other offenses.

There weren’t any.

The cop nodded and handed back the paperwork. “That’s fine. You’re free to go.”

“Will I get a ticket?”

“Naw, I couldn’t do that to a man on New Year’s Eve. Just get that light fixed, okay? There’s a mechanic on East Thirty-Fifth that’s open over the holidays. Best to get these things sorted out, right?”

“Sure, I will. And thanks.” The driver smiled.

“Say, where are you from? I can’t place your accent.”

“I’m from Portland. I’m actually not here to celebrate. My daughter’s coming from back from a vacation in Cancun, and she asked if I could pick her up.”

“Cancun? Aw, that’s such a kid place to go. I’ve got some time off coming up, and I hope to spend it in the Adirondacks wearing orange. You much of a huntin’ man?”

“Can’t say I am.”

“Well, it kicks the shit out of police work. Have a good day, man.”

“You too. And all the best with your hunting trip. It’ll be a good one, I’m sure.”

He reached into his pocket and pressed a button.

The uranium bomb in the van went off.

[Transmission of Vanadium Dark endeth, for now.]

Hello,

My lawyer wants me to write this as an exercise. I don’t see the point. The verdict has come in, and everyone wants me to go away. I want to go away. No more attention, please. No more idiots shoving microphones in my face, asking if I’m sorry.

Yes, I’m sorry. Very sorry! I’d do it again. I’d do it a hundred times. I’d do worse. But I’m sorry. Do you feel better now?

I’ll write a little, because it beats staring at the wall.

I was born forty two years ago in Brisbane, or so I’m told. I don’t have a birth certificate. I don’t seem to have ended up with the usual accessory of a father, either. I can remember a man picking me up when I was very small, so maybe that was him.

I was raised by my mother, and then by the council when my home situation deteriorated. I hotwired a car at thirteen, and squatted in an abandoned apartment when I was seventeen. I never had a problem with stealing, never thought it made me a bad kid. Now I’m on the hook for a crime to make all the rest look small, so I might as well speak my mind.

The part of my youth I want to tell you about happened when I was nine years old. I don’t remember where mum and I were, but I remember what we did.

We went to see a man.
(more…)

tick…tick…tick…

There was a clock in the hallway. He couldn’t see it, but it spoke the seconds like a visitor that never tired of talking to him.

His cell was two meters long by three meters wide. At its narrowest point, he could take two forward steps. Concrete thwarted even the beginning of a third. He had slab of hard ticking to sleep on. There was a combined toilet/sink in the corner.

The door was a sheet of steel with a rectangular slot. From outside the door came noises – footsteps, voices, and jangling keys. All of it happening a few meters away, and all of it as distant as interstellar radio. The ticking clock was the only thing that intruded into his world.

There were a few books, a stack of blank pages and a pencil. Some of them had been written on.

Once, he’d tried keeping a prison diary.

He’d given up on that partly because he had nothing to write about, and only the barest scaffolding of reality to attach that nothing to. Was it normal to be in prison – in solitary confinement – and not remember why? Was it worth writing anything when nothing ever happened? Was it enough to just be ? He didn’t think it was. His life felt blanker than the pages he was writing on.

But mostly, he’d stopped writing because the things he wrote were wrong.

He would write something innocuous and self-evident. Then he’d masturbate, eat his dinner, sleep, wake up, read the words again, and they’d make sense. Then he’d count to a thousand, eat his lunch, trace out a crack in the wall with his finger, thumb uselessly through a read-to-rags paperback, walk from one end of his cell to the other a hundred times, whistle, recite the prime numbers from one to a hundred, nap, read his words again, and they’d still make sense.

But eventually, they wouldn’t.

Sooner or later, they stopped being right. They became the words of a different person, dwelling in a different place.

He’d read a sentence like my mattress is made of vinyl , and touch his fabric mattress in a state of wonder.

I have sixteen pages of paper … Disorientation, when a recount proved the number to be fifteen.

On the final page, written in pencil, were the words My name is Kruger .

He’d re-read that days later, and a memory from years earlier surfaced. The girl from the motor registry handed over his driver’s license. “Hey, just to check…that’s kay-ar-yoo-ee-gee-ee-ar, right? Oh, good. I thought I’d made a mistake and I’d need to start the machine up again.” … No, he could not keep a diary after that.

Sometimes he lay on his mattress, wondering how long it would be before he started the slow descent into madness.

Reading his writing made him think the descent was already happening…and it was anything but slow.

(more…)