Detective D. Case by Neal Goldy Read Free Book Online

and
meaningless, those eyes. He didn't want to think anymore, but if he did, he
would put himself to sleep, a terrorizing sleep of hopelessness.
              If
the whole world behaved like the people in the city, D. would have surely
committed suicide by now. Here, people called the time spent when one was
asleep Sleeping Hours. It never made sense to D., but the population had to
accept it or be cast into a state of delirium where it was uncertain whether or
not you fit into society's fundamental structure. People didn't survive those
things, and to D. it was a special weakness. The loss of purpose was a hard
one, but he managed to live through it. It wore off him like a broken
sweetheart.
              But
what about that officer, his mind wanted to argue. What about Officer West? He
said the year was 1978. Are you hallucinating?
              Thinking
these thoughts, it occurred to the old detective that he was sleeping in a wide
awake state. How could he be? He was swimming in his own deprived and distorted
thoughts. Doctors said these thoughts were the kind that a person diagnosed
with a – no, he didn't want to let word out-- illness. Go in too deep into that
forbidden world, heading through the gates, and you don’t go back. Best if
people pushed it aside, leaving it for better days where the human race was
more capable of tackling it than now, when everything was about cancer and the
possibility of AIDS. They thought about this, didn’t they, or D. might be
misinformed?
              His
body still shook from the uneasiness of the strings pulled at the tiny hinges
where his joints were. His breath cracked and his eyes were slits trying hard
to open up to the surroundings of the world. Soon his brain would fall apart,
melting and slipping from existence. Safety seemed too far away to help D. now.
All except one, that was.
              Somehow
the thought of ghosts prevented him from getting to the police department. The
way there, all the blocks were getting farther away no matter how fast D. ran,
like the dizziness shot he’d seen in Vertigo. It’s funny to think about
a mind having a mind of its own, turning the simple clichéd phrase into
a disturbing yet original one. D. cared nothing for creating groundbreaking
literary techniques; he couldn't have cared less when asked. All that mattered
were the joints in his arms and legs tugging at him, wanting to distort him
from the regular basis of life. They were ready to capture what was left of his
spirit in life and swallow it up whole. It happened once, and he wanted it to
end. Already it was shaving off his energy while he ran, and D. didn’t know
what he would do when he finally couldn’t go any further.
    He
found it surprising to find Chief Advert still there in his office when he
arrived at the police department. Like last time, the chief puffed smoke from his cigar. Predicting that the
chief would have another few years until his lungs blackened into the sporting
colors of Death, the old detective sat down. D. recounted the events that
unfolded during the time he spent in the McDermott penthouse scavenging some
interesting information that seemed to appear only when D. arrived. The chief
nodded every now and then as he watched him speak, but never said a word. Time
ticked away to night by the accordance of the clock hung near the ceiling. Each
tick had the power to reduce anyone’s pressure down to pencil shavings.
              D.’s made sure he was well hidden in the
shadows, obscured – metaphorically – in mysteries. Same went with his voice,
likewise matching his appearance, also obscured in obvious groans and roughs.
Typical detective cliché of hiding beneath the curtain of darkness,
obviously, but it didn’t matter; it didn’t sound like a reasonable way to deal
with important information like arson, but D. felt so muddled that he didn’t
want to show his face often anymore.