INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1 by Casper Greysun Read Free Book Online

5:
     
    Detective Hector Santiago, high-ranking
officer and Senior Investigator for the NYPD’s Crime Syndicate
division, has a wife, Ruth, who at the very moment is sitting at
their home, rolling a joint by the window still, watching the
clouds move across the gray and solemn sky. On her lap lays her
personal cell phone, open and ready to be used.
    Prior to rolling the joint, she had been
readying herself to place a call to her sister, who she has not
spoken to in a very long while, too long for her taste. Her last
interaction with her beloved sibling ended in an unnecessarily
heated fashion. Ruth’s sister does not like Hector’s womanizing
ways, especially when Ruth calls crying because she, once again,
suspects her husband of infidelity. During their last outing, the
sibling’s manner of support was a bit too intrusive, causing an
explosive riff between the married couple which threatened to
dissolve the marriage. As Ruth’s sister alleged, Hector had been
cheating. However, then, and as always, there was only the
knowledge of an affair, never any proof. The lack of evidence,
which is not too surprising considering that Hector Santiago is
specially trained to seek out all forms of evidence, was the
deciding factor in Ruth siding with her husband rather than with
her sister, who knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Hector was
guilty.
    The phone displays Ruth’s sister’s number
along with her contact image, a snapshot of both sisters playfully
squishing their faces together for a silly picture taken at the
beach a few years back. The only thing left for her to do is to
touch the call button and wait. Her finger hovers over the button
but it never lands. She cannot bring herself to call her, no matter
how much she wishes to hear her little sister’s voice.
    She places the phone gently by her side and
lights the joint with a match, despite there being a lighter in her
pocket. She, much like her younger sister, has always enjoyed the
scent of sulfur dioxide produced when a match is struck and then
dies. She inhales deeply, holding the smoke inside her chest for a
few seconds before releasing it. Repeating this process, she smokes
the joint down to the halfway before she is seized by a fit of
coughing. Instead of snubbing out the joint, she buckles down and
finishes her smoke, choking slightly in between every strong
toke.
    Within minutes, the weed is kicking into full
effect, producing a large enough euphoric sensation that her entire
body slouches back against the wall of the windowpane, completely
relaxed. Her mind, on the other hand, does the exact opposite, it
races, darting to and fro different thoughts as if her mind were
playing a game of cognitive ping pong. Finally, she settles on the
thought which had consumed her in the moments before she sparked
the ganja, her younger sister.
    She palms her phone, contemplating whether or
not she should call. Postponing it, she decides to call her husband
instead. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to speak to him. She’s
actually hoping that he does not pick up the phone. If he does
answer the call, she’ll make up a random question concerning dinner
later. This is her version of the coin flip. Undecided about
calling her sisters, she tells herself that if Hector picks up, she
won’t call her sister. However, if Hector doesn’t pick up, she will
call her sister. Her reasoning, obviously impaired by the high,
does not require logic, only the delusion of having an excuse.
Because no matter how badly she would like to speak to her sister,
she does not have an excuse to call her, mainly because there was
truly never a good excuse for why they ceased talking to each
other. Of course, Hector is to blame for their now sour
relationship; but Hector himself should not have been reason enough
to keep two sisters apart for so long. In his defense, he couldn’t
care less whether or not they ever talk to each other again. In his
opinion, the issue isn’t that important anyway.
    Two