Hate

Part I - Jack Daniels


A swift black palm engulfs a thick and rust-darkened lamp post, choking its stance, stripping the dirty peeling paint. Giant claws clench the neck of the tall beaming tower, shaking it violently, sending an evil fissure down to the surface, unsettling a couple of dusty rocks that are drying out in the night breeze; a cool wave soaking the canine urine deep into the chalky rocks.
Tomorrow, no liquid will remain, but passers by will have the rotten stench attack their senses.

As the rocks roll and crumble, a black, no, pitch-black silhouette leaps into the night, releasing a faceless demon shadow across the vibrant moonlight, casting a dark sheet over Riley and Main.
The anxious barks of a hundred dogs pierce the silence. A peaceful, gentle night it is no more as the one hundred owners of the one hundred frisky mutts flick switches all over their residences. Small bedside lamps brighten rooms where the bed sheets are uncovered and the faint outlines of humanity sink into the mattresses.
Opulent grand chandeliers shine their light into the centre of a dozen glass diamonds, imitating crystal below dark white ceilings.

Outside of the rooms, through the walls and into a forest of night-bleached foliage, dark green leaves exist only as dull brown, crooked blades with their weakening fragile twigs invisible in the darkness.
Small chirping crickets breathe life into the black ocean, illuminating the street with not light, but addictive sound. Addictive that is to Mr. Graham Hartigan, 34, of house number sixty eight, who is mimicking the crickets’ tune as he jogs silently past a fragrant bush, watching closely in the corner of his right eye for any minute emerald spots of insect life.
A tight grey tee-shirt struggles to support his enormous beer gut from being exposed to the air. The mass of skin rolls around like a peachy sea, slapping Hartigan’s underbelly.

Graham was, just six months ago, a cold, soulless carcass with absolutely nothing to live for. His wife had left him for his former best friend and taken his two children, Sammy, 8, and Johnny, 6, with her.
He spent eight hours a day drinking himself to death; bourbon after bourbon; double after double; triple after triple. . .pass out. . .

Hartigan’s skin grew an even deeper orangey-yellow every day, and not from a tan, no one had a tan out here, this is San Brooke, known locally as the City of Devils, not Southern California. The sun barely shone; instead it was suffocated by plumes of pollution, rotting the city and its inhabitants from the inside out, tearing apart what used to be a picturesque paradise blooming with a society of goodwill and compassion. But not now, no, those days are long gone. What’s left is a crime-ridden shell plagued by choking industry, murder and grime. No-one cares anymore. SanBroo’s (its local nickname) inhabitants would much rather live for the moment than contemplate the future. . .if of course this city has one.

Fortunately for a few, San Brooke is divided into two sectors. The public, where there really was nothing left, and the private, where local government officials lived, where the mayor, Geoffrey King stayed on weekends, even where Mr. Hartigan himself resided. You see, as well as the select few receiving complimentary accommodation, those with a bit of spare cash could afford property there.

Graham originally lived in Ontario, Canada, Windsor to be exact. There he worked as one of the more ‘higher up’ honchos, earning a nice and large salary at an IT development company. After splitting with his wife, Roxanne, he moved to Riley and Main, across from Canada to the U.S. of A.

Back in Canada, Hartigan was an intelligent man; in fact, he was an extremely bright spark. He can thank his generous I.Q. for saving him a couple of brain cells when he went AWOL, and getting help. Half a year of not so pleasant Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and rehab. He hated it with a mortal passion, but knew that it was one hundred percent worth the struggle. He was now a fighter; determined as ever to complete the toughest challenge in all his life and reach his ultimate goal. Graham knew that he had to put his money where his mouth was, and not a bottle of Jack Daniels to wash all his sinful sorrow down to the very bottom of his stomach.

And guess what? Hartigan had overcome his struggle. He had won the battle against alcoholism. He was one hundred percent alcohol-free. . .but not one hundred percent memory-free. He still had that heaving taste in the back of his throat. The taste that reminded him of his family. The bitter taste that reminded him of his wife’s rose-smelling, silky hair. The sweetness of his children’s affection, and the sight of his former best friend. That uplifting rosy haze was always replaced by a sicksweet, vile taste.

Removing that whiskey-induced stomach of his was a new priority. He would jog up and down Riley each and every day, morning and night. Of course, all of his attempts at enhancing his fitness were nothing more than ounces of desperation breaking through his World War One mind, squirming their way to retrieving his past life. . .his kids. . .his wife.

However, something screamed within him, something far more complex than his moral heartache. Something negative. Something confusing. He could never find out what it wholly was, but he knew that it was eating away his mind, tearing it up as if his veins were made of barbed wire.

It’s nearly a year to the day since he last saw his family.


Part II - A Hate Confined


Hartigan’s thoughts contort. The happiness to the depression. From smiles to nearly tears. His cheeks quiver with emotion, bleeding memories of a love depraved. A love departed.
He begins to breathe heavily and slows his pace, although trying to keep focused on the task at hand, trying to throw his past from his sight. Trying to put an end to the neural weight that crushes his eyes.

The pain of a hate confined.

‘Bullet in the brain’ he says to himself. That’s exactly what he wants to happen to his ex-best friend. The very man his Roxanne ran away for. Yes, the thought of ending that bastard’s life was his only comfort and rejoice. But he knew he could never do it, no matter how much his explicit hate fuelled his fury.

‘Bullet in the brain’ he continues, as he clambers over a huge root that has broken right through the sidewalk. He increases his speed. Faster. Faster. Faster and faster. The jog has now turned into a complete sprint. Hartigan’s mind, and legs, are in overdrive. He’s charging down Riley with his thoughts replacing his burning red lips, chanting his fatal wish.
All that Hartigan is focused on is the end of the street, to the mayor’s weekend townhouse and back. Not even the quaint, vegetation-rich gardens can catch his eye as they always do. No racing through the sprinklers of local councilman, Horatio Freeman tonight to cool off. No smelling Mrs. Morgan’s delicate, exuberant roses. No passionate, invigorating red haze tonight.

When the hell did normality stop jogging alongside Hartigan? And when the hell did Hartigan stop jogging alongside normality?
Going this fast would usually cripple his heart. His ticker wasn’t up to this kind of work, to this kind of physical punishment. Even a numbing pain in his chest doesn’t halt his speed. He is being driven by that thing inside him. That exact same thing that rips apart his brain and pulls apart his soul like a five year-old raping a conscious insect of a leg or a wing.

Hate. It’s Hate. Hate is driving Graham Hartigan and isn’t reaching for the break. Hate is what’s pushing him to the end of the street, what’s got him just metres from the mayor’s breathtaking residence. Hate is what causes a sudden surge of pain through his body. A mind-wrenching pain. A vision-evaporating pain.
The Riley and Main resident is a stumbling crucifixion, whose pupils have dilated into black before fading to white. An avalanche of sensual brutality. Hate.

All that he remembers from that night is of falling face first onto mayor King’s freshly mown lawn, getting a mouth full of wet grass, courtesy of a faulty sprinkler system, and thinking how much he detests King and all the products of his political reign. Hate battles Hate.

Sunday morning. 7:50am. Mayor King’s townhouse. Graham Hartigan awakes from his pain induced slumber. He spits out mangled vegetation all over the lawn, soaking with saliva, before sneezing the grass from both his nostrils. As he gets to his feet, he notices a shattered window, a broken down door and smashed plant pots with spots of soil on a porch. . .the mayor’s window, door and porch.
Not remembering last night’s ordeal, Hartigan merely wonders why in God’s name he’s awoken here, and not in the comfort of his draped Victorian double bed. Much more than just a trifle confused, he walks, with some speed, to the exposed house. As he ascends the three steps, his pace slows. He steps over the soil and enters the house with a hunched back.

Everything’s okay? Hartigan questions himself; the house appears to be in perfect shape, nothing seems to be out of place. Lush watercolour masterpieces hang straight, oak chairs sit neatly around a grand oak table, and a phenomenally large Persian rug lies without any trace of creases. Just a vandal Graham thinks, suspicious, yet humoured by the prospects of someone costing the mayor some not so hard earned cash.

Hartigan walks through the dining room and turns the corner to enter the parlour. This is the private sector of the city, this isn’t Wrong-Turn-And-You’re-Dead Street. . .what is this? The comment relentlessly repeats itself in Hartigan’s mind. He’s just discovered something that shouldn’t be seen in the private sector of San Brooke. Disbelief and uneasy consciousness takes control.

Murder.

Two men. Dead. Two jaggedly sliced throats, two pools of blood, two necks with flaps of flesh just hanging off, two formerly white shirts now sopping with blood. Bodyguards. He’s seen them on TV, accompanying the mayor a plethora of times; always keeping that much needed watchful eye.

What son of a bitch did this?

Then it dawns on his mortified shell. Where’s the mayor? He climbs over the corpses and walks through the blood-spattered open door, into the parlour. The entire room has been bathed in blood, from floor to ceiling, the walls, the furnishings, everything.
Hartigan’s orangey-yellow skin turns a ghostly white. He feels the urge to throw up, something he’s used to from his whiskey days, but the fear and horror paralyses his muscles.

In a corner of the room, the television set has a thick rope tied around it. Graham follows it to the head of a third corpse, at least that’s what he thinks it is. The skull has been smashed in; pieces lie around a sea of crimson. Brain matter has been pulled through the nose and a kind of necklace has been made from it. There are what looks like multiple stab wounds in the chest and face of the body, and even an eye is missing from its rightful socket.

It’s the mayor.

The mayor has been severed at the waist, and there is no sign of his legs, well, apart from the fibula bone that’s been knifed through his heart.

The whole scene is reminiscent of both Charlie Manson and an anarchistic version of Jack the Ripper; even Hartigan admits that in his shock-frozen mind before running the hell out of that house as fast as he God damn could.


Part III - Pick Your Poison


SBCN, San Brooke City News. Being the premier newscast in the entire city, with sources in just about every inch of the place, couldn’t help them with information on the investigation of the previous night’s slaughter. A day or so of lengthy reports covering the gruesome triple murder at the townhouse, all repeats with the words jumbled up – the mayor is dead – that is all that was said. That was all that could be said. No one knew what had happened, with an exception being made for Mr. Hartigan. All that the police said was that the body had been severely mutilated.
San Brooke, paralysed with confusion and extreme morbid curiosity.

Graham Hartigan, profoundly lost and dismembered of any emotion except Hate.

A shivering corpse-like shell he has become. . .just like sixth months ago. He is drunk. Drunk on fear. Drunk on a poisonous adrenaline, a cocktail of emptiness – mixed nothing – it doesn’t make sense, he is surviving inside out.

In his living room, he downs a whole cup of coffee, just boiled, no milk to cool it down even the slightest. It burns immensely, churning his throat, but he doesn’t feel it. Hate has made him numb; it has captured his senses, his instincts.
He turns on the television via the grey, white rubber buttoned remote. The black screen explodes into white, the white seeps into colour, and the colour merges to create life.
The last twenty four hours of Hartigan’s life have just flashed before him, yet in reverse. A pleasant jog, colourful life. A waging war against pain, white. The grim discovery of the mayor and his bodyguards, black. Emptiness.

On the television, newscasters sit in their black leather chairs, captivated by what they are hearing from those working in the gigantic room behind, which must contain at least two hundred computers.
One female anchor reports of another grizzly killing, in fact a quadruple murder where the victims have been found in a state similar to that of mayor King, in Toronto, Canada.

“Two victims have just moments ago been identified as thirty three year-old Roxanne Hartigan and thirty seven year-old boyfriend Lance Witherspoon, of Windsor. Two smaller bodies, believed to perhaps be the victims’ children, are currently unable to be identified due to the sheer brutality of these murders.”

What? Repeats Graham in his thoughts.

Hate.

It’s Hate.


“You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul”.
- Julie de Lespinasse


“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
- Anne Lamott