O' Malley's descent
Chapter I
The Wake Up Call
Where had he woken up this time?His head felt like it was being horsewhipped from the inside. He couldn’t see anything. His extremities were just not there. He was blind, senseless an paralysed.
But then things started to clear. He could see… He could see a four finned fan slowly spinning in front of him, dispersing the flashes of neon from the pharmacy next door. The pain in his head slowed down. He could feel his fingers again.
He was in his room. That was a good start. He was lying on his back, in his living room. It was still night.
The phone had been ringing. That’s what had woken him. But it suddenly stopped. Too late.
Almost immediately, his cell phone started ringing. He instinctively reached for his pockets, only to realize he didn’t have his trousers on. Not his shirt either. That’s when he also realized that he was soaking wet. With water. As if he had just come back from a swim. What had happened this time?
He didn’t have time to worry about that. The phone… it was on the coffee table. The ID said it was Jane, her partner.
At this time it could only mean one thing.
“Who has she?”
“Some girl, waiting for her cab to arrive after a party. O’Malley… she was only fifteen.”
O’ Malley stiffened. Suddenly his head cleared, all the pain was gone. He didn’t say a word for a good 30 seconds.
“O’ Malley. You there?”
“Here.” Bernard said. He realized that his left hand was clenched into a fist so tight that his nails were cutting into his flesh “It’s him…isn’t it?”
“Pretty sure it is. But I’ve got good news for you. We have a solid lead this time.”
“I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”
Bernard O’ Malley was cop. And he was Irish. That was it really. That’s what everybody knew about him. That’s all they cared to know about him. That’s all they needed to know about him. His reputation said the rest.
Bernard O’ Malley was a large ugly brute of a man. He stood taller than anybody around him. No matter what he wore, it seemed to be stretched tight over his broad back. His face was old, and scarred, and aged far more than his years. At first glance it seemed dead and hollow. Like and enormous oak tree. He never cracked any jokes, never laughed at any. But his eyes, set in their deep hollows, glowed, like the core of some dormant volcano. Which could explode any moment.
Bernard O’Malley wasn’t a good cop. He wasn’t even an honest cop. He was no different from any other cop in Poison Bay. Except for one thing. He wasn’t on anybodies payroll. In Poison Bay, you had to be on somebody’s payroll. Or you had to be dead. O’ Malley didn’t choose the former, and he was still holding out on the latter.
Everybody had a price in Poison Bay. Maybe Bernard didn’t. Or maybe they just hadn’t reached it. Not that they hadn’t tried to guess it. They had. Most of them had left with broken fingers or jaws. Their briefcase full of cash thrown out after them.
Bernard liked this arrangement. If you were not on anybody’s payroll, you were not responsible for anybody either. Except maybe the people of the city, but for who cared about them anyway. But this also meant that when the shit hit the fan, nobody would be responsible for you. And that was a bad a place to be in Poison Bay, because the shit hit the fane here on a regular basis. O’Malley knew his number would come up one day. When he would become too much of a bother for somebody or the other. And with no one watching his back he would be easy to take out. Snuff out.
He knew that day would come. Soon.
But he didn’t care.
As long as it wasn’t today.
to be comtinued...
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About me
- I'm erebus
- From Perth, WA, Australia
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Your description of O'Malley seems right out of the American hard-boiled genre. Very nice. Am waiting for chapter 2.
p.s. I think the context in which we chose the names are different...but well, it's a wierd coincidence.
ofcourse... I was just kidding... but the similarity in titles did seem pretty funny...