Chapter 3:

“The Party”


Marcus D Rossell hated his neighbours, it was about 3am and they were still pumping their hip-hoppy trance music - if it could even be called music - quietly with their back light on and thick clouds of smoke in the air like they had a small bonfire going, if that bonfire was made of street-bought weed.


Marcus hated his name, the D didn’t stand for anything, his parents were too busy arguing about what the D should stand for and the papers were already filed by an unwittingly dim nursemaid by the name of Beatrice, who had always been a little bit left of the curve.

Marcus hated his job, he’d been a beat cop for 11 years, and at 37, he was starting to feel the pressure in his back from all the weight in his stomach after years of eating shitty food and drinking cheap coffee; being a beat cop meant getting the minimum wage, and surviving on the minimum wage meant he often went to the same shitty diners or restaurants every week, and hardly tipped.

Being a beat cop still meant free coffee in most of the places he frequented, even if it was shit coffee.


Marcus shook his head slightly, as he tried to clear his thoughts, and of course then his thoughts turned back to the music still thumping faintly in the background. “Fuck this” Marcus mutters in a barely audible guttural tone that probably sounded remotely familiar to any avid Star Wars fans in the audience, viewer… reader.. ship. It was 03.03 according to his small blue screen display that only turned on whenever he looked directly at it. Sometimes this took a while in the dim light without his square-edged prescription glasses perched in that skin deformity one gets in the nose abridged of the constant use of the aforementioned prescription glasses.


He had a rather crooked nose, obviously broken a time or two, and a bit of a slight surprised look on his face, given the small scar across his left eyebrow from the closest he’d ever come to God as one could be; a scar remiss of a time a few years back in the height of the international intent to change the face of racism, and some people retaliated rather aggressively to the usual traffic-stop routine, even with guns. He felt the scar absentmindedly as he remembered the heat of that bullet passing by his face as he was slammed backwards by his then partner; and now of course after last weeks bullshit party to celebrate the rank he earned from that one deed, and probably a sore shoulder whenever it gets cold, Captain R E Driffet; or as he was more affectionately known amongst family and peers, Reef.


Marcus blinked a few times, turning his attentions back to his current surroundings. Swinging his legs over his double bed and hanging them from the knee til his toes brushed the cold non-carpeted floor, he looked about him in somewhat of a daze, his right hand reaching out and blindly scrambling around the nightstand until his fingers found his glasses. If it were up to him, he would tear all the damn wood out of the floor and opt for carpet, but even on such a small place as his, complete with an ensuite shower that was all but right in the center of his bedroom, he didn’t much use this shower, though he didn’t exactly expect much company often.

He briefly marvelled at the stupidity it could take somebody to build something as ridiculous as the house he lived in, if you could call it a house.


Marcus reached under his bed rather carefully, not wanting to tip forward since his reflexes were about that of a 70-year old pre-coffee. His fingers found what they were looking for, and his hand instinctively curled around the trigger and butt of the police-issue Remington 850 wreathed stealthily under the right panel of the bed, nearby his slightly open window.

He pulled the shotgun out from its sheath like brandishing a sword and stood up, walking the two steps to the window overlooking his backyard and the neighbours bong party.

Sliding the window up and open fully, he poked his upper torso through the window, leaving his head behind the glass to minimise the shock to his ears and pulled the trigger first once, then a second time, straight up into the night sky. The resulting cacophony of noise and flashes of light from the explosions in the barrel might have looked almost like fireworks to anyone passing by, but it sure worked a treat on the belligerent stoners across from him, as they jumped up and yelled in fright, spilling the bong and mix-bowl in the process, to Marcus’s amusement. “Aw man, that’s the last of it” one of the post-apocalyptically-stoned members of the group say slowly, and without emotion. Satisfied, Marcus slams shut the window and goes back to his bed, curling back under the covers and sliding the shotgun safely back under the bed in its holster.


The End.