The Main Character

Everything was stupid and nothing made sense and it was all ruined. This was not MC’s reality. She voted against this plot point. Someone else was dead.

MC had received a call from Alastair when she was lying in bed next to Quinn. It had been a convenient reason for escape. Not that she particularly wanted to leave, it was just easier to. Alastair had said it was an emergency, but she honestly had not thought it was one. He tended to be dramatic so when he said the emergency was at Karen’s place, she was all but sure it was a more of an invitation to come over and console her than an actual request for help.

When last Alastair and MC spoke, both had agreed that there were mysterious circumstances surrounding the suicides of Rémy, Jack, and a few other friends of hers as well as a few friends of his. The problem was, hey couldn’t figure out what the circumstances were or why anyone would facilitate the deaths of depressed artist friends of theirs. There was certainly an increase in the number of suicides in Sector 7, and a gross difference in number of suicides in Sector 7 compared to all other sectors. They had affirmed these feelings with concrete facts. The part they struggled with was figuring out why this was happening. Was there something in the water in Sector 7 to make people want to kill themselves? Or were these actually murders disguised as suicides? And either way, what was the point of killing off the creative and free-thinkers? They were a mostly harmless group. After nearly three hours of discussing it, they only found one idea that made sense: the government was targeting people they felt most likely to lead a revolt against them and pre-emptively taking them out. Alastair seemed very content that that was indeed what was going on, but MC was less sure. In the end, they had parted ways promising to look into the matter further and possibly recruit help to do so.

That being the last thing discussed, MC had thought that Alastair had found a conspiracy theorist who wanted to help or a vague article that had solidified the theory as truth in his mind. That was not what he had found.

MC stood in Karen’s apartment alone with Alastair. He was standing, smoking, and staring at MC expectantly. The rest of the world had stopped. It did not exist. He then turned his attention back to the laptop computer he was holding in his right arm. He supported the back of the laptop with a surprisingly relaxed and opened hand. After a few taps on the keyboard, the printer spat out some thirty odd pages. Alastair then proceeded to grab seemingly random and useless items from around the apartment: a press badge, post-its, a scarf, an opened packet of cigarettes, a day planner, stacks of papers, files marked CONFIDENTIAL, a beer, a voice recorder. Some the things he grabbed so casually seemed to be Karen’s roommate’s. Then he grabbed MC’s hand and led her to Karen’s bathroom. He locked them both in. MC hadn’t had a moment to protest because she had been frozen after her first ten steps inside. Alastair sat on the edge of the bath/shower tub which left the toilet lid to MC. The things he had grabbed were being stuffed into his dark blue backpack, except for the beer which he was drinking. MC threw up on the bathroom mat. “I hate you,” she said in disbelief. “Why would make me come here?”

They both sat in silence while Alastair tried to say what he wanted to. He twisted and pulled at his hair nervously. She continued, trying to pick at the details of the situation first, hoping it would shed a brighter light on what she had walked into. “Why didn’t you grab the notebook? Why would you grab the planner and not the notebook?”

The question did not phase Alastair who seemed to be largely ignoring her, he knew what she was getting at. “There wasn’t anything in there for you. It’s no’ even real.” He barely looked at her as he spoke.

“Liar,” she snapped. She had seen her name. Right at the top of the last page. There were only a few lines on that page. Three. Three is very few. Why would someone start a whole new page of a note like that to write what they could have squeezed at the bottom of the previous page? Was the idea that important that it needed its own space? Was the author planning on expanding upon that idea but thought better of it? Were they prevented or distracted from completing their train of thought? Or was it the subject matter itself that drove the author to call it quits? She was spinning out of sanity.

He grabbed her with one hand. His palm wrapped nearly all the way round her forearm. The heat and wetness moistening her dry skin. She grabbed his forearm back then used the thumb pad on her other hand to wipe up the tears her eyes had produced when she vomited. She got up, wiped her hands on her black jeans as she stood up. “Come on, we gotta go,” he called as he slung the backpack over his shoulder. MC was ready to walk out the door of the apartment, she wouldn’t look back. Alastair waited for her to exit the apartment first, closed the door, then followed her down the hall of the apartment building toward the elevator. They left. Karen stayed. Wearing one shoe. Swinging from her doorframe.

Alastair had met up with Karen the night before and tried to bring her in on the conspiracy theory he and MC had been developing. Karen had seemed uninterested and kept trying to derail his rant to the point where he got ‘frustrated drunk’. He was frustrated that she did not believe him and even more frustrated that she would not let him fully explain. He kept drinking to keep himself from yelling. She would not even give him the time of day. Eventually, he left.

When he woke up the following morning in his apartment, he was filled with a reinvigorated sense of purpose. He made up his mind to talk to Karen again no matter what and make sure that this time she would listen. This time he would fully explain himself. He thought the best way to do this was to storm over right then and there. However, when Alastair arrived at Karen’s, he found the door open. When he went inside, he could not hear anybody stirring. When he investigated, he found Karen. Then he called MC because he was the worst type of person that exists. He was the type of person who lacks the ability to suffer alone; he needed someone else to know the pain he felt. This particular pain was the sick responsibility and helplessness one feels tearing at their stomach from underneath when they encounter an unmoving person next to an opened notebook. Time seemed to move like honey through a funnel. Every moment Alastair stood in Karen’s apartment with her dead body seemed to both last forever and escape without warning. He had stared at her notebook vacantly, not daring to read what was written. However, at some point his brain started working again. He connected what he saw to his last conversation with Karen and decided this wasn’t what it looked like. He decided to gather ‘clues’ so he could figure out what ‘really happened.’ Before MC had arrived, Alastair had snooped through nearly the whole apartment, making a pile of things he planned to take with him in his nearly empty backpack. It was only when MC stood in the same room as the two of them that Alastair truly felt like it may have been real. But at that point he was too committed to stop operating under the assumption that it wasn’t.

“I’m tired of thinking about this moment,” MC told the wind as it breezed across her mouth. They were both standing at the edge of the river that separated their sector from the rest of the metropolis. They stared at the water as it brushed the bank of Sector 6, feeling safer within the boundaries of their familiar Sector 7.

“Let’s no’ then. Let’s move to the next moment. Let’s dream about tomorrow.”

“DO NOT SPEAK!” MC screamed at him unexpectedly. The sound waves were so harsh they created extra space between herself and Alastair. “Do NOT speak right now.”

“You’re allowed to speak and ah’m no’? That’s fair. No man, you canny tell me what to do. We need to talk about this.”

“I swear to God. Stop.” The words were both pleading and harsh. Alastair understood what she wanted but did not think it was smart to stand around outside after what had happened. He was starting to get paranoid that someone was going to come after them.

“Let’s at least walk back to yours so we can talk about it when you calm down.” Alastair had a point and said it like he was keenly aware. They walked and smoked in silence.

MC stood in her kitchen while Alastair spread out what he had taken from Karen’s apartment on her coffee table. She looked at it for a while before she went in her bedroom and shut the door. She took her journal out from her bookshelf headboard and tried to transfer the events of the day onto the pages so that they would stop floating around in space and effecting the relative time in which she existed. Her attempts were unsuccessful. Karen was just as dead when MC had run out of words as she had been when she had started writing 5 pages ago. All the while, Alastair had been waiting on the other side of the door to talk. Moments after she put her pen down, he came in. He had run out of patience.

“We’ve really got to figure this out. This was definitely no’ a suicide.” Alastair was slow and deliberate with his words which only made MC angrier at the statement he had made.

“What do you even mean by that? Do you know what you mean, or do you just say any stupid shit that comes into your head? Not everything is a conspiracy Alastair! Karen’s death doesn’t even fit into our original idiotic theory. If someone was trying to kill off the creatives and the free thinkers to prevent a government overthrow, why would they kill Karen? She writes puff pieces of a pop magazine?! Is that what this was about, that’s why you called me over? You thought it was all set up and was evidence, she didn’t kill herself, it’s all part of your idiotic notion that…what? What even is your idea? That people aren’t committing suicide, instead a band of deranged ninja assassins are staging it? What are you saying?” She was yelling at this point. Her voice was even but she couldn’t help the dramatic increase in her volume. She was outraged. “Do you know what you’re saying? You sound insane.” Her voice was now eerily calm.

Alastair was not discouraged. His face remained expressionless the entire time MC had been speaking. First, he was used to being talked down to. No one really gave him the time of day since his book sales dried up. Second, he had answers to all those questions. “Well ah’m no’ insane. I have proof,” He tried to say it dramatically and in a matter-of-fact tone but when he saw MC’s horrified face he realized she thought he was defending the idea of ninja assassins. “No’ of ninja assassins.” He waited for her face to un-scrunch itself. “Let’s sit down on the couch, have a beer and ah’ll tell you what’s been goin’ on.” She agreed. She needed at least a few beers to prepare herself for whatever Alastair was about to say.

“Look, I’m going to tell you what’s been happenin,’” Alastair started, taking sips of beer in between every few words, “but you have to let me finish. No interrupting.” He pulled all the papers he had collected from Karen’s apartment from his worn blue backpack and put them on the table. He spread them out and put the ones he would not reference at the bottom of the stack. The CONFIDENTIAL files that both agreed did not belong to Karen were put back in the backpack.

“Fine,” MC sat back against the couch. “But I reserve the right to make faces at you if you start sounding like an idiot.”

“Ah’d prefer it if you didn’t but whatever.” Alastair opened another beer in preparation. He had a habit of doing that if he had his mind set on a task and didn’t want his focus to be interrupted. Then, he started twisting the hair at the front of his hairline between his thumb and forefinger. He was stressed. “Alright. Ah met up with Karen last night because ah told her ah wanted to talk to her, about the stuff ah talked to you about the other day. Ah thought if all three of us teamed up, we could figure out what’s goin’ on ’n she could write about it in her column ‘n everyone would know. She’s no’ an artsy person, so ah thought people would take her more serious than either of us if we tried to blow the whistle on the Colmeses.”

“The Colmeses?” MC was shocked, but remembered that she had promised to hold her tongue. She didn’t apologize, but she let him continue.

“Yeah, alright. Let me start from the beginning.” He crossed his legs on the couch and started at his hair again. The more serious he became the more American his accent became. “Okay, before ah went to see Karen ah did some research. You weren’t all that receptive when ah was talking to you about it and you’re…more…rational than Karen. You know how she is. You need a lot of shock and aww to keep her attention. So, ah compiled a lot of stories from the news about suspicious suicides. And ah brought them with me when I talked to her.” He was avoiding eye contact with MC now. His head was dipped and his hand moved to the base of his skull. It was clear he was going to say something MC wouldn’t appreciate. “One of the stories was Jack’s.” He peeked up to see her face. She didn’t flinch but it was as if her eyes emptied out. “See, when I brought it up she acted like she wasn’t interested but…” he grabbed some crumpled papers from the coffee table and held them up. “I found these in her apartment.” He put them down just as quickly as he had picked them up. He didn’t want to lose his momentum, and for that matter, his nerve. “Karen’s press status gives her access to some records. Like medical records. And ah know this is going to sound stupid, but he didn’t take his anti-depressant that day. And it looks like she checked, and neither did anyone else that I told her about. The people you and I talked about.” He started waving his hands in anticipation for MC’s counter. “And ah know that that just makes it seem like the anti-depressants are effective, but come on. Ah mean, you’ve taken them, right? Ah take them. They’re SHIT! So, ah had a different idea. What if they had taken their anti-depressant, but…”? He raised his eyebrows like a guy who thinks he has a mind-blowing idea to communicate. “What if they took a different pill that was put in their bottles, but…it was something else. Like, not their anti-depressant. Like, something that would make them more depressed.”

“Karen wasn’t taking anti-depressants though.”

“Ah know! That’s the thing. Ah think because she looked into the whole thing it raised some red flags on the internet and they went after her.”

“They?”

“The Colmeses!”

“Why would the Colmeses be plotting to kill depressed people…and Karen? Do you even know the Colmeses? Cause I do, and they’re not psycho murderers. They’re severely descent people. Do you know how many charities they fund? They built this whole metropolis! They literally saved humanity in North America. Why would they kill the people they saved for being human? You’re being a presumptive asshole…idiot.” She was angry but she did not storm off. She sat there and waited for him to respond. She did not intend what she said to hurt his feelings, she was only saying what she observed. He was being presumptive. What connection did he have between the Colmeses and fake psychosis-inducing anti-depressants? And what was their motive?

MC was exhausted. She reached over and stole his pre-opened beer. The first few sips did nothing to calm her agitation so she started gulping it down.

“EXACTLY! They fund everything, they’re a part of everything! How could this even happen without them knowing about it? They have to know AND be a part of it.” He hadn’t finished his first beer yet. He sipped on what was left of it with a sense of self-satisfaction, waiting for MC to congratulate him on uncovering such an incredible scandal. Of course, she did not. He did have a point though and she admitted that. She retrieved another a beer for herself from the refrigerator but changed her mind about drinking it as soon as she sat down. She abandoned it on the table and went back to the kitchen to make a gin and tonic.

Her mind was racing. The new information about Jack’s death was shifting the earth beneath her feet. Additionally, Alastair’s speculation about Quinn was tormenting her. There was no way that Quinn was involved.

“There’s no way that Quinn is involved,” MC stated coldly and dryly. She had made up her mind about that and she almost believed it. She felt dirty. She had also forgotten that Alastair had no idea who Quinn was.

“Right…” he said in reserved and confused agreement. “Quinn who?”

There was no need to explain their relationship, or lack thereof, or friendship, just whatever they were or were not doing was not important to explain to Alastair right now. She did need to figure out if Alastair was right though.

“Nevermind,” MC mumbled more to herself than to Alastair. She could feel her brain getting all jammed up now, not only with the information about the anti-depressants and Alastair’s theory about the Colmes family, but not with her mercurial emotional responses.

In an attempt to clear her head, MC stopped pacing around her kitchen and made her way back into her bedroom. She grabbed her journal from her bed before resuming her position on the couch and asked Alastair to explain everything again. She wanted all of the details. She wanted to read all the papers he brought. She wanted to see and understand each of the individual dots that he had connected to come to his conclusion. MC was driven to find answers and make sure they were the correct ones.

But any which way you cut it, Karen and Jack and Rémy were all still dead.