Cynically Yours

Well, there's not a lot going on around here lately, so figured I'd do something I've been meaning to do lately- write stuff down. Not really in any particular order, or for that matter even entirely based off of reality- I guess I'll test the waters with this one, see where it goes. So, without further ado, this blog gets slightly more interesting- Still lacking a title, this is about the bulk of what I've gotten down so far, though a plot and character development are proceeding-



Knock, knock

The sound roused me out of a half-remembered dream. Turns out it was in the real, waking world after all.

"Detective Rains, are you in there?" a slightly shrill voice called from the other side of my apartment door. That would be Mrs. Pealey, my landlady. Eccentric as the day is long, but a nice woman all the same.
Damn. I had fallen asleep on the couch. A paperback book, one of an endless series that graced my apartment, lay tented on the floor beside the couch that I was on. I went to move, and found I had a charlie horse in my neck that could have run in the Kentucky Derby. Clearly, sleeping on the couch was not a good idea, intentionally or no.

But Mrs. Pealey was still at the door, no doubt growing concerned by the absence of response, and thinking perhaps of some pulp-fiction melodrama; she opens the door to find the body sprawled on the floor, a pen still clutched in stiffening fingers, having written one last clue to the riddle...

"Just a moment, Mrs. Pealey! I'm afraid you caught me dozing".

"Okay dear, just as long as you're ok".

Typical. I hate to disappoint, but no dying man. I've seen dead men before- not quite the romanticized version my dear old batty landlady might have in mind. But more on that in a minute. Time to answer the door.

I crossed the living room and opened the door. There was my landlady, in all her kindhearted glory- the print dresses she always wore, and the flat shoes she wore around the building, and the bobbed hair that seemed fifty years out of date, but nonetheless looked fitting on her. I always thought she picked a haircut from Casablanca, but of course kept this opinion to myself, as I liked that movie and my landlady, and didn't want to have that misconstrued and resulting in hurt feelings.

She peered past me into the living room- uninteresting walls, a painting made by a friend of mine, slightly worn carpet, and a couple couches. Nothing like what you read about in the books.

I'm a homicide detective by profession, so of course you'd expect the standard grungy apartment, overflowing ashtrays and empty whiskey bottles in the sink. Well, actually the only thing in my sink at the moment were two coffee cups, left there from this morning. The apartment, though a little old, was clean. I prided myself on not losing my ability to keep a place clean, even after I left the Army. But that's another story. Perhaps a little background will help. I live in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, and I'm a homicide detective for the Boston Police. Divorced for three years, no kids. I think that about covers it. The first thing everyone seems to say is, "I'm sorry". Well, to paraprhase the late great Madeleine Kahn, it's a question of life after death- now that our marriage is dead, I have a life.
But at any rate, back to the apartment. I live in an old brick building that was at some point in its past converted to apartments. What it was before that, I don't know. If I was really that curious, I could go search the moldering town records for some indication. The only thing I find strange about it is the basement- it's sealed up, the only door in the building's lobby bearing a liberal coat of paint over the gap between the door and the jamb. Mrs. Pealey had no key to this door, and knew of no one who had ever been down there. She herself used the attic for storage, and as long as the pipes didn't leak, she didn't really care what was down there. As for me, I was too busy dealing with people killing other people on a weekly if not daily basis to spend too much time worrying about basements, and as for the rest of the tenants, I couldn't say.