This post was written for a creative writing course, originally titled “I’m Just a Lawyer.”
I admit that I may not have held client confidentiality in the utmost regard in the past. As a legal practitioner in the state of North Carolina, the consequences to such disregard may be much higher than for most people. A few consecutive events in which this may have become apparent can be found in the story of the Conrad family…
“So, if we look into the forms the inspectors sent into the agency, we should be able to find some evidence that they were are up to par with procedure, right?” inquired the man sitting in his pin-striped suit and bowler hat across from me at my desk.
“That’s the idea. I’ll ask some friends I know in that field to gather the papers. Oh, and there was another matter I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”
“Which is…?” he asked.
“Well, I was looking at some old papers when I noticed your father’s last will and testament. After skimming through it I noticed a bit of a flaw…”
Pierce Conrad Junior was lounging in my large, brown leather chair on the opposing side of my desk that day to discuss a particular lawsuit his business was being threatened with (something about buildings falsely examined to pass code restrictions), when I brought up the issue of his father’s will.
Pierce Conrad Senior’s last testament had not been updated in twenty-three years, a time when Pierce Junior was married to his now ex-wife Marcella Whitlock. Pierce Senior was particularly fond of this now ex-daughter-in-law and had allocated a substantial amount of his inheritance to be given to her. Only a few short months after the will was written she discovered that Pierce Junior had been cheating on her with her own sister, Mercedes Whitlock, whom he even had a child with by that point.
At the time, Marcella was outraged and came directly to me, asking that I represent her in court for the divorce, which, of course, was won as easily as tennis with a dead pigeon (it’s harder than you think, believe me, I know). What I had forgotten, however, was that Marcella was still a client of mine, and was slouching in the waiting room of my firm on the same day that I was discussing this business with Pierce to have me help her with filing her seventh divorce, and to add to the trouble, my stained oak double-doors are not as soundproof as they should be when being propped open by a jealous ex-wife who would do anything to get back at one of her previous husbands, especially if it would benefit her in other ways as well.
Had I known there was any breach in the privacy of our conversation, I would have pushed immediately that Pierce Senior have his will updated, but I was, in fact, unaware that Marcella was eavesdropping on the conversation and that, due to this, the situation was significantly more dire than I had previous thought. So, without a second thought, we ended our discussion:
“Well, I believe that was all we needed to talk about, Greg, unless you had any other documents to mention…”
“No, not really. Have a good day then, Pierce.”
“You too,” he said as the sound of shuffling could be faintly heard behind the door, which was undoubtedly Marcella sneaking away from the doors she had propped open with her foot. “Wench,” he whispered as he strutted past her in the doorway, just another sign of how much he resented her from the three months when they had been married ages ago.
“Gregory!” she shouted excitedly in the irritatingly high-pitched squeak that is her voice. “How are the papers for my divorce coming along,” she continued as she clumsily bounced into my office with the same grace as the average hippopotamus on marijuana.
“They’re going just fine, Miss Whitlock,” I hissed through my clenched teeth. Just as any conversation with Marcella, this discussion went on for about an hour too long and felt as if I was gargling small porcupines the entire time.
About three weeks later, Marcella waltzed into my office, a spring in her step with arms flailing about as if they each had a mind of their own, as exuberant and proud as always. She came with the sole intent of telling me:
“Pierce Conrad Senior’s dead, or whatever.”
She laid this out plainly in her usual nonchalant and incompetent tone, lending no emotion to what many would have considered horrifying news. Not only was it her of all people who brought this news to me, but she did so while attempting to suppress a smirk (and failing miserably), and this made me begin to think that something wasn’t quite right. I also noticed that she wasn’t wearing any makeup, well, not exactly no makeup, more of none of the makeup she normally wears. What she had applied was a series of long streaks of eyeliner sloppily smeared down her spray tanned cheeks attempting to make it look like she had been crying.
“Of course, you are telling me this,” I groaned while muttering the words to her, half expecting her to completely ignore me, which she did.
“I guess you’ll have to do that lawyer thing you do when people keel over. You know, like look over his will and stuff,” she blurted out, cracking her annoyingly high-pitched voice in the process and still failing at suppressing the ever-widening smirk on her face.
“I suppose so.” I was completely sick of her, she had been there only five minutes and I already wanted to jump out the window (on the second story at that).
I’m not sure how Pierce Senior (or Junior for that matter) ever came to like this woman so much; she was completely out of control, always butting into conversations and shouting anything that was on her mind to anybody who had so much as functioning ears. She wore the flashiest dresses she could get her hands on, showing as much skin as she could without being arrested for indecent exposure. At this little meeting, for example, she was wearing clothes that she thought would give off an aura of mourning, being all black with a veil, but any such feeling they gave off was ruined by her exposed midriff and the couple of inches of her thighs that were visible beneath the skirt.
“Just let me know if there’s anything in there about me,” she practically sang, enunciating every syllable to ensure I heard her, like she hadn’t made what she was doing here obvious enough.
“Why would there be? You and Pierce divorced twenty-three years ago.”
“Well, you never know what might pop up,” her excitement was rising, and with it, her voice was as well.
“Fine, whatever, I’ll call you if I find anything,” and with that she finally turned around and strolled out, almost toppling over the high heels she matched with her ‘mourning’ clothes. After she was gone, I decided it would be best I look over the will once again… just in case.
She knew I had already read over the will, by this point I had figured out that she was listening in on us when I told Pierce that she was receiving around thirty percent of Pierce Senior’s estate, whereas Pierce Junior himself, the only child of the family, would get only about ten percent.
Mercedes Conrad was never once mentioned in the document at hand, nor were any of her children with Pierce, further proof that the will hadn’t been updated in a while. The rest of the Pierce Senior’s wealth was to be distributed evenly between the only other people he pretended to care about: his brother (Joseph Conrad) and his wife (Elizabeth Conrad).
The following week I was invited to attend Pierce Senior’s funeral, so I could pay my respects to one of my longest returning customers. The day before the funeral, I stopped by the dry-cleaner’s to have one of my better suits cleaned (I needed to look my best since about ninety percent of my clients would be attending), and through all our small-talk the obese man stationed at the register and I began discussing the death of Mr. Conrad, as he tends to obsess over rumors.
I figured this man worked here full time, he was almost always here whenever I came in. He looked to be about thirty-eight to forty years old, and like he was never not on drugs. The smell of the air around him was always pungent with that cigarette scent that probably gives someone cancer from just thinking about it, his eyes were bloodshot and drowsy, and his white polo was littered with food stains and splotches of sweat.
“This whole thing is a legal nightmare,” I said shaking my head.
“How so?” I could see the curiosity glimmer in the man’s eyes contrasting the dark bags sagging below. He was the type of man who lived off of rumors, being almost as addicted to gossip as he was heroin.
“Well, there’s this whole suspicion-of-foul-play thing.”
“Really? I heard he drove himself off the bridge, man.”
“That could be possible, however, he was found tied to his jet-ski on the bottom of the river, which doesn’t exactly sound like suicide material. At least, to me it doesn’t.”
“Woah! All I heard was that he was found in the river. Nobody’s said anything about a friggin’ jet-ski! That’s crazy!”
“I guess news like this doesn’t really travel as fast as they say these days.”
“Guess not,” he said as he held up my suit wrapped in plastic between his flubby fingers. I could tell that he wanted to discuss it more, but I needed to be on my way, so I grabbed the suit from him and handed over a few bills to pay the costs. I nodded and headed towards the door, stopping a moment to say my farewell, hoping he wouldn’t shout out any other questions.
Outside the building I saw the newspaper in the machine had a story on Pierce Senior’s death on the front page, but they didn’t have any mention of the jet-ski either. I may have just accidentally started a rumor there, but the news was going to reach people eventually anyway, so where’s the harm?
I threw open the back door to my Volkswagen and hung my clothes on the ceiling hook, making sure to keep them out of the doorway before I slammed it shut. The traffic at the time was slim, the lunch rush had yet to come into town, so the ride back to my house was smooth and unobstructed by the typical gridlock of cars that usually jam up Main Street.
After a quick stop at my house to change my clothes, I headed to the Johnson Funeral Home on Third Street (often confused with the one on Seventh Street of the same name). Once inside the home, I headed over to where I saw Pierce Conrad Junior standing near the coffin.
“This must be hard on you,” I greeted him (as you can see I was never the best at consoling, so I always fell back to the cliche).
“Well, that, and the company stock isn’t doing so well either,” I wasn’t expecting such an apathetic reply, perhaps he was just being humorous to cover up his feeling about the death of his father.
“Stocks tend to take a hit when the company’s owner passes, I suppose.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll recover from this soon, we don’t want what happened back in—,” our small talk was cut short when Pierce’s jaw dropped, he had only just noticed his ex-wife, Marcella, entering the room. “What is she doing here?” the disgust in his voice was increasingly obvious.
“Who? Her? She must be here to comfort her sister, this must have been quite a devastating loss for Mercedes,” I could barely keep myself from grinding my teeth, who honestly has the audacity to show up to the funeral of someone they probably killed just to flaunt about it in the family’s face?
“Oh, no, I’m sorry for your loss, this must be hard on you,” she said with a slightly too cheery and slightly condescending tone. Obviously she was equally as bad at this comforting thing (plus, she took all my good lines!).
“Marcella, what in the hell are you doing here?” Pierce was already at the point of barking, the two of them hadn’t talked much since the divorce, and he was on edge every time.
“Why, I’m just here to comfort my poor little sister.”
Totally called it, I thought to myself.
“Since when did you ever care about any of your family?”
“That hurts, Pierce, that really hurts, you are the one who cheated on me with my own sister, and here you are lecturing me about ‘caring’.”
“Maybe that was just because your sister isn’t a psychotic b**** like you.”
“Wow, harsh!” she retorted bluntly and at about a hundred decibels, they both just stood there glaring at each other, both looking ready to pounce, I hadn’t felt tensions this high since last time I tried bungee jumping.
“That’s all you have to say?” Pierce was over the edge now, his face boiling in a deep red comparable to that of his Ferrari. While he and his father never had the best of relationships, this was the last thing he wanted to deal with at his own dad’s funeral.
Of course, I also disliked her and at this moment figured a catalyst wouldn’t hurt, so I threw in a fitting little anecdote: “You know, Pierce, just last week she was asking about where all your father’s wealth would go if he died. I’m no police detective, but it looks to me that she could be after the money.”
“Huh, like I would do such a th—” Marcella’s response was ended as Pierce’s fist met with her face. I knew I could trust him to be as compulsive as ever in this situation. Punching her once was not enough to ease his irritation, after she fell to the ground, he continued by stomping on her chest only moving on to kicking her in the head once he was sure he had caved her rib cage completely in.
Chaos erupted throughout the venue, women screaming and covering their children’s eyes as several men pulled out their phones to report the incident. Crowds of people began to shove each other out of the way trying to escape the gruesome scene. I, however, had seen this coming and was already halfway out the double doors of the funeral home, trying to avoid being trampled by reaching the safe haven that was my little sports car.
Fleeing the scene of a crime may be illegal, but hey, nobody was going to notice one lawyer escaping with the rest of the horrified masses. Plus I was sure the cops would have no trouble at all trying to find eyewitnesses to question about this whole conflict, and all I wanted was to get out of my now blood-stained clothes, maybe take a shower and relax for once.
Driving home this time wasn’t nearly as smooth as I had hoped it would be, every thirty seconds I had to pull over to let the police or an ambulances pass by. At least they were going a decent forty-five miles per hour, so none of them noticed that I was covered with what I would have told them was fruit punch. Something like three hours of driving later and I had finally reached my house.
My next visit to the dry-cleaner’s, a day or two later, was significantly more awkward than the previous. The same man was still working the register looking as high as ever when I got there, face gleaming with curious intuition, however, this time he wasn’t as trying as aggressively to lean the conversation to anything about the recent deaths. His silence was probably due to the clothes I handed him having large splotches of now dried blood.
“So… have you heard about Ms. Whitlock?” he asked nervously.
“Yeah, she’s one of my clients.”
“Uhh… do you know what happened to her?”
“I heard something about her being beaten by someone…” I trailed off, not wanting to discuss it too much, at least not enough to incriminate myself.
“That’s what I heard! And guess who they say did it!” he became excited again, as he did every time he was able to talk about his beloved rumors.
“Pierce Conrad Junior?”
“Holy cow, you know! Dude, you are so informed about this stuff!”
“Well I am their lawyer…” I realized I should probably stop talking before I say anything that might start one of those rumors about me. “Anyway, I really need to get going, call me when my clothes are done being cleaned.”
“Well, okay dude,” he continued on with his usual droning voice. He might have meant to say more, but I was already rushing out the door, trying to avoid all the suspicion that might arise if I discussed anything further with him. Though, I don’t think I would have had to worry too much, the guy lives off of rumors, he doesn’t make them up himself.
I walked into my office with a sigh, this was going to be a long night of filling and filing forms. I slouched down into my chair, and combed my hand through my hair, while rotating my chair towards my desk. Work, work, nothing but work, avoid everything else and just get this all done. I tried focusing, but there was beginning to be a bit too much on my mind for this, I really needed to calm down. Another cup of coffee helped a small amount, but caffeine isn’t the best for focusing on legal papers.
My eyes were slowly shutting themselves, though I kept forcing them back open, shifting from one fifty-page-packet to the next. This work either got done tonight, or I would have to spend the rest of my life trying to catch up with the paper trail. Eventually, dozing off became the only option, I couldn’t focus for the life of me, but just as I finally began to drop out of consciousness, I heard the chime of the bell on my front door. Who could possibly need legal counseling at three in the morning? Just as I finished running that question through my mind, it was answered.
Clark Whitlock walked in, shirt soaked with red up to the collar, dripping puddles of blood as he limped further into my office. “Uhh…” I droned, both because I was tired, and because I had absolutely no idea how to respond to this.
“Hey, Greg, you got a minute?” he said in a perfectly normal, conversational tone.
“Umm… depends… does it involve blood?”
“Well… sorta—”
“Nope, not in the mood for this,” I cut him off, slamming my face into my desk in an attempt to ignore him, because I was in the least tolerant mood: tired. Clark was Marcella and Mercedes’ younger brother, who was in the asylum for the past five years after killing his own father. As I am the lawyer of the guy married to his sister, he came to me to defend him in the case, and I claimed insanity which was, of course, proven within five minutes (he showed up to the hearing wearing the uniform of one of the guards and driving the police van… into the courtroom).
“Come on man, I just need a little advice and I’ll be on my way.”
“Clark…” I began, face still planted in my desk, trying to think of a good way to say this. “Unless you are actually being chased by the police, right now, I don’t give a s***.”
“Heh, funny you say that, because—” he was unable to finish his sentence as the wailing of police sirens and screeching of tires were too loud to hear him over.
“Clark, what the actual f—!” I lifted my head up to yell, only to be cut off myself by the warning gunshots and muffled yelling of an officer through a megaphone. “Okay… so, are you going to tell me who you killed then?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, but given our situation, I can try to cut it short.”
“Go on.”
“Well, as you may know, the Conrad family has a family of very loyal servants.”
“Okay…” I said with a worried tone, I already had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say next.
“This family, the Sergants, has been serving the Conrads for several generations, and currently there’s two of those generations living in a separate house on the estate. Elizabeth asked me to bring a message to Jeeves, the current head of the Sergant family.”
“Wait, why would she send you to give her servants a message, can’t she just call them or something?”
“You see, she said this was a very private matter that she didn’t trust to discuss over the phone, she thought that at this point every phone in the house could be tapped, and who knows about the walls.”
“Okay, so what happened when you brought the message to Jeeves?”
“I killed him.”
“Uh huh… and is that why a SWAT team is currently surrounding us?” By this time there were laser targets hovering all over the room. The banks of police squads outside the window were doubling up by the Special Forces vans.
“Partly, yes. They might also be here because they realized they were never even supposed to let me out in the first place.”
“I thought we got you down to five years in an asylum.”
“You could say that, or you could say a few well-placed bribes got me down to that. Either way you look at it, we still have to deal with the situation at hand. Now, my plan involves a few theatrics, including a small kitten and a stolen fire truck.”
“That sounds great and all, but how do you plan on stealing a giant red fire engine in the middle of this mess!?” Just as I finished shouting those last few words at him, the wall beside me caved in as a massive truck smashed through. I of course was shocked to the point where I could barely get myself to follow Clark, and as per his plan, the SWAT team was too surprised to fire at us as we both hopped into the cabin seats and floored it through the wall on the opposite side of my office, except for the trigger happy fellow who shot thirty or so rounds into the air in a panic. “I get what you were saying about the truck, but what was that about a cat?”
“Kitten, to be precise, and she should be rounding the corner any minute now…” he began trailing off as we both watched a calico kitten, weighed down by a few pounds of C4, waddle her way around the corner of the building. This was truly the work of someone who should have been serving a more liberal term in a much higher security asylum than Clark had been, and as far as pleading innocent to this, well… I can’t even defend him in court because at this point I’m an accomplice.
“Clark, would you mind explaining just how you pulled all of this together in such a short amount of time?”
“Heh, I just grabbed things as I ran, really. The cat was a trained show cat from birth, so I just had to teach her to run towards any loud noises, that being this truck here.”
“Yeah, I get that… but how did you trigger the truck to smash through at that moment?” Instead of just answering me straight up, he took his hand off the wheel and jammed it in his pocket, from which he retrieved a trigger mechanism.
“This little buddy. I rigged the truck on top of the hill behind your office, shifted it into neutral propped against a rock, and set some explosive to knock the rock out of the way,” he explained in a exhilarated tone. He was so preoccupied with finally being able to explain his brilliant scheme that he didn’t notice the truck slowly veering off of the thin country road.
The last I saw of anything before I was knocked out, was the light of the high beams reflecting off of the small group of deer in the ditch beside the highway.
“Mr. Wilson, are you feeling any better? We had to give you some morphine to keep the pain low, but overall you didn’t sustain much damage. Only a couple of toes on your left foot suffered any form of injury.”
“Oh, uh… how long was I out?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t missed any of the cases that have been piling up recently.
“About three hours.”
“What? Wait, what time is it?”
The doctor glanced down at his rather cheap looking watch. “It’s about six twenty in the morning. As I said earlier, only your toes were injured, it shouldn’t be too surprising that it’s taken such a short time for you to wake up. If you were worried about anything it should be the DNR, you two took out more deer in one crash than most hunters do a season.”
“So… how long until you can let me out.” I was actually pretty anxious to be released. I had almost forgotten when going through all the paperwork the night before, that Marcella’s trial was supposed to be today. Granted, Marcella wouldn’t be attending do to the fact that she recently deceased.
“As soon as your insurance runs through, you should be good to go.”
I pushed myself up with my arms to continue our conversation, but part way through the expression on the doctor’s face turned to one of horror. Not knowing what it was he was responding to, I promptly ceased my ascent. “Umm… what’s wrong?” I asked him worriedly.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but there appears to be a blinking red light reflecting off your back. Considering who you were found with, I believe it may very well be a bomb.” I rotated my neck very slowly, until I could just see down my back.
“I don’t see anything that could be its source,” I said, worrying more and more with time.
“Perhaps it’s attached to your pants or something,” the doctor replied, shaking in fear of his own life. I began pushing myself further, in hopes that I could see the potential explosive. I propelled myself up off of the hospital bed, and brushed myself off with the backs of my hands.
“Let’s see…” I began, looking around myself for anything suspicious. “Still don’t see anything.”
“Try checking your pockets.” I felt around my front pockets, nothing. I reached around to my back pockets and found a rounded rectangle there. I eased my hand into pocket, grasping the object which felt a little too familiar to be any explosive device.
“Oh, it’s just my cellphone,” I said realizing that it was, in fact, merely my phone. The red flashing was merely an alert to tell me that I had a message, I chuckled with relief once I had noticed.
“Well, that was worrisome,” said the doctor, voice still shaking as he had yet to calm down from what he had thought would be the end of us both.
“My entire night has been like this. Clark seriously does belong in an institution.”
“Speaking of which, the police came by earlier to pick him up. He barely had a scratch on him, so they planned on taking him in right away.”
“That’s pleasant to hear. I could have died because of that guy,” I said while still laughing a bit. I glanced at my much more expensive looking watch to check the time: 6:40am, I needed to be leaving soon if I wanted any chance to shower before the court case at nine. “Anyway, I’ll be off if you don’t need anything else from me.”
“You should be fine,” he checked his tablet to make sure, “yup, your insurance came back fine, so you’re in the clear.”
I dropped a “thanks” on my way out the door which the doctor held open for me with his white scrubs clad arm. The wind outside flowed through the door as it was open, flapping the loose sleeve of his coat back and forth in a wing-like movement, and as much as he tried to hold it in, I could see the doctor was extremely irritated by this as I passed by him on my way out to the street.
A deep sinking feeling overtook me as I looked through the five or six parking spots in front of the downtown clinic. I had forgotten that I had not driven myself there, but had been sped in by an ambulance. I shifted my weight over to my left leg and pondered what to do about this for a moment. The most logical solution would be to call a cab, and so I whipped out my little old Nokia and swiped the ‘Unlock’ bar.
I noticed, once more, that I had a message, the cause of that red scare earlier. Seeing as I wasn’t in too much of a hurry, I clicked the green button to listen to the message:
Greg, listen up, it’s me Clark! So the police were dragging me away to the asylum or station or wherever, when suddenly out of nowhere this random guy shows up and starts attacking the squad car. I didn’t get a clear view of his face, but apparently he’s wanted for some six hundred criminal charges, like top of the national wanted list type stuff. Anyway, the cops all jumped out and started chasing him! I, of course, took this brilliant opportunity to escape. Some other stuff happened and I really need your help right now, so could you meet me by the Johnson Funeral home?
Clark… of course he found some way to get away from the police, and was now off somewhere causing a ruckus. As usual, he was begging for my help, but how could I? For one, he didn’t even say which Johnson Funeral Home. For another, I had more important matters to attend to. I moved my phone away from my ear and flipped through the contacts list, trying to find the cab company, which I eventually reached after about seven minutes of scrolling (easily enough time to have walked over to my office where my car should still be). The cab company was called ‘Zzzzooming Cabzzzz’, so it made sense that it was on the bottom of the tax-form-long list of my address book.
I scooted down and brushed off a small area of the curb, loosening my neck-tie and relaxing a bit before my cab arrived. I leaned back pushing my arms behind me to keep myself from falling and tilted my head back to enjoy the full extent of the cool breeze in this deathly hot summer (say what you want about summer, but anything above seventy is just too hot for me). I slowly started losing consciousness, drifting off into the dream world, when the honk of the ever so impatient cab woke me up.
Using the cab door handle to help myself up, I jumped up off the curb. I swung open the door and slid into the back seat in one, smooth, cat-like motion, aside from my tie mysteriously latching onto the door, dragging it with my and slamming into my hand. I pushed the door away from my hand and, after pulling my hand out of the way, closed the door.
“Where to?” shouted the driver in a stern you-are-taking-to-long-to-get-in type of tone.
“Uh… On sixth street… on the corner with Maple Avenue,” I peered into the driver window and saw none other than the ‘prodigal son’ Pierce Conrad III. He was the first child of Pierce Conrad Junior and Mercedes Whitlock, the one Piece had while still married to the late Marcella Whitlock. His hair was just the same as his father’s: crew cut, brown, and just a dash of spiking gel on the front. Of course, he was wearing the generic cabby getup rather that his father’s traditionalist pinstripe suits. At this young age of twenty-four, he was already divorced and paying child support for his six-year-old daughter, Miranda Devereux. “So how’s… things, Pierce?” I asked, trying not to hit a sensitive spot.
“You, know, same old, same old. Scraping by on this s* f** cab job just so I can pay the f** child support and use whatever the f* is left over to f**** try to pay my motherf*** rent for my s*a** apartment!” The car was going about forty-five miles per hour by now, and this was in a twenty-five zone. The other signs that I had still hit a nerve, even though I tried to avoid it, were numerous: he was clenching the wheel so hard that his veins were starting to look more like something that would scare the hell out of Indiana Jones, his teeth were clenched to unhealthy levels, his forehead was wrinkled, his face was a deeper red than a tomato, et cetera, et cetera.
“Alright, sorry for asking,” I threw up my arms while I tried apologizing and calming him down. Not sure if it was what I was planning, but he didn’t say a word for the rest of the ride, even forgetting to charge me for the trip in his anger while kicking me out about a block north from the corner I requested.
This isn’t the worst that’s happened to me, I calmly reminded myself as I trudged my way to my mansion that was around three city blocks away (I always ask the taxis to drop me off a block or two away so they don’t know where I live). I was back to the dozing off, as well, and beginning to walk a lot like a zombie or whatever pop culture creature has no brains these days… which might as well be pop culture itself. The extreme pain in my hand from the cab door was the only factor that was for keeping me awake as the rest of my body begged for more rest.
“All rise!”
I was leaning back in my chair, half asleep with drool dripping onto my suit, when the judge called for the beginning of the hearing. As I was nearly unconscious, I wasn’t the most attentive person in the room, and almost completely ignored my surroundings until the judge shouted: “Mr. Wilson, are you going to rise or am I going to have to send someone to do it for you!?”
“I might as well not be here, my client isn’t even alive anymore.” I snapped sarcastically, still trying to force myself out of the sleeping state,
“What was that, Mr. Wilson?”
“Nothing, your highness,” the cynic in me only seems to come out this strong when I’m tired as a beached whale. I don’t even remember what happened over the next few hours, as I pretty much either slept or winged my way through it. Whatever happened must have been really important, because all I know about it is that everyone in that room died by the time I was fully conscience.
It isn’t too preposterous to assume that it was Clark that did all of this, he was on another one of his crime sprees so there isn’t much to say that could disprove that idea. There was even his trademark absurdities in the deaths. I would go into further detail, however I can’t even come think of some of the evidence that it was him without almost losing my lunch like an alpaca.
The only significant note about the scene of an obvious massacre, that didn’t include genitalia, was the blindfolds on everybody’s eyes with blood running down their left cheeks, and obvious joke about the ‘blind justice’ idea. That was proof enough for me to conclude right there and then that this was all Clark’s doing, because not a single other psychopath in the world would put that much time and effort into desecrating the bodies of his victims.
Well, if you would call it an important side-note that also backs up that theory: I was alive. and Clark had never really tried harming me per say (just as a cat never really tries to harm her kittens when picking them up by their necks, but this cat has four inch fangs covered in hydrochloric acid). Regardless of who did all of this, I needed to flee. As I said earlier, this is illegal, but seriously, even in the event that they did need an eyewitness, I was asleep the whole time so I wouldn’t be of any help.
I limped out the swinging doors of the courtroom, after finding that my right leg was strained; I must have fallen out of my chair or Clark must have missed when hitting someone, something I definitely would not put past him. As usual, I was too lazy out to walk home, while not tired anymore because my nice five hour nap, so I tried calling a cab, once again.
The only taxi driving down the street I was on was the legendary Cab #42, Pierce Conrad III’s cab. Mentally bracing myself for whatever rant he might come up with this time, I waved my hand to signal I wanted a ride, to which the car immediately pulled over and rolled down the left side window.
“Greg!” I heard the driver shout, but it wasn’t Pierce’s angry holler, it was another familiar voice. I leaned over to peer through the opened window to see the one person whom I was completely sick of even saying the name of.
“Clark, what the f*** are you doing in Pierce’s taxi?” I questioned while shaking my head.
“Well, when you didn’t answer my message, I figured you must be busy with some boring legal thing, so I went to find you. As it turned out, I was right, it was a boring legal thing, and to make it less boring I spiced it up with a little joke about law, you did notice the blind justice thing right? Anyway, I also thought you might want a ride home, since you dislike blood and all… in hindsight killing Pierce Conrad III and leaving him in the back seat doesn’t really work with saving you from seeing blood… doesn’t matter. Hop in!” He rambled this entire spiel in his typical light speed manner, not letting me respond to anything before moving on to some other insane idea.
“No.”
“C’mon, Greg, you know you want to.”
“Clark… I just want to go home and relax, can you please just leave me alone?”
“Well… f*** you too, Greg,” he grimaced and floored the little taxi, barely avoiding the Tesla parked in front of him, leaving a skid mark about the length of the average anaconda along the road. The blinking red lights of the back of the taxi were mildly concerning, last time I saw such a light it was just my phone, but there were at least twenty on the cab. It took only a few short moments before my fears were realized, a massive explosion down the street sent several cars about thirty feet into the air. As with any explosion, it was the shrapnel that was deadly, and several large pieces of glass were flying in my direction…
END.