Making Life Worth While
Written by Christopher J Archuleta
Copyright 2014 Christopher J Archuleta
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
CHAPTER ONE
Filled past maximum capacity was the parking lot behind my apartment complex. Two drunkards were brawling and not one single person called for help or alerted the police. The combatants, as well as the crowd, came from the tavern nearby. The Sun had already set that night, and the safety that accompanies daylight set as well. A small town called Pine Grove was where I used to live. With only 3,200 people in town, everyone knew each other. People from Pine Grove looked at me as if I belonged somewhere else. Well, I actually did want to live somewhere else. That town had a different way of thinking than I did.
Unless you’ve lost every single thing you have, wasting your life away with fighting is uncalled for. Since I’ve never held up one fist in public, everyone gave me nothing but silence. I was considered a faux pas despite the fact that the townspeople’s philosophy of fighting resulted in a bunch of beleaguered hospital workers. There was only one person in the entire town that liked me, whom I rarely saw. Special was she because she wasn’t violent to the point of stupidity either. This was because the entire town thought that violence was the answer. When the mailman used to come into the apartment complex, he looked confused as he stared into the second floor apartment where I used to live. The light brown, brick, two-story apartment was the same as all of the other ones in the complex, which is why I didn’t appreciate the mailman spending a lengthy time gawking into my window. Why me? Why my window? I knew exactly why, for when one person abhors another, there isn’t any confusion. I was glad I didn’t have him looking at me with his sorry face for long. He looked upon me with a superior pity, like how an amateur hunter stares at his kill until he enters a trance in which he ponders his ranking in the food chain. Then thinking about the bigger picture, he thinks about his position relative to the rest of mankind. Also, some guy who used to live across the street did the same thing as the mailman. Creepily, he would scope out my apartment as if he wanted to go inside. Like the mailman, the neighbor across the street saw me in an inferior manner. In short, I was surrounded by a lot of untrustworthy people.
Anyway, I didn’t call the police to stop the scuffle because they didn’t treat me right either. Until that one night, I didn’t care about not having any friends in town because I had all of my necessities. I didn’t think I needed anybody. My plan was to deal with anything that came my way. That was probably the worst plan ever. The reason is that the police were corrupt just as much as the town and I let that get in the way of making the fight cease, which started to become intense.
“Fight, come on, let’s see some blood!” one cheered.
Quickly enough, fists were being thrown. There was punching, kicking, blocking, butting of heads. Soon, one unlucky bystander got punched. As much as he deserved getting punched for cheering, he was hurt and not one person cared. Because no one helped him, I ran outside and quickly took the man back into my lonesome and dark apartment. Not one person even noticed that I got him from the ruckus.
Stiff was the harmed body that I put onto my small living room couch. He asked me for a bed, so I laid him on my bed in the bedroom. My hatred of the cops meant nothing when someone was in pain. They should’ve come quickly since they were only five blocks away. Once I called 911, I decided to go check on the victim. He seemed alright, so I went to go check the fight outside.
The two fighters were still attacking each other, and there was a little puddle of blood in the middle of the parking lot near the manhole. To my surprise, everyone left the scene. In the distance was the echoing sound of sirens approaching. Once the fighters heard the sirens, they ran off in separate directions.
I chased the fighter that I recognized as Henry Thornton. At 10:00 PM, it was hard to see him as he was sprinting north through the parking lot. He then made a swift diversion between two of the apartments. Worst of all, when I followed him out to the front street, the police were already leaving the apartment complex as if everything was said and done.
Without much energy, I raced across the street, then between two more apartments, and ended up at the entrance/exit that led from Main St. to the complex. The road went in a circle that went around the apartments, so I beat the squad of cop cars to the exit. I decided to flag the cops down. Without realizing it, I passed up Thornton, as he was behind me. Nonetheless, he eventually ran around me so I couldn’t capture him and he sped toward the busy road.
The squad approached me as I was trying to catch my breath. The first car’s window rolled down, which was when I realized I shouldn’t have called the cops. Benjamin Hollard was the officer that stifled with me the most. Our pasts were very dark before that moment, but this incident was about to beat them all. He looked at me with his blue eyes, but he swiftly put on his sunglasses. At nighttime, wearing sunglasses was unnecessary. Those glasses were meant to mask his eyes; the eyes that showed his true feelings about me that would explode like a caldera volcano that screams “I HATE YOU” if it weren’t for the glasses.
He asked, “What’s the problem? Why aren’t you in your home?” He seemed very upset. “Everything’s fine in your apartment.”
“No, everything is not fine in my apartment,” I said. “Didn’t you see the injured guy on my bed?”
“What guy are you talking about?”
“The one that”- screeching tires drowned out my voice as I glanced to my right to see a speeding white van without headlights on trying to slam the brakes. The vehicle was rushing toward Henry, who was in the middle of running across the street. The driver was slamming with all his might and was turning the wheel while Henry tried to stop himself, for they were on a collision course. This all happened within half of a second. Despite all of the efforts, they both reacted too late and Henry was brutally hit. From underneath a lamppost, I saw his ragdoll body fly 10 feet above the ground. Henry flew for sixty feet before landing onto the road back first. He slid further down the road once he landed from all of the momentum.
An ambulance came and Henry was taken away. I never found out, but I think he was pronounced dead that night. Meanwhile, the driver was being questioned. All of the police were across the street interrogating the driver, including the cops that I was talking to prior to the crash. After looking both ways, I crossed the street to talk to the police.
“Why weren’t your headlights on?” the sergeant asked the driver, who was without wrinkles but it seemed as if he would if it wasn’t for a plastic surgery. He was also making noticeable stutters while he was talking. On top of that, he kept rolling his eyes up into his head. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and smelled like one of the taverns down the road. He finally answered.
“Well-well-well, I-I didn’t think it was that-that-that dark outside. Cuz’ the streetlights are like-like this big!” He ran from one side of the road to the other, with arms held out to convey just how large and vivid the lights were to him. The sergeant handcuffed him and gave him his rights.
While the sergeant was shoving the drunk driver into the police car, I noticed Hollard doing nothing b
ut texting on his cell phone with a nonchalant attitude. I decided to tell him about the other fighter.
“Hey, Hollard?”
He put his sunglasses back on before looking at me.
“Yes.”
“The person that got hit was in a fight behind my apartment with a guy who ran toward the Barker cul-de-sac.”
“Now why didn’t you do anything about this, hmm?”
“Sir, that’s why I called the police, also, the reason I wasn’t at home was because I was chasing Henry down the road.”
“I see,” he said bluntly.
“Yeah, and a bystander got hurt.”
“Where is he at?”
“He’s in my bedroom.” Hollard’s face shriveled and he began to look dumbfounded.
He then told me, “He couldn’t be in your room because no one was in there. All that was in there was an open window, and I closed that.” Realizing I didn’t leave my window open, I decided to go back to the apartment. Alone, I walked across the street back into the complex. Something was up, and I had to figure out what was going on. While I was walking, my hands swished around in my pocket for my keys. When I got into my apartment, I raced to my room, but no one was in there like Hollard said. On my dresser was my money chest. Flickering lights in my closet were on too, dimly lighting up the bedroom. I went to the chest that I usually place on the windowsill. I already knew where that was going, but I had to find out for sure. I put it on the windowsill to make it look like another knickknack. I entered the valid code and opened the chest. Where $5,000 was once was then air, dust, and an envelope. I knew for a fact that there wasn’t supposed to be an envelope in there, so I ripped it open. There was a note inside which said:
Dear Travis,
Thanks for the money. Bill Bishop and I are going to split it. Guess you won’t be seeing him across the street in his window anymore.
From, ME
Within the note was not the vehement attitude one would expect from a person that broke into someone’s house and stole a great deal of money. On the contrary, there was sheer happiness in the letter. Whoever “ME” was, he or she found joy in committing the theft. Mentalities similar to this were not uncommon in Pine Grove. At the time, the only thing that hurt was that when someone noticed me, it was to use as a bridge to go from poor to rich. I was nothing except for the footpath on which feet trod upon that helped “ME” get a little extra spending money.
A bunch of saved up money was stolen from me, so I requested the police to search for the two who stole my money. They reluctantly agreed to do a “moderate endeavor in finding the thieves in Pine Grove”, nothing more. What caught my attention was the fact that they didn’t say “nothing less”. I knew in advance that they would do the latter of the two. Aside from that, there was something that bothered me even more. That was the fact that this incident was just one of many that caused me to make the decision to leave Pine Grove for good. Times weren’t always like that, but once they went south, they stayed south.
During the morning following the theft, the sergeant led a door-to door search through town. I requested to join, and the sergeant agreed. We went through town in the wee morning hours when the Sun was barely skimming the undulating morning clouds. They shone a bright orange red over the town, but soon faded as we went halfway through Pine Grove. While this was happening, Pine Grove police got ahold of the nearby town of Plainview. We asked for them to send their forensics team to search the apartment complex. They responded quickly, but with some disappointing news, for they told Pine Grove police that they were busy. At least, that’s what Benjamin Hollard told me. Hearing that from him made it seem a little fishy. Even hearing a message like that from the Plainview police themselves would have been fishy. In a town of 20,000 people, what are the odds that the Plainview police would already be occupied with a case? Either I had bad luck for being a victim of theft at the same time a crime in Plainview happened, or I had bad luck for having Hollard lie to me so much. Once again and to this very day, I believe the latter to be true.
We crossed the Temperate River, the river on which Pine Grove became a settlement in the first place, and went back to the police station.
“Well,” the sergeant told in a morose way, “not to be frank, but unfruitful searches like this lead us to one conclusion.”
Silence fell upon the sergeant, a few other officers, and me. I waited for his conclusion, knowing it would be inadequate as far as I was concerned.
“It’s done,” was plainly and simply muttered by the sergeant before he left me and the random cops alone.
The room we were in was the first room one entered if they were to use the main entrance. The walls were baby blue and a navy blue belt of paint lined all four walls at about waist height. On the ceiling, white was the dominant color. In the center of the ceiling, though, was a cap badge painted with the words “Town of Pine Grove”. A gold chandelier suspended from the badge cap and was what lighted the reflective floor with black shoes that were made of wood. All in all, the room was a cleverly conveyed police officer. Blue chairs lined the perimeter of the room and an open window was in the wall opposite of the entrance. An officer that obtained letters, complaints, and fines sat on the other side of the window. Officer Hollard emerged from behind the wall and grabbed the phone that was visible from the side of the window that I was on. From the place where I sat, I heard every word that came out of his mouth when he dialed the phone number.
“Hello,” Hollard said before listening to a long response that was muffled from where I was sitting.
“Yeah…uh-huh…oh no…really? You don’t say? Well, what is assured is that the search wasn’t inconclusive. …I’m sure of that. No. Not one person in town is a suspect. Yeah, he’s in the room right now. You want to talk to him?” He pulled the phone away from his ears and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hey, Travis,” he chastised, “you must’ve touched the box in your bedroom because now we can’t conclude whose DNA is whose. We got Smoke Lake to come all this way for nothing.”
I got up and called loud enough for the person on the other end of phone call to hear me, “Give me the phone. Let me talk to him.”
He hesitated, but gave me the phone anyway. He stood within hearing distance, but I didn’t care whether or not he stood across town or on top of me.
“Hello?” I called.
“Yeah, this is Officer Deshawn Brumin from the Smoke Lake Police Department, and the only evidence we could gather from the search was a hair follicle found on the bed. He was laid on the bed with red bed sheets, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, and as of right now, we’re finding out that he’s done multiple drugs and has been driving under the influence. Unfortunately, we have five possible suspects. Four of them have been under the radar for years, barely any information is known about them.”
“Okay.”
“Alright, can you give the phone back to Hollard?”
“Yeah, thank you.”
I gave the phone back to Hollard and left the backroom and entered the room that the entrance led to, where a bunch of police officers were still lingering. Even though I could believe that whoever did this wasn’t well-known by the authorities, how could there be five suspects? I thought that DNA was special to each person? At the time, I figured my DNA must’ve been mixed in with the hair follicle. As the policemen were talking, I contemplated about how in the world anyone could be so hurtful.
I wondered about the childhoods of those who ruined the childhoods of others. I wondered about why certain people had to experience events such as utter success and inconceivable tragedy that others didn’t. Between the paradises of the world, there were many differing places such as menacing places and places of poverty. Then, there was Pine Grove. Among the world, many oppositions fill hearts and waste time. Time, as planet Earth knows it, is limited. In fact, time is so limited that some say it doesn’t even exist. Racing through my brain were these thoughts even t
hough I failed to see what was unfolding in front of my eyes until it was almost too late.
“Hey, dude!” one of the police officers exclaimed.
“What?”
Everyone in the room started to run out of the building in terror. Shocked, I did nothing but sit there. I turned toward the window that showed the other room and saw Hollard trying to stop a fire in the room. Out of nowhere, the fire exploded and ambers flew out at Hollard. He ran out of door, ran past me, and fled out the door. I turned back and saw the fire as it was about to engulf me.