Chapter 20 - Snap - Part I
In the end of all things, the murder investigation was leading towards a structure of some kind, and that was what had did her in. It masked identifying who had actually killed her. I was now torn. Because in traditional circumstances, I had someone I could hope to lay my hands on at the end of the path, if I got that lucky.
But here. Even if I identify and get the person that actually did the deed itself? I also got the person issuing the order. Who is in all actuality, more to blame than the person who does the deed with their own hands. The whole thing's a mess. I'm frustrated. I'm pissed.
I'm approaching some kind of breakdown of some kind. I prescribed myself a whole cc intravenously to combat the temporary waves of depression and anxiety. Which helps, make no mistake about it. If an addict shooting up with morphine or heroin lays around once the drug hits them good? Mine has me sitting calm when it overtakes me. Its as if all body responses are shut down.
Its impossible to keep a perfectly steady amount of any medication in your blood stream. You add some, your body metabolizes it. It goes up and down, like rounded off saw teeth, were you to chart blood availability of the drug in your system over time. You seek to be constantly over and under your desired state.
If I have an attack, such as now? A depressive state stronger than usual settles in. I can dispel it, with an extra cc of the magic juice. I slowly go up and level off with the additional intravenous dosage added.
I even have a medical backup plan, for if everything goes completely to hell. Drugs administered for psychiatric purposes like mine, can turn on you in a heartbeat. They all have side effects, though they are getting better over the years. If I were to suddenly develop one of these rare side effects? I have an emergency alternate medication to shoot up with.
Medications can turn on you in ways other than dangerous side effects. They can slowly or even suddenly confuse or derange you. Its not impossible for a medication to go from working, that is to say... calming the patient and putting them at ease? And suddenly your safe happy shot brings on voices and feelings that are new and terrifying. You run to your medication? It just gets worse.
These are the people that run out one day dressed like... whatever they dress up as, and... you find them jumping from hood of car to hood of car.
If something were to go awry with me? When we were trialing exactly which medication to use to calm me at the beginning of this, a backup was picked. It made me too lethargic, and we went with the other one that I tolerated better. But. If I were in danger of the neighbor's cat sending me on a weird mission? The extra "lethargy" of a stiff dose would prevent me from acting out some strange thought or feeling that could wash over me.
Last thing I want? Is to be the naked wild animal, that the police need to catch with nets in a busy intersection.
Mercifully? This hasn't come to pass. I tolerate this medication I use fairly well. Only the most routine of side effects do I notice. Dry skin is one of them, and the other seems to be a sort of humming noise in my ears that comes and goes. Sounds like machinery spinning at speed.
High testosterone people, a segment of mainly the male population? Are at risk for a few things from this medication, but I was tested and have thoroughly normal T for a man my age.
As I'm sure I've said before, when all you possess is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I pretty much only have a hammer in my toolbox to handle any handyman situation that comes up with my condition. Hell, I even have backup bigger hammer waiting, in case the first hammer doesn't work for whatever reason.
The depression came on like a black cloud, and it will pass like any dark cloud. This dark cloud rained, and whipped up into a storm. During a bad attack? You end up in the fetal position in pieces. I've been on the floor like that for a day at a time before. I recognize it. I take it until it becomes clear, that this is no dark cloud passing through, nor a quick drizzle.
When a depressive attack is bad? You feel crashing waves of emotional torment washing over and through you. Its hard to describe to someone who hasn't experienced anything close to it. Here's the best way I can describe it to a newbie.
Imagine getting the worst news ever. You're reduced to a hot crying mess, and its understandable. Given the news you just received, it makes perfect sense. Now. At the height of your screaming crying fit? Blowing hot snots down your nose, face contorted in wracked agony. At the very zenith of this great purge?
Imagine the machinery in your body gets "stuck" at the point of the apogee of this hysterical fit. Like a car with the throttle stuck down. And just like a stuck throttle? The engine revs up dangerously. That's what its like. The gas pedal of your crying fit gets "stuck" at the height of full blown spell. It lasts? As long as it lasts.
Your pulse shoots up not quite as bad as a true panic attack, but its up there. I'm athletic, I work out and I'm in shape. I'm not in danger of a heart attack. To my heart, its like a long run.
When the gas pedal breaks driving the car, and gets stuck at full throttle? You might have the presence of mind to do something, in your sudden panic. Anything. In a standard? Push the clutch in, at least just blow the engine and don't wreck. An automatic? Oh, shove it into Neutral. Once again, no wreck just the engine blows.
Probably the best thing to do, if you were on a straight stretch of road? Just turn the key off. As you quickly slow down with the engine off? Drift gently onto the shoulder of the road, and park it.
So. When it became clear that this was no passing dark cloud, it meant to turn into a bad spring storm? I took it long enough to be sure, then locked myself in my house. I took a quick bath, with tears streaming down my cheeks. Terrifying images passing in front of my eyes. I sat down in my boxers on the bed, and gave myself a full cc.
I sat there, and felt it. The warm feeling where I hit the fat and muscle tissue on the little shot. That odd warm and cold feeling both at once, that slowly grows like a shiver that won't disperse and envelops me. The gradual 20 minute slowing of my pulse and the speed of my thoughts and everything else along with it. Just when you're sure you've hit almost rest state slowing down? There's this weird spot. A sudden instantaneous flood of the depression, that within a second or two, lowers and dissipates.
Yeah, I'm leaving. But? I'll be back. See you again sometime.
I'm coming back down, after having treated a depressive episode in this exact fashion. Its all I have to work with, really. So, I'm sitting there not feeling much of anything at all. The extra juice, and sitting there letting it work its way into and around my systems.
What I sit in, is a profound though fake calm. A ladybug crawling on me in this state? Is likely to get looked at as much as flicked off. I was monitoring communications, more for something to do and background noise. Not intending anything to even be going on in the first place. I sat here for two days like this, with only short naps.
The short naps, the little sleeps. That's what is being chased after here. The human neurological system manages and even fixes itself? During deep sleep. I sat there for the better part of two days turning into three days, little naps lengthening. I have a tiny syringe in my kit, and I can administer less than 1/10th of a cc at a time with precision. I do that. Shooting for normal resting heart rate as my desired baseline? I let the fraction of a cc rise, work, then begin to fall. I track by pulse rate and time, and watch as the action rises and falls in slow motion. I see how long it takes that fraction of a cc to get used up.
Up front, its about seeing how bad of a depression storm is moving in. Seeing if you can take it, without resorting to the toolbox and the overused hammer. Once I start injecting though, it takes the wind right out of the depression's sails. As emotional reactions all one by one drop away, the depression has nothing to attack me with.
Its terrifying the first time or three, but you can get used to anything. I have it down to a science. Most of those couple days though, is taken up by a series of little naps, and the rest of that time is sitting around waiting. I need something to do. It has to use my hands a little bit repetitively, that produces a calming sensation. It has to occupy my thoughts, that produces another kind of calming sensation to go with the first one.
Reading and poking around on the internet works perfect for this. The automatic eye hand coordination of the little click, click, click operations. Reading, studying, learning. The bathroom murder scene photographs and movies that flash in front of my eyes? Slow and return to what they're supposed to be. The now and again of trauma induced PTSD. Not the locked in the movie theater feeling, and the same clips are being played over and over with no intermissions.
I'm curious about people in my situation. Desperate. People at the end of their rope. People up against big stacked odds. I sometimes drift into and back out of what are called chat websites. Depression chat rooms where people gather and chit chat. They make signing on easy and automatic. Just click and type a screen name in, that's it.
You can go into basically two parts to the site. Chat about everything but? Or, chat about depression and other related problems. I went into everything but. I took a shine to this one poster, and they seemed to do it back. When I went to the bathroom and chatted that I wanted a shower and a bite to eat? They suggested meeting up again. We did.
You can sometimes find solace in strangers that you can't get to with friends, family, coworkers and peers.
"I want to read? But, I have to watch what I read when I'm like this. Sure you know what I mean."
My real but imaginary friend did what they had been doing, that so endeared themselves to me. They were some kind of free thinking, free spirit. They admitted, they can give advice way better than they can follow their own. My chat buddy went the other way with it, like they usually did.
"Really? Why not read what you want. If you've been filtering what you read when you have a spell? Not like it keeps the spells from coming. Read what interests you. Try it. You can always quit reading. But if you can't get reading, because you can't read what you feel like reading? I mean, that violates the first rule of reading. Its up to you, what you decide to read."
My chat friend described something they had done, battling depression for years. They described their feelings and situation as best they could, and searched to see what text would pop up from them and the way they described things.
We all have a million little tips and tricks to keeping our minds and emotions occupied until things feel better.
Thing was, though. I made a little less than one page of text, describing feelings and situations but not explicitly. It was an intense page out of a bigger story. You got my one page description out of context. I worked on it, and searched. And worked on it, and searched. Finally? Something popped up. Naturally, I read it.
It was a letter. A short one. Someone was going into a great battle in world war two, and didn't fully expect to make it back. They in fact hadn't made it back, almost all of them did die. This letter got hand delivered to family by an air crewman after his tour ended? As he had promised the man he took the note from.
He was afraid, he admitted it. But no more than he had been afraid and for a very long time now. He'd been putting up a good fight up until now, and he would continue to do so. The odds coming up though? No getting around that. The letter was to his infant son he would never see.
The calm bravery of his short letter. None of the loud, yelling bravado. Just, going to go do it, and... odds are we won't make it. It was very sobering to read for me, somehow. I touched my laptop screen. This man, now gone? Had lived through worse than I did. He saw more and saw worse than I did. But he didn't just go along and get along. No he hadn't. He jumped in and helped. He did all he could about it.
The notation said this was one of the men picked for one of the most important moments in the war. They were going to take a beach, and get a beachhead going. Over ninety percent of this man's large force sent in with endless others, got shredded on the German held beach.
They took that beach, though.
I can't explain how the combination of riding out my episode, and getting... what. Fascinated? With this piece of text. What it did. Just keeping myself busy, I idly went onto a literature site. There was a flurry on the public chat box there. Like a party line, anyone checking onto the website that was a regular would say something or even talk for a while in the chat box.
I dropped a link to what had impressed me, and we gabbed a little about it. Someone quickly named it. It was called a last stand. They noted that the concept of a last stand? Was very dramatic. Last stands have happened in real life, and they make for interesting plot devices. So Hollywood keeps putting heroes into last stands.
They were right, of course. I quickly found other last stand stories. I read a lot growing up, and most boys enjoy action and adventure stories. These last stands, were certainly right out of my pulp novels in my youth.
Enough people independently were so impressed by this one Viking, that they were inspired to describe him and his actions. Rare multiple accounts of his actions were judged to be accurate. In the Viking culture and time, cancer was known as "the wasting". They knew it ran in families, and that often enough what kills a grandfather and then a father? Will naturally befall the son.
In this big strong Viking's legacy? His grandfather fell in his prime, to the wasting. His father had fallen in his prime? To the wasting. The enemy was pouring into their land. They were banding up and riding out to meet them.
This Viking. Was in his prime, too. He had the start of the wasting.
He knew his time had come.
He cast off all his armor, and decided to hold a tiny bridge, over a swollen spring creek that would drown men and horses and carry carts away. He held a huge force down. All morning and afternoon and almost into the night, before they finally brought him down. He bought a precious whole day for more reinforcements to band up and pour in, enough to put a stop to the invasion.
These men were the stuff legends were fashioned from.
The 300 at Thermopylae. Just like that Viking, they located a great choke point and exploited it. It will cost you your life to make a last stand though, and that's why its even call a last stand. Its the last thing you will do. Its even worked into our speech patterns. This is the hill I intend to die on? Means that its your final choice, and your mind can't be changed now.
Hero, is just a word we made up to describe a person that accidentally lives through a last stand.
Getting onto almost the third day of coming out of this state that I can manage with some time and some privacy, a soft voice came out of the speaker on my little scanner. The soft beep that sounds after every transmission? Tells me that its on my alert channel.
My attack is long over by now, almost three days in. I'm rested, I'm chemically relaxed. I have basically no emotional response, to anything. I've come through the storm, and can let the rise in medication that got me through it, now fall again. Recede back down to what I think of as my baseline.
My alert channel? That tone after every scanner speaker back, that reminds me. Hey, you were looking for this channel, you know. That's the extra channel. The one they used that night they... wow.
With chemically frozen feelings, but full logic faculties about me? I listened. It sounded identical to the night they had hit that house. I had already noticed, that this extra channel? Wasn't even a real channel. Their little slice of radio channels they were given to use for their own purposes, was from A to B. From frequency A to frequency B, was a certain distance. It was a chunk of a whole band.
Fully outside that band, located as they were near the end of it. They were just using a channel. Any CB user? Would think of this situation as someone using channel 57 on the CB... that only goes up to channel 40.
My state I'm in? Very unique. My system is devoid of any normal emotional response. I'm fully capable of going out and doing nearly anything, physically. Emotionally though, I'm simply not here. In terms of feeling or experiencing an emotion for the time being? The lights are on but no one's home.
The dirty county drug task force female. Her and her merry little band of sweethearts. They're going out, to do it again. Its been a couple months. Using this period of time as a guide, I can imagine how many times a year they do this. They wait for a big score, then they take it. It has to be enough to make it worth their while.
Be logical. It has to be enough money and drugs? That you bring more than one big gear bag to haul away the booty. It has to be enough, to lure this team in. I saw her take the gear bag into the clubhouse, to home base for the illegal activities of the family. She's a new and major source of intermittent funding now. No telling how much drugs and money she hits every couple months for.
Me and my investigator realized, once the disco light show of gunshots at the windows in the distance faded. This was where a corrupt governor could get a hold of a kilo of hot cocaine from, and toss a legendary campaign win party. It wasn't just the cocaine for those volunteers in attendance, either. They were solid soldiers to their cause now. They were inner circle now. The system was encapsulating them and bringing them into the amoebic blob that was our political system.
This, or something just like this? Was likely the source of the couple million dollars always infused into his own personal campaign's late hour of darkness.
I'm up against a system. A machine. I'm listening to the part of the system that sucks in resources. Here, money and drugs. Whatever else the machine does, this is what it runs on. Money. You attack the resource gathering, you defeat the machine. Like turning the valve under your motorcycle tank? Its not immediate, but soon enough the engine slows and starts sputtering. Out of gas. That's what I could do, with surgical precision. Simply shut off the valve between the tank and the engine, and stand back and watch for sputtering.
And really, the state I'm in? Its the exact wrong moment to pull this. I'm feeling for two days, like I'm up against tall odds. That its suicide to go up against it. But, its a last stand. I'm looking for the best choke point to get myself greased in, that I can cost the enemy as much as possible. Get the most bang for my buck, so to speak. I'm not throwing my life away cheap. I'm raising the price of it.
I'm going to cost you.
I ended up reading some very dark last stand material. One was a lengthy manifesto. The one man account, released after he had gone and done his deed he had set out to do. He witnessed a horrific crime. It was yet again another Muslim attack on white Europeans. A lunatic with a beard and a turban, ran down human beings in a frenzy. A precious little pre-teen girl was exploded into pieces of carnage, and he fixated on the horror of it.
The manifesto author named the young female victim, and he repeated her name several times over and again throughout the manifesto. Her name? Was Abbe Lundaker. The author of the manifesto, practically dedicated his act, to her. He drew her name on his primary battle rifle he carried into his attack. For Abbe? Became all but a battle cry for him.
He laid out his case, in his somewhat lengthy manifesto. Almost eighty pages, and it was no meandering insanity. Abbe's case had touched him personally, but it made him realize what was going on. Muslims? Were attacking him and his tribe, just for being themselves. The crime? You're white western Europeans, living peacefully in your home land. For that, I will attack you viciously there, on your own soil.
Abbe as a victim transfixed him, then he saw the giant conflict that it was all a part of. Literally thousands of attacks, all across Europe. All terror acts committed by fervent Muslims. Against? Well, it seemed that simply any white western European is fine for a victim, and will do in a pinch. Men, women, children, pets, old people. There was no taboo on victims.
This man? Decided what the hell. He? Would attack them. In their own mosque somewhere. He found a mosque that had radicalized people later taken into custody on battlefields and after terror attacks. He did back to them? What they did. He armed himself to the teeth, and walked right into a mosque... and just started shooting people, like fish in a barrel. He actually ran his camera live, online. People were waiting in case he actually went through with it? And copied and saved the live footage.
He marched like an insane god of war through a Mosque for long minutes, slaughtering everyone in his path, ruthlessly. On a helmet camera, to watch and hear everything, first person. It was horrific? But if you read his 80 odd page manifesto, he explains it quite rationally, and it makes perfect sense.
All the thousands of Muslim attacks on white western Europeans, living peacefully in their own homelands. Innocence defined. He would do? The exact same thing back. In the end, before he was caught alive... he got just over 50 of them in his attack. He freely gave up his own life, and finished his part in the game? 51 to 1 is a pretty big win. His expressly stated attitude? You can only kill me once. And I'm in such a state obsessed on seeing that sweet little Abbe's obliterated carcass? Its a mercy killing when you finally get me.
His words and attitude resonated with me. Any novella has its big sentences and repeated phrases, for emphasis. His did as well. Two of them I liked.
If not me? Who.
If not now? When.
And just like that? He went off for several months of self training and traveling and introspection. He located a suitable mosque that had radicalized captured extremists, and exterminated all the faithful at services inside the day he arrived.
When you take all emotional responses out of the equation? The man was right.
Yeah, when you take it all in? It was the exact wrong night and time to let me hear the quiet radio peeps that told me they were going out to do their thing. After the first time, I'm not shocked at all. I can now hear it in their radio voices. No official cross talk. On what I now realize is an out of band and wholly invented channel. You hear many tiny breezes on fine sunny days? But only a few of them lead to bad storms. I know I'm listening to one such seemingly gentle breeze.
I was sitting at the foot of the bed, which puts me at my laptop station. I simply relocated to the other side of the bed. I have stuff laid out, for any encounter if it came to that. I've been more or less preparing for war, without a specific battle in mind.
I had hours. I took my time gearing up.