It's on. They all grab their gear. They all head out. It's morning. Early morning in a simple city. A large city, almost a nation in itself. Most of them are nothing more than children. Some are being driven by their parents. Why, a pair of grandparents are dressed as Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler! She makes for one fine Hitler. Where are they all going? And by all, I mean everybody.
Why, everybody's going to CITY HALL!
A massive crowd is sitting in front of City Hall. They're standing in front of it, dancing in front, clapping. Some quietly. Being quiet. Not a peep, otherwise. Not one word. So many people! And they're all holding signs.
Signs that are blank.
A representative for City Hall stands attentively just before the closed iron & oak doors. The police look bored. A giant of a man yawns, his sunglasses barely even rattle.
One woman, SOPHIA PILLAR walks up and through the crowd, those behind her grinning like dogs and they all pat her on the back. She stalks up the stairs, graciously with lanky limbs until she's higher than the crowd but on the same level as the representative and the law and the closed doors of City Hall.
She isn't wearing a costume. Her face is not obscured by a mask. She has longer than shoulder-length hair and is undeniably pretty plain.
She has turned her attention back to the crowd, who, at this point, has erupted in applause. In unison.
She speaks.
This is no clapping matter! That's nothing
to clap about!
The crowd laughs a hearty laugh. Punctuated with authenticity and veracity. Everyone is smiling. Sophia pauses and looks upward before grazing her eyes over the people.
This has been a long and tremendous struggle
for every single one of us, to get this here,
to this here very monument of this here very
moment.
Sophia looks downward but only for a second.
We have sacrificed. We have priced ourselves
with dignity and with honor. On this here day,
as with every other day, we are bound together,
hounded by our conscience for better days. Not
tomorrow. Not later on. Not in a minute or in a
moment because the present is upon us. For all
too long our silence has fallen on deaf ears. Been
seen with blind eyes and felt by numb hands. For
all too long our very voices were broken and
shattered into millions of tiny pieces that, when
could speak, would just end up making one terrible
racket.
The crowd stays silent. Signs raised in triumph.
Slowly, and with great care, we have grown our
message over these here past days. With great care,
we have united our voices, our hearts, our minds,
our very selves into this here moment.
Sophia Pillar stands tall and spirited. She wears all white.
With great care are we ready to see beyond this
here moment.
Everyone in the crowd looks full on promise and trust.
With great care --
Sophia smiles hard.
The time has come for all of us to understand that
now, yes now, how we must push ourselves forward,
stepping toward the future, how we all shall walk
together behind the light of truth, beside this
here hope of justice and --
A shot, wrung out, disturbs the revelry. Sophia takes one in the head.
The title splashes over this here tragedy, thick white on black, and it reads: The Bullet and the Brain
The detective BELLA ALEXANDER is looking incredulous.
What do you mean the body is missing? How can you
lose a body? Yes, I suppose the young lady did have a
mass of admirers who could have done such a thing.
What kind of security system do you have running
around these parts?
The mortuary guy shrugs his shoulders. He is short and shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
Of course. Budget cuts.
Bella is right incensed. She didn't have to take this case. They called it a favor. They told her it was open and shut. They said, assassination. Sure, she might not find who did the deed, probably skipped the city by now. Probably the country, if the murderer were thinking straight. Sure beats working some detail where there weren't thousands of witnesses. Could be worse.
What a day.
Bella is wearing a dress. A fine dress. Understated without any frills attached. It drapes and drops from her body the same way a sheet hangs from a child on Halloween.
Were you at least able to extract the bullet? The
detective first on the scene verified that no exit
wound was found. Just entry.
The mortuary guy shrugs his shoulders again. His cheeks bounce.
No body. No bullet.
Bella runs her hand through her hair, messing up a mass of curls. Now her shoulders shrug.
No ball.
The music is classic and grand, just like the space. The assembly hall is holding its own against the boys in blue. And black. Top hats and bottom tails stretch about as wives chuckle with drink glasses sparkling in the light of the chandeliers.
The MAYOR along with the POLICE CHIEF are standing off to the side, on the highest level, discussing the days event in a type of verbal code they had developed back in their days together at the ACADEMY.
So the dream kept going on like that, everything
around me, getting bigger and bigger, growing through
the roof, the chimney, the windows, through it all.
The house didn't grow as well?
No, no, I am afraid not. The house did not budge.
Me neither, not one inch.
The Mayor chuckled at this grave news and he understood why the Chief had wished to speak to him privately and in public.
Go on.
Ahem. At that moment, an old acquaintance of
ours, from the Academy, that girl with the limp and
the lisp, well, she just comes sliding down the side
of a giant lampshade until she lands on the ground,
strolls over to me and says a few pleasantries.
Grave news indeed. The Mayor condemns a vacant laugh.
I'll tell you one thing, an odd thing. She was older,
looked older. She was a very unique girl. Walked
funny. Talked funny. But, in my dream --
Yes?
The Chief bows his head.
No limp. No lisp.
Both men pause, appearing nonchalant.
Hard to imagine her like that. Like everybody
else, I mean, so normal.
The Mayor attempts to wipe the sweat from his brow. Using his hand, he creates a dry patch on top of his mostly moist face.
He is feverish with thought.
What ever happened to that girl, what was
her name?
Pearl. Her name was Pearl.
What happened to her?
A silence slices through the Chief.
Well? Out with it! What happened --
That we're in over our heads? That what you
want me to say? That --
The Chief bites his lip. None notice.
That she met a guy named Sigh with a hump
and a hum.
SIGH is humming to himself, always to himself. Atonal tuning would be the proper name for it. Sigh tries to find the correct note to start off on.
His OPPONENT scoffs at this and starts slapping his belly, rhythmically and even throws out a few primal insults in his native tongue, to sweeten the song.
His opponent has traveled very far to be here. His family is prestigious. Connected. Few relatives, going back centuries, have had this opportunity to join the Academy.
Each failed.
This opponent has earned this chance, trained for this chance with blood-stained hands and he aims to pass his ALPHA TEST. He could best the best of men, so surely he can take this mutant and his mound!
Sigh kept the hum going as he stood, right shoulder first, HIS HUMP rising higher than his head, and he kept the hum going dressed in nothing more than a pair of short dark gray cotton pants, with a simple white rope to hold them up.
Sigh has a hunch about his opponent.
You understand the rules?
His opponent nods his head. A small smattering of spectators has formed, students and teachers alike, all gathering in the ALPHA AUDITORIUM, a large earthen pit crafted into the private grounds just outside the entrance proper.
Sure you understand the rule?
His opponent starts to nod then stops, quizzically eying the Quasimodo. It is shifting the question around.
The rule, fool.
A hesitation hovers in the air.
Where's your ruler?
Sigh hums low and wide, mixing it in with the hesitation and an ample amount of audience participation.
The whole point of this here test is meant to
stress the guessing that holds what I would
suggest sure ain't a reasoned lesson now unless
you wish to stop and rest --
His opponent becomes paralyzed with an uncertain and awkward action. Sigh keeps the hum close to himself, and closer still, to this opponent.
I thought we are to fight? To do battle?
With hands? Not wits.
Sigh smiles.
You are correct.
The last thing his opponent hears is the humming of hands and feet and Sigh could've even used HIS HUMP but wished not to humiliate such a fine lad from such a fine family.
The audience yawns about and claps with gingered emotion.
He is carted away by some members of the MEDICAL WING and Sigh imagines his opponent feeling bruised for a spell. Beats him taking the BETA TEST! That would've been brutal on the already bankrupt boy. Not everyone is made of our material. Especially these days.
Sigh hums an old, old tune and walks to his residence beyond the great, big Academy doors.
Sophia Pillar is inside a very fat man. His name was Hubert Hangover and he gave himself to the cause, admirably and with tender care. His death was coming a long time, shot through the liver and well, he had led a good life and died at peace in his sleep.
The GROUP staged a suicide for Mr. Hangover. He, of late, had begun collecting Japanese swords and reading books on samurai culture. He was also considerate and in order to lessen the impact of seeing his messy evisceration, he had kindly emptied his bowels, guts and entrails into a wide steel drum half-filled, or half-emptied, with some sort of corrosive causing agent.
The timing of the plan was a little off and so Sophia lay right tight in this here stunning darkness.
She had made a large incision underneath one of his lower rolls of fat, enough to crawl on in and make herself at home. She was thinking about the plan. The Group had debated the finer points for months with Sophia leading the discussion, rhetorically and orally, until a majority had proceeded to concede that, once again, Sophia was right.
She would sacrifice herself, publicly and privately, to rile up the people and to further the cause. The Group would fake her subsequent death with a few appropriately timed special effects, like a small blood pack set off to explode a split second after the successful shot. Hidden under her hair and filled with her own blood and bits of bone, the pack worked flawlessly. As did the paralyzing drug and the driven paramedic. Sophia surmised that the detective who got the first call was probably lazy and stupid and thinking more about the upcoming festivities then the task at hand.
She gambled on whether or not the morgue would pry her apart before she awoke. A small probability, a tiny chance.
Sophia is thankful to be alive. Curled up in the belly of a very fat man. Not to mention, she hadn't felt this close to a guy in years.
The Mayor whispers banalities into the ear of an aide as his little eyes shift round the spacious hall. Everyone is talking about the death of Sophia Pillar. How beloved she was to the poor people of this here city. How she was trying to build something greater than herself; a bridge between the Province of Problems to the State of Solutions.
The Mayor is ragged and pulls at his cummerbund. He interjects himself into a nearby conversation.
If you ask me, Ms. Pillar was nothing more than
a rouser to the common rabble. Her methods were
sloppy and unprofessional --
He coughs and clears his conscience.
There are diplomatic avenues that one must travel,
at least these days, lest you become mired in
admiration. Ms. Pillar suffered from a grave and
mortal wound, undeniably, yet I wonder if it weren't
self-inflicted, speaking metaphorically so. I wonder
if her death came, not from the long barrel held by
some psychopathic killer, but from a simple and shut
case of hubris --
A loud and unsightly sniffle cleans out any hidden contrition.
We all grieve for Sophia Pillar and for her cause;
lost a figurehead that was as brilliant as she was
beautiful. She will be missed but her mark shall stay
with us, buried deep inside our desire for change.
The ideas she espoused were, for my generation at
least, different and some might even say a little
radical of a rascal --
The Mayor chuckles and raises his glass.
To our Sophia.
A shared gulp later and everyone is talking about the birth of Prince Since Polonius and other royal subjects.
The Chief motions for the Mayor from across the room and patiently waits for him to meander over. The two of them head into a smaller chamber off to the side, door closed.
The message is sent. He'll be on it soon enough.
Good. Who else?
Bella Alexander.
Very good. Is her father here?
No, I am afraid not. Far to busy for any of
this, really. Thomas is probably attempting to
mount Ms. Everest, that gorgeous new actress
from overseas. She's foreign, I do believe.
Thomas taught you well, old friend!
The Chief looks confused and then bemused. Just thinking about THOMAS AUGUSTUS ALEXANDER is enough for his tongue to slip back into a verse-voice that notes an Academy graduate.
Do you remember back in September, that scandal
and how we handled the press all dressed up to
profess our guilt near some such nonsense built
over time like a rich suspense. I'm almost certain
that it's curtains for us folk when that tragedy
broke their attention span before we even had
a chance to suggest a stance of distress against
fundamentalists, that the cycle had spun our
scandal undone.
The Chief shakes his head, dizzy and amazed.
You have a go at it! Just for old times sake?
No.
Killjoy.
Sigh sighs. He is not humming. He sits in his residence, a little hovel of a home on the outskirts, near the wilderness, back out by the OMEGA GYMNASIUM. A pear tree grows in the front. Off to the side is a small workshop, chunks of marble are scattered, crumbled and chipped apart, some with fully formed bits of sculpted woodland legs and wings and horns and snouts and claws and tusks and trunks and tails sticking out of these sizable squares of stone. Large chisels cleave into an abused tree stump nearby and not a single hammer is to be found.
His hump has been acting up again. A dull ache of an act.
Sigh hears someone running up to his front entrance followed by a few elegant knocks and while Sigh wasn't planning for company, he is relieved from his boredom. He springs up from where he sits and opens the door.
Hello and good evening to you. Won't you please
come on --
The messenger looks Sigh straight in the eye and hands him a bulging manila envelope and shakes out a vigorous nod, his undertaking now complete. Just before he bolts back into the early dusk light, the messenger sneaks a peek at the humongous hump, if only for a split second.
Hum.
And the messenger is off like a lion after the lamb.
Bella is studying the paperwork on the Pillar case, what little there is. Crime scene photographs, a hastily written report from a detective who should be here instead of her, witness accounts, what else, some lint, guess the envelope it all came in doesn't count, huh?
She languishes in her chair at her desk. The station is near empty. There was some fear of rioting but the protesters seemed to be more sad than angry, left to commiserate with one another over the loss of their illustrious leader.
Bella will have to trudge down into the vault, where the records are kept and pull up whatever additional paperwork there is on the late Ms. Pillar. Anything to help pad this bare as a bone case.
She languishes some more.
Sigh is evaluating everything there is to know about the life and death of Sophia Pillar. Very little on the dying part aside from a request signed by the SIGMA GUILD to find the missing body.
Her life was pretty plain except for the stuff of her schooling which was done here at the Academy, a couple of years back. She studied in this place. Made it just as far as the EPSILON AUDITORIUM.
Says she didn't take to fighting, or any of the other physical contests; Sophia was apparently gifted with the TONGUE TRAIT.
That explains why Sigh doesn't remember her. Talk is cheap. And boring. And so much easier as compared to battling an opponent with fits of fists and pounds of punch. That takes guts.
We are all mere blades made dull by tempered
lives of thoughtful minds.
Sigh smiles. He reads further then frowns with a furrowed brow. She didn't finish her studies, that much is assured. The last exam she took was administered by none other than Thomas Alexander himself.
And she passed. Curious.
The following day she called it quits and left the Academy for good. Not completely unheard of. The real education usually begins after the ZETA TEST, which is about when Professor Alexander steps in.
Now there's a fighter. Kicks that can create capitulation from even the most hardened crowd let alone any advisory. One doesn't have to beat him to graduate, simply survive.
Like Sigh. And he was asked to stay! To teach! And he began to hum a sweet and soft harmony, carrying it up the stairs towards his closed closet of clothes. He opens the door knowing what must be done.
And so Sigh puts on his tailored Sunday best and heads out into the world.
Ms. Everest is still reeling after the performance of her lifetime. With flushing cheeks, she breathes only after every giggle and glows over the reflection in her mirror.
A knock occurs at the door. An honest-to-goodness man walks on through holding a very large bottle, a pretty bow tied to its neck.
Good evening. Would you care for a drink?
From my bottle? These are dangerous times.
Are you in here all by your lonesome?
TO BE CONTINUED
