Novel Treatments / The Rallyman second revised Prologue, revised Chapter 1, Chapter 2
Prologue
The man with long, unkempt black hair hunched over his desk, his bony fingers massaging his scalp and his bloodshot eyes peeled to the golden envelope that lay before him.
The envelope was slightly larger than a standard mailing envelope, by approximately two inches in length and one in width, with a higher volume of a couple of millimeters to allow for multiple letters, photographs, and of course, dollar bills. The opening was sealed with an insignia: The letter “R”, bold and elegant in calligraphic style, and above and to the right of the letter the number “3”, in a plain font as if an exponent in a mathematical equation. Both were violet. This was the mark of The Rallyman.
The envelope addressed the man with long, black hair as simply “R.B.”, keeping his actual name hidden, as was standard for a man of his elusive position.
R.B.’s unabbreviated name was quite conventional, but at this moment his initials seemed to stand for “rat bastard”, as part of his own mind’s persisting of beleaguering him. Half of him was internally yelling insults at himself, and the other half was trying to defend himself with excuses.
I didn’t think it would have this kind of effect!, he thought to the other part of his brain, which responded didactically with It’s the most important rule there is! ‘Don’t Dirty Your Hands‘! It’s on the walls, dumbass!
Indeed, the four-word admonition “Don’t Dirty Your Hands” was printed in crimson letters on each of the four walls in the room between which he was presently driving himself mad. He had remembered hoping it wasn’t written in blood.
But maybe no one will find out! Maybe I’ll be fine after all!
It’s over, asshole! Of course they’ll find out! He was your BROTHER! Do you know how difficult it is to cover up a murder so obvious? And you aren’t exactly ‘slick’, you nervous son-of-a-bitch! In any case, let’s say they don’t catch the fingerprints that you most certainly left behind. You’re going to have to deal with THIS the rest of your life! Give it up, you rat bastard, you are INSANE!
“Enough!” shouted the man named R.B. in a fit of rage, and the noise was followed with a “BANG” that sounded like dim gunfire. He had smashed his forehead onto his desk, and although the force wasn’t strong enough to knock him out, small streams of blood trickled down his face, around the corners of his eyes and down to his chin, leaving a warm sensation. This was a quite painful experience for R.B., but the voices temporarily ceased to harass him.
Yes, maybe he was insane. He was having internal schizophrenic fights with himself. Yet he did not realize WHY.
In the list of rules set aside for The Rallyman to follow, “Don’t Dirty Your Hands” was indeed the very first one. Given how these rules were originally constructed over a century ago, the fact that this one remained the first was a mysterious sign of it’s importance. Did this happen to all Rallymen who directly murdered someone?
In an attempt to preoccupy his mind with something that would keep the two bickering voices from sounding again, R.B. opened the envelope in front of him with his knife, and took out it’s contents: A folded-up paper of the same golden shade as the envelope, three photographs, and a crisp $100 bill. The golden paper was in fact a sort of application, and it was from a well-known New York lawyer named John Garcia, who spoke of another man, the Vice President of a major corporation named Eric Bost. R.B. attempted to read it, but was so badly shaken that he wasn’t able to focus on the information in front of him. What was obvious to R.B., however, was that Garcia was making a request.
John Garcia was asking R.B. to arrange the killing of Eric Bost.
R.B., having been The Rallyman for almost a year now, knew this fact instinctively. Any mail he received in a gold envelope was as an application for an assassination, and he had an entire other room for storing them; at least 600 were in there for the time being. The photographs were of the individual being requested for, and the $100 was a bribe- Many clients thought they needed to prove how much the assassination meant to them.
Suddenly, the loud, rambunctiously angry voice of the part of R.B.’s brain that made incessant jabs to his mental state of mind clamored in, DON’T DIRTY YOUR HANDS! YOU WERE WARNED OF THIS!
To which the meager voice of the part of his brain that made excuses to justify his actions retorted, What else was I supposed to do?! He knew everything!
The man called R.B. by the opened envelope sat back and soaked in the words from the two bickering ideas in his head as he looked around. The walls made of faded, dark gray stone bricks that once blissfully reminded him of the study in an impenetrable fortress seemed now like the hopelessly morose dungeon in the same fortress. The majestic red door that brooded in the corner leading to the mail room reminded him of just how many letters he needed to tend to (it was basically an endless supply), and the pressure was magnified when he noticed again the crimson letters on the wall. “Don’t dirty your hands” was on every side of him, and it seemed to be inching nearer to him every time he allowed his mind to wander.
I must be the worst Rallyman to have ever existed, his two separate voices seemed to agree upon.
After a few minutes of musing over his situation, R.B. pulled out a pencil and a sheet of lined paper and began to write.
It was a lengthy letter, one which spanned a couple of pages. His handwriting was atrocious- large and sloppy- but he hadn’t the time to worry about such trivial matters. He had a message relay, and he had to copy it down before he was too out of his mind to think clearly enough to do it. Afterwards, he sat back into his chair, lit up a cigarette, and wondered. The police could arrive at any time. If they did, and he wasn’t there, his property could be searched, and the cellar-like chain of dungeon-like rooms may be discovered; That had to be avoided at all costs.
What if he killed himself? Then, the humiliation of being locked away in a correctional facility (or at this point, a psychiatric hospital) would be spared for him.
But then he realized it was impossible. He was too weak to kill himself. Maybe it was because of his devotedly Catholic mother. He recalled a particular time when a man that had killed himself was on the news. “The Devil’s work”, she said. “Pity to those poor souls in Hell. Always remember, son, God bestows no mercy unto the souls who turn to suicide as a final answer.”
“Why not?”, he would reply. “What if you were being tortured and by killing yourself you could avoid the pain?”
“Jesus Christ himself was tortured and killed as well, but it was meant to be. God has a reason for everything, boy, don’t you forget that.” Thanks, mom.
He slowly stood up, and wobbled for a second- he seemed to have been sitting for days- but regained footing, walked over to the rusted steel ladder, and began his ascension. He opened the heavy metal hatch at the top, and was greeted with the blistering summer heat outside.
After closing the hatch and covering it with branches to make the location look less conspicuous, he took a deep, painful sigh. He wouldn’t be returning here. He began walking towards the house.
The air-conditioned kitchen did nothing to alleviate R.B.’s mental state. He was still just as nervous as he was before, not so much from being locked into confinement, but that the area out back would be found out. It hadn’t, though, for at least a couple of centuries, so maybe it would be alright.
Oh, Jonathan… What the Hell have I done…
The man with black hair, R.B., hunched over the kitchen table, sipping on some unsweetened tea that just tasted repulsive.
Police sirens could be heard in the distance.
Nathan Brizenski tiredly gazed around as he waited for Spencer to make his move. He and his opponent, Spencer McDowell, were playing a quick game of Connect Four on Spencer’s apartment balcony. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, but crickets were nonetheless still chirping, and Nathan’s watch read the awkward time of 6:45. He yawned and stretched his arms.
He then rubbed his eyes and looked forward, scrutinizing the features of Spencer’s countenance. At twenty-nine, Spencer’s face contained a maturity that, at the mere age of eighteen, Nathan could not grasp. The skin was slightly taught around his skull, and his thin-rimmed glasses were perched majestically atop his long, bony nose. Spencer hadn’t shaved in quite some time, and his sideburns stretched down the sides of his face and met in an explosive rendezvous at the bottom of his jutted-out chin. His mouth was closed and his jaws were pressed tightly together, occasionally grinding against each other in his deep muse. He gets so serious when it comes to things like these, Nathan thought. He’s so awesome.
Nathan had always been in awe of Spencer; he admired how he looked, how he moved, and how he acted. However, none of this probably would have been true if he hadn’t admired his way of thinking above all. Spencer McDowell was the most intelligent person Nathan had ever known in his life.
“Your move”, said Spencer, after a short sigh. If Nathan hadn’t known Spencer for over five years now, he’d almost think he was growing nervous over this little game of theirs. But he knew better than that.
Nathan scanned the columns without his head fully in the game. So many other things were ambivalently clashing inside his head. For one, he was wondering to himself why they were playing Connect Four instead of their standard morning game of Chess. He certainly had no quarrels with the change- He’d always quite enjoyed the competitive Milton Bradley game, and he had definitely welcomed the extra sleep he’d acquired due to the comparatively short length of the game- he’d just thought it was odd for Spencer, someone who wasn’t as tolerant to change as Nathan was. Having no real complaints, he quickly dismissed it and inserted a circular red piece into one of the plastic, yellow columns.
Nathan also thought of the novel he was working on. He constantly imagined himself as an aspiring novelist, like Spencer, and wrote in his spare time. Strictly in his spare time- he was still a full-time high school student taking Advanced Placement classes, and required an exorbitant amount of time to complete his schoolwork, as well as other activities he involved himself in. Upon completion, this would become his fourth novel. Nathan wasn’t exactly sure if his novels were good enough to sell- the only person he ever showed them to was Spencer, who was never too enthusiastic about his opinions on anything he did, discouraging Nathan from trying to publish it- but he felt that it was at least some accomplishment to have written so much with so little time on his hands.
He noticed Spencer making his move and almost absent-mindedly returned it.
He normally took his games with Spencer seriously, but he was so haphazard with his moves today, largely the effect of another thought that was polluting his mind- that this day may be the last day living with Spencer. As much as Nathan enjoyed being around his idol, he realized that some time in his life he had to move on and find his own place- otherwise he could never learn to earn things for himself. Spencer saved my life, he often thought to himself. I don’t deserve any more. He had only been searching for a place to stay for a week when he noticed an ad in the paper for a house in the woods that rented for a mere thirty dollars a month. Nathan instinctively wondered what the catch was, but he wasn’t going to complain. He had lived in worse conditions than a shabby house. Far worse.
“I win”, Spencer claimed, without the slightest sound of triumph in his voice.
Reviewing the game, Nathan noticed the four black pieces diagonally reaching the top. “Damn,” Nathan said, hanging his head down in shame. Then, lifting his head back up in a comically sophisticated manner, addressed Spencer with “Pretty sneaky, sis”, imitating an old commercial for the game that Spencer had shown him on his PC. The commercial featured a little boy saying the same thing to his sister after losing the game to her, but Nathan found it quite humorous to call someone with as much grandeur about him as Spencer “Sis”.
Spencer smiled weakly. “I didn’t know you were good at this game. I’m impressed.”
Nathan replied, “Yeah, I guess I’m pretty good. I mean, I lost and all. I guess you’re pretty good if you lose.
“I mean it. I won, but the pieces reached the top. The game would have ended soon anyway. You should take pride in the fact that this is the closest anyone has ever gotten to beating me.”
“So I take it you played this game a lot?”
“Never.” They both smiled.
Nathan noticed that the sun had risen higher than when he had last looked. He sighed at the magnificent sight in front of him. Spencer’s apartment was on the fifth floor of the complex, and at the bottom of the cobblestone slope the town was built on was a large, clean-looking lake. As he noticed the fresh sunlight glittering across the body of water like tiny detonations, however terrific the view was, Nathan couldn’t help but feel resentment in the fact that it was almost time for him to check in to that awful place, as he so frequently described his high school. Not only did high school bore him almost to tears, he also realized that the anticipation of the events that were to follow later in the day- mainly talking to the owner of the house in the ad- were going to drive him nuts. The eight hours in school certainly weren’t going to go by quickly.
Nathan checked back at his watch, which now read 7:14. As if reading his mind, Spencer said “you seem jumpy today. You have plenty of time before you have to be at school, don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah”, Nathan replied, “but I was thinking about eating breakfast at a restaurant or something. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Raspberry Fig Newtons and a can of Sunkist is fine with me, but I think I need a little change in my life.”
Spencer shrugged. “Whatever.”
Nathan pushed the sliding glass door to the left and walked back into the living room of Spencer’s apartment, through the kitchen, and down the adjacent hallway to his room, opposite of Spencer’s. He changed into some clothes he had lying around, then went back into the living room, stopping to fix his short, brown hair in the bathroom mirror along the way. When he emerged from the kitchen, he noticed Spencer still lying back in a recliner he had pragmatically situated on the balcony, smoking a cigarette with his eyes shut. From the other side of the sliding glass door Nathan said “Well, I’m off. I suppose I’ll see you at 12:00.”
“Same place?” Spencer asked without opening his eyes.
“Afraid so. I can’t afford too much. I may have to start paying rent after today, after all.”
Spencer smiled and looked at him. “I could always pay for your food, you know.”
Nathan shook his head in response. “I’ll take care of it.” He’d told Spencer myriad times to stop offering to pay for his food. He already paid for him enough as it was.
Nathan started walking towards the door and turned the knob, hesitated, and turned around. “I have most of that novel I’ve been working on written. It’s in my room on top of the book case if you want to read it. I might try to get this one published, I don’t know. I could sure use some feedback on it.”
“Sure, I’ll read it”, said Spencer. He would keep his word. Nathan knew that, and it made him happy that, even though Spencer probably wouldn’t wholeheartedly back up his potential plan to get it published, he would at least dedicate some time reviewing it. Damn, he’s cool, Nathan thought, then said “see ya”, and walked out the door.
Chapter 2
Spencer took a long drag on his cigarette.
Still sitting in his spot on the balcony, he had a perfect view at the cobblestone roads leading from his house to the lakeside town below, and could see Nathan leaving the downstairs garage in his run-down car. It was lucky for Nathan to live so close to his school and his job- Spencer was always skeptical when thinking of Nathan’s car making a trip more than twenty miles.
After Nathan drove off into the congregation of buildings in the immediate distance, he turned to his side and focused his sights on the Connect Four game he had just won. Even after he had achieved victory, however, Spencer was thinking too much to care.
He’s only eighteen, he mused. Eleven years younger than me, and yet it was so close. He was particularly fixated on the upper row; only that row had to be filled up before the game would have been over.
He had been pondering things like this for a while. Over the past few mornings, Nathan had proven himself to be a much more undefeatable foe when it came to their chess matches. He had gone a month in close matches with Spencer until he began to defeat him, and Spencer didn’t know what to make of it, recycling the idea of playing a game like Connect Four instead. Although it seemed like a childish game to someone looking at the two children on the box, it could still be argued as an intellectual, yet simple activity. However, this game allowed far fewer moves than chess, much shortening the amount of strategies that could be used to win, in turn allowing Spencer a greater percentage of victory and Nathan a greater percentage of defeat. With luck, Nathan wouldn’t see the hint of jealousy in this action.
But it’s not jealousy, Spencer thought. He couldn’t, and refused to, bear the thought that he could ever be jealous of such a young and impressionable mind. The thought of an English major from such a prestigious college envying a boy who hasn’t even graduated high school yet is laughable. He arose from his seat and walked through the glass-screen doors and off into the kitchen, taking out a can of Mountain Dew from the refrigerator and a package of raspberry Fig Newtons from the cabinet. He popped a couple into his mouth.
I’ve just been unlucky lately. Work keeps me up to the latest hours of the night, rendering me careless. And I’ve got to hand it to him, he’s probably been very determined to beat me and learned some new chess moves outside of our games. I have every reason to lose. He sipped a bit of his soda.
Still, even after justifying his recent ties and losses on carelessness and luck, he couldn’t help but wonder if Nathan HAD been determined to beat him. He didn’t look the slightest bit involved the game today, but that could have been a ploy to make Spencer more careless. He then dismissed the thought, and walked into Nathan’s room to collect something that would surely reaffirm Spencer’s mental superiority: Nathan’s novel.
- - - -
Chapter One
Franklin Trudeau sat up in his bed and let his surroundings materialize around him. He had just woken up from his bedside alarm clock blaring “Louie, Louie” into his ears, which would have immediately excited him and stirred him into a dance in his younger days; but the eighty-year old man, though fit for his age, wasn’t nearly in shape enough for things like that.
Now back to Earth, Frank got out of his bed and walked into the kitchen, still wearing his navy blue two-piece pajama suit, and began making coffee. He only bought one kind: An imported French brew named “Chute D’eau” that he fell in love with in Paris a few years previously. It was made exclusively by a small French company, so it was quite expensive, but Frank could easily afford it.
Coffee on the pot, he started walking over to the television to turn on the news. However, before he got to it, he heard an eager knock on the door.
“Hmm… I believe it’s a little early to get visitors”, he said to himself. “But at thirty dollars a month, I’m surprised they didn’t break in at the crack of dawn.” He walked to the door and opened it, but was very surprised at what he saw.
On his front lawn, his porch, and the sidewalk in front of his house, sat at least forty people obviously responding to the advertisement in the Sunday paper. Many of them had brought books to read and video games to play, and many of them were teenagers who were obviously cutting school. The knocker, standing right in front of him, was a pudgy boy of about nineteen or twenty who seemed slightly nervous and very jumpy.
“I thought I saw someone moving in there. My name’s Curtis, and I’m here about the house.” Frank was still taken aback by the amount of people who had shown up, and how many of them probably had something important to do around this time in the morning. Nevertheless, Frank was riveted. As a lazy smile crept across his face, he realized what a grand opportunity a turnout like this would prove to be.
“Ok, Curtis, step on inside and take a seat.” Frank moved out of the way and let him inside, closing the door behind them.
As Curtis was looking around, he was obviously amazed by the amount of grandeur the interior of the house presented. It was two stories tall, had wooden and carpeted floors, and seemed to need no repairs whatsoever. The stairs in the corner of the living room coiled up and turned into a beautiful balcony overseeing the rest of the house below. He turned to Frank and said “this house is incredible! You can’t possibly be renting this out for so cheap!”
“You suggest that I charge more?”, Frank retaliated.
“No, no… Of course not. But what’s the catch?”
“There’s absolutely no catch. I’ve lived in this house for the good part of my life, and I’m ready for a little change. There’s nothing so wrong with that, is there?”
“No, of course not.”
“So you’re still interested in the house?”
“Definitely!”
“Very good.” Frank sat down opposite of Curtis. “My name is Franklin Trudeau, by the way. I’m going to interview you, and the interview I give you will be very detailed and personal. Only someone I can truly take a liking to is worthy of this house, so you’d be well advised to give this interview your full attention, and these questions your honest answers.” Curtis nodded in understanding, but Frank knew the odds of him accepting the young man were one in a thousand. Not only did he not particularly favor him even before the interview had started, there was a good chance that he wouldn’t feel this way for anyone else out there.
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I still love the story, and I still think you should finish it.
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Good use of punctuation, grammer and you’re extensive range of vocab is evident here.
Like the story and I think you have something good here so don’t be discouraged by any bad reviews you may have had just make sure that you keep wtiying ok.
Keep up the good work xx
9 out of 10. I liked it before, and I like it now. Great work!
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