Update!! Shorter than last time, a perfectly-sized chapter, almost! Well, actually, it's the first half of a longer scene.
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Eric took what he could carry from the basement of the house, and brought it to his apartment where he put it away in specially organized boxes and drawers. He didn't expect to need it until later that night or the next day, depending on what he needed to do at those times. He honestly felt like just getting some rest for a change.
Now wasn't the time for that, though. In his off-white refrigerator, next to some jars of food that A.G. had somewhat illegally procured for him, was a bouquet of flowers, all white tulips, kept cold and fresh since he had bought them, on the day of the Zephyr Corporation contract. He had expected to have earned more form that, but the cost of the flowers wasn't high, due to low demand in this city for such extravagant expenses as bouquets. Eric himself thought the purchase may have been a little too much, but in the end he felt it was best.
With his coat hung up on its tall wooden rack near the door, Eric slipped out of his more casual "working" clothes, and once again put on his suit. This time, his solemn attitude was genuine, and there was no way of making this situation any more joyful. It was somber, Eric knew that, and respect was important in cases such as this.
As for armaments, all Eric took with him was his .45 calibre pistol, sleek and black, bought years ago, with his first paycheck, full of memories.
After he had got it, off some Eastern District weapon manufacturers, he had never looked back. If there was any point in his life where he honestly knew what he was disembarking on, that was it, a moment that changed him forever, even though he had just turned seventeen. That pistol he bought was part of him, he knew it both inside and out, he learned from it and it taught him well. His first murder was committed with that gun, all in the name of money. He had kept the bloodstain on the side of the barrel for a week after that, just to remind him the fatal seriousness he had caught himself in. Then he washed it, took it apart,
examined it, cleaned every last piece of the elegant machine until it was working better than it was when it was first manufactured: a device to bring clean death, all in the name of money, that deep, ancient language that broke all borders and tested even the greatest faith. It was a tongue Eric had become far too well-versed in. Long nights were spent alone, just him and his pistol, shining in the moon's glow through his window, in years past. Those were nights where he couldn't sleep, when nightmares wracked his painfully young mind, his subconscious revenge for forcing himself into a world so foreign to him, a world he was determined to become a part of, simply because there was no other way. He was a teenager, still young, school-age, and he had shot a man dead in an alleyway, then hid the body in a dumpster for it to be towed away to the landfill. He was good, too good. It frightened him that he could deal with it so easily. What had brought that up in him?
His father had left a few months after the occupation ended, a half-year at most. His mother stayed, since she had no obligation to go like his father. He was a scientist, of importance to London. He left his son and wife in New York, promised by the London government that his family would receive financial support in exchange. The money came, every month, a few thousand dollars for young Eric and his mother to live on. They heard nothing from his father. Perhaps that's when Eric truly changed, long before he had bought his gun. His father had left a pistol, an old service revolver, in the apartment. Eric found it intriguing; complex yet simple. That was his first personal experience with violence and weapons and the livelihood of New York. Buying his first gun was just an inevitable byproduct of that.
In a way buying that first gun, big, dark and heavy in his hand, was like buying his first condom, knowing that incredibly soon it would see use, and afterwards he would be forever changed. When he first shot it chasing after a man through the lawless streets of the Eastern District, getting him in the left thigh and making him go out of step, stumble, then fall forward, it was an ecstatic discharge of feelings: the rumble of it in his hands, its loud shock, the sheer feeling of dominance from bringing someone so close to death with a single squeeze of the trigger. It was beautiful. Thinking of that, Mel's reaction to the knife suddenly made sense. Eric had found solace in the complex mechanisms of the gun that all combined to perform one simple yet miraculous action, the propulsion of a solid piece of metal at supersonic speeds with the intent to kill or heavily maim another sentient creature. Mel found his own love in the simplicity of the knife, gorgeous in its power that could only be hinted at by its exterior, tough, with nothing too complicated. Just a refined length of steel, sharpened along one edge and forged over a course of many hours just to be able to kill a single person in seconds. Eric, in his own way, respected that kind of thought. It was pointless to fight against his own nature, and after his own contemplation he found that Mel was hardly different than he was, only Eric's sole teacher was himself, and the scholastic lessons his father had given him in science and math, seeming so far gone to most, but held close to his heart. If anything, he preserved his father's memory in his intellectual studies, so his father, wherever he was at that point in time, be it in London or New York or even halfway across the world, would someday be proud of him.
Eric heaved a deep sigh. He usually kept those strings of thoughts to nights or mornings when he slept, letting them be pondered infinitely in his dreams, only for those problems to disappear with rising consciousness and the end of sleep, to return focus to the day and the task at hand.
He held the flowers tight in his hand, and departed form his apartment, making sure to lock his door. Even in a suit he wouldn't appear too strange, as it was in the height of the afternoon, when the people walking the streets in this part of the city were mostly people going home from their mundane jobs or public schooling, that one modern relic that had survived the London occupation. There was a school nearby Eric's apartment complex somewhere; he had seen it once but never paid it much attention. In the Eastern District, there was probably something similar, though likely in relative disarray compared to most of the Residential District's buildings.
The road sloped gently down until it reached the four-way intersection, with the corners of tall walls on all sides, and houses on top of that. Heading northward still, the road became less crowded, as farther north in the residential district there were more, smaller bridges across the thinning river to downtown and midtown, allowing people to walk home more quickly than those who had to cross the New York City Bridge closer to the vast mouth of the river. The houses here were also richer than the ones to the south, especially the many apartment buildings, making the whole residential district a sort of wealth gradient, with the poorest people living close to the river mouth and southern inland portions of the district and the people who were better off in the north and along the shores of the bay, with the middle class stuck between, relegated to the inland just east of downtown.
Most schools and other such public buildings were located in the middle class section of the district, along with several parks commissioned by the government, and a few buildings that were privately owned by single people or groups who kept them running off of their moderate wealth and surprising good faith. It was to one of these areas that Eric was headed, in sight of the river, with a beautiful view of the unobstructed river and the rather clean downtown and midtown skyline that blocked off all sight of the polluted, gloomy Eastern District atmosphere. If he had the time, Eric would certainly visit the view more often, but in his career there was almost never time for that kind of carefree living, and even this was for a sad memorial, for it was a cemetery located right near the river that he was headed to. This cemetery, the second largest in the residential district, was supported financially by the synagogue across the street from it, which happened to be one of the very few religious buildings in the entire city. Eric had always thought that the emigration from Earth to Taas, along with the discovery and subsequent war against the zerconiths, had made many people question their faith, which wasn't aided by the militaristic London government approach of purging all religious sentiments, an operation that had barely started by the time the occupation was uprooted.
Turning left at the very top of the long sloping hill, Eric was facing the river view. To his right, standing tall, was the synagogue, with a large Star of David design on the second story, parallel with the great wooden front doors. Before those were six pillars as high as the second story of the synagogue, with a thin rectangular covered area forming between the columns and the structure itself, with a larger space between the columns in front of the door, separating them into two lines of three. Along the side of the stone and brick building ran a small paved area branching off of the street, leading to a modest parking lot behind the synagogue. A large garden made the entrance to the building beautiful, almost a small park in its own right, with an iron arch marking the beginning of a white cobblestone path through the garden, past vivid flowers and plants and small trees, some of which weren't native to the area of New York. Here was the largest synagogue in all of New York, though it was only one of two in the entire city, making up one of the seven religious buildings still standing in the region as a whole. Eric wasn't unfamiliar with this place, though approaching it gave him a chill through his bones, thinking of the sheer age of the building and what kind of strange beliefs those within may have. In all of his visits he only really explored the cemetery, and going into the synagogue was only a part of his usual routine. Few people willingly entered the cemetery regularly other than for funerals these days.
Back when Eric acted more like the young, polite son of a London scientist that he was, he felt that asking the caretaker of the cemetery, who was also the caretaker and a member of the synagogue, for permission to visit the graves. It was originally out of ingrained London etiquette, but had grown over time to become a sort of tradition, tied into this semi-annual visit. Eric wasn't a religious man, but he had at least some respect for the caretaker's beliefs, and had come to know him.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Berwald!" Eric said as he stepped into the synagogue, expecting to see him somewhere in the building, as always.
An older man, with grey hair that wasn't quite balding and a large yet well-trimmed beard walked out of a door near the other end of the synagogue, passing the altar and several rows of seats, once glancing up at Eric, then looking back down at a stack of papers he carried in his hand.
He extended his hand and Eric took it. "Hello, Eric, it's good to see you again! I... assume you're here to ask to visit the graveyard, yes?" He wore a smile and a bright look in his eyes, untainted by the harsh, poor life of the South Inland area as Eric was. Eric always admired that tenacity and optimism, and his charity even for a resident of New York. Mr. Berwald had helped Eric through trying times, especially at the time of his mother's funeral when it needed planning, the anniversary of which Eric was commemorating this day.
"Ah, yes." Eric said, nodding and staying formal. "I've come to see my mother again. I hope you haven't moved her around at all."
Mr. Berwald laughed. "Ha, no, Eric, those renovations over the summer just increased the land that's available, so there's no need to worry. I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you or your family, not at all. Your mother, she was a good woman, and it truly brings me joy to know that you have such respect, even in such times as these. You're a good man, Eric, regardless of what you think of yourself." Eric gave a faint smile, but disagreed in his mind. His mother's death was one fraught with inevitability after her steady decline after his father left. When she passed, Eric took comfort in the knowledge that she was at peace, and no longer suffering as she had been for years. It was at her funeral that Eric shed the last tears he had ever known, and on that day he moved on only to end up as he is today. The thought only made his bitter and conflicted, and he wanted not to think about it, but just to visit his mother's grave, pay his respects, and return to his business. The whole ordeal was difficult.
"Yes, Mr. Berwald. You have the key to the cemetery gate, right?" Eric tried to move the conversation forward.
Mr. Berwald reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a key ring that was nearly filled. Eric moved to the side, gesturing for him to lead the way to the tall iron cemetery gate, its simplicity contrasting the rich beauty of the synagogue and garden, separated by the side street and the reckless modernity it symbolized.
The gate's lock slipped open as soon as the key inside was turned, and the gate itself, heavy and old, took all of Mr. Berwald's ageing strength to pull open, with some help from Eric nearby. The fence surrounding the graveyard was three-quarters the height of the gate, but its matching Gothic look was just as imposing.
"Oh, and Eric!" Mr. Berwald said as Eric took his first solemn steps into the cemetery, "A little earlier Cecile Dubois, I believe you know her, asked to get into the cemetery as well, and she's still in there, last I checked. She'd certainly like to see you, Eric, so go say hello, alright?" Eric raised his hand in agreement, turning his body slightly as he looked back to face the caretaker, then kept going forward. He made this trip only once or twice every year, but he could never forget the location of his mother's grave, no matter how long it had been.
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I hope this one was enjoyable/depressing! It only gets worse!
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Originally Posted by Five_X
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