WHITE

by Neal Arbic

  “Twenty years ago, I would have had this psycho locked up by now– but the world we lived in is gone, Martha.

  “It just doesn’t make sense: the victims, the murderers, the clues. They’re right in front of me, but…I can’t understand them.”

  He dropped his head and shook it slow and sad. A long minute passed.

  “I’m tired. Tired of this world.”

  ***

  Jack’s chin rested on his chest, moving as he breathed. His mind was a black bottomless pit. Then a thought wandered out of that dark: a memory of Delware on the lawn today yelling ‘Negro.’ That kid. He might have done it. Maybe not this year, but if Jack hadn’t blown it, the kid might of made detective…someday. But not now. He would be busted back into blue, walking a beat in Watts. Back to the ghetto he worked so hard to escape. Delware was out there in the night lying in his own personal abyss, his losses stinging him like scorpions. Negro. Delware had used that word today to describe himself. The word he so loathed and longed to overcome. Jack knew that was the heaviest weight, that Delware was shackled to that word tonight, sinking under its weight.

  Jack looked up through the doorway from the black room. His .38 holstered on his chair. He eyed the gun and thought it might be the easiest way out. No tomorrow, no facing Delware or hearing about his fate. No facing the Department or Pat. No sad looks or jeering grins. No lonely days with nothing to do, but to think about how he failed and what he had done: to himself, to others.

  His father and grandfather had died by the gun. Maybe that was the Middleton curse. He stood up and walked back into the light.

  Jack moved like a man to the gallows, passing the chair, his hand swept out, his fingers embracing the butt of the .38. His arm hung limp as he passed, but his fingers held. The gun slipped out of its holster, swinging by his side.

  Sinking into his chair, he stared at his World War Two shelf: a citation for bravery, purple heart, medal of good conduct, a jar holding a piece of shrapnel taken from his leg, a Congressional Medal of Honor wrapped around tarnished brass knuckles.

  His eyes turned to the table of empty scotch bottles.

  His head turned to the antique television set on legs, blank, its plug still on the carpet. Its rounded glass screen darkly reflecting his elderly body in his worn out chair. His reflection stared back at him.

  Jack muttered, “I am old. Too old.”

  The gun hung loose at the end of his arm. The trigger finger rose and spun the cylinder. The clicking of the whirling bullet chamber was the only sound in the room.

  Jack looked dead, his eyes lifeless, a corpse slumped back in a chair. Only a whisper of life, enough to take his own, remained.

  His head slid to one side, those dead eyes fell on the console stereo. There lay the black Bible and the White Album. He whispered to them. “I am a useless, old, man.”

  The gun rose slowly, silently through the air. His arm had a life of its own, as if a cobra, its deadly head the .38, sneaking up on the weary man.

  The finger rolled the cylinder again, sounding like a rattlesnake about to strike. Jack’s head lolled over and he kissed the barrel of the .38. “Don’t fail me now.”

  He turned his head away from the loaded gun and squinted. The black hole of the barrel rested on the hollow of his temple like it too was tired.

  His finger curled around the trigger. The hammer began to draw back. Jack held the black Bible in one eye, the White Album in the other, but there was no intelligence in his pupils. He was already dead.

  His withered lips whispered, “Adios.”

  His eyes slowly slid down.

  Something glittered. He faintly wondered what it was, but his eyes continued to drop and closed. Jack stared into the black infinity behind his lids, waiting for the bang. His finger, slow and steady, squeezing. The bullet chamber aligned with the drawn hammer.

  His last thought: what the hell?!

  A single eye popped open. It glittered again. Something was under the old Victor Victrola gramophone, near the back leg. Studying it for a moment, he still couldn’t decipher what he saw, but it wasn’t supposed to be there.

  He gave up. He didn’t care. Closing his eye, squinting, he waited for the blast, but his finger eased up.

  Both eyes popped opened. “What the hell is that thing?!”

  Tilting his head back for a better view, anger straightened his spine. In one swift, annoyed motion, he was down on his hands and knees. Popping his head under the Victrola, he leaned on one elbow and reached under with a single hand.

  His fingertips touch something soft and plastic. Pulling it out, he came up grimacing on his knees. He held a clear plastic bag; at the bottom dangled four white sugar cubes.

  His mind raced, how did he know this? Then he remembered: Margery, his granddaughter in San Francisco, handing the bag to him as he left, him getting home and realizing it was LSD, then tossing it. He hadn’t thought of it since. Anger mixed in with the memory: this was her present to him! He detested her for that. How could she?!

  Coming to his feet, he held his knees and groaned.

  Tossing the bag on top of the record player, it landed on The White Album. There it was, his bane: The White Album. He stared at its all white jacket: a twelve inch by twelve inch wall of hippiedom, it might as well have been eight miles high and long - it was never going to let him in.

  Jack whispered, “I know you’re in there, you psycho. You hid the clues in the most public place, you goddamn sumbitch! Where everyone could see ‘em, but no one could understand – not the way you do!”

  Reaching down, he flipped open the double sleeve. The motion knocked the cubes from the bag and shattered them on the surface of the console. The light sparkled on the white grains of sugar.

  Glaring down at the cubes, he remembered his granddaughter’s eyes, sparkling as she handed him these cubes: they were like Martha’s eyes - full of caring.

  “Oh my god.”

  He went back to the chair, his breathing labored.

  “Oh my god.”

  His heart raced.

  “That’s it.”

  Sweat popped on his brow. His eyes looked back at the album and the four white cubes. His shaking hands gripped the chair handles. “That’s it!”

  He whispered. “I can’t do this.

  “But it’s the only way.

  “No, no.”

  He looked at the cubes with helpless eyes. “Please forgive me.” Jack stood up and sat right back down again. “No!

  “Oh my god!

  “Don’t do it. Don’t!

  “But that’s the key…that opens the door.”

  He rose and walked over to the stereo, his eyes moving back and forth: the white cubes, the White Album.

  A trembling hand came forward, pinching a cube, dropping it into his palm. Holding it like a communion wafer, his eyes widened with fear: the innocent cube of sugar: white like death itself.

  He closed his eyes. His lips parted. As if bringing a poisoned chalice to his lips, both arms shook. The cube rolled in the shaking palm. He held his breath. His hand paused on touching his trembling lips. The cube rolled and stopped at his bottom lip. His nostrils flared at the sweet smell. His hand hung there. Jack’s entire body shook.

  With one last effort, like plunging a dagger into his own heart, he pushed the cube into his mouth. His eyes shot open wide with surprise, but it was too late. On reflex, he swallowed the sweet, melting sugar laced with LSD.

  ***

  The White Album opened with the whining whistle of a jet plane landing in the left speaker and skidding to the right. The band kicked into Back in the USSR. Jack sat expectantly, his hands clutching the worn, upholstered arms of his chair. The bouncing beat faded out into the quiet, tentative Dear Prudence, Lennon coaxing a reticent girl to come out and play. The slightly off-center Glass Onion rolled by and then Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. Jack sat thinking something had gone wrong. The first side of the record had finished with the fractured Happiness Is a Warm Gun, but
he felt nothing.

  Walking to the stereo, he stared down at the three white sugar cubes, thinking he had taken too weak a dose. Delware would have warned Jack that LSD can take up to forty minutes to take effect and that he had already taken a huge dose. But Delware wasn’t there.

  Jack popped two cubes into his mouth like candy. Clumsily, he flipped the record over to Side Two. Glancing down at the remaining cube, he frowned and then popped it into his mouth. Sitting back, he swallowed the last of the melting sugar laden with LSD.

  As Martha My Dear turned into I'm So Tired. Jack felt something creeping up on him. He couldn’t tell what it was at first, but it felt ominous, like the darkening of the sky before a storm. Pushing himself deeper into his chair, his shoulders tensed.

  As Lennon dragged his feet through the last verse of I’m So Tired, full paranoia set in. Jack’s eyes darted about the room. The strange notion that the entire LAPD, somehow, knew he had taken LSD haunted him. Images of officers lurking outside his house plagued his imagination. He thought he could hear whispering in the kitchen.

  Checking the kitchen, the windows, he found them all clear. But he still couldn’t escape the feeling that someone was watching. Where was this faceless, disembodied surveillance? What did they want? Who were they?

  Jack didn’t realize it, but the first dose of LSD had just begun to take effect and three more were on the way.

  As Blackbird snuck into the room, the music seemed to warp as if the turntable was wobbling. Jack felt a desperate need to escape. Sitting in his chair, he held himself there, fighting the urge to run screaming into the streets.

  Then came the oink of pigs from the stereo, the song Piggies began, and so did the hallucinations. As the harpsichord played, Jack noticed the imitation Persian rug at his feet, an object he hadn’t paid any attention to in twenty years. In the intricate patterns, a little tendril started to curl and uncurl as if alive. A moment later, all the interlacing designs looped around each other. Pulling his eyes from the carpet, the walls moved as if breathing. The windows grew very large then very small. Jack wondered: are they really moving?

  By Rocky Raccoon, the patterns on the carpet, drapes and wallpaper pulsed and swirled in ever larger flowing circles. Jack slid down in his chair, eyes wide and pupils broadly dilating.

  The stereo needle finished Side Two. Jack’s fumbling hands pulled out the second disc causing 8’x10’ glossies of each Beatle to fall on the floor. The four photos were included in every copy of the White Album. Jack stared at them, the four Beatles stared back.

  Not realizing he was skipping Side Three, he put on Side Four. It took a number of laborious attempts to drop the needle correctly on the spinning disc.

  Revolution #1 kicked off. Instruments whirled around him, notes fading in and out. Jack dropped to his knees. He no longer remembered why he was listening to the record. By Honey Pie, Jack didn’t even realize he was listening to The Beatles. He only experienced chords, notes, melodies. The other three doses were kicking in. Everything in the room was in motion. Tables, chairs, bottles, pictures were alive, radiant with energy. The black-and-white picture of his wife followed him with her eyes as he crawled back to his seat. Sadly gazing at his shelf of medals, they seemed dead: faded ribbons; neglected, dusty pieces of metal.

  The walls and floor rippled like water. Jack kept sliding from his chair. He had no choice, but to lay on the swirling carpet. There was no center anymore, nothing left to hold on to. The world was a swarm of sensation, a stream of surging, shifting color and sound, melting and moving, morphing endlessly. Feeling his body sinking into the floor, he lay there amazed.

  Then it began: Revolution #9.

  It wasn’t a song. It was a sound collage, a patchwork of random audio: a plaintive piano wandered across the speakers, a somber man’s voice repeated, “Number nine, number nine, number nine…” An orchestra played backwards, John Lennon spoke over it in a flat, monotone, “and everyone knew that as time went by, he'd get a little bit older and a little bit slower...”

  Sounds continued to morph: a girl’s laughter into a baby crying, a choir’s lamenting chant and again the somber man repeating, “number nine, number nine” shifting from one speaker to the other. Jack’s eyes widened: insane, uncontrolled. Revolution #9 grew more chaotic. Cars honked, traffic barged in. A cocktail party emerged. Football crowds chanted, “Hold the line! Hold the line!” Unintelligible speech turned into George Harrison’s voice: “...there were four of them...”

  Suddenly, Jack saw the lawn of the Tate mansion in the middle of the night and the backs of four hippies facing the mansion. The hallucination was vividly real. Harrison continued, “...only to find the night watchman, unaware of their presence...” The hippies snuck up to an open window, cutting the screen. Following them to the kitchen, Jack watched them taking knives from the drawers. Instantly, John Lennon screamed like a maniac, “Rise! Riise! Riiiise! Riiiiiiiiiiise!!” Jack saw the word being written by a bloody finger on the white walls.

  New sounds appeared: the crackle and snap of fire, interrupted by a barrage of radio static, bursts of gunfire jumped from nowhere. The somber voice swung again and again from speaker to speaker, “number nine, number nine,”

  George’s voice whispered, “...pushing it between her shoulder blades...” Jack saw a blade plunged into a woman’s back repeatedly, blood spraying. The stereo gave a painful scream which descended into a low, manic mumbling.

  Jack’s dry tongue flickered like a lizard’s, trying to moisten his chapped lips. His teeth hummed with electricity. A voice came from the stereo, “There were lots of stab wounds.”

  “Number nine, number nine, number nine,”

  Abruptly, Jack sat ramrod straight, his eyes wide with some mad revelation. Rising unsteadily, he rocked on his heels like a mad man on a seaborne boat. His pupils outrageously dilated like they might rupture. Strange tics pulled at his face, as if he might weep one moment, then fly into a murderous rampage the next. On and on, contorted and pale, his face twitched out of control, an impossible expression…from murderous to suicidal, suicidal to murderous, murderous and suicidal!

  “Number nine, number nine, number nine, number nine,”

  Jack stumbled toward the stereo, torn with some violent, bizarre, god-awful idea.

  Beside the White Album: the black Bible. As he picked up the Bible, John Lennon spoke from one of the speakers, “Take this, brother, may it serve you well...”

  Jack, thinking the voice was in the room, dropped the Bible and violently turned, frenzied with fear. Sounds multiplied: shouting men, women choirs singing backwards, the burst of machinegun fire erupted all around him. The Bible lay open on the floor.

  Falling onto his hands and knees, he wept and laughed wildly, desperately turning pages, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the Bible.

  The somber man began again, from speaker to speaker, “number nine, number nine,”

  His trembling finger could not grasp the thin pages. He tore as many as he turned, until he clawed them out of the Bible, grinding his teeth while orchestras climaxed and spun around him. Tearing away page after page, he finally reached the last book: The Book of Revelations.

  His trembling hand moved more slowly now, carefully ripping pages from The Apocalypse, until he reached the chapter he was looking for: Number Nine.

  His shaking, claw-like hands withdrew from the shredded Bible, afraid to touch it again. Staring wildly, his eyes attempted to read, but they could not. Words with watery letters bounced up and down the page and from side to side.

  The phrase: four angels, jumped out at him. Jack glanced at the pictures of the four Beatles on the floor.

  Angels. The Beatles’ long angelic hair framed their solemn, contemplative eyes that stared quietly from their photos.

  He glanced back at the Bible; two words moved in and out of focus. The Locust. They grew larger and larger, then faded back, only to grow again: The Locust. Vanishing into the jumble of letters, they emerged onc
e more: The Locust. Jack almost screamed, “Beetles!”

  Jack whispered to himself, “Locusts are beetles. Beetles! Beetles!”

  He looked back at the pictures that lay on the swirling carpet. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. He whispered, “The Beatles!”

  Struggling, Jack managed to read the passage: The Locust came and their faces were as the faces of men and they had hair as the hair of women. He glanced back at the four faces framed by long hair.

  His eyes returned to the Bible, And they had a king over them which is the angel of the Bottomless Pit.