by Jon Sauve
The cops came at some point. I remember some guy in a black jacket bending over in front of me, asking me things, and Mary answering for me. Finally I was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled out. I didn't see Mary for a long time after that.
I fell asleep. It seemed like any normal sleep, full of dreams. Not nightmares, yet. Those came later, after my brain had a chance to collate everything I'd experienced.
When I woke up in the hospital, weak but coherent, I was offered a picture of my health. Ankle pretty badly sprained, but the damage would heal on its own, as long as I stayed off my feet at first and did all the rehab exercises they gave me. The staying off my feet wouldn't be an issue, because I would have to use a wheelchair while my bullet wound healed. And on that topic, the damage wasn't terrible. No major arteries compromised. A chip on the bone where the bullet had settled.
Only one of my teeth had been broken, and at it was a shitty one that had a huge filling in it. I would have had to get it worked on again anyway, to replace the filling, but there was no way I was going through any of that stupid shit anymore. I had it totally removed. I had to bite down on gauze for a while and watch how I ate and drank. Nothing terrible, I guess.
As soon as I was decently recovered the police meetings took place. I dreaded those at first. But they were not as bad as I thought. I was asked questions and I answered them with complete honesty, seeing as I had nothing to hide. The police were nice. Just good cop, no bad cop. They even gave me whatever drinks I asked for.
Oh yeah, my mom. She was allowed to see me pretty much right away. She was in shock and didn't say much for awhile, but after that she was my best friend, as she had always been. My only friend, really.
After the first round of questioning there was no barrier between Mary and I. She didn't want to see me, was all. I guess I can understand that. It would bring back a lot of bad memories.
The police found Beth the very same morning they brought me into the hospital, they just didn't tell me right away. Shaun had caught her in the desert. Enough said.
I'm writing this a year later. It's taken me this long to continue it, and the only reason I even started is because the police allowed me to have all my shit that they recovered from the hotel, including my notebook. That was a while ago, though. I needed time, I guess.
Physically, I am pretty much totally recovered. I started walking again as soon as my mom would let me, and it really helped my leg recuperate. It still gets a bit sore and achy, but I'll take what I can get. Also, I now unavoidably take a longer step with my good leg, which leads me to drift a bit while I'm walking. I've stumbled into ditches and gutters a number of times.
Mentally, I have a long way to go I think. For one thing, the nighttime walks are out. It has to be sunny, sunny, sunny for me to go. If it's even a little gloomy, the thought of walking fills me with dread.
It really sucks. No part of my existence has gone undamaged. Everything is worse. I was already shy before, but now I can barely bring myself to look at people. If it's a bald guy with sunglasses, forget it. The one exception is any girl who looks like Mary. I can't stop staring, or hoping to finally gain enough courage to talk to one of them.
It won't happen. It won't ever happen. I'm still Orin, just an even worse version of him.
Why am I writing this, you might ask? For personal catharsis? Partially. But honestly, I'm kind of hoping to get it published. I'll dedicate the thing to Ben. It was his idea.
Oh, Ben. Ben, Beth, Jacob, Luke. The fallen ones. I have met their families, all of them, though not for long. Luke's dad and mom seemed a little angry at me. Turns out Jacob has a daughter in her thirties; she was really cool. Beth's parents were about what you might expect, two tall severe people with a very official demeanor about them, which kind of crumbled when they started to cry and tell me how happy they were that I lived. They wanted to hear from me what Beth had been through that night. Telling them was by far the hardest thing I've done since the night it all happened.
As far as Ben, I only ever met his dad, a divorced guy in his late fifties. At first he was solemn, almost intensely so, but then he opened up and I was rewarded with the most genuine conversation I've ever had with anyone besides my mom. Stories of Ben, whose favorite place to go as a child was the beach. Stories of Ben's mom, who was the biggest bitch in the world but who had been so devastated by her son's death that she was now in an institution. But stories of Ben, mostly.
Things cooled down after the first ten months or so. Things went back to normal in the world. For me, they had never been further from normal except on the night itself. It used to be I would sit at my computer all day, struggling to write something meaningful. Every few months I would get a random hair up my ass and decide to "finally get a girlfriend." I would shave, take some pictures, make a profile on some dating site. Then delete it a week later.
For those first ten months I couldn't really do any of that stuff anymore. I don't know why, really. I just vegetated, in the purest sense of the word. After three weeks of watching and rewatching and re-rewatching the same DVD's we had, my mom finally decided to get cable. TV was my medicine for a while. It let me get dumb and forget everything. I could never watch anything violent; it was just stupid reality shows and a lot of cooking.
I started walking again after the first month of being home. I had a sense that I was doing the wrong thing by watching so much TV, so I made it a point to walk at least ten minutes every day. My leg was still a problem at that point. But I got strong faster than I hoped I might. Soon enough the length of my walks depended on how long I could go until I got bored.
Whatever. Enough about boring ass Orin, loser extraordinaire. You want to know more about the mythical Scavenger Hunt.
Let me tell you, I don’t have a comprehensive knowledge. As soon I thought I had the gist of it, I blocked it all out. Maybe someday I will open my brain up to it again, but not now. So if you wanted a book about the background of the thing, and the people involved, well... you picked the wrong one.
But you made it this far in my personal manifesto, so I will give you the basic outline of it.
First things first. Jeremy was a lying sack of shit. He lied about the money, about the possibility of winning, about almost everything. The one thing he told the truth about, as far as I know, was the snipers. The whole thing about them being a higher order that he was beholden to.
No one knows who they were or where they went. There isn’t even any actual proof they were there, other than the bullet that killed Luke. They could tell the weapon type from that, but nothing more. The prevailing theory is that they were ex-military guys trying to make some money. I don’t know what I believe. All I know is one of them killed Luke, and I hope they’re caught someday.
Jeremy was rich. He had a fuck load of money and a surplus of time. You might be able to piece the rest of it together. Rich kid with all the power and charisma he could want. A bloodthirsty side. A nice big chunk of land that nobody cared about, least of all the owner. He got nothing out of the whole thing other than entertainment. It was a hobby for him.
And now here I am. Writing again. Hoping again, kind of, if only because I have a very good reason to hope. People love these kinds of books, don't they? Tell-alls, memoirs. Especially when they have to do with really nasty stuff.
My sense of humor has kept me going through all this writing and remembering. But I'll set it aside for now, and tell you straight out that the events in the hotel have pretty much ruined my life. Whatever slim chance I had of becoming a normal person is completely gone. I really just want to sit in the house for the rest of my life and, other than my brief excursions for walking, forget that the world exists. The book is a chance to do that. If I can sell it, if I can just live off it for a while. Maybe something will change later on.
My mom hasn't had it much easier. She's still working, but I don't think she can do it much longer.
Mary still doesn't want to see me. I got up the guts to call her a
few weeks ago, but it went to voice mail, and she never answered my message.
That's it, I guess. Not much more to tell. My name is Orin. I am a person, I am alive. And now it’s time to hide, wait, and hope that things finally change for the better.