A Memory of Disjointed Illusions - A Short Story

The year was 1989, in an alternate universe very different from ours. In this universe, technology was very far ahead of ours, and with that, so was science. The world was advanced, yet was still rotting away from global warming, even quicker than ours.

He inhaled a large breath as the raindrops fell onto the clear glass table that sat on the balcony. Trickling onto the floor slowly, the raindrops created a small, shallow puddle.

That puddle was very much like his cluttered soul, and the raindrops were the danger and anxiety from it, filtering in. Even though he was so high in the sky, he was really so deep in the ground. He could hear the whaling of the city, its busy streets pumping with blood, like a human.

His eyes darted left and right, watching the hovercars and the bright lights that illuminated the city outside as they caused him to fall into a trance. He snapped out of it and started to get on with his day. The loose purple dress shirt he wore was still hanging off him, the buttons undone, with no undershirt below. He began to do up the first three buttons of the shirt as he frantically searched the apartment for something. He picked up his keys from the wooden dish that sat on a small table close to the entrance of the small apartment. He then darted into his room, and put on the rest of his clothes, juggling his bright purple raincoat, and sitting down to sling his socks onto his feet.

Finally, he eyed the thing he was desperate to find. After he had finished putting everything on, he picked it up. It was a .45 cal pistol, which he stuffed in his right jean pocket. With that, he left.

He entered the dingy apartment hall, which was old and grey. It smelt of rotting wood and mung beans, but he didn’t mind, he had always loved living in a small apartment. He briskly approached the elevators, as someone had just stepped in the left one, and the doors were about to close. He hopped in and stood at the right corner at the back of the elevator as the doors slowly closed.

The person who occupied the left corner was a tall man, about six feet, bald and wearing a raincoat that was black and went down to his knees. The elevator ride was awkward and stale, but they both made it through it.

Our main character was delighted to hear the ding indicating that it was the main lobby, and he darted out of the doors, into the lobby, and finally, out of the main doors into the city.

He took a deep breath as he smiled at the sunsetting sky filled with activity from the hovercars all around, gliding across the air.

He crossed the road, and hopped into a hovercar that was parked parallel to what looked like some sort of gated-off construction site. He typed some things into the console of the hovercar, grabbed the wheel, and he was off into the air.

His hovercar looked quite new, the paint still fresh, the interior still clean as it hummed towards the center of the city. It looked as if it was modelled after an old 80s police cruiser.

Our main character was named Jay and was on a special job today, something that held a lot of weight over him and would prove or disprove if the last three months of work would have been worth it.

The ride was stressful and filled with a lot of anxiety, as the traffic was heavy, especially considering it was only one o’clock on a Tuesday. The rain still hit his windshield, getting heavier and heavier it seemed.

Finally, Jay had arrived at his destination. Outside a small alley under a small bridge, he parked his hovercar, which stopped its humming and its glow disappeared after doing so.

He hopped out of the car, with its automatic doors gliding shut behind him. He walked down the alle, and approached a graffitied door that was in the wall of the alley.

Jay stopped at the door, looked around, and knocked once, waited a second, then knocked twice. The door opened, and Jay entered the darkness of the building. Inside were a bunch of people laying around on couches, cocaine and heroin everywhere, on the floor, all around the coffee tables and on the couch that the tens of people were laying on.

It was like the junkie den of all junke dens, the lighting almost not present, and the walls scratched and torn to almost destruction. There wasn’t a foot of space left where you could sit or even really stand. Jay followed the man who let them in, who lead him to the kitchen. Three men stood in the middle of the kitchen, smoking cigarettes and weed.

“Yo man, what’s up?!” the man on the right asked.

The man came in for a high five which lead into a fistbump. He gave the same to the other two, nodding his head up at them.

“Not much Z, you ready to do this?” Jay asked back.

“Yeah man, we’ve been waiting for you. They’re out back, follow me.”

“Dope, see ya boys.”

The other two stayed there, and nodded up as they left. Jay followed Z towards the back of the kitchen, into a similar lounging area as before, but bigger. They walked into a hallway to the right, and out into a door that lead back into a subsection of the alley. The man who was leading Jay had a silver briefcase in his right hand, and stood in the middle of two black suited men with handguns on their crotches, pointed to the floor. On the opposite side of them were three other men. The two on the outside wore trench coats and also had handguns in the same position as the other men. In the middle of them, was a man in a totally black suit, with gold rimmed sunglasses.

“Here is the guy I was talking about, he knows the prices, he knows everything about this business, alright?” Said Z.

“Is this true?” Asked the gold rimmed sunglasses man.

“It is. If you’d just let me collect something from this truck, I will be right back to show you what we have been working on,” Jay replied.

“Fine,” The gold rimmed sunglasses man exclaimed, who looked like he was starting to become impatient.

Jay walked towards the large U-Haul sized dark grey truck that sat behind them. Jay walked towards the passenger's seat of the truck, and got in. He pulled out a phone from his right pocket, and dialed seven numbers. He held the phone up to his right ear.

“Converge on my location, we have both gang leaders on my location, I repeat, both gang leaders on my location,” Jay said hurriedly.

After about twenty seconds of waiting, men in Police uniforms approached both sides of the truck, with heavy armour on, and M4 rifles in their hands. Jay jumped out of the passenger side, and held his .45 cal pistol up in front of him, aiming it ahead, backing up the other Police officers.

They approached the men that stood there, ready to arrest everyone.

“Everyone put your weapons on the ground, this is the Vancouver Police department, and we are arresting you on drug trafficking charges, get on the ground, now!”

The two other Police officers held the suited men down to the ground, cuffing them, and a couple of other officers came for the other gang, who had their hands in the air.

Jay grabbed Z and got out his cuffs to slap them on him.

“How could you do this to me Jay, how?! You were my man, you were my boy! You were the only guy I could trust, you know that?!” Z yelled at Jay. Jay emotionlessly lead him back to the street, behind the truck. He looked like he was trying to hold back so much pain, so much anguish all at once.

He couldn’t do it.

A tear dropped from Jay’s eye as he escorted the criminal into the police hovercar.

Jay would never forget that day, the day he arrested his brother for drug trafficking after being undercover, working his case for months.

Never.