Darkest Vow

The following is a teaser chapter from my Kindle eBook - Darkest Vow.

Chapter 1

Radiating streaks of light broke through the tattered aluminum blinds. At first, they were faint, but as each passing minute crept closer and closer to another bitter unfulfilling day, the intensity rose in a crest not diminished by the scant protection the blinds offered. I rolled over, letting my body free itself from the sweat-stained sheets while my head buried itself in the folds of the pillowcase like an ostrich seeking the succor of darkness within an earthen hole.

The reward of the pillow was short-lived. Sounds from a piano-man cricket scratching ten fingers on the ivory ticklers of a tinny piano from the bar below dug through the thin veil of earwax. My head was already ringing from the result of a night that contained laborious elbow bending. The forefront of my mind was clouded in a heavy fog that even the brightest sunray couldn’t clear. Slowly I moved up toward a sitting position.

‘Screwy cricket, why can’t he rest during the morning hours like the rest of his brethren,’ I thought to myself as I safely landed both feet heavily onto the floorboards with a loud thud. The wooden planks beneath me screeched out upon bearing the full brunt of my weight. I am not a heavy man; quite the contrary, in the past few years, my body weight has reduced with a steady diet of bourbon, smoke, and restless sleep. Call it irresponsible behavior to blow what little dough came into my coffers on vices that would ultimately shorten my life, but I would instead take up the position that those vices helped keep my sanity.

Limping over to the pedestal sink within the small confines of a haphazard washroom, I glanced into the mirror. Staring back at me was an apparition of what I used to be. A once rugged and chiseled reflection has grown soft around the edges, stress lines spreading in cracks from the edges of my eyes, and my cheeks grew gaunt and sallow. The brown tufts of hair on top of my head were thinning and, at present, matted against my scalp. My lips bore the fractures that would typically indicate long exposures to cold weather, but living in the growing Southern California metropolis of San Diego, nothing could be further from the truth. Locking eyes that were once gripping and piercing now had taken on the droopiness of a weathered hound dog.

I raised a hand to caress the stubble from my face. It was at least a couple of days old, though I must confess that keeping track of hygienic practices such as shaving had rapidly decreased in priority. Any passerby looking upon me on the street would surely assume that I was some sort of barfly and vagrant, though they wouldn’t be that far off. My once successful private dick practice has long since slipped into a ruined decay that left this shamus nothing but a mere shadow of his once former brilliant self. In fact, it had been months, or perhaps it was bordering on a year, since any serious work sauntered through my door.

Once upon a time, I was held in high regard and called in on many cases as a consultant to the official San Diego police department, but in recent times I have been reduced to following cheating husbands or wives around. The direct result of my current work produced nothing more than incriminating pictures that made divorce attorney wallets fatter. And for all my trouble, maybe fifty bucks, barely enough scratch to keep afloat. These cases were open and shut before the client even walked through my door. Whether or not I could validate their suspicions was really of little consequence. The human mind, when made up, is a force unto itself, and very few outside influences can provide a turning point of change. My clients of late wanted one thing, to be shed of their unhappy marriages for whatever reason, selfish or not. I simply gave them fuel to start the fire that would burn the marriage license. In the process, my reputation with the community shifted from being respected to being a joke.

So what could have brought my life to this crashing depression?

To answer that question, I wish I could come up with a better answer than the one I am about to give. I wish to God that it was some legitimate reason, like an accident or brain damage, yet no such luck with that explanation. Not unless you count the addiction to a woman as a culprit for brain damage. Dames are the one force that can build up a man quickly but can just as quickly tear him to a million pieces. If only a time machine existed like the one in that H.G. Wells story, I would gladly go back in time to revert the course of history and ultimately change my fate. Since no such life-altering device exists, the best I can do is attempt to prevent my obsession from traveling back through the banks of memory to that fateful date five years prior. The memory of a single knock on my once semi-posh office changed my life forever.