The Messenger is a short story which originated from a submission to the Owl Canyon Press Autumn 2019 Hackathon. Writers were provided with a first and middle paragraph from which they had to craft a story. Although my entry was unsuccessful, the judges commended the work, stating that they found many things to admire in the writing, including an original plot and various interesting details. The first few paragraphs are shown below.
Beyond the cracked sidewalk, the telephone pole with layers of flyers in a rainbow of colors, and the patch of dry brown grass, there stood a ten-foot high concrete block wall, caked with dozens of coats of paint. There was a small shrine at the foot of it, with burnt out candles, dead flowers and a few soggy teddy bears. One word of graffiti filled the wall, red letters on a gold background: Rejoice!
Tannen stared at the word in disbelief for a few seconds. It was a striking new addition to the disconnected scrawls written there before and anger started brewing inside him. What was the meaning of this? Rejoice? After what had happened? Who could have written such a thing? A kid had been killed for God’s sake!
He approached the wall, taking care not to tread on one of the teddies or skeletons of flowers. With two fingers he brushed the R of the word Rejoice. The work wasn’t overly fresh, as evidenced by it feeling dry and no color transferring onto his skin. But he could definitely smell some residual paint fumes. Without thinking, he clenched the same hand into a fist and drove it hard into the wall. As the pain seared through his body, he immediately regretted his action and looked down at his hand. The skin was grazed across three knuckles and there was blood seeping from two. There was more pain as he slowly unclenched his fist. If he got away with just a fracture, he’d be lucky.
He closed his eyes, threw back his head and sighed. He hadn’t vented just because of the graffiti. He was fresh from yet another argument with Delia and it was clearer to him than ever that his marriage was over. She’d been going on about progressing their divorce again and he was convinced there was someone else sniffing around. Luke had pretty much confirmed it a few days ago. That’s what was killing him the most – the thought of another guy around his kid. He and Delia were pretty much done; he supposed it was time to accept that. He knew he hadn’t put enough time into the marriage. As a cop it just wasn’t always possible. But the kid; he couldn’t stand the thought of someone else cutting in on his kid.
Tannen opened his eyes and looked at the wall again. It was in a fairly sketchy part of New York called Hunts Point which was a neighborhood on a peninsula in the South Bronx area of the City. Thoughts shifted to the wretched being whose memory was being honored there. She was three years old when she died. Three fucking years. Where was the justice in that? And if this wasn’t bad enough, the days leading up to her death must have held only loneliness and fear. So much fear. It made him feel sick to his stomach just thinking about it. The CSIs reckoned she’d stayed in the house for three days after her smack-head mother killed herself. Survived on a couple of lousy cartons of juice and a block of cheese. And each night she’d curled herself into her mother’s corpse – how they knew that, he had no idea – and God only knows if there was any temporary relief from sleep. He thought about Luke and how he might have reacted in a similar predicament. Suddenly he wanted to take a shot at the wall again.
A sharp sound behind him made Tannen spin round rapidly. At the same time, he instinctively reached for his Beretta but his fingers didn’t quite make contact. His eyes settled upon the girl as he tried to shake the horrible feeling of suddenly realising he wasn’t alone. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen, with long brown hair which looked fairly unkempt. She wasn’t short but not what he would call tall either and was wearing jeans which were quite badly ripped at the knees, as well as a few other places. There was no jacket, despite it being quite a cold day, just a white t-shirt which looked yellowed with age.
Thomas McGlone 