The Purposeless Detective

Life is rough. That's why I got in the game. I spent my time on the streets drinking from a flask and looking for purpose, even if it was trouble. You walk the crowded streets of a city and you're bound to run into something. Someone's going to hassle you, someone's going to speak to you, someone's going to sell you on something.

Me, I'm not too lonely, just bored. That's why I wandered in the living painting of this city's nightlife, just another brush stroke against the bright lights and the deep shadows. I'm tired of work, but I rarely do. I schemed to make ends meet. I sought solace in the peep shows, the strip clubs, stolen cable with its porn channels. Yet eventually there's that point you get to where you sink or swim. That's when I joined my line of work.

Having a familiarity with this city's seedy underbelly has worked quite well to my advantage. I've seen things bizarre that would sound ugly on paper, but the more you deal with morbidity, it's more funny than anything else. I've hit clubs with hidden hallways leading to the underground. People are drinking, doing drugs and fucking but it's all in their idea of good fun. The kinky stuff usually goes on someplace upstairs, but the freakish shit always goes down in the basement. The middle ground is for those who haven't picked a side, a sort of purgatory for the normal. Whatever you call it, it's all right beneath the surface. All of it resides in a dike just 6ft below the normal waking earth.

I have no judgment for the drag queens, the coke heads, the submissives tied and clamped, the self-mutilating types, the lost and the bored. I'm no different. I've got the same disease just a more advanced strand. I have laws to uphold but I don't fly straight. My work is undercover. I don't waste time taking bait from the degenerates and lowlifes at the bottom. They're puppets to their vices. It's the men at the top that I want. That's my draw. The real dealers and the murderers. That's what got me this job. That's what cured my depression and erased most my angst and boredom.

It's all an act from the outside, but inside, I fit right in. I don't relate to these people but I remain fascinated. I've seen snitches cut up and never heard from again but I've never been sniffed out as one. Those fallen fools go in my paperwork as part of crimes so corrupt and large they couldn't stick in court. The make a lie big enough and keep telling it thing is true. The head at the tops' tentacles reach so far down and hold such an influence, even most the bigger crime I come across gets written down rather than reported.

But this all changed, because I was a bored motherfucker with purpose. That's the key to creating ambition. That's the motivator without interest. Give me something to do with this talent God's granted me. He gave me arms so I could grab handles and mow the lawn. He gave me creativity to put two and two together. He bestowed boredom to whip me for ever lagging behind. Like the criminals and their strings tied to every part of this town, I'm strung along, too. The lasso is wrapped around my leg but at least I know it, and I know I'll never free myself.

Dragging along, I rid this dark town of crime and disease, but I ain't any happier. What's purpose once it's gone? What's a detective to do when he's righted all the wrongs? I can't rejoice. I've been strung along by God and it's not my choice. Of course, God's always been a synonym for fate. Some said love. Some claimed love. A girl I tried to love told me that's what God was. It isn't, God is fate. And after I finished solving the last crime all that was left was contemplation's overbearing weight. Back to the basics, back to beginning. To call it pointless would be redundant.

This free time only leads to thought of free will. I've read and watched videos on the subject, but as I get deeper I'm subject to tunnel vision. I've read philosophers in all their wisdom trying to convince themselves life's worth living. Even though there's no real control and we're just pulsing vessels with souls craving gratification. It's a rigged game forced down a path and not even a frown will change that.

They gave me a medal for my work. But what good's a detective without murder? As good as The Sun without Earth. As good as a mother without her kids. I'm a man without purpose. I was never smart or deserving of any authority. I never had stern ethics, a straight face or merit. Why am I writing this? I guess retelling this shitty story is therapeutic.

I tried to do things right. I'm a vegetarian but ate meat amongst murderers. I had to kill a man and didn't seem to mind. It proved to the bosses I was cold-blooded. Had I said no, they would've known and it would've been my life. I would've been shot on sight. That's a fair price. You can bet that was never written down in any reports. It's a game of chess with these fellas. If you want to take down the king you can't fear to lose a knight, a bishop or a queen. Especially not a dame, and lost mine I did. So you knock off a peon, so what? it's not like it keeps me up at night. As ugly as it sounds, an end can justify the means. Of course, I don't really mean that. But once it's started, it's started. It spirals infinitely and there's no stopping it. Like when the Bible speaks of original sin. I am born in the wrong.

It just keeps going. So much so it's bleeding into a second paragraph. There's no justification for any evil but once you do it's a free-for-all. That's what I believe now. I can't claim there's such a thing as "a little perversion." It's pollution that doesn't dissipate with care. It's part of our beings and we've got to find a way to deal with it. It fluctuates but it won't go away. It's an ugly curse and innate. That's what I believe, anyhow. These beliefs help me deal with God's fate and that idea of original sin. You can't plant a dead thing in earth and expect it to blossom.

Yet sometimes I want to cease writing words to no one and believe the lies. Like the dame that inspired me to believe roses weren't ugly and she shit them. Even if for a moment, that feeling of growing up under God and Santa Claus returns to you, warm and enveloping. Humans are good, life's a good thing, and all these other enticing simplicities. My wandering mind and detective work freed this city of crime. I've got paychecks to spend as I wish, but instead I'm buying and eating from cans of beans and stuffing my face over the sink. I just eat to make my stomach shut up, it's not the reason I'm living. It's not my calling.

If things reverted back to purity I'd probably be as insignificant as water or even less. There'd be no carnivores or herbivores, it would all regress. When it got hot I would boil and steam, and when it got cold I would freeze, but nothing more. That would be a life without perversion, murder, deceit, and hardons, but who says those are bad things? Think of the humor death breathes into comedy. Think of the strange way joy is influenced by suffering.

Evil's not going to end and I don't understand these strings pulling me at my shoulders. I could move to another district and solve their crimes, but solving these didn't solve mine. I didn't learn a goddamn thing. I studied the criminals, bled, wept, killed, and tried, yet I'm back at the beginning. God teases me as I sit in my messy studio working on sketches. He brought me back to old friend alcohol and cigarettes. These aren't going to kill me. A dame's as good as dead to me outside a rough exterior. These gripes and vices lead me here and shut her out. She was collateral damage in my cure. Sorry if you don't understand this, it's poorly written. That's what happens when you write selfishly.

I guess I'm neglecting part of the story. The glimmering light of hope that obscures your pessimism, that dresses up your suffering under the disguise of redemption. A lass, the type of person fate sent you as bait, until you're cooking for her and buying Christmas presents. You're taking her on dates and neglecting your true love, skepticism. It's flesh and a kiss at a cost, but which? A little piece of you, but that could mean everything. It could be the last inch of you that impedes your progress toward happiness or your true being. Maybe that lack of lucidity is key, I don't know.

Those ideas went rotten and ended in my bin. Now I've got a new plot to do away with God's damning, endless noise. And fate's string that guides me through this lovely, ugly city. I'll leave my town in perversion the way I found it. How, I don't know yet. But I'm capable. And anything beats a bored soul. And only rebellion gives you the truest illusion of control. Maybe I'll blow a hole in the prison and help free all the convicts. Or commit unthinkable crime to really stir up some shit. And make the leap from hunting to hunted. Rationality never made much sense to me, not when it leaves you on empty.

With all those bloody crime scenes, there's still nothing sinister enough. Even all the heinous stories I've heard don't impress me, in my mind I've done worse. There's no dirty alley filled with junkies, whores and worms darker than the human psyche. I want to really make the mayor proud, make his stomach turn. I've got to go all out against the innocent, not the wicked. For idling, for believing they're innocent. Using every bit of wisdom the job's given me to be proactive. Long-lasting. Exacting. Perhaps balance can be restored through hideous acts of murder, manipulation and other depravity, and help perpetuate the inevitable. There's no cure for boredom. There's no answer that's certain.