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Sunday
Jack tried three times to breathe. Then he realized he was out of air.
He fumbled around for his oxygen tank--gone. Someone had simply detached it from the hose. Before his vision grayed out, Jack caught a greenish blur, rabbiting down the slope, leg muscles fueled by oxygen from the stolen silver cylinder--his oxygen.
They called it the death zone. Past eight thousand meters, the amount of ambient oxygen is too low to sustain human life. Jack was at eight thousand one hundred and fifty two. His last thought was of an old wives' tale--Afrikaaners in the Namib Desert trading diamonds for drops of water.
The next expedition found him in a sitting position, back against another frozen corpse. They stepped around him. His wife found out Tuesday.
Wednesday
I first found out from the wife. She reached out to me and asked me if I'd be interested in finding her husband's killer. I was young and I needed the money, so don't judge me.
I asked her why she was so certain someone had killed her. The death rate was nearly 10% atop Everest, I reminded her gently.
She slammed down the phone.
An hour later, she rang back, called me some nasty names, then doubled the rate. I imagined that some of the other investigators in town must have been less polite.
Widows, as a rule, have a pattern. The first week, they're still trying to come to grips with the loss of their husband. They look for friends and family for comfort. After a month, they start looking for companionship, but usually, in most marriages, all her friends are either female, or mutual friends. Even though most guys will sleep with anything that moves, I have yet to meet a guy who will relish fucking his dead buddy's wife.
So that's where the strangers come in. A pickup at the bar. The hot co-worker who she's never really talked to. The milkman.
And me.
But she was different. The sequence was all wrong. The second day, while I was going through her husband's things in the master bedroom of the house, she said she missed how her husband used to burrito her in between the couch cushions. When I turned around, she was wearing stockings, heels, and nothing else.
Afterwards--like a 10-second time-lapse in reverse--her face morphed from the slack-jawed expression of ecstasy into the rictus of mourning.
I took a cold shower and knocked down a glass of rye. I think it was in that order. Then I walked out the door.
It was autumn in Chicago, yet another year's worth of dust on my bookshelf. Chaucer. Proust. Nietzsche. Texts for angsty, angry young men. I found myself fingering the leather jacket of Also Sprach Zarathustra, wondering what a dead German philosopher would think about fucking widows and bouncing rent checks.
I was the following Monday before I actually moved beyond matrimonial counseling into serious investigational work.
 
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Monday
It was noon Monday. The phone buzzed. A text.
I feel empty inside. Wanna come over?
Poll: What to do?Call rival investigator (4) 44% Pick up her call, tell her I'll be over soon (3) 33% Grab lunch somewhere (2) 22% Go back to office and reread case files (0) 0% 9 total votes Your vote: What to do? (Vote): Call rival investigator
(Vote): Pick up her call, tell her I'll be over soon
(Vote): Go back to office and reread case files
(Vote): Grab lunch somewhere
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really great read
going to assume this is a good work of fiction
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Yeah I've skimmed/read some of your other stuff and you seem like a pro :O
The idea to have a choose your adventure sort of story like this is actually fantastic ^^ cheers!
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Cool stuff.
I thought this line was a nice touch.
Past eight thousand meters, the amount of ambient oxygen is too low to sustain human life. Jack was at eight thousand one hundred and fifty two.
I voted for grabbing lunch. Of course it'd have to be an interesting setting. Maybe i'm just hungry idk. Call rival investigator seemed a bit random though. Any ideas as to why the protagonist would do that in the situation? The wonderful thing about fiction is you can make just about anything you want become feasible and realistic. Looking forward to seeing what happens next.
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Choose your own adventure, forum style!
Pretty good so far, and fun!
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Monday (Pt. 1)
I hung up the phone on wifey and gave my crosstown rival a ring. A gruff voice, faint yiddish accent. "Bernie Moritz." I could almost hear all two hundred and forty pounds of doughy flesh coming through the headset.
Bernie and I knew each other from college. Back when I was an undergrad, he'd been my professor-at-large, teaching me courses from the major of Life. He'd been so proud when I'd figured out what he did for a living that he'd broken two of my ribs when I asked if I could buy some of his product. Apparently he was disappointed. He didn't want me to buy, he wanted me to sell.
So I ended up making music with him. The jagged chords of meth during finals week, the long notes of E and H afterwards, the slow drum beat of weed and coke throughout. I remember Valentine's Day from three years ago like it was yesterday.
That weekend, both of us were recently single. We were sitting in a small padded booth at a hot pot place called Mandarin Kitchen. He made a joke about how at least my break-up didn't have to involve lawyers.
It had been a good week. Apparently sharing some E in a hotel room was the hot new way for trust-funded international students to cement a relationship. We must have sounded a little too happy, because the next week the waitress asked me where my boyfriend was.
That night, as we shared a handle of scotch, legs dangling over a billboard railing, shoes inches from each passing L train--Bernie gave me my final exam.
"You remember Marty," he said. I nodded, took the bottle from his hands.
"Yeah?"
"He's popped up again."
Marty was an itinerant drifter who'd promised us two thousand E pills months back. Then when we met him in Calumet, he'd had his buddy stage a robbery. Even today, I can still remember the burning sting of a freshly fired shotgun muzzle against my neck. Professor Bernie later called it "losing your being-scared-shitless-cherry."
I remember handing Bernie back the bottle, and watching him chuck it at an approaching Orange Line express.
"That fucker has some nerve," I replied, trying to sound tough.
Bernie laughed. "So whatcha gonna do about it?" I noticed him turn around, a little too quickly for this to be an ordinary conversation.
I replied exactly on cue. "Dunno yet. But I'll need a favor."
Bernie was a little perplexed now. "What favor, kid?"
"You might want to buy Marty a four by ten plot somewhere quiet."
Bernie laughed. I'd passed half the test. Three months later, as the CPD homicide division closed the case for lack of evidence and I got my diploma papers, I felt a hand lift my graduation cap from my head. Without even turning around, I knew it was Bernie, and I knew I'd passed all of it.
Monday Pt 2 coming soon
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EPT
