The Innocents, Nathan Senthil [best life changing books .TXT] 📗

Since the lab was taking its time, he and Peter were bored.

Yesterday had been fairly uneventful. The morning after their little party, Joshua had woken up, whizzed, and slept again, until noon. Later that evening, he had charged his dead phone and checked it. The browser had shown him the sort of porn he would never dare watch sober. What kind of demented fuck was he?

Wincing, he had closed the browser and opened the call log. Only one entry was there. Gabriel. Holding his head, he’d tried to recall the conversation. He had told him that he’d mailed the notebook. But nothing else popped out. Embarrassed, Joshua had put off speaking to him.

Then he and Peter had met the security guard who survived Lolly’s bridge robbery. He’d said he still remembered that day in minute detail. Particularly, the visceral memories of three kids with kerchiefs tied across their faces. Two bastards, one with dreadlocks and the other with bald spots, robbed while the third stood guard on the bridge. Except for the firsthand account of the survivor, there had been nothing to garner from the meeting.

Both had returned to the room and started partying again, the binge stretching into morning. This time, Joshua had the mind to give the phone along with the car key to the receptionist. He hadn’t known that cell phones were as deadly to possess when sloshed.

Joshua had been awake for five minutes, and he was getting ready for an important task. Peter had suggested something crazy when he was liquored up, and unlike most drunken ideas, this one looked promising even when sober.

They were meeting another survivor today.

Joshua came out of the bathroom and tossed four pouches of Skoal into his mouth before picking up the towel and going back again.

The hot bath and the sudden nicotine rush should have curbed some of the hangover. But it didn’t. Feeling fresh and clean—only on the outside—he waddled to Peter’s room.

His friend looked a lot better than Joshua. He had only consumed a few lite beers and held his own pretty well last night, unlike the one before.

Twenty-five minutes later, he braked in front of a pair of intimidating mechanical steel gates. They were as tall as the palm trees surrounding the property’s peripheral wall. Joshua got down from the car and pressed the buzzer.

“Hello. This is Joshua Chase from New York. I’d like to see Mister…”

Goddamn it.

What was his last name? Unable to recall it, he settled for, “Mr. Don.”

A few seconds later, the gates parted automatically.

The Audi cruised along a tree-lined driveway, which was longer than Joshua’s street back in Staten Island. As they drove onwards, lush branches receded, and a grand mansion came into view.

Peter whistled. “Christ on toast!”

Joshua didn’t share his partner’s awe. Criminals might live a life of luxury while good people barely had enough to get by, but it wasn’t about lavishness. No matter how rich a person was, inner peace could not be bought. Particularly by a guy like the one they were visiting, who’d exchanged his soul for ephemeral worldly pleasures.

Most of the evil men Joshua had known and put away didn’t die peacefully. In that way, he thought, the ending was only the beginning. To some eternal destination. Paradise or damnation.

Joshua’s wild ruminations halted when he saw three men standing under a canopy. Peter stopped near them and they both got out of the car.

“Let me park it for you.” One man held his hand out.

A valet?

“It’s alright. Show us where.”

He shook his head. “We don’t let strangers into our garage.”

Weird rule.

Peter handed the key, and two of them drove away with the car.

The remaining man, a kid really, in beige shirt and chinos frisked them. Then he opened the largest teak door Joshua had ever seen and took them in.

After crossing a smoke-filled lobby and spacious hall, they climbed the stairs at the end. A length of rail ran along the lower portion of the wall, and a stairlift chair rested on the landing, cobwebs drifting between its armrests.

The kid led them through a corridor flanked by a dozen niches in the walls and each lighted recess exhibited a carnal figurine. Then the kid turned right into a room; they followed.

As soon as Joshua entered, he was assaulted by the reek of cocaine, liquor, and barbecued chicken.

The first thing that caught Joshua’s attention was Bugsy’s prosthetic arms. They sprouted from underneath the sleeves and hung limply. Bugsy was wearing an orange T-shirt and sitting back on his chair, behind a mahogany table.

Could it even be called sitting?

Joey had said that Bugsy’s legs had been amputated at the hip. How was it possible to sit without thighs? Were prosthetic legs competent substitutes? Joshua didn’t know, except for the fact that Bugsy’s weight was supported by his stumps. Propped on a chair like a half mannequin.

Joshua had imagined that immobility might have rounded Bugsy’s physique. But it was not the case. Bugsy was prism-like. From his hairless head, jowls, and neck to flabby chest, every visible muscle sagged, giving his body the appearance of a melting candle or soft serve.

But the most disturbing of all was not the plastic arms or the drooping torso. It was his skin. It was oily and had a yellow sheen to it. Like he suffered from caustic jaundice. How long had it been since he’d been out in the sunlight? The stairlift appeared as if it wasn’t being used anymore.

Questions. So many questions.

How did Bugsy shit, pee, eat, or bathe? How did he scratch an itch on the nose? What if a mosquito or a bug bit him? Even to wipe off snot from a sneeze, he needed assistance. How cruelly embarrassing!

No one deserved this kind