Absolute Goner

By Ivaylo Gogov

A story of a goner who dared to stand in the way of organized crime in a small town in Bulgaria. A story of a personal fight of a daring loner who took the steep path between despair and hope. Book with an exciting storyline with unexpected twists and turns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivaylo Gogov
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463303153

Ivaylo Gogov

Born: Ivaylo Gogov on March 24th 1973.Studied: High School of Mathematics in Sofia, Bulgaria.Graduated as Landscape architect at the University of Forestry in Sofia, BulgariaWriting professionally since 1990 as a writer, screenwriter, novelist and poet.11 novels published on paper, 8 poetry books and 2 collections of short stories as well.First book published: January 200021st book published: April 2020Favourite place: Rila MonasteryFavourite author: Lee ChildFavourite song: Orion, MetallicaFavourite taste: EspressoRecently: writing a new book.

Book preview

Gunshots sound differently in your sleep. The human brain comes up with some bizarre plots to make sense of the unexpected sharp reports and mask the threat. That’s happened to me twice. The first time, I dreamed that the aluminium door of my hospital room was repeatedly slamming against the frame under the force of the wind. It was swinging wildly and I was desperately straining and failing to reach the handle. In my second dream, I was in a low-ceilinged laboratory where the pedestal fan was out of whack, its blades rattling against the wire guards. I was getting really hot and starting to think I might suffocate when the fan somehow wound up on the ceiling and next thing I know drops of cold water were spraying over me.

Both times I ended up waking up from the gunshots, only to find myself in really sticky situations.

But this was different. The shots sounded loud and clear, sharp and harsh, just as rounds fired from a handgun are supposed to. Besides, I wasn’t all the way asleep, having been stirred by a serious ruckus a minute earlier.

1.

My name is Emil. I’m forty-three and my life is straight up crappy. When I say crappy, I don’t mean three-days-worth-of-delay-of-my-salary crappy. Oh, no.

What I wouldn’t give for a permanent address and a regular job! Nine to five every workday, sometimes Saturday mornings… An office coffee machine in constant need of water refill, lunches with colleagues who tell old jokes, Friday nights spent in clubs that play retro music, occasionally in piano bars with even more retro repertoires. Salary boosting my bank account every first day of the month, or sometimes with a three-day delay.

What I wouldn’t give for that life!

Then again, I probably wouldn’t give anything. Simply because I have nothing to give. Plus, I don’t like empty talk.

You don’t get what I’m saying?!

Well, that’s the trouble with having a crappy life. People with permanent addresses and standard working hours don’t get me. My world is different from theirs. Different from yours.

In another life, I used to live like you. I would wear ironed shirts and keep my hair combed back, my shoes polished and my name tag inscribed in two languages. I would move swiftly, talk sparingly, earn big money and just plow ahead. I was untouchable and immortal.

Those years are long gone, consigned to oblivion. You probably have no way of knowing this, but crappy life has this knack for making all memories fade, especially the good ones. There one moment and gone the next, like footprints in the sand or snowflakes in early November.

What is etched in my memory, though, is the incessant whining, a ritual as old as time. Whining about how bad traffic was, how coffee was no good anymore, who the boss’s new right hand was, who wasn’t the boss’s right hand, what had happened the previous night, what hadn’t happen the previous night… whining about others whining and about no one having whined lately.

Still not getting me?

People around me would have mental break-downs over their salary payments being three days late. Or failing to squeeze into their last year’s swimsuit. Some would go into depression just because their swimsuit was last year’s collection. They would despair of the rising interest rates, the falling Christmas bonuses and the presence of gluten and palm oil in their healthy vegan menu. They would say all the time how utterly crappy their lives were. Every day they were on the verge of suicide, pouring money into the pharmaceutical industry—more specifically, the happy-pill segment of its vast spectrum.

Well, now I could tell them all about what crappy life is like. It’s such a long story that they would forget the antidepressants and grab for the sleeping pills. I don’t see myself making the effort to enlighten them, though. I don’t like wasting my breath.

I try to live a peaceful life and not get in anyone’s way. I try to steer clear of trouble, stay out of conflicts and keep any advice I might have to myself. I mind my own business, pretend not to see or hear anything. I don’t answer questions, respond to gibes, or let insults get to me. I don’t get into arguments or feel the need to voice my opinion. I’m not too keen on adventures either, have no taste for heroics and dislike taking risk, even to save my crappy life.

By some cruel twist of fate, it’s the risks that I have taken that have made my life crappy. Insane risks that tend to start out as harmless and perfectly logical actions born out of compassion and kindness.

If you really want a taste of crappy life, start acting like me. I give you my word, it’ll be no more than a year before you wake up aimless in some abandoned beach bar with twenty bucks in your pocket and about to have a few good men hard on your heels, hell bent on doing you in.

***

The beach bar wasn’t truly abandoned. Just closed for the season and huddled in darkness and quiet, waiting for next summer. The owners—or renters—had cleared the place of any furniture or equipment to the point they hadn’t even bothered to lock up. The only thing of value in the rickety wooden building were the walls, which provided shelter from the biting wind, and the curtains made out of fishing nets, which a man desperate enough to spend the night in a deserted bar on the seashore could use as covers. The salty dampness of wet sand seeped through the cracks of the sparsely laid floorboards, while the cane-reed roof might have provided nice protection against the unforgiving summer sun, but it definitely wasn’t equipped to handle the sly autumn rain.

The building was far away from the road and grooves barely visible among the sand dunes were the only reminder that until a few weeks ago the place had been buzzing with excitement and bacchanalian parties. Crushed beer cans, discolored cigarette packs and several square bottles were strewn among prickly patches of dry grass dotting the area around the beach bar. On my way in, I had noticed a crumbling flip-flop and a thin syringe by the door. The moon had been only a dull silhouette behind a runny veil of milky clouds, and I had been in a hurry, shaking from the cold, so I might have seen wrong.

Now I used my lighter to take a look around the room, hoping for a sink or at least a bottle of mineral water left behind, but I wasn’t that lucky. The place was stripped bare. Even the light switches and the electrical sockets had been pulled out, leaving twisting cables to silently stare at me from the walls and the cane roof overhead. The only item that wasn’t a board, a cane reed, or a piece of fishing net was a flyer advertising a beach party with someone named DJ BMG. I pulled it out from a crack in the floor and scanned the photos of half-naked girls with bleached hair getting sprayed with champagne by bronze-skinned, beefy young men with pirate beards ala Sandokan. How desperate must one be to lust after this particular brand of bliss?!

The lighter started to feel too hot against my thumb so I put it aside. I pulled down the curtains and folded them twice over. I lay down on the floorboards in one corner and wrapped myself in the makeshift cover. I rested my head on a pillow of my own hands and smiled. Life hadn’t always been nice to me. Crappy life even less so. I was used to taking whatever I could get because there might be even less for me around the next corner.

***

I don’t like empty talk. I don’t like existential crises either. I have a strategy that satisfies any question that may bubble up: I am where I am and I do what I do. At this very moment, thousands of people around the globe are struggling to survive in dim hospital rooms, depressive jail cells, or muddy trenches smeared with crap. Thousands of others are taking their last breath, crushed by distorted metal in car accidents; having a heart attack, or swallowing a deadly handful of toxic pills. At this very moment, somewhere around the globe thousands of people are saying their last goodbye to each other, getting beaten to death, or falling into the wormholes of human trafficking, slavery, prostitution and God knows what else. The modern world offers a rich combo plate of refined entertainments for all tastes.

So I have nothing to complain about.

***

I had nothing to complain about.

I was sheltered from the wind and had a roof over my head. I still had that twenty-buck bill, a pack of gum to stay my hunger and a promise for a decent job half a day away from here. It wasn’t that bad for early November.

2.

I couldn’t tell how many of them there were.

I woke up to voices quarreling. Outside, several men were talking at the same time, as if they were trying to outtalk each other. I couldn’t make anything of what they were saying, just heard snippets in English and some gibberish in another language that sounded like Turkish to my hazy mind. So it could just as well have been Portuguese. Amid the sounds of waves crashing into the shore, the words were washing over me in surges, carried by the salty air, distorted by the cold and my sleep-muddled senses. Still, I managed to figure out that two of the voices—the ones speaking English—were trying to shut the rest up.

Scared to move, I hoped to hell that none of the quarrelling men would get the idea to go inside. As far as I could tell, more so from the intonation than the words, they were all on edge. They were liable to get tired of shouting and start settling their scores like real men soon. Inserting myself into an argument of such intensity had repeatedly proven to be an unhealthy choice for me. Most of my run-ins with angry types had had quick, unpleasant resolutions, but there had also been times I had found myself locked in seedy places with my hands tied up, forced to do disgusting things against my will.

Fully awake, I sat up with my body pressed even closer to the wall and listened more carefully. The men were four or five. Well, there might have been twenty of them but only five were talking. It sounded like they were throwing accusations at each other—broken promises, double-dealing, unpaid debt, lies, betrayal and other sins of distressing nature. They were likely leveling other accusations too, but I could catch only a word here and there, jumping out of the cacophony of poor English and Turkish/Portuguese, like dolphins out of the sea.

It struck me as odd for a group of men to choose the beach on a cold November night to settle their business problems. These things were usually done in expensive restaurants or—as a last resort—glitzy offices. Unless…

Six bullets were fired in quick succession. Measured, decisive shots. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! All six rounds in no more than two seconds. Something heavy thudded against the wooden wall inches from my head and then dropped to the ground with a rustle. Silence fell.

These were the unmistakable sounds of murder.

It wasn’t like this was my first rodeo.

I was sure that a human body was lying outside, slumped against the wooden wall, a body that was never going to rise again.

Shit!

***

The voices had finally subsided into quiet. The distant thunder of the surf returned and drowned everything else out. Three car doors clicked shut and the whir of a powerful engine filled the night. The car quickly pulled away and I thought I could smell diesel exhaust.

Silence settled over the scene.

I slowly exhaled the air trapped in my lungs and swallowed hard.

***

Have you ever fired a handgun?

You can go through a whole clip and still miss the target from three steps away. Most people shoot and hope for the best, freeze after the first round. Some even drop the gun. The more experienced ones are good for about three shots. But you have to be really cocky to fire six rounds in succession without flinching.

These were no small-town crooks. The shooter was practiced, trained to hit the target—probably by the army or the police, likely in one of those especially nifty units.

My thoughts were interrupted by a muffled moan. At first I took it for the sound of floorboards creaking disturbed by the wind, but then I listened more closely and caught it again—it was coming from outside.

Somewhere close, a man was moaning.

So not everyone was gone, one way or another.

I wanted to peek out the window and scan the area. Unfortunately, the windows faced the opposite way, overlooking the sea. I knew perfectly well what I had to do—climb out of one of them and dash for the dark horizon without looking back.

Instead, I crawled to the door and cracked it open.

The moon was now completely concealed by a blanket of clouds, shining only a pale, ghostly light on the scene, but it was enough to reveal a dark silhouette lying on the sand. The grass around the male form swayed nervously in stark contrast with his inert body.

The moans clearly indicated he was still alive.

Shit!

I looked around and saw nothing but sand dunes, cane and trees.

It wasn’t until I came out of my temporary shelter that I saw the other guy.

The source of the moans was actually sitting, his back resting against the wooden wall. Another man’s body was sprawled out a little further away, with yet another one next to it.

Shit!

It took me about a minute to confirm that the three prone men were dead. And no more than a second to figure out that the fourth was hurtling down the same road at breakneck speed. I couldn’t see a wound because his front was sticky and glistening black in the night. His suit jacket—probably gray before the disastrous rendezvous—was darkened from the right shoulder all the way to the pockets, and his shirt could easily serve as a Rorschach inkblot test. I grabbed him by the shoulders and proceeded to ask absurd questions like Are you OK?, Are you hurt?, Are you in pain? etc., as my brain kept rejecting reality.

The man didn’t answer any of them, he didn’t need to. Even in the frail light seeping through the clouds, it was obvious that he was in desperate need of emergency medical interventions. Serious blood transfusion, for starters.

In moments like this I wished I had a cell phone.

There couldn’t be that many hardheaded holdouts in Bulgaria who still refused to get one of those gadgets, but I was one of them. And I had never really felt the need for it. Except in moments like this.

I checked the guy’s pockets, first the suit jacket, then the pants. I found only a wallet and a passport. The passport was definitely not Bulgarian—there was an eagle or a shield or both on the cover and plenty of doodles in Arabic. I had no time for linguistic research, so I put it away and moved to the tricky back pockets of the poor soul’s pants.

The guy’s moans were getting less frequent.

Shit!

And then I saw it. The phone in his palm. This foreigner had probably had the same idea as me but couldn’t muster the strength. It didn’t take me long to pry the small device out of his sticky fingers. I wiped it on the sleeve of his already bloodied jacket and dialed 112, the emergency number for the EU.

The call lasted way longer than I would have liked.

I reported the number of wounded people and gave a relatively accurate description of the location. I had to repeat everything twice, and the dispatcher’s inadequacy got on my nerves. I hung up before he could ask me more questions and put the phone in the wounded man’s pocket.

It was time to split.

Using every last bit of his energy, the poor guy reached and grabbed my elbow. It was more of a touch, actually. Another moan left his lips, only this time it sounded like coherent speech. In broken English, he was begging me to help him, to not leave him.

I told him that I had called for help, told him to hang on until the paramedics came. He either didn’t hear me or didn’t understand me because he repeated his request. With his other hand, he shoved a yellow piece of paper in my face.

Two hundred bucks.

I made another effort to calm him down, didn’t work the second time either. I gently pushed his hand back, but he was straining, mumbling incoherently and generally looking like he was about to kick the bucket. It wasn’t until I took the bill that he finally relaxed, somewhat.

He kept asking me to help him, stay with him, but I saw no point in explaining anything to him. The man was in shock, if not even delirious. He was saying the same thing over and over, as if he would never stop, but the slackening grip of his fingers suggested he didn’t have much time left. My presence must have given him comfort because I thought I saw him smile. But my eyes were already searching the darkness for signs of trouble so they might have played a trick on me.

It wasn’t long before the signs of trouble showed up.

In the far distance, to the south, the paved road curved near the rocky seashore. It was from there that I had spotted the abandoned beach bar at dusk. Now the bend in the road was flooded with bright headlights and flashing red lights. The emergency number dispatcher had taken me seriously. The ambulances, assuming that the hospital in the nearby town had more than one, were going to be at the wooden building in four-five minutes.

In five more, the whole area would be crawling with police until the morning. The landscape was about to get extremely busy and tense. It wasn’t an experience I cared for so I fully intended to pass on it.

I made sure the man was propped comfortably against the wall, patted him on the good shoulder and ran for the sea. I waded into a tangle of mossy seaweed, its smelly flesh pulled at my legs, slowing my steps. Frothy waves lapped the coolly pale coastline. If I wanted to get away quickly, I needed to walk, even run, on the smooth, damp sand of the surf—where my footsteps would disappear in seconds, leaving no tracks to be followed.

I glanced to the south and caught sight of the rocks projecting out over the sea in the far distance. Even further away, several miles from the bend in the road, the sky was turning yellow. The street lamps of the small town below were glowing beneath scowling clouds. I had no intention of spending the winter on the beach. I needed to get to town, act like a late tourist and find myself a ride north to Burgas, the nearest major city.

The wet sand under my feet felt like walking on pavement. The only inconvenience was that it was wet. My shoes were sturdy and in fine shape, but after a half hour water started seeping in. The good thing about sturdy shoes in fine shape is that they hold up well against water. The bad thing is that once they get soaked, it takes an eternity for them to dry. If I didn’t want my feet to be wet for the next two days, I had to get away from the sea or walk barefoot. I changed lanes to the drier part of the beach and quickened my pace. I glanced behind me a few times, but no one seemed to be following me or searching the coastline with flashlights. I figured they were still pretty busy with the scene of the triple—if not already quadruple—murder.

Shit!

Couldn’t those idiots have picked another place?! Of the fucking entire Black Sea coast, sprawling over more than three hundred and fifty kilometers , they just had to shoot each other right outside of the abandoned bar where I had planned to spend a quiet night!

Couldn’t they have gone someplace else? Couldn’t they have met tomorrow night? Couldn’t they have talked things over like grown men? Why did they have to pull out the guns? Why did they have to kill each other? And why did they have to botch the job, leaving one half-dead behind?

Shit!

3.

Have you ever passed through the quaint small town of Izgrev, just a speck on the map and barely there on distance signs along the main road connecting Burgas and the resort town of Sinemorets? Prior to that night, I had only been once, years ago, and my memories weren’t all that pleasant. True, I had been younger then and the streets had been bustling with tourists, half of them drunk or stoned and practically begging for a good beating… Whatever, water under the bridge.

Now, in early November, there was no trace of the tourist-season excitement in the small town. The hotels were dark, the drinking and dining establishments shuttered, the shops had packed their colorful merchandise and stored it away, the outdoor cafes were gone. The streets, until recently teeming with tourists, were now back to perfectly ordinary small streets in a perfectly ordinary small town. The houses were creaking in the cold and quiet, with the occasional lit window serving as the only indication that the town was populated. Smoke was curling upwards from a chimney, filling the air with the acrid smell of winter. A fat black cat jumped out of a nearby trash can and streaked across the street. Yup, I get to scare instead of getting scared at times.

The only open place this early in the morning was a fancy gas station. The sharp glare of its lights was a tempting promise of civilization, restrooms and hot coffee.

I needed a cup of