Sweetheart

By Nicholas Ong

Dead bodies, splattered brains, bloated bodies may not really appeal to the mass public, but then again, youre not me. Each suicide was a new job for me, something to look forward to. Mixed in a sea of corpses, Bryan, Jade and I set out to rediscover the true meaning of the beginning of death and how fragile life can be when pushed off the edge. We will bring you to the world where someones death is our desire and how dark and fun things can get on this nerve tugging adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Aug 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482852813

Nicholas Ong

Nicholas Ong has a warped and twisted sense in the style of writing while bringing out dark humor. He believes that nothing is too taboo to write about and feels that expressing his thoughts about all things modern through writing should be recognized and enjoyed.

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Copyright © 2015 by Nicholas Ong.

ISBN:                    Softcover                            978-1-4828-5280-6

  eBook                                978-1-4828-5281-3

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This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising as a consequence of your use or application of any information or suggestions in this book.

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CONTENTS

36

2

16

37

11

40

42

60

47

61

58

49

0

62

63

64

To everyone who bothered to hear me on what I have to say and especially to the sensitive people in the world

You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the grim reaper.

Robert Alton Harris.

36

This is Mr Thirty-Six I’m cleaning up after. Brains, guts, innards, and what have you are all over the pavement. I fucking love my job. Bryan over there thinks we are doing something good for the community, for society, but we really are just glorified street sweepers removing the refuse of some dumb cunt who thinks he can escape reality just by jumping from the fourteenth floor of the Grand Monakil Hotel. What a way to start my morning. This is my life.

Victim number thirty-six fell straight through the metal grate that covers the drains at the front of the hotel. It’s the kind of grate that has vertical bars parallel to its rectangular shape; that should give you a better image of what the scene of the suicide looks like.

One man, multiple parts of him – some in the drain, some stuck in between the grill – and his head is just staring up at the sky like a turkey looking straight up when it rains.

The thing about Victims Heavenly is that they recruit people who are not fit for society: the degraded, the mentally insane, and the all-around fuck you, fuck that part of society.

The lepers of the cleaning service. The undertakers.

Bryan, my only friend (and I use the term loosely) in the force, is suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. The daily 40 milligrams of Valium aren’t doing him any good, but I do know it keeps him from running away from the bodies that have met their untimely demises. The unfortunate thing is that he didn’t sign up for this; none of us at Victims Heavenly did – except me, at least.

I would describe Bryan is that he appears as an abused kid trapped inside the body of a middle-aged man. His short brown hair and shifty eyes tell everyone that he lacks the confidence that a good upbringing might have caused. I wouldn’t know; it has only been twenty months and four days.

Why, you might ask, would I join this line of work? The simple answer is I enjoy it. I don’t even know the long answer.

Mr Thirty-Six is a classic jumper. I wonder what was going through his mind during his flight. Maybe it was an ex-girlfriend who cheated on him, or maybe he was depressed that his parents did not accept his homosexuality. We may never know. What we know is that Mr Thirty-Six had about three seconds before he hit the pavement. I bet he really regretted it then.

The paramedics swarm in with the police as usual. And let’s not forget about the reporters, the plague that will spread sad news all over our beloved city.

Detective Waple shows up and starts instructing everybody not to touch the body – not that we want to, except me.

He does his usual routine, which means he covers the body up with a white blanket and begins taking statements from any witnesses. Again, it’s not like anyone wants to see it – not anyone other than me, at least.

Then the ambulance comes, and they tell us what everyone already knows.

This is where we come in, Victims Heavenly, picking up the scraps one organ at a time.

Bryan asks me, Do you think these people kill themselves because they think there might be a better place for them?

I explain to him that if there were a better place to go to after you die, then major religious figures wouldn’t travel in bulletproof cars.

Yeah, but maybe their service hasn’t been served completely. Maybe they feel like they can do more.

Like any of that makes sense – serving the community by reading out of an age-old book that everyone has or just giving people a false sense of affirmation.

God, you’re one harsh fucker.

God, you sure are one.

Bryan and I aren’t the guys who check the identity of the dead. We’re just the delivery guys. Transport human specimen A to location G – every little bit of remains that we can scrape off the pavement or asphalt. We don’t always get jumpers, but they come as often as they can. Mr Thirty-Six was our twenty-first jumper. That leaves us with five honourable hangers, four winning wrist-slitters, three adventurous alcohol poisonings, two buzzing bleach drinkers, and our one ten-out-of-ten trigger-happy target shooter.

There may be more, but Bryan and I are lucky enough to witness such a beautiful pattern.

On the drive back to Victims Heavenly, Bryan sits on the passenger seat spouting anxieties about life after death, about why people commit suicide, about worrying about worrying.

I tell him to relax, to calm down. I tell him to pop some of his diazepam, or lorazepam, or Xanax, or something more potent – heroin, perhaps. I tell him how I’ve been doing this for the past eight years and always sleep soundly after getting my fix of another parasite leaving our planet.

Of course, I don’t tell him that last part.

Fucking hell, man, he says. This isn’t funny at all. I mean, we’re all one united people, despite race or religion …

Just shut the fuck up and listen to yourself speak. I tell him he’s too stupid to see what is happening around us, how one race dominates the other and has been dominating the other since the dawn of the evolutionary splits. I tell him that I need a light while I pull up to a gas station.

It’s a little before dusk, and the setting sun is a semicircle on the horizon. We’re standing by a gas station surrounded by nothing but grassy