Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 54 (Eddie Works Out the Pieces, II)
Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 54 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index
When Eddie returned to his desk, the file on Sasha had already arrived and was sitting in a closed package, a hermetically sealed history of his once youthful and attentive lover. It struck him that this was all that would remain of an exuberant and flamboyant person who could have done so much with himself had Eddie not ruined his life.
He cut open the seal and pulled out the cream-coloured folder. The only markings on it were a security number and a plain white label that read “Pigeon, Sasha.”
OMNINet personnel files that senior level employees, like Eddie, can access are unique in that they are an extremely comprehensive exposé on your life. Memberships. Affiliations. Groups and clubs you belonged to when you were a kid. Significant cross referencing to other personnel that you associate with and so on.
Sasha’s history was no different. A surprising amount of detail was compiled in this seemingly small file.
Detailed log files and time sheets were documented and recorded with several notes about Sasha’s compliance with daily performance standards. His web browsing habits were recorded in detail, including a comprehensive list of his bookmarks. A disc was included with the file and was labeled “email & computer use”.
It was like kindergarten all over again, where you had a page of happy faces or gold stars and on occasion, a few black stars.
What struck Eddie was that there was a substantial amount of information related to Sasha’s personal life and more importantly, lifestyle. It contained details concerning his social life in Chelsea, including photos that Eddie didn’t think were possible. There was nothing x-rated in this file, although after looking at the detail for a few moments, he was surprised there wasn’t. There were copies of posters that Sasha had made at the office and plastered all over Chelsea whenever they had a SashBash, a celebration of all things glam.
Eddie’s association with Sasha and his entourage was painfully obvious and he was stunned that a homophobic organization like the OMNINet was still willing to take him in and treat him with any kind of respect. His conversion had obviously won over senior management, but he was not seeing the cost of his actions and the impact that his choices to “go straight” had had on Sasha.
Until now. Eddie recoiled a little as he wandered through the last few pages of the dossier. It was like reading up on the documentation of a prisoner of war. It clearly exhibited Sasha’s extensive drug use – prescription and otherwise – with a lot of medical information that deeply troubled Eddie. It looked like one of the OMNINet’s pharmaceuticals was using him for a test program for one of their AIDS treatment programs. However, the detail identified that he was to be given limited portions, a sign that the company only wanted him to be able to survive without recovery. He choked a little when he realized that one of the divisions in the company he was working for was doing Mengele-like analysis and scrutiny of Sasha’s health and livelihood.
There was a clear recording of all of the notes concerning Sasha’s decline and the use of the prescriptions, which were eventually substituted for placebos and fake medications. Not only was Sasha being robbed of his last few pennies, but he was being robbed of his life.
The last pictures had a profound impact on Eddie. They were various shots of Sasha in his last days of existence. He was frail, thin and wasting to nothing. He looked like his was skin was withering and shrinking onto his skeleton, like he was a mummified version of his former self, all fat and water and signs of life long gone.
Some notes in the last few pages of the file identified that there was clearly something missing, and these notes made allusion to Sasha’s death and Hadlock-level access to any details.
However, Eddie didn’t take the time to absorb that information because as he flipped the page, he was staring at a shot of his long-lost university pal, Carl Parkfield, leaving Sasha’s building just a day before Sasha’s death.
Stunned, he pulled away from the file, nervously closed the package and put it into his desk.
What was Carl doing visiting his ex-lover?
Was Carl watching over Eddie?
Eddie dialed the number that he had for Carl, but didn’t have any luck. Apparently, this number was no longer in service.
And then Eddie drew his next conclusion: Carl was hired to kill Sasha.
(Note: "Excited Delirium" is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)
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Excited Delirium by Liam Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License .
Based on a work at www.exciteddelirium.ca .