The Life of Conrad.

[LordRetard]

BY POPULAR DEMAND: Anyway, I'm in no mood to fix it up, even though I'm looking at a couple of parts and I'm already thinking "oh god this is shite." I think this is the last edit I made of it, after sending it to a writing contest (did not win); I'm not sure if this is my favourite edit, but it's the longest I have, so whatever. I'm not nearly as keen on it as I was before, but hopefully leaving it as-is will give people an unbiased opinion.

EDIT: Tell me if the formatting makes it too hard to read. And damn, this is a bad edit... Maybe I should roll it back.
EDIT 2: Rolled back. I really don't like that edit. So, I hope no one started reading yet!

The Life of Conrad
Conrad stepped out of the confessional.
Nothing strange. Conrad had committed a crime, and the institution of guilt must be notified. Conrad felt guilty, and from the moment that he stepped out of that confessional he felt free of his actions, and in his mind he felt able to attend the church service with nothing weighing on his conscience.

Conrad sat down in the large hall. Back and to the left. He didn't need this; this was his gift to the priest and his church and God. Conrad felt generous in his newly found freedom.
The service was dull and long, and the sermon more so. Father Riches was on a racist tirade. Father Riches had a lot to say about people who weren't white. Blacks were lazy, Asians were greedy and the Mexicans should go back to their own country. Riches was hardest on the Mexicans, or, as he called them, “filthy wetbacks and job stealers”. Riches knew that his wife had cheated on him with a Mexican. Everybody knew that he was married and everybody knew that his marriage was falling apart.

Conrad's mind drifted, and he began to recall an exchange from the past week with the doorman to his apartment. They were discussing Steinbrenner's newest trade. He couldn't recall the name of the player or whether he supported the trade, but he recalled the argument, the anger that surged in him, rising to defend whatever point he intended to make. It didn't matter. Conrad just felt good to argue with and irritate that filthy doorman, the bitter, spiteful man who lived to make debate with the tenants. His son had died in a drunk driving accident twelve years ago. Conrad thought that he may have met the son once, recalling how well they had got along and how the son, despite physically resembling his father, shared only some of his unenthusiastic outlook on life, making him considerably more bearable. Conrad had never actually met the doorman's son; he was confusing the man with a character that his neighbour, Franz, described in a movie, a character that happened to share the same first name as the doorman's son.

Franz was a pleasant folk, though not particularly intelligent. Conrad thought of him as an endearing mutt, loyal in its constant but flawed attempts to please some supernatural master. Franz talked a lot. About anything, really, though he went to the movies frequently and was also quite fond of the daily crossword, something that delighted him to no end. Conrad frequently reminded him that such passive activities were only interesting to the archetypal coffee-shop pseudo-intellectual. Franz always said he didn't care, but he could never bring himself to tell Conrad how hurtful he could be sometimes. All the same, Conrad was not a man easily swayed by sympathies, and Franz knew that he would do nothing but humiliate himself.

Franz was Catholic too. He was just two rows up, eyes drilled into the podium, trying to focus. Franz feared death like any other man. He cried in his sleep. Conrad could hear it. He didn't care. He once told Father Riches this, Riches absolving him of his sins. Riches didn't even understand his crime, and neither did Conrad; all the same, thinking about Franz crying gave him feelings that he was unfamiliar with, feelings that told him nothing except that these were the typical feelings that might lead one to attend a confessional. Even so, confessing to even this minor, albeit chronic incident did not free Conrad, and it was only with time that the feeling simply dissipated and Conrad no longer concerned himself with Franz's emotional problems, assuming that whatever problem that caused them would eventually solve itself.

Franz's father spent every night undoing his mother's bizarre and convoluted religious teachings and telling Franz that he would never amount to anything and that he would “just rot in the ground” when he died. Riches spent the last six years trying to undo the work of both parents when he moved next door to Conrad and Conrad had told Franz to talk to Riches, unwilling to help Franz himself. Franz was doing well until Riches' secret marriage fell apart, and Riches began to take out his frustration at his wife and the Mexicans on Franz, dissecting everything he told him and reversing all of his work. Franz felt that Riches was like a father to him.

Riches was discussing how even a “loser like Franz” was better than “some dirty border hopper here to steal an honest hard-working man's job at a Wal-Mart in Texas”. The audience was nodding in agreement, all except for Franz, who appeared to be very interested in something on his shoes instead; in reality, there was nothing on them. He only looked up when Riches began his “slurs for Spics” segment.

Brooklyn's Church of the Holy Cross was well-attended, well provided for and quite well thought of by the various Roman Catholic Executives, turning out one of the highest profits in Brooklyn every year. Father Riches' passionate and frequently violent support of the church was to blame. Riches was a strong speaker and a strong man, and his emotional outbursts only added to the strength of his words. The source of Riches' anger was a small malignant tumour in his skull that affected his temperament and made him believe that he was constantly smelling peppermint. He would die within three years of Conrad's confession.

In the meantime, Riches did well for himself, and he was well respected by virtually everyone but his wife, who, troubled and frightened by Riches' mood swings, took to avoiding him whenever she could, leading to Riches making the inexplicable assumption that she was with a Mexican. Riches was a generous man, and would turn down no beggar. He had decided to take up the priesthood when God gave him the courage to snap a mugger's neck when he and his younger brother were accosted one day. God gave him strength, but it was his parents' healthy genetics which made him a brute force killing machine. Brooklyn's Church of the Holy Cross had the Brooklyn record for the most fights, yearly, between a priest and an audience member; a prestigious honour, considering Brooklyn's already violent nature within members of the clergy.

Riches was starting to calm down slightly, and his “solutions” segment was winding down. The service was over. Conrad stood up and went to speak with Father Riches.
“Father.”
“Avery.”
Neither of them had anything to say to each other.
“How goes the new job?” inquired Riches.
“Pretty good.”
“Lots of work to do?”
“Yep.”
Riches and Conrad hated each other.
“Have you taken down Mexican society yet?”
“It's not a society, these people are filth, Mr. Avery!”
“Fair enough, have you taken care of the Mexican problem yet?”
“No. But working on it. I tell you, it'll be a cold day in Hell before I let some drunk-ass Mexican priest take my job."
“I suppose it must be difficult being in the same league with a bunch of border-hopping drunk-ass Mexicans, yes?”
Riches realised that Conrad was suggesting something. “What? Fuck if some wetback could do what I do.” True enough, only a minority of Mexicans were capable of the same work as Riches. “Are you looking for trouble, Conrad?” Riches had already cast off his clerical vestments.
Conrad smirked. “Please. Perhaps another time.”
“That's right, shithead, you're not going to knock me off just like that whore!”
Conrad chuckled. “I don't have to put up with this shit.” He started to walk toward the exit.

“Hahah, what whore?”
Conrad was stopped by the voice of his bitter and hateful doorman. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“You're always going on about this 'Catholicism' and 'absolution of sins' thing, so I decided to try it out.”
Conrad laughed. “It's not like that. You have to do more than just be baptised and attend Church to get to Heaven. You still have guilt.”
“Guilt about what?” The doorman frowned at Conrad.
“Guilt for being a bitter person and an annoying doorman, for not caring about anything, for letting your son die, for letting everything happen. It's not enough just to be here.”
“Bah!” The doorman said, barely holding back his rage and tears, “I'm not guilty of anything! I've never hurt anyone in my life!”
“Fine,” said Conrad, “but if you're not going to admit your mistakes, you're not going to be absolved of anything. Because it's not just the big things, murder, theft, but the little things, too, and if you're just going to stand idly by and let everything happen, then who's to say your life isn't in constant jeopardy? You have to confess to everything with a priest. That's how you get to Heaven. You could start with confessing about how your abusive parenting led your son to drink and get himself killed.”
Conrad left the doorman, tears forming in the man's eyes. He said nothing; his thoughts were solely fixed on how long until he could find a priest to confess to, before he could go home and hang himself.

Conrad continued walking, and had almost left before Franz approached him.
“Franz. A terrific morning, I trust?”
“We have to talk.”
“Franz. There is nothing to talk about. What's done is done!”
“Fuck you, Conrad!” Franz was visibly angry, and Conrad thought he detected a hint of this. “This went too far, Conrad. We have to settle this. Now.”

There was a brief pause with the sound of Father Riches slamming his foot down on the front left pew, splitting it in half with a thunderous roar. Few things, including Mexicans, made Riches more angry than Conrad. Riches was ready to kill for the first time in the past couple of months.
“Fair enough.” Conrad put his hands in his coat pockets. “My soul is prepared. What about yours?” He stepped back and a hold-out pistol flew out of his pocket and into his hand, firing wildly at Franz.
Franz ducked behind a pew, dust and splinters scattered everywhere by Conrad's wild and poorly aimed shots. He lifted a snub-nosed revolver, aimed it at Conrad and pulled the trigger.
Conrad barely managed to move his head out of the way of Franz's incoming bullet, instead spearing himself in the side of his neck. He stopped firing and fell to the ground. Blood pooled around him.

Franz murmured, “This is for my sister, rest her soul,” dropped his weapon and he walked out, eyes blankly staring at him. His problem had finally been solved; his last relative was dead, his neighbour would be soon enough, and he knew that his days were numbered. Riches broke into a sprint after him, screaming threats of horrific violence. The doorman stared at Franz's gun, lying on the bloodied floor.

As Conrad lay dying, blood rushing from his body― thirty-four years of prayer, confession and waiting for a better tomorrow; his last thoughts were of relief, in that he had died honourably and, having confessed, would be taken to Heaven, to live eternally in paradise. His body lay lifeless.

[AHMETxRock]

My eyes were rolling all over that text.

[LordRetard]

Is that good rolling, or bad rolling? Er... I mean, is that "bad formatting", or "*rolls eyes*"?

[AHMETxRock]

That was a thrilling read. My back is wet from all this sweating.

It's good. Nothing I can really pick apart.

[Groff]

You are one dark mutha, LR! Thanks for sharing your work.

Sometimes it's refreshing to read a story with characters who are less than sympathetic. They're less heroic but more human. On the other hand Riches
is not very believable. Love the peppermint thing though.

I found the action description awkward. For example, "a hold-out pistol flew out of his pocket and into his hand, firing wildly at Franz" sounds like the pistol is perfoming everything of its own accord. Also confusing how sometimes we are listening in on Conrad's thoughts, then stepping into an omnicient perspective in the next sentence.

Parts of this story remind me of Pulp Fiction. You have these despicable characters who hate themselves but at the same time they're hilarious, and having fun in their own ways ("[To] Conrad [it] just felt good to argue with and irritate that filthy doorman..."). And the religious themes.

I like the Conrad vs. Riches rivalry for sickest human being. Funny that Conrad goes up after church just to piss Riches off (and himself).

Is Conrad supposed to be a kind of allegory/ attack on Catholicism? Or is it just about these characters?

[LordRetard]

It's definitely not an allegory, in fact it's pretty see-through as an attack on Catholicism. But the characters are themselves. Riches is kind of a joke, admittedly, but I like his place in the story and he usually tests as the comic relief.

I've heard that about the pistol line before; maybe that's something that needs to be fixed.

[Lethal Interjection]

He only looked up when Riches began his “slurs for Spics” segment.

I like this line. The alliteration of it keeps repeating in my head, as terrible as that is.

[FengharTheNord]

I heartily enjoyed that story. Good stuff, LR.