Pete

I've been planning on writing for a while, but then I've been planning on a lot of things for a while, including finding people who will pay me good money for doing very little. Since that doesn't seem like it's going to happen, why should this work out either? Still, I suppose I should post something, or the smarter ones amongst you chaps (okay, that WAS funny) might stop visiting. So here's a scrap I jotted a month back, and maybe posting something will kickstart the writing again. Till then... Read you fools, read!

It was a night like any other night, where we all got together on the rooftop and got high and laughed and told secrets, confident because we knew that right now everything was funny, and because nobody would remember any of this in the morning anyway. And it was a night which we'd never forget because it was the night when everything changed, all because one thing happened for the first time. But it was the sort of thing that can only happen once.

It was the night that Pete died.

I think that Pete was the reason that the six of us used to meet again and again, getting drunk together on the rooftop, while Pete held us all together, the master and his disciples, he said fancifully. We all made fun of him for saying such things but we all knew it was true anyway. He was the crazy one, who came up with ridiculously stupid ideas which were irresistible in the night and appalingly stupid in the mornings, who laughed that big laugh of his at everything the world had to offer, and made us laugh as well. We drifted apart quickly after Pete died, held together by him even after he was gone, yet avoiding each other for the same reason, because in all their faces I could only see Pete, and remember that night.

Pete had been walking on the wall encircling the roof, making up dirty songs as he circled us. We all watched him, telling him he was crazy, telling him to get off the wall, but laughing anyway, and listening, the way we always did. And then, without any warning, Pete fell off the wall, onto the roof.

It was a two foot fall, and Pete couldn't have gotten hurt by it, so we all just stood around, expectantly, waiting for him to get up and make a joke about the whole thing, but he didn't. When he didn't move for another two minutes, I started to get worried, and Andy, who I didn't really know but who was one of Pete's old buddies, stepped up to the prone form.

Looking up, he rather unnecessarily said, "He's not moving." My training took over then and I stepped up, quickly feeling for Pete's pulse. There was none. Pete was dead, a heart attack perhaps, though only tests would show for sure.

Whatever the reason though, Pete was definitely dead. For now, there was the question of what we would do next. I was a police cadet, and the other men were all making a start in respectable careers too. And yet, here we were, all six, well now five of us, who met twice or thrice a week and then drank and smoked weed until we couldn't keep our eyes open or our mouths shut. If we went to a hospital, or called in the police now, Pete would still be dead, and we'd be in lot of trouble.

I looked around, taking in the four faces. Andy, the young soccer player. Howard, my oldest friend and Pete's most recent, and most fervent follower, an assistant chef in of the most famous restaurants in town. And Steve and Greg, the lawyers, who had met Pete and me in the gym. Pete and me, the rookie cops. All good men, who weren't going anything particularly bad, but would be in a lot of trouble soon. We were all thinking that, I could tell, by looking at their faces.

Howard was the first to speak. He idolised Pete, and tried to act like Pete all the time. Taking care of the situation, knowing what to do now, that was what Pete was best at. And so Howard was trying to solve our problem. And he said what we were all thinking.

"The body. We've got to get rid of it. Lets dump it in the incinerator."

And we listened, because it was like Pete was talking to us. And when Pete talked, we always listened to him.