The Death Wish Game Read online

  First published by Half Wing Press in 2017

  Copyright © Jonathan Chateau, 2017

  Cover design & book layout by Jonathan Chateau

  Edited by Jim Spivey & Joanne Gledhill

  Author Photography by David Lally

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written

  permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a

  website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9988504-4-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9988504-5-0

  For more about the author, visit

  www.JChateau.com

  or

  www.Facebook.com/JonathanChateauAuthor

  Other works by Jonathan Chateau

  Faith Against the Wolves

  Nightmares in Analog

  Energy Drink

  The Saltwater Marathon

  Video is Dead

  To my good friend, Grant, who has made this book what it is today. Thanks for your feedback and for reading the first few drafts... more than once.

  “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down on your wrath.”

  — Ephesians 4:26

  “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching.”

  — Gerard Way

  Chapter 1—Road Trip

  I’m jarred awake by the bus slamming on its brakes. Are we there yet? I open my eyes. At first, everything is blurry. Then the bus cabin comes into focus. The interior lights are all off. It’s dark outside. We’ve stopped moving.

  Something about this feels incredibly wrong.

  I start to rise—but I’m stuck.

  I look down.

  My entire body is wrapped in . . . duct tape?

  What the hell?

  “It’s party time, people!” a deep voice says from the front of the cabin. I can’t make out who it is. “Hope you all are nice and snug in your seats. I tend to go a little tight on the restraints.”

  Restraints?

  I wriggle in my seat. Yeah, I’m not going anywhere. It’s hard enough trying to breathe let alone move.

  “Shit’s about to get real”—the man laughs—“real quick.”

  What is going on?

  Is this a joke?

  This isn’t real. It’s surreal. I must be dreaming. I mean, the last time I’d been on a bus, I wasn’t literally strapped to my seat in a cabin full of strangers crying and pissing themselves. I was on my way back home from aikido summer camp. Not the kind of kiddie summer camp that involves bonfires, volleyball, and social bonding, but a rather intense week of martial-arts training for grown-ups.

  ***

  I was testing for my black belt.

  Years of training had all led up to this point.

  There were lots of joint locks, arm bars, elbow pins, and face-plants into the sweat-soaked mat. It reeked of rubber and feet. Even though the camp was held in an air-conditioned college gymnasium, it felt more like a sauna. Must’ve had at least twenty pounds of perspiration soaked into my gi alone. One of my training partners, Phil, was a walking rainforest. He was perpetually drenched, which kind of worked to his advantage in a disgusting sort of way. Couldn’t grab hold of him to perform a wrist lock to save my life. It was like trying to snatch hold of a fish that knew how to dodge, counter, and plow me into the cushioned canvas floor.

  When summer camp was over, Phil ended up sitting next to me on the bus. Told me he owed me a beer considering how many times he drove my head into the ground. I’m sure if we had practiced one more day, the imprint of my face would’ve been permanently embedded into the mat like some archaic stone relief. I thanked him for not going easy on me. For coming at me full force, in a real-life kick-your-ass kind of way. I didn’t want to be handed a black belt. I never wanted to be a paper tiger with a certificate of achievement that meant nothing on the street. A certificate would never hold up to a sucker punch to the face.

  Fortunately, I was able to power through the nerves. Ignore the room full of eyes, of fellow students, teachers, and family who had come from all around the state to see who would pass and who would fail.

  I managed to sink into the moment and counter Phil’s strikes with everything I had learned over the years. A dance of skill against a wild opponent. I performed this all under the watchful, stoic gaze of some of aikido’s best sensei.

  A blur of motion, Phil came at me from every angle, and somehow my lizard brain processed this, and I turned his momentum against him.

  Somehow, I survived the test.

  Somehow, I earned myself a black belt.

  It felt surreal when I stepped off the mat. I had achieved the belt through sheer determination. By not giving up. Something I have forgotten in the years since aikido camp. That’s what’s led me to my current fate.

  Phil had explained to me that a black belt was not an end-all. Some students think that’s all that training is about. Get the credentials and switch hobbies. But he said that earning a black belt was more akin to getting a diploma than a doctorate. “Rodney, with a black belt,” he said, “you’re just getting started.”

  But I had to explain to him that earning a black belt was a side effect of training. I told him the real reason I trained was that it was my way of coping with stress—namely the pressure of managing people and meeting the constant needs of my boss. I’ve always been a reluctant leader. My star sign is Aries, so maybe by default that positioned me to have to lead in life. I’d like to think that’s why I took up martial arts—so that I could mold myself into a better man. A stronger leader. Build up my self-confidence.

  Phil told me he trained because around eight years ago he was jumped at a bar in downtown Columbia. Several thugs were hiding in the parking lot, waiting for their next intoxicated victim. That was Phil. He never saw them coming. They beat the shit out of him, took his money, his watch, and most importantly a gold ring with a garnet gemstone. A ring his deceased daughter had given him. He swore after that he would never lose a fight again. And that’s why he’s trained and trained and trained. He said that an ancient Greek poet once said it best: “One does not rise to the level of their expectations, but falls to the level of their training.”

  “Socrates?” I’d asked.

  “Archilochus,” he answered, with a slight smile.

  “Or maybe, in the words of Mike Tyson,” I said, “everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That’s why we train, right?”

  We both shared a good laugh. Yeah, that was a pretty epic summer. I was happy and had more money in the bank than I knew what to do with. And I was single.

  Fast forward a decade.

  I’m newly divorced, unemployed, and have a complete and utter understanding of what it means to be at rock bottom—and once you get to that awful place, a lot of things have a way of not mattering anymore. The petty things you stressed over—the deadlines, the perfectly crafted emails, the quarterly reviews, doing the dishes, not forgetting anniversaries or birthdays, remembering to put the seat down—none of that shit really matters.

  When you hit rock bottom, you have the privilege of walking around and giving the world the middle finger. You might just find yourself wanting to implode. Irrationally taking responsibility for every negative event, every outcome. When emotions have taken the driver’s seat of your brain, logic is hard to separate from any ounce of rationality.

  When you hit rock bottom, things are tasteless, joyless, and a dark haze of depression sets over your vision, peeling, cracking, and obscuring your
view like a bad tint job. When you’ve gone that deep, that far down, scraping off that layer of misery requires more than Windex and razor blades.

  Although the razor blades might work. Or a gun. My father’s old Beretta would do the trick. He gifted it to me not long before he passed. Told me to use it for self-defense.

  So, self-defense it is.

  I’m saving me from myself.

  This morning I woke up. Had myself a Belgian waffle. Then put the business end of the Beretta in my mouth and counted to ten.

  1 . . .

  2 . . .

  The barrel had a tangy, acrid taste.

  3 . . .

  I’d assumed batteries tasted the same.

  4 . . .

  I was surprised at how much my body was shaking.

  5 . . .

  6 . . .

  It was as if there was an internal struggle going on. That primordial need to live, to survive, being overridden by my depression. By that bad tint job installed into my brain by those who had caused me pain.

  7 . . .

  As my tongue flicked across the 9mm diameter opening of my gun barrel, I understood why every sad song in the world was written. I understood how those artists felt.

  8 . . .

  Those artists weren’t looking for Grammys or platinum records. They were seeking to fill that void in their heart. A black hole of nothingness, of feeling meaningless.

  9 . . .

  I mumbled a quick, “Forgive me, Father,” because most likely I was going to Hell.

  Though I never got to find out.

  My sister, Becky, called at the right time. Always had a knack for being timely. Told me she bought me a bus ticket to Miami. She told me I could start over and move in with her.

  Start over?

  She went on about missing me and wanting to reconnect. Little did she know that a Beretta was sitting on my lap and that a few seconds earlier I was about to attempt to replicate a Pollock painting using the backside of my skull and a lot of red and gray matter.

  As she continued talking, my brain shifted from self-pity to a glimmer of . . . well, hope.

  I figured, why not?

  What did I have to lose at this point? I’d already lost the very things that defined me—my management career and my woman.

  Now I had the liberty of saying screw the dishes and birthdays.

  Newsflash, boss-man: This job sucks.

  Managing your lazy employees sucks. Your paisley ties suck. No one cares that you were at Woodstock. Nothing was ever good enough for you. Not the overtime. Not the times I had to come in from vacation to keep our department afloat. Or when I was cornered into choosing you over spending time with my wife—

  Not that it had mattered anyway since she left me.

  Still, nothing was good enough for you. You promoted the green-eyed, busty brunette who just so happened to be a Florida Gator—ha, ha, ha. The two of you at the water cooler, talking about UF, football, and a mutual love for all things Crate and Barrel.

  Yeah, I know why I was let go.

  Because there was only room enough for one. And I didn’t have the right parts.

  Apparently, I didn’t have the right parts for either my boss or my ex-wife, Diane.

  She upgraded. Found better, fitter parts on her personal trainer’s body. Dude’s name was Chad. I know this because I introduced them. He’d been my personal trainer first. Then I made the mistake of hooking up the two of them since she had nagged me about getting in shape herself, even though I was completely OK with every inch of her frame. Connecting them was a fitness decision that I would forever regret.

  Chad.

  Screw you, Chad.

  I’ve never met a Chad I liked.

  All of the Chads I’ve known have been car salesmen, lawyers, or mortgage brokers. They’ve all had chips on their shoulders and thought they were God’s gift to whatever profession they were in. This Chad had been no different. I saw the sparkle in her eye when they first met. I should’ve picked up on it. That twinkle in her eye, that glimmer I hadn’t seen since our first few dates.

  Diane did this thing she did with her lip when she gets hot and bothered. A subtle lip curl, generally on the right side.

  Diane plus Chad had equaled a lip curl that day.

  I’d been too naive to pick up on it.

  Or stupid blind.

  Suddenly she was at the gym way more often than she’d used to be. I’d thought it was due to some mid-year resolution she hadn’t told me about. When I finally asked her about her aggressive fitness regimen that had seemed to blossom out of nowhere, an argument erupted. I was accused of being insecure and unsupportive. Far from the truth. I just had this blip on my worry radar that kept telling me something was not right.

  Radars rarely lie.

  Well, at least not in my experience. I guess I should’ve seen the correlation between Diane’s increasingly fit physique and her diminishing sex drive. Turns out, her sex drive didn’t decrease at all. It had just shifted to a new partner.

  Then the divorce struck me like a stake to the heart.

  Mr. and Mrs. Corso no more.

  Thanks, Chad.

  Screw you, Chad.

  My cold Beretta in my mouth.

  A fire of deceit and hate in my heart.

  Yeah, Becky called me at the right time. She’s the only one who has ever given a damn about me. She’d never cared for Diane. Initially, I’d thought that Becky was simply jealous of a woman stealing her brother’s time, but it turns out she was just protecting her older brother from his snake of a wife.

  When Becky didn’t come to our wedding, I was pissed. Didn’t talk to her for years after that. Since the divorce, though, we’ve reconnected. I apologized for my stupid behavior and for not talking to her, and for not listening. Even though she had made her protest apparent by not being there for the exchange of vows, Becky hadn’t been wrong.

  I owe my life to her.

  Literally.

  She works two jobs and is putting herself through college. Dreams of being a dentist. All the woman does is work and study, work and study. She scrounged up enough money to get me from South Carolina to Florida. I’d had to sell my dream car, my Dodge Challenger, to afford the legal fees.

  Divorce is an expensive beast.

  Financially, physically and mentally.

  Drove me to put a gun in my mouth.

  Becky had been excited to tell me that she’d gotten a deal on a bus ticket, some discount bus line I never heard of called Mane’s Transportation. She said they’d received stellar customer reviews from several websites.

  Still, it’s incredibly humbling to be on a bus, with total strangers, and not driving in the comfort of my own car.

  When I first got on the bus, I’d noticed that it had an odd smell to it. The piercing, spiced aroma of flea market patchouli permeated the air. My first thought was that maybe the previous passengers had been a bunch of granola-heads from Berkley or Asheville. Then again, the tired and dated exterior of the bus suggested it had seen many years of service on the road. The stale smell inside wasn’t really that much of a surprise. Perhaps the incense was just a lazy way of attempting to mask the musty odor embedded in the seat cushions and carpeting.

  As I found my seat, I’d noticed that very few people made eye contact with me, which was perfectly fine. I wasn’t here to make friends.

  I was on this bus to get back to Florida.

  To reconnect with my sister. To start over. To escape the depression and the bad memories and the places that I’d used to visit with Diane.

  Columbia, South Carolina. My once beautiful hometown, now a city of constant reminders of loss.

  When the bus driver had finally shown up, he’d looked like a misplaced biker.

  Scratch that.

  He resembled a misplaced Viking. The man was almost seven feet tall. A thick, gray spider web of a beard covered most of his face. He had a black newsboy cap, like the trademark hat worn by Brian Johnson
of AC/DC. His eyes were hollow; beady black pits that sized us up as if we were going to fight him in a boxing ring.

  When he spoke, his voice was even deeper than I expected.

  “Thanks for choosing Mane’s Transportation for your trip to Miami.” As he talked, I could barely see his lips through his beard. “My name’s Jim Grimm. To set the ground rules, I don’t tolerate fighting, and there are no weapons allowed on the bus. Is anyone carrying?”

  I had snuck my pocket knife on board. Carry it with me wherever I go. It had brought me luck in the past. The times I didn’t have it on me—my last week at work and when I introduced Diane to Jerk-face—the results spoke for themselves.

  I’d had it on me when I was about to kill myself.

  So it’s on me now.

  In answer to his question, a few passengers mumbled no.

  Jim went on to explain that Mane’s Transportation goes beyond what other bus lines offer. “Even though all of you got cheap tickets, the cheapest tickets available, that doesn’t mean that we skimp on quality.”

  Jim moved his head slowly, from side to side, making eye contact with every single person on the bus, seemingly memorizing and reading our faces the way I imagined a secret service agent would.

  His tone was flat; a tour guide who’s delivered this speech a thousand times before. “But before we head out, we’ll be feasting like kings and queens.” And he stepped off the bus, disappeared for ten minutes, leaving the passengers craning their necks, mumbling to one another.

  When he returned, he had two coolers in his hands. He dropped them down onto the aisle and kicked them toward us with his boot.

  “This one has prime rib sandwiches, chicken wraps, and veggie wraps.” He pointed to the other cooler. “This one’s got beers, soda, and vitamin water for those of you who are health conscious.”

  Some of the passengers smiled, traded excited glances with one another.

  “Like I said, Mane’s Transportation goes above and beyond,” he said. “It’s a long trip, and the first meal is on us.”