© Denis Fitzpatrick, 2016
‘“Those who are reckless
for themselves are generally ten times more so for their friends.’” Charlotte
Bronte, The Professor
Cassidy was for the first
time in his life thoroughly disgusted with himself. He had just finished off a
bottle of Jamison’s whiskey and he was still unwittingly sober. He was also
angry. Very angry, maybe being so angry that it absorbed the alcohol. He was
angry because he had been humiliatingly sacked from the local Jewell
supermarket, Newtown, inner city Sydney, that day, an otherwise ordinary, but
an unusually cold, early spring day, 2016. Mind you he deserved to be sacked,
having turned up over an hour late for the past tenth straight day, the result
of getting into the phase of partying harder than usual. But he did not deserve
to be verballed by the assistant manager, in front of the customers, and
summarily sacked. It really was no wonder that he couldn’t help going over and
over such trauma. But what was the worst thing was that his work colleagues,
his ‘friends’, just stood by and watched, not even looking like they wanted to
intervene to stop the brutal scene. Typical. They deserved to be taught a lesson
for that. Yes, indeed, they richly deserved to be taught a lesson. One or two
of them could have easily stepped in to say the manager was out of order.
Especially in front of the customers.
The planning started instantly, Cassidy
staring at the blank television screen, imagining how he could greatly hurt his
so-called friends. And since all of his imaginings involved all the Jewell
mates gathered together somehow under his dominion he soon decided to invite
them all over for a party, a ‘Farewell Party.’ The irony was delicious when he
saw how he would make them bid adieu
to their their self-respect.
Having bought another whiskey, it was
starting to have a small part of its intended effect around midnight, making
Cassidy feel that his vengeance was more assured. After turning on the
television and flicking across the pointless channels, he decided it was
probably best to get into his pyjamas and go to sleep. When he did quickly fall
asleep it was to the sound of derisive laughter from an approaching dream,
laughing over the pictured horrible fate of his fickle friends. Yes, indeed,
they so much deserved the humiliation.
*
Cassidy’s ‘Farewell
Party’ was reasonably well attended by six people and his plan for their
shaming was proving easy of fruition. He had bought a few bottles of cheap
whiskey for the celebration, lacing two of the bottles with crushed Rohipnol
tablets, a strong sedative, well before his guests arrived. He had no problems
getting the prescription drug. The party continued in full swing while they all
gradually passed out. He continued drinking from the unspiked bottle, gleefully
imagining the next step in the plan. He was going to undress them all and drop
them off naked in the local park, Camperdown Park, Newtown. He’d probably have
to do the job in two runs but the bastards were worth the price of their
deserved humiliation. Let’s see how they liked being cowed now. The cold spring
was a bit of a conundrum, not wanting to cause hypothermia in his victims. So
he chose a forecasted warm night and hoped for the best. Naturally they would
all know it was him who had victimised them but they’d all awake sooner or
later and eventually get their clothes back. And what could they do when they
did find out? He wasn’t pummelling them after all or making an attempt on their
lives. If they did decide to involve the police those officers would probably
think it was just a practical joke. No harm done. Case closed. Hopefully.
It came time to test this hypothesis when
he saw a police car slowly driving past the park whilst he was offloading the
second load of bodies. Could they see him discarding his vile, spineless
colleagues? It was quite possible, the area being well lit. But there were
trees obstructing the police’s view. He could only trust to that.
Yes, they must have seen him. The police
car stopped. Cassidy watched them. Two officers stepped out.
Thinking quickly Cassidy took two of the
remaining three Rohipnol tablets he had on him (in case he had to knock out any
of his bastard friends that came to early) and then partially undressed, laying
down and waiting for the drugs to take effect. He hoped that the police would
think they had disturbed the real culprit, who had run off before being able to
fully undress Cassidy. The fact that all of the others clothes were nowhere
near available was a bit of a problem but Cassidy would find some way around
that.
The two officers approached with one of
them requesting three ambulances. Cassidy found it easy to drift away while the
two police discussed why he was the only one dressed. They felt his pulse and
Cassidy successfully managed to convince each of them that he was passed out
like the rest. He eventually really did pass out on the Rohipnol and alcohol
when the ambulances carted them all away to hospital. He felt safe.
*
Cassidy tossed around a
bit before he awoke, and then was instantly alert. He asked the police officer
watching over him,
‘Where am I?’
‘Royal Prince Alfred Hospital,’ replied
the officer. ‘You fully awake now?’
‘Yeah. What happened?’
‘You know what happened, mate. Care to
make a confession?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We found the Rowie on you, mate. It’s
pretty clear you drugged and stripped your pals. Why?’
Cassidy decided to make the best of it;
obviously his ruse had not at all worked. They’d probably go easy on him if he
confessed.
‘Those bastards aren’t my friends,’ he
said. ‘I thought they were. Maybe I got carried away though.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They all just watched me being verbally
abused when I was sacked from work. It was so embarrassing. But I suppose I
just got too caught up in the anger they caused me. Are they all right?’
‘Yeah. I’ll have to charge you, mate.
Recklessly endangering life. I’d have you charged with assault too but your
pals talked me out of it.’
He was formally charged and appeared in
court two days later, the day after he was discharged from the hospital. He
represented himself and humbly begged the court’s pardon, freely admitting that
he had completely overreacted to a trying situation. The magistrate was not to
be impressed though with his remorse, saying he would like to give him a
custodial sentence for Cassidy’s sheer bloody minded behaviour to his friends,
irrespective of the cause. But seeing that New South Wales jails were too
overcrowded presently he gave Cassidy a two year good behaviour bond. Cassidy
thanked the magistrate for his leniency and thanked his lucky stars on the way
home from court.
When he was at home he headed straight to
his laptop to email invitations to the friends he’d wronged, to another
‘Farewell Party’. He explained the reason for his crime and told them that he
obviously overreacted to what was really not such a big deal. He was going to
move to Western Aus and wanted to leave his friends on a positive note, making
up in any way for his unwarranted hostility.
Funnily enough most of them accepted the
second invitation, four of them, but all declared they would have no alcohol.
They were willing to attend his party and to forgive him, especially since they
really should have stepped up to defend him while he was being roundly abused
so publicly. Both sides had made mistakes, so they may as well get together one
last time to deeply bury the sordid hatchet. Cassidy was viciously pleased.
Cassidy had no intention of leaving his
bastard friends without completing his vengeance and was even more determined
to somehow ruin as much of them as he could before he fled to Western Aus. And
this time he would put more thought into his revenge. The party was planned for
three days’ time, a Saturday, and by the Saturday early morning he had what
looked like a foolproof plan.
The four friends arrived together and thankfully
two of them brought handbags. He was easily able to drop almost a full packet
of Rohipnol, missing four tablets, into one of them unobserved, and in such a
way, from within his right shirt sleeve, that left none of his fingerprints on
the packet. While he was making everyone a coffee he downed four Rohipnol
himself, and once the coffees had been served brought out a fresh bottle of
Jamison’s, not expecting the more dire results that eventually ensued. He told
them he was drinking to sins forgiven and helped himself to large gulps of it
while they all sat around drinking their libations, recalling the good times
they’d had at Jewell. They would even be sad to see Cassidy go after all; he
was always friendly to everyone and was good for any party. But maybe if he
hadn’t liked partying so much he wouldn’t have kept arriving late to work, and
so not started a whole vicious cycle of events. Ah well, it was just one of
those things, best forgotten entirely.
When Cassidy slumped to the floor, his
guests thought he was making some sort of joke. But they promptly enough saw
that he wasn’t joking and that he’d inexplicably fainted. They called an
ambulance and the police, the police being called in a bit of a blind panic.
Cassidy was soon taken back to Royal Prince Alfred and the police asked
questions, conducting a brief search for any drugs, taking the almost full
Rohipnol. Cassidy entered a coma when the ambulance arrived at the hospital and
could not be revived. He died a day and a half later and the hapless Tina, into
whose handbag he had dropped the fatal drugs, was eventually tried for murder.
The evidence was damning against her, too damning. She received seven years
imprisonment and Cassidy was buried by his family. They would ever after think
of him as a needless victim, far more sinned against than sinning. He was only
twenty-three years of age.
~~~
If you have been enjoying Fitzpatrick's stories here you may also enjoy his short story collections, and other books, available online as both Kindle books and paperbacks (go to http://amzn.to/1NfodtN). Other ebook and paperback options are available at http://bit.ly/1UsyvKD Fitzpatrick has also had a collection of short stories, Aberrant Selected, published by Waldorf Publishing, available on Amazon.
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