THE DYING SUNRISE a NOVEL by BENJAMIN R. WILCOX “Terror Of
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THE DYING SUNRISE A NOVEL BY BENJAMIN R. WILCOX “Terror of civilization, welcome to the world my new creations!” -Kathetor, The New Population PART 1: CHANTÉ Chapter 1 Ryan Sanders sat alone at his kitchen table, celebrating his thirtieth birthday with a glass of scotch, a cigar, and a feeling of desperate loneliness. He had spent the last seven years of his life with what he thought was the girl of his dreams, and it had all fallen into despair over the course of the last month. He had met Emily Freedman in college. They had lived on the same floor of a dormitory at the University of Minnesota. Emily didn’t like Ryan at first, and to Ryan it didn’t seem like she tried to hide it at all. She was a hippie type. She had auburn hair that cascaded down to the small of her back, and always wore long patchwork skirts and Phish t-shirts and the like. She smelled of clove cigarettes and patchouli, and was exactly the opposite of what Ryan would have considered his “type”. Ryan was athletic and handsome, had played on the high school football team (albeit without much interest) and had always received good grades. Although he had given up sports for college, he was still a hard academic worker, and was doing well in college. Ryan met Emily at a “get to know your floor” event, and they had heatedly argued about something, but sitting at his table, remembering Emily over his fourth scotch, Ryan couldn’t remember the subject of that argument for the life of him. It was later in their freshman year that the rigidity had evaporated from Ryan’s relationship to Emily. They were at a kegger at a frat house, and inhibitions had been shed quickly with the free-flowing beer. Ryan had found himself on a couch talking to Emily, and before long they were laughing and talking and making fun of people that they saw. It wasn’t long after that night that Ryan asked Emily to go out for coffee, and she agreed to the date. They continued seeing each other throughout college. They moved into an apartment together after their freshman year. They had their little rough patches, as couples always do, but they stuck together. After graduation, Ryan was accepted to the University Of Minnesota Law School, and Emily got a job downtown, working as a manager at a record store. They talked about getting married, but figured that they would wait until Ryan had finished all of his schooling. Three years went by rather quickly, and before long Ryan was an honest-to-goodness lawyer, working close to 80 hours a week at the large downtown law firm of Beecher, Edwards, and Baxter, doing grunt work for the big shot partners. He and Emily saw each other less and less. Their relationship became more and more distant, and eventually it all fell apart. There weren’t any of the typical offenses involved with disintegrating relationships. They never cheated on each other. They didn’t have any money problems. They simply started going their separate ways. Ryan was wrapped up in his work, and Emily was often sitting alone in the condo that they had purchased together, wondering when she would see her boyfriend. One day, Ryan came home from work around 10:00 PM to find that Emily had packed up all of her things and moved out. She had left a note to Ryan, telling him that she had moved back in with her parents in Watertown, South Dakota, and that it was over between them. That was on November 5th, one month ago. Now Ryan sat alone at his table, taking big sips of scotch and coming to grips with the fact that he would not have Emily in his life any more. He got up from the table to pour himself another drink. He stumbled as he walked, and managed to spill some of the brown liquid onto the counter as he poured, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to drink this birthday away. He didn’t have anything to celebrate. His parents had both passed away. His father had died of a heart attack back when Ryan was a senior in high school. His mother had discovered that she had lung cancer when he was in college, and had passed away during his second year of law school. He hadn’t been remarkably close to his parents, but he still missed them a great deal. Any friends that Ryan had at this point in his life were also coworkers. The grueling schedule of a burgeoning lawyer didn’t allow him a lot of free time, and seeing that most of his friends at the firm were in a similar situation, everyone he knew was too busy to hang out with Ryan on his birthday. So he sat in his condo kitchen, his mind slowly melting under the buttery warmth of whiskey. Before long, Ryan fell asleep with his head on the table, alone and miserable. Ryan woke up with what felt like a construction crew jack hammering his head to rubble. He peeled his face from the smooth surface of the kitchen table and tried to clear his blurry vision. It took a moment for Ryan to realize where he was, but eventually his foggy brain pieced together what had happened. His kitchen stank of whiskey and cigar smoke. He stood up and got himself a glass of water from the kitchen sink. He drank it thirstily, and then made a pot of coffee. He looked at the kitchen clock and saw that it was nine thirty-five a.m. He had slept for seven hours on his kitchen table. His neck ached fiercely from having rested in that awkward position for so long. Coupled with the ache in his head, Ryan felt sore all over. He walked down the hallway and into the bathroom. He pissed a stream that seemed to last ten minutes, and then scrubbed away the last vile remnants of whiskey with his toothbrush. He opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Advil, and took three pills from the bottle. One by one, he popped them into his mouth and swallowed them with water from the bathroom faucet. His haggard face stared back at him from the bathroom mirror. He was unshaven, and had huge dark bags under his eyes. His left cheek was a rosy red from the surface of the kitchen table. Put simply, he looked like hell. “Happy birthday to me,” he said to his reflection. His voice sounded like he had swallowed a belt sander. “Welcome to your thirties, old man.” He went to the living room, grabbed a cup of coffee, and sat down in a chair with his laptop. The MacBook gave its familiar chime as he started it up, and he logged into his work email to take a look at what was going on. It was Saturday, so he didn’t necessarily have to go into work, but if there were something pressing that might change. His inbox was full of birthday well wishes, most likely because people had seen it on the calendar from the firm’s intranet. He didn’t see anything that looked urgent in his inbox, and even if he had, the hangover would have prevented him from thinking in too much detail. He fired up his web browser and started occupying his time with the mind- numbing art of Internet surfing. He looked out of his fourth floor window at a blanket of snow that had descended on Minneapolis over the course of the night. He loved this city, but December was a damned cold month, followed only by the cruelty of January and February. Still, it was home, and quite Saturday mornings with a couple inches of snow on the ground were part of what he loved about it. He stepped into his shoes and threw a sweatshirt on. He was still fully clothed from the night before. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto his balcony, feeling the brisk morning air enter his nostrils and watching his breath leave in a puff of steam. Ryan’s neighborhood was quiet at this time of the morning. Most of the residents of his building were either of an age with him or elderly folks who kept to themselves. He had seen a couple of kids in the building, but not many. The rest of the neighborhood was populated with other apartment and condominium complexes. There were tracks on the street from cars that had passed earlier. In the distance, he heard the whine of vehicles traveling on highway 169. “I need to get out of here,” Ryan proclaimed to the morning air. He didn’t know where the thought had come from, but there it was, sudden and pervasive in his mind. He needed to leave town, just for a week or two. He needed to go someplace warm and sit on a beach, watching scantily clad women stroll in front of him as he sipped a drink with an umbrella in it. He needed to leave this city, his work, the cold, and especially his memory of Emily, behind for a little while. Just a week or two. Ryan walked back into his condo and started looking for deals on plane tickets and top destinations. He still had to clear the vacation time with his job, but he thought that they would be OK with it.