Chapter 15: WHEN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE, WELL YOU HAVE NO CHOICE (6)
If feelings were a painter's palette, this palette would show many shades. There were about twenty officers in the meeting room, and there were more or less about twenty contrasting shades.
When they heard a story hard to believe, people's reaction said a lot about their personality.
There were the ones who took everything that was said at face value, the somewhat naive introverts who knew how to hide their emotions. These ones were silent in a corner, but it could be seen something was amiss. The future awaiting them tended to become darker as they digested the events and perceived their implications.
There were also naive extraverts, the ones who did not know how to hide their emotions. They had a face full of dread, probably shocked by the details that Moa had distilled in his story. In fact, when you knew the victim and you imagined his end, it was definitely not the same as seeing an anonymous being killed on the battlefield. The anonymous, his finality was to die whereas the commander was only the collateral victim of the madman's gesture. His finality was not to die and he had asked nothing of anyone.
Their eyes were blurring under the stimulation of their lachrymal glands. In a few moments, dread would be replaced by sadness, the sadness of losing a loved one, one of theirs. If they were not officers and did not possess the dignity an officer should always sport, they would not try to hold back their tears.
Their empathy told them that they too, for a reason x or y, x being an untidy shoelace, y possibly a detour to greet a friend, they also could arrive late for the mid-day meeting and finally, a life, their life, could end in this way, under the weight of a suicidal loafer.
All the officers weren't naive people, it was even the minority. Many of them had much more critical mind and were almost conspiratorial for some of them. They were heard giggling stupidly while they searched for anything that would allow them to question the official thesis in Moa's narration.
For now, they busied themselves with the intellectual challenge they were facing and had yet to understand the seriousness of the situation. They were facing an enigma. The death of two people was reported and what mattered to them the most were not the identities of the corpses but the consistency of the proposed scenario. If they were to find the slightest flaw in the story, they would be the first to stand up and deny the facts.
There were finally the cynic ones who were still laughing heartily. Moa knew that it was their nerves letting go but for a short lapse of time he would have imagined he possessed a comedic talent he was not aware of.
The whole range of reactions one could expect in such circumstances was now displayed in front of Moa. Nobody remembered that he was forbidden to come to the meeting this midday. Bit by bit, the quickest witted had understood that commander Hacion was no longer. Soon after, the slowest witted had also integrated the idea. Stupor had to make way to the classical steps of mourning, denial.
Moa must have been a good actor; de facto it was difficult to say that he had not told the truth, or at least part of the truth. However the first manifestation of denial came naturally from the most skeptical. An officer stood up. He couldn't believe it. He had to see the commander's corpse with his own eyes.
The meeting room was located on the other side of the building. From the eighth floor section A, all you could see was the battlefield. As they had already spent a major part of their morning seeing this landscape, it was considered better to choose another view; hence the choice of section C which overlooked a plain to the west where it was possible to discern a limestone hillside of meadows, maintained by goats, and woods at its summit. The landscape in section D looked almost the same but facing due south, the sun bothered some participants.
They had to return to section A to be able to have a view of the street. The complexity of the building meant that the simplest thing to do was to descend to the fourth, at the crime scene, where all started.
Moa had no objection even if he had just made the way in the opposite direction and physically, he had not fully recovered from his efforts. Finally he called the tune to the fourth floor.
Some people were whispering behind his back. Despite a sharp hearing he was not able to know if these murmurs concerned the double death that had just occurred or the condition of his slightly crumpled pants.
On site, a glass panel had been broken. One by one, the officers take a look below and even if their experience was not comparable to that of Moa, the scene was eloquent. Two superimposed bodies were lying. The pool of blood was a little larger than a few minutes earlier and the air had started clotting it.
The most emotional ones let out a cry. The impact of seeing the commander's body in this state was even worse than they had imagined.
Denial, what good was it? The corpse was there for them to see. Might as well go straight to anger…
Anger was an essentially a physical manifestation. Anyway, contained, it was not good, neither for stress, nor for stomach ulcer an officer in place for a sufficiently long time could not help but develop.
In general, it remained mostly contained because they were after all civilized people. It was nonetheless possible to see anger through a tight fist at the end of an arm, kept along the thigh, a clenched jaw, clenched teeth, frowns and small grunts that showed that they were angry, seeing red, close to fly off the handle.
Those with the least self-control hit a wall whose poor quality drywall could not withstand the violence of the impact. Others chose a more solid surface and skinned their hands, and among those who had not thought about the consequences of their acts and had chosen their directing hand, they would have some difficulty in holding a pen properly for a few days.
One of them even chose to strike the point where glass was still hanging around his frame and cut his hand open, missing by nothing the ulna's vein.
Anger brought more harm than good, so it was a good idea to go to the next step of mourning: bargaining.
One of the officers noted that perhaps the commander was not dead. It was not that he doubted the professionalism of Moa but hey, between a deep coma and a dead man, without machinery to monitor the cardiac activity, it was not so simple to make the difference, especially when it all had passed so quickly.
Moa knew perfectly well what had happened. He was one of the actors of the scene. The commander's death, although accidental, he was the one that accidentally caused it. He had taken some liberties in his account of the unfolding facts, this was something he could not deny, but these liberties were minor. Major elements, such as the death of the commander, he could certify on honor.
It was not information he could pass on without verifying. Moa was not someone who launched unfounded rumors. However, he was aware that bargaining was a necessary step in the mourning work so he did not try to contradict him and let the other officers speculate.
The commander's 'death' status was not unanimous. It was actually tempting to think that Moa was mistaken in his expertise. After all, at the distance at which they lie, just a tiny breath would be difficult to detect. And the commander's body was below that of Ferrash, the vision was rendered even more difficult. And then, it was not a spectacle easy on the eye so they had not dwelled on the show.
Some managed to keep a bit of rationality. The commander had certainly consumed tetrodotoxin hence what looked like death, but in fact he was alive and well.
The debate could have dragged on if one of the officers had not offered to go a little closer and since it was now faster to reach the ground floor than to return to the eighth floor, he was in favor to not to clutter up visiting the third, second and first floors and directly go to check the corpse for himself.
The convoy of officers therefore descended and quickly found itself in the street.
The show was even less bearable close-up. Moa had spared them the worst details in his description and when they were at fifteen meters above, it was actually more difficult to discern them. They had not realized yet.
The blood was no longer flowing. Finally, it had been a few minutes since the hearts of the two men had stopped working and deprived of its motion force the blood flow tended quickly to stagnation. The blood around the bruises was spilled on the cobblestones and its viscosity made the puddle less important than imagined. In this blood, debris of cerebral matter gave the burgundy red puddle a pearly sheen. Coincidentally, a road network expert could have recognized in the drawing a famous highway interchange near the capital.
A few teeth cut from here and there, and for once, they were arranged so that an amateur astronomer could see a famous constellation allowing sailors to aim south.
Ferrash's case was not topical, his death had already been integrated by everyone and then, for a loafer, what good was mourning?
It was the commander that interested everyone.
His chest cover was pushed in, a sign of collapsed respiratory function. Blood had escaped from the base of his head, near the cerebellum, probably an aggravating factor in the appearance of respiratory collapse. His eyes had stayed open and the squeeze in those eyes, though fading as the post-mortem time increased, betrayed his last feeling, it was surprise. There was no pain in this expression. If there was any good news, it was that he had not suffered.
One of the officers approached. Fortunately, the digestive bowl of his breakfast had already left his stomach. Otherwise, he would have vomited. He looked for the captain's pulse, first at the wrist, then at the carotids, before resigning himself to pushing Ferrash's body to the side and placing his ear at heart level. He waited for almost two minutes without being able to hear a beat.
Everyone was silent. Moa had made the correct diagnosis. As for tetrodotoxin, this was an assumption that was initially not credible.
Present with a fait accompli, bargaining asked too much imagination. Mourning could move to the step of depression.
The sound of a suddenly falling body broke the silence. It was an officer, one of the skeptics, whose legs were failing and who found himself the next moment with the rear on the sidewalk. He was pale even if a hematoma was going to develop on his buttocks. He didn't even feel that his tailbone was cracked under the impact.
This produced a chain reaction and many imitated it.
One of the officers in the cynics group noted that it would have been good to have benches installed because the sidewalk was not very comfortable. He knew that he was waging war for the well-being of his buttocks and to impose such harshness on them was to do their enemies a kindness.
The tears that were contained a few moments earlier blew up the dam of their dignity and rushed along the cheeks of other officers, like a tsunami ravaging makeshift constructions on a beach, these tears washed away the makeup they had great care to file in the morning in case a camera had the idea to capture them at a time of the day. The tears even washed away older layers that had not been properly cleaned.
The faces displayed streaks of mascara, foundation, wrinkles repairers and products masking blackheads. They looked like transvestite pandas after a sweaty night on the dance floor of a bamboo plantation.
Several questions and exclamations were heard, how is it possible?, impossible!, what will become of us?, we are finished! etc.
If certain remarks had their answers in Moa's story, they all knew it but vocalizing had an outlet effect. There was still some shadow in the causal chain of events, but it would wait. As for questions about the future, it should be confronted with the realities that were bond to arise.
Moa stayed a little away, stoic. He was a stain in this surge of lamentation. He let it go because he knew that it was an important step of mourning and that it would not last very long.
Effectively, mourning could not last too long. After all, they were all great professionals who faced death every day. If they couldn't grieve quickly, they wouldn't be okay. They would spend their time mourning and could do nothing else. It was more difficult now because all of them knew the commander Hacion, but their lives continued.
They always had to keep a regiment running. One of theirs was missing. He was an important figure, but other lives, theirs in particular, depended on the decisions they would make in the following moments.
It was already the resignation, the mourning was over and they could start to discuss more serious things.
…
The death of Ferrash, for the third regiment and for the big picture, it was not an important event. Ferrash should have a few friends in the regiment and they would be saddened. They should also go through mourning, but that did not jeopardize the destiny of the regiment. If these friends were other hairdressers, the worst consequences would be a few missed haircuts, but it didn't matter. In the worst situation, the hairdresser would be blamed if he missed an officer's haircut, but the authorities would be magnanimous and there would be no other consequences as long as they compensated the officer with a wig. If these friends were involved in the front line maneuvers, at worst they would be killed during a joust. It would increase Moa's workload a bit.
Finally, concerning friends and family members in the civilian sector, it was not the problem of the army which already had enough worries.
Ferrash was however a good hairdresser. It was a captain who recommended him for this mission. His technique was such that he achieved bangs without scales. He cut the sideburns at the same height, which was rare among military hairdressers.
Ferrash did not study at a military school or a training camp. This was one of the reasons why he did not participate directly in the jousts and he was confined to logistical tasks.
He had responded to an ad in his local newspaper. The ad was simple: looking for a hairdresser because of death, a phone number. Ferrash had called, the secretary asked to send a resume, cover letter and two letters of recommendation directly to the human resources department of the third regiment because they had to pay for each character in the ad and they did not mention this point. He had completed the task in three sending, as specified, obtaining the recommendation of his six-year-old son who really did not have very legible writing and whose the letter was confusing with not of great depth content. He had also obtained the recommendation of a certain Armoix Raglass who was much more eloquent in her arguments even if nobody knew who she was.
Ferrash had arrived eighteen months earlier. He had his little reputation in the hairdresser's circle for his professionalism and he enjoyed the contentment of his customers. Hazards of concordant schedules had brought the captain one day at his workstation.
The latter could not believe that his hairdresser had killed himself. He would have to find a new one that satisfied him.
Except for this captain, this death was not significant. Ferrash was seen as the murder weapon. If he aroused something, it was only resentment.
The feeling of despair which had taken hold of everybody was evidently linked to the commander. Who was this man? To this question, the most versed in poetry and architecture would answer that he was the keystone that held the dome. The third regiment remained a fragile building whose very structure was called into question. Everything could collapse without the one who maintained the pseudo-balance that an outsider's eye could see in this regiment.
Dekor Hacion was a real figure. Rather small for a man, rather plump for the former sportsman he was in his youth, this man had become a soldier long before the war. It was someone who had known the army in a peaceful country, someone who was a parasite on society, who served no other purpose than to swallow up a significant portion of taxes because politicians believed that an army was like a car, having a big one compensated for the smallness of their sex and as they could not afford to buy a big luxury car with their own money, they preferred to develop an army with other people's money.
If he had something in common with Ferrash, it was that he had not known any military school or training camp, as they did not exist at that time. He had applied as a free candidate after a discussion with his guidance counselor who, not knowing which way to lead him, remembered an advertisement he had seen a few days earlier promising mountains and wonders to parents wanting to make something of a child with no future.
He had started as a loafer, at the very bottom of the ladder, and he had finished as a commander. It was an exemplary progression over the retirement and death of his colleagues.
Dekor was a master of camouflage which he also taught sometimes in neighboring military camps as well as in a prestigious school.
His specialty was hiding in thickets of pruned shrubs. He enjoyed this talent from time to time to observe the training of the athletics team, the sport he practiced when he was younger. In the middle of a yew and a privet, he was almost undetectable.
His baldness had spared some hair that drew the crown around his tonsure. This hair had bleached in recent years due to age and the stress inherent in his function.
When someone first encountered him, it was hard to imagine that he held such a position. And yet, in his case, the clothes did make the man.
In uniform, he was impressive with the shoulder pads holding epaulettes which made him appear more broad-shouldered than he actually was and his wedge soles which earned him the respect that a person of his size should not have enjoyed.
Often people measuring a size significantly lower than average, and especially in the case when those people had no charisma, were obliged to compensate for their handicap born of an unfavorable genetic inheritance from their parents by a surly attitude towards of their congeners.
This was not the case with Dekor. To those who had to deal with him, he had the reputation of being a good guy, close to his men. He always had the little word of comfort for them in the event of a hard blow. It was undoubtedly because he had known all the levels of the hierarchy and that nobody had done it for him in his hardest moments that he acted thus. To all, it was the officer who showed the most compassion. In truth, to be more down-to-earth, it was the technique he was more confident with when he hit on a whippersnapper.
His conception of the hierarchy was peculiar. In his opinion, an ass was an ass and it didn't recognize stripes. The general staff based in the capital's headquarters had reservations about his management methods.
However, the members of the staff were old, with a flaccid buttock and if an ass remained an ass and it still did not recognize stripes, it did not mean that the commander did not have his love clean and its tastes. Also when it was pointed out to him, he had protested by saying that it was not hundreds of kilometers from a front line, the buttocks fitting well in the armchairs of the offices of the ministry, which did not improve the muscles of their stately behinds which by the lack of activity threatened to cave in, that it was impossible to have an idea of the realities on the ground and that if his way of doing things displeased him, he willingly left them his place.
Finally the members of the general staff got used to the comforts of life in the capital and of their chairs. They had turned a blind eye to his lack of diplomacy and his management of the third regiment.
This management was oriented around the simple idea that the third regiment was a large family. He was the patriarch, the senior officers were the older children, the non-commissioned officers were the youngest ones and the simple soldiers were the grandchildren. It was a large family whose head was spoiled but favored living together.
As in every family, there were quarrels and tensions but the brotherhood always prevailed at the end.
As in every family, grandpa was permissive with the education of the grandchildren, much more than he was with his children. So he regularly scolded the senior officers when the latter were a little too harsh with the soldiers.
Often grandpa also volunteered to comfort his grandchildren. Cuddle-therapy often took place in the shower. How many of these grandchildren had the pleasure of visiting his private quarters and his state-of-the-art bathroom? It was a lot, too much anyway to use one's fingers to reference every one of them. The knuckles would not have been enough either. In fact, even assigning a different bone to each grandchild who had this privilege, anatomy experts would not have found enough bone without getting in a muddle.
Yes, the third regiment was a large family where grandpa was incestuous but since there was no blood connection, it was not as serious as that.
…
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
ludo2776
ludo2776 ... to be continued in the next chapter
Just a quick word on tetrodotoxin for those who don't want to go onto Wikipedia... This molecule, also called TTX is a neurotoxin produced by different marine organisms such as pufferfish (fugu). I do not know the merits of the scriptwriting trick as I don’t have the time to deepen the pharmacological data, but the use of this product often comes back in the scenarios when a character wants to simulate his own death. It would seem (I remain conditional because I have not checked) that at a sub-lethal dose, TTX slows down the heart rate so that it is almost undetectable, making someone who would take the pulse of a person on TTX think that he is actually dead, when in fact, not at all, he simulates hey, hey, hey!
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