Excerpt from Can't Press Rewind
A haunting literary mystery about grief, guilt, and the ghosts we carry.
This excerpt is the opening chapter of the novel. It introduces the death of Chris Eagan — a childhood friend of the protagonist, Press London — whose apparent suicide sets off a gripping investigation into memory, loss, and buried secrets.
Chapter 1 – Marlboro Red
He never considered how the gun would taste.
Every other detail of this night had been anticipated and scrutinized. He planned where he would do it, how he would do it, and what he would wear: the same ratty Jake’s Bar tee shirt he donned on the day he holds responsible for why he wanted to kill himself in the first place. The courage and calmness he hoped would join him when the day finally arrived are welcomed, yet more likely borne out of a Dewar’s and OxyContin combo than some sense of accepted fate.
His normally restless mind fixates on how the steel from the barrel on his tongue reminds him of licking the monkey bars during a recess dare.
It was the last thought Christopher Eagan would ever have.
When Renee was first diagnosed, Officer Shane Moriarty promised to quit and he had, but between her chemotherapy and his job, abstaining from the only vice she thought he had lasted only a few months. He convinced himself a single Marlboro Red at the end of a life threatening workday was essentially quitting and his wife would never know otherwise. So he continued the habit through her treatments, his fear, and whatever people call the stage when fear gives way to fuck everything and everybody. Some might call it acceptance.
He hopes the sound he hears while traveling southbound on Route 202 is anything but a gunshot. The first drag always tastes best and he tries savoring the smoke filling his lungs before blowing it out of the window. The warmth doesn’t last long. After pulling a U-Turn where the sign forbids it, he flashes light bars and aims a spotlight in the grassy area between the edge of the road and the tree line. His eyes tell him the lump on the ground could be anything, but he knows it’s a body. Feels it in his gut.
From there, time moves in blinks. One blink after he’s out of the car, he’s walking through wet grass towards the woods with a hand on his holster. A blink later he’s standing over the body. The man’s face lays twisted, holding an expression of solitude where fear or anger should sit. Sheer violence eliminating all the emotion living beings make. More important than how this face looks is who it belongs to. For Officer Moriarty, who is now trying to blink his way out of tears and the reality of what he’s staring at, this isn’t just any dead body.
The flashlight illuminates three notable items for Moriarty: A 9mm Luger, a folded piece of paper, and brain matter scattered in an uneven clump. He unfolds and reads through the letter while his left hand shakes then clumsily folds it back up and places it in his back pocket. He fights to hold in cries during his call for backup, but some hiccups escape.
Another blink and flashing lights fill the empty space between the policeman and his dead nephew. The squad finds Officer Moriarty smoking his second cigarette of the day for the first time since a doctor told him his wife had pancreatic cancer.