Tehran Decree

Copyright © James Scorpio 2010

This book is copyright under the Bern Convention

No reproduction without permission

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Published by Jamscorp Electrobooks 2010

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Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction, characters,
descriptions

and situations incidental in the text are therefore
not

intended to slur, or defame in anyway,
individuals,

organisations or government authorities.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Edwina Anne Whitworth for her assistance
in the preparation of this novel

The government had not done any better since the
dismissal of Clement Chester, the Australian New South Wales
commissioner of police, in fact, they had well and truly stuffed
things up. The latest news broadcast had signaled the release of
most hostages, but not the US president, which is what the
terrorists wanted anyway. As far as Chester was concerned, the
authorities were a lot of limp dicks pissing in the wind, and he
was glad to be out of it in his forced resignation.

Although Chester relished his early retirement, the
circumstances surrounding it had left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Vengeance was a cruel agitator and would not let go of his addled
brain. They had humiliated him, all of them, after forty loyal
years of service to the police force and the country he loved, the
very last thing he needed in his twilight years was a ready made
set of political demons.

Every night he would go through the Sydney cross city
tunnel fiasco, reenacting the whole damned thing in his head,
creating better scenarios that would have worked had he been given
another chance, but one could not rewind the past, life wasn’t a
rehearsal for something better, it just happened and that was it,
take it or leave it.

But he was fortunate in some ways, he had what some
psychiatrists might call a split personality, which gave him the
ability to divide his personality in half, so that one half was
unaware what the other half was doing. Two separate people in the
same body; the equivalent of psychological Siamese twins, but even
this had its problems.

He suffered long and terrible periods of
recrimination due to internal conflict between the two halves,
which frequently lead to severe depression.

The two halves were separate all right, but they were
not water tight, and they kept knocking on each others doors
looking for trouble. As soon as he had closed one door, the other
opened, and he found himself struggling to keep both doors closed
at the same time. On the few occasions he achieved this it was
absolute bliss. The world went away and heavenly peace descended,
but it had a short life span, and the demons would come back with a
vengeance. It was a contention between some psychiatrists that the
struggle between the left and right brain hemispheres was the cause
of many mental disorders.

Chester had smoked marijuana cigarettes to alleviate
it, but this often made the depression even worse, and of late,
suicide had entered his mind to end the terrible struggle and
unbearable dark nights.

Strangely, the actual thought of committing suicide
temporarily relieved his depression, but it always came back when
the brain was cheated of actual reality, it was as if relief could
only be satisfied by the physical act of suicide itself.

He pointed the remote, sitting upright and switching
through the TV channels, in his favourite patchwork armchair; it
was a present from long gone mates and a survivor from his training
days at the police academy.

He continued to change the news channels picking out
reruns of the worst cases of police ineptitude during the tunnel
siege and verbally criticised them between gulps of beer and long
draws on his marijuana cigarette. Chester spent most of his free
time in his shed away from his wife, so that he could practice and
sustain all the bad habits she so despised in him. Most of his
evenings were spent this way in a drug induced stupor, enhanced
with draughts of alcohol. He did have his lucid periods, during
which he carried out all the things he’d missed out on during his
drug induced haze. Unfortunately, the distinction between the two
periods was becoming dimmer and dimmer, and he was vaguely aware
that unless he went cold turkey very soon and stayed that way; it
would be the end of him. God had made a complex being all right,
but the management part of the brain simply wasn’t competent enough
to control it. Had the almighty unwittingly created a monster, a
sophisticated Frankenstein monster conjured up from the left over
molecules of the universe. Chester, although a roughly hewn male
externally, was a delicate and sophisticated thinker in his lucid
moments, which unfortunately, were becoming rarer with each day
that passed. But he had the forethought and insight to know his
wife, Rosey Chester, was now taking the brunt of his gross
misdemeanors.

Rosey had taken to charity work and community
volunteering in a desperate bid to relieve her frustration, and to
secretly get away from her husband of thirty years. He had become
all the things she detested in a man; he was bull necked,
overweight, scarred with wrinkles and unbearably irascible most of
the time. He never dressed formerly anymore, it was either worn
jeans or drill shorts, matched by a grubby polo top.

On this particular evening a Ladies Club progressive
international dinner was in progress, and it was the sort of thing
Rosey Chester loved. The lucky ladies as she referred to her
companions, went from one members house to another, tasting a
different international dish at each house. The chosen country
happened to be France and Rosey had spent many hours cooking French
cuisine with all the trimmings. She just loved the French -- classy
and culturally savvy, they were everything Clement wasn’t, and she
would have given anything to play host to her ladies group. But her
house would not be on the list of venues visited, courtesy of
Clement who hated visitors impinging on his private life, and in
any case, Rosey was ashamed of him. She made a point of prolonging
such occasions for as long as possible so that Clement would
hopefully be asleep in bed by the time she arrived home.

It was two thirty a.m. by the time the last morsels
of her French cuisine and that of her companions had been consumed
and Rosey decided enough was enough. Clement should be well and
truly tucked up in bed by now. It took nearly another hour before
things were cleaned up and pots and pans were assigned to their
rightful owners.

Rosey drove the short distance back home and arrived
there at three-thirty p.m., and on this occasion, she pulled in the
drive way cursing
--
the outside light was off, but there
was a dull yellow glow in Clement’s shed, with fluctuating light
flashes in the side window.

Clement had obviously fallen asleep again in front of
the telly, it was just one of a battery of irritating habits he had
developed since his abrupt retirement. Rosey was at the end of her
tether and had begun to realise that this awkward, drug addicted
recluse, was a mere shadow of the man she had married all those
years ago.

His habits had been largely hidden during
his days at work and had now become fly blown and out of all
proportion. Every word he uttered, on the rare occasions when he
chose to talk to her, was full of irony and irksome platitudes
about the human race and its inevitable decline.

She had agreed with him on numerous occasions but
that was never enough for Clement, he wanted to spend evenings
discussing, and arguing, over the same points day after day, week
after week.

Rosey slammed the door on the Holden Commodore hoping
this would wake him, then wrenched the shed door open. The
flickering brightness of the TV screen matched against the darkness
of the rear of the shed confused her and she peered intently at the
old armchair. It was several moments before she realised Clement
wasn’t sitting there; she looked beyond, to the rear of the
shed.

She was met by an incomprehensible void of shifting
forms, which refused to be focussed into a cohesive whole; the
scarcity of the pervading light seemed to be creating misleading
images of its own.

Shouting his name in frustration she switched on the
main light at the side of the door. Three seconds passed before the
imagery registered in her cerebellum.

She stiffened in horror; Clement was strung up to the
roof of the shed, his head pulled crazily to one side by a hemp
rope tied in a rough knot around his neck, a deathly gray pallor
bathed his twisted features. Sputum and saliva streaked with blood,
dribbled from his open mouth, his expressionless eyes protruded
from a bloated misshapen face; she wanted to vomit and cry in the
one breath.

An old stool lay on its side a mere six inches from
his feet -- once again he had stuffed things up
--
botching
his own death by slowly strangling himself, instead of the
swiftness and finality of a clean spinal severance.

A severe pang of conscience surged through her brain,
perhaps she had been too hard on him, her strict upbringing had
often resulted in futile arguments, which Clement always lost on
moral grounds, causing him great humiliation. He had hidden his
despair in self abusive drinking and drug taking. Her heart
softened for the first time in years; seeing him for the last time;
in this, the ultimate state of self humiliation.