Detective Mal #00

Back in 2008 I did a sketch base about a double suicide case. There were two physical characters in it, the Inspector of the police and a hired private-eye, Private Detective Mal. I always had an interest in pulp investigative fiction and have decided to bring the neglected character of Det. Mal back in the spotlight. I have decided to develop the character more, but before that I would need to get back to the original. The short sketch is down below and is entitled 'THE SITUATION'.

THE SITUATION
Scene 1 EXT. Construction Site
A dead body (Du Rate) is laid sprawled on the ground with a Bent Coin in palm wearing a wedding suit tuxedo.

Inspector
Evening detective Mal, Private-Eye; what’s your situation here?

Detective Mal
Evening Inspector, the situation? Suicide, jumps off the building, dead by shock before impact. Who we have here is Mr. Du Rate, his wife hired me to investigate his whereabouts; I discovered that he’s in love with another woman. Mr. Du Rate is from the Du Rate family, rich and famous and all that. His marriage with his wife was more of a business deal between the families. Following his diary, he seems to be in love even before his marriage. The woman he loved took her own life yesterday, while him, tonight.

Inspector
Double suicide. But why jump off a building?

Detective Mal
I believe, to him, by jumping off a building is like he had flied off into the next world and by doing so, left his body tumbling down to the ground; a ticket bought. The woman he loves took her life in bed by drugging herself with sleeping pills, a painless death, I assume. Well, at least their together now.

Inspector
Incredible! I assumed that they’d been planning this for awhile. But what’s with the Bent Coin in his palm?

Detective Mal
Through the letters, he kept saying that their love is priceless not like the marriage he had with his wife. Paying the Ferryman everything they have just to be together is not a price at all. They can’t be in love here, so they took it on to the next.

Inspector
So that’s love eh? [beat] How’s his wife?

Detective Mal
Pleasurable!

END

Of course the main theme about the whole sketch is LOVE. Be it even though it was observed through a third person point of view. The idea did work quite well at the time to question the true meaning of love between a man and a woman, but that was just the situation Det. Mal finds himself being involve with and as payment he slept with the dead man's wife. Now from here, we find out that Det. Mal is an admirer of woman of all sorts but I believe I made him a too clean. As is noticed, he did not curse at all through out the sketch but he goes straight to the point when giving a report which shows that he was in the police department before. What made him quit to be a private investigator is something I would have to think about. Maybe his wife died in an unsolved crime which might take the same tale as Adrian Monk or maybe he did solve the crime but he can't touch the murderer because it is out of his jurisdiction. This will make the murderer some kind of untouchable top shot. Maybe it was not his wife but rather his fiance.

I will be needing a dark event in his past, because of the whole intention is to make the character darker and driven by the past to hope in building a future he would tend to live on later. Thinking about it, I believe it would stick to being his fiance's death. But the death or the crime is fill with conspiracies, which means her family must be in the 'rich and famous' category involved with the 'rich, dangerous and infamous'. [...]

To Wait for a Mockingbird

Finish reading the masterpiece just yesterday. I always wondered why it was such a big deal, fortunately now I know. It's like getting smack in the face by a friend than with his fingers pointing directly at you with a high pitch squeal, 'Hah! Told ya' so.' And at some point I felt delighted that it was done to me so, because I would have never pick it up to read.

The story itself is supremely magical but scary at the same time too. The innocence of it all and the revelation at the end beguiled me in ways I did not notice in me at all. I never knew that part of me existed. Maybe it was meant to be that way. The way of which I wanted to not limit myself with the genres I love or am more comfortable with. In a sense that kept me neglecting; I would always avoid buying that book. Yes, I have heard of it in the movies, (by goodness sack I haven't even seen the film version of it yet too, or maybe did when I was a child meager enough to not remember it), I've heard tell of it from friends, reading to reread everlasting reviews or references on the book, said it to be the pinnacle of American Literature and yes, true, I would have to finally state that they were all right. It did not have to even be bold for there was no losing stake on the statement, it was just plainly true.

I am the kind of a reader which will purchase a book to read it. It give me a sense that I have paid penance towards something or someone or maybe even a being I have yet to figure out what, who or why, but it is a part of my own natural habit which I had accepted as being bred in the bones. Whenever I come into a bookstore, I would quickly rush towards my comfort zone and browse it, even though I have done so over and over again, spelling out and reading in the same titles and authors, fingering which one should I cast my cash on today. Once this is done, I would waste around the piles on other sections. I would spend time doing this, trying to discover something which can dazzle my eyes and if it does happen (which on occasions is quite rare) I would grab it along with me too. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee has always been there, waiting innocently in patience. Till towards the end, on a day, in a bookstore with nothing else but the mockingbird, I bought it.

But the journey of this book in my life have yet to even begin right. I got back home and shove it on the second top shelf of my room and again we played our waiting game. Till one night, I was out of fiction books to read and there it was staring down at me from the shelf I had left it to be and the rest of it as they say goes on and on.

The book was a patient delight from it's roots down under to it's last leaf at the tip braving the wind. Remarkable characters with situation most thrilling and very, very personal to me. The way it was written made me feel at home and it is in this way that took me into feeling a very personal touch I have never come across coming out of from my insides before. A truly life changing truth.

Pondering onwards, maybe the book was not only the one waiting the wait, I was in some way, deep within awaits it to. A proper love story I presume, as Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story.