The Onyx Spark Job

By Eric Maldonado

The Onyx Spark Job is a Hardboiled Tale of Spiritual Misadventure told in the form of a "found" document. Narrated by its hero Nick Turner (a Messianic Retriever of Lost Souls) and by its Transcriber, Onyx Spark is a truly Hardboiled Tale of actual Rosicrucian Cosmology that becomes a Spiritual Journey in itself. Read at your own risk. The Onyx Spark Job is a story that will change your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Industrial Foundry
• Release date: Nov 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452415383

Eric Maldonado

Eric Maldonado is a screen actor living in South Central California. Yet to be paid Restaurant-Karma compels Eric to slave away as a front-man for the swankiest steakhouse in town. Eric also writes, but never seems to find time to develop his own stories... Another Karma seems to intervene, placing the work of someone else into Eric's baffled path... The problem being, Eric finds these works so damn compelling, that he willingly transcribes these "found" stories. To this end, Eric founded INDUSTRIAL FOUNDRY, the premier e-publisher of "found" document. Eric's favorite film is Lost Horizon {1937} starring Ronald Colman, the finest screen actor who ever lived.

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The Onyx Spark Job

Eric Maldonado & Phil Gilley

Published by Eric Maldonado at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Eric Maldonado & Phil Gilley

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment solely and it may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The Onyx Spark Job

what:

Hardboiled Tale

for:

Spiritual Misadventure

and how:

Not Written Occult

The Work Of

Nick Turner

transcribed by

Eric Maldonado

from an old school composition book found by

Eric Maldonado & Phil Gilley

Transcriber's Preface

It all started one night when Phil said:

Hey, you know what would be cool? Phil looked happy.

What's that? I wanted to be happy too.

To write an 80's cult film set in the 80's!

It did sound cool, though I didn't know about it making anyone happy. Phil must have just been happy that night and I was not.

Phil and I work in a swank steakhouse in Central California. He's the valet and I'm the doorman. We got together a few times at our favorite taco stand before work and bounced some ideas around but nothing really seemed to gel.

Then one afternoon I was helping Phil set up the valet station. We opened the key box and there it was: An old school black and white flecked composition book.

It was tattered, worn and filled cover to cover with tiny cryptic block letters. It was written with thick black ballpoint ink. Its cover label read only: Onyx Spark.

That night Phil and I did our best to decipher our find but it was tough going. We did get enough to figure that we had stumbled upon a mother load. Since my handwriting was the worse, it fell upon me to transcribe the whole load.

And what a load it was. The whole thing appeared at first to be one long stream of consciousness. I looked closer. Tiny dots of punctuation were there... I looked for more.

Some words were capitalized mid sentence. A rather lengthy section of dialog was written over double. Did that indicate bold letters?

I began to transcribe, setting left and right margins at one inch and used 12 Point Courier, the standard for screenplays. I worked in earnest, faithfully including each tiny dot of punctuation.

... And that's how I came to know Nick Turner.

Each and every paragraph justified itself to the damned point...

12 Point Courier is a fixed width font, meaning, for every ten points of character, including spaces, one inch of text is out laid across the page. When transcribing as I did on a computer, any word exceeding the right margin automatically drops to the next line.

Of course, a computer can automatically justify paragraphs by spreading and hyphenating words to fill the margins of a page.

But just look at the out lay of text in The Onyx Spark Job.

The words are not spread. Nothing is hyphen-ated. Each paragraph naturally justifies itself at the right margin to the damn point.

Nick Turner does not deal in jagged edges.

And the result is particular. Each paragraph, many resulting in uniform blocks, expresses itself as a particular line, lines or block of action. Nick's paragraphs themselves are expressive of action. The particular result of Nick's style is rather... Epic.

The Onyx Spark Job is no epic poem. However, it is rather epic in its prose. Nick's style and structure itself is epic. Though Nick himself is often declamatory as when telling you what for and how.

He even waxes lyrically on occasion as if imploring you to get it.

I have emulated Nick's style for this Preface, the Introduction and the Afterward but allowed for computer justification in the Chapter Notes. So that you may note the difference. And so that thereby I can testify...

... It is Not easy.

Which I suppose leads us to our Introduction.

Special Note: This ebook edition features deactivated computer justification in the Chapter Notes. For your viewing pleasure.

Also of Note: Due to screen size and font size/style preference, certain ereading experiences will render Nick’s full page block paragraph format and comments thereupon herein irrelevant. This doesn’t depreciate in any way the relevancy of Nick’s narrative.

Introduction

Some things are easy to read. Others are Not... It all depends.

The Onyx Spark Job rather belongs to the latter two categories.

It's as though Dashiell Hammett willfully felt Soren Kierkegaard in the land of the dead and together they thought a story called Onyx Spark would do our world good only to discover that Rudolph Steiner had imagined and inspired their mutual intuition.

If that makes sense, you are in for a treat. If it does not, you are going to get the treatment. The Onyx Spark Job is a complete treatise. Everything you need to get it is included in the story.

Wether you get it, or not at all, depends upon you, the reader.

But to get it at all... You, dear reader, must Pay Attention.

And what must you pay attention to? Nick immediately tells you just below the title on the title page where he references The Onyx Spark Job as...

what:

Hardboiled Tale

That The Onyx Spark Job is hardboiled is not only indicative of Nick's personality evidenced through his justified to the point style and epic prose but also of what makes any hardboiled tale inherently compelling.

Hardboiled literature and its resultant genres, especially film noir, are so damn compelling because they are thematically epic.

Good versus bad versus good all in a world where the grey areas intersect and nothing is absolute but the inevitable justice of destiny. Just like life. And like the works of Dashiell Hammett.

Nick Turner himself could be the work of Hammett. It's as though Hammett had resurrected his iconic character, The Continental Op, from the land of the dead and ordered him back to our world that the greater justice he observed in the afterlife might be better served.

But what in the world would one resurrect such a character for?

Nick tells you in his next line of the title page...

for:

Spiritual Misadventure

And what makes for more spiritual misadventure in this world than philosophy? That Nick's thinking is epically hardboiled obviously has a lot to do with his feelings for the spiritual misadventures of his fellow humans. It's obvious in Nick's many philosophically declamatory passages throughout the course of his narrative. Thus raising the question of... What makes for spiritual misadventure?

Thinking, feeling and willing are spiritual activities. Nick does his best to illustrate this in The Onyx Spark Job. To read Nick's narrative is in itself a spiritual adventure requiring you to pay attention through your faculties of thinking, feeling and willing.

And Nick makes you pay by the very dialectic structure in the majority of his frequent philosophically declamatory passages throughout his narrative of The Onyx Spark Job.

It's as if Soren Kierkegaard himself was brooding over his own seminal work, The Sickness unto Death, in the land of the dead when Dashiell Hammett encountered him there. Kierkegaard's The Sickness unto Death is one of the great philosophical works to emerge from the Nineteenth Century.

For Kierkegaard, the human being is not being human prior the discovery and acceptance of its own standing before God as an individual spirit and the Sickness unto Death itself is the despair inherent in the spiritual adventures or misadventures humans undergo in any discovering and accepting of themselves being individual spirits standing before God... But there's a complication inherent to the human being that complicates the adventure.

The human being is a synthesis: Of the temporal and the eternal. Of freedom and destiny. Between these two relations relates the individual spirit... The individual spirit is the relation that relates to itself. Does it sound complicated? Well, yes, we are.

And Nick Turner is painfully aware of the complications inherent in being human. But more than that he is aware that it is not so easy to be human. And that's what for and how he has written his narrative of The Onyx Spark Job.

This he tells you in his final line of the title page...

and how:

Not Written Occult

To be human is not easy. Life itself is complicated. Though Nick never mentions Hammett nor Kierkegaard in The Onyx Spark Job, he does refer to Rudolph Steiner, on more than one complex occasion.

Most people may be aware of Rudolph Steiner as the founder of Waldorf Education and Biodynamic Agriculture. Fewer may be as aware of his contribution to Speech and Drama as the founding father of Eurythmy. And few are aware of his influence on the English language through his friendship with Owen Barfield, a founder of the Oxford Inklings... A Mid 20th Century literary group whose membership included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

More than a few are familiar with Steiner as the founder of Anthroposophy. In Steiner's founding Anthroposophical works: Philosophy of Freedom, How to Know Higher Worlds, Theosophy, Outline of Occult Science and Christianity as Mystical Fact, Steiner establishes a Science of The Spirit. Steiner's five founding Anthroposophical works are, if read, a significant assistance to your future of human evolution. I kid you not.

Those five works, if truly read, evoke a thinking, feeling and willing panorama of what it is to be human for those who truly read and of how the individual spirit evolves, is evolving and into its future may evolve but that being said, Steiner's five founding Anthroposophical works are, truly, not written occult.

However, Steiner's works are not easy to read. Neither for that matter are Kierkegaard's and to read Hammett is to become a bit hardboiled yourself. But that is exactly the author's intention.

For to read, in itself, is a spiritual activity involving your thinking, feeling and willing. To read adventure involves your thinking, feeling and willing with faith, love and hope. And a reading of spiritual works involves your thinking, feeling and willing with faith, love and hope for life, light and... Being.

But in hardboiled literature you get involved with characters who are ignorant, insentient and inert as they dole despair, loathing and anxiety until the absolute justice of destiny sees to it they get the darkness, death and nothingness they've got coming...

... Hell, that they've deserved.

And they deserved it alright. Every guy and girl in a hardboiled tale who selfindulgently shirked a harder life to unscrupulously get whatever for themselves gets the absolute justice in the end.

However they tried to steal love... You, the reader, knew better.

The easy life is not easy. Anything worth getting is hard to get.

That's what makes the works of Hammett so hardboiled. As for the works of Kierkegaard and Steiner, they make for hard reading not because they are written occult but because they are written for those who seek truth. The truth is not occult. But it is hard to get. That's what makes it worthwhile and how for those who would seek the truth... Spiritual adventure must not be written occult.

So The Onyx Spark Job is Not easy to read. But it is not written occult. It all depends... Upon your will to think and feel truth.

Yes, dear reader, I heard you when you asked why in the hell you should pay attention to any of this. I suppose the time has come to take my leave of you. May this Introduction be your bundle of luck on a stick over your shoulder... As I give you over to Nick Turner: The Man Who is Not, Redeemer of Lost Souls, Mr. Big Time for Hell...

... May God have mercy on your soul.

The Onyx Spark Job

A

I am Nick Turner. I am Not. That's how I know who is.

You may ask what for. Just do Not ask why. Why Not? Why is a fool question. What for and how, when combined, is Not a fool question.

Think about it for God's sake!

While I tell you about what for and how. Let's start with Norma.

Norma is Not a fool. She is Obsessed with Nick Turner. I am Not. Indeed, I am the opposite. It is what I am for and how I am Not.

I became aware of Norma's Obsess predicament during the Felmont Job. It was the Job prior to this one. What the hell is my Job?

The Cardinal arrives. He offers the Job. I accept then leave the Monastery for the City. I usually set up Base prior to meeting a client. I had met Felmont at the Fairmont.

I Thought that was funny. Felmont did Not get it. Too bad. We were in that Bamboo Tiki Bar. The lounge band drifted on a raft about a fake lagoon. Stink blasts of fake mist wheezed from the rafters to glamor up that crappy lounge act. So... Perhaps Felmont was right.

It was Not funny. It was pitiful. But Felmont was pitiful.

A misty blast of fake stink set Felmont off:

Anything. Anything! I know she did it but not there. The tears welled. It's killing her mother. It's killing Me! Tears gushed for pity and So did Felmont.

What about some Parental concern for their little girl prior the committed crime? Oh how I have Not sympathy for pity plead fools such as Felmont.

You have to save her! Felmont gushed his pity tears. I'll pay anything! Raft and lounge band passed again with the fake stink.

That's what I do. They pay for it. I do make them pay. If only they knew what for. They know Not how much their Deal involves.

I took Felmont for ten million cash, his ten bricks of Nazi gold, his ten carat diamonds and his Late Goya Print which happened to be one of my ten favorites. I took it all up front.

Felmont's Daughter was in the Slam for the murder of Felmont's Father. I was Not certain she had committed a crime. I made to infiltrate the Slam. Then arranged for a Montecristo Maneuver.

It was easy to weed out the two inmates Death ready to save an innocent and Redeem their Souls. It was Not So easy to fix the brawl. It resulted in their Deaths with no harm to others. And created the necessary confusion afterwards.

I became certain Felmont's Daughter had Not murdered Grandfather just before we busted out. She was petrified of getting into her body bag. She had some innocence to lose. I had to dope her down. I got her in the bag... And had barely gotten into mine when the guards arrived.

The guards hauled us away for Free. Felmont's Daughter was safe with the Cardinal six hours later. I made for Felmont's mansion.

It was Time to seal the Deal.

Felmont's eyes made like a baby's when he read the Note. He puked like a prom queen when the brains splattered his study. I watched from a few yards away. Norma watched from right by the big window.

Norma stood aghast at the study window as the Note Bearer did his thing. William and I stood aghast behind a tree and studied Norma.

What the hell was she doing there? How had she known when and where? She should have been getting on with Life. Her Job had apparently gone even more tragic.

Hers was the Norma Job. I usually name a Job after its principle Interest. Her Kid Brother had needed saving. She had offered ten thousand cash. It was all she had. I took five.

I damn regretted Not taking it all as we watched her that night.

Felmont dropped the gun and the Note. Norma ran to the front door. She rang the bell. I was Not certain wether to admire or hate her. William and I ran to take her place at the study window.

Felmont, slobbering idiot, went to answer. Imagine! With a fresh blown corpse on the floor of his study. Norma blew past him. She ran for the corpse. Felmont dashed after her. Norma bent over to examine the corpse. Felmont yelled at her to stop. Norma stopped!

People do damned silly things around corpses.

But Norma was Not too silly. She had grabbed the gun. And there went all of Felmont's toughness. He set to the slobbering again.

Shoot me. Shoot Me. Shoot Me! I'm a Murderer!

Norma's got backbone. She yelled him back down.

Shut Up! She wagged the gun. Sit Down! He did. I killed him. Her chin jutted forward. Her mouth opened ugly to show teeth and gums. She got into Felmont's face. I Killed Him Five Years Ago!

Felmont let slip a pity tear: You don't understand...

But I understood... Felmont was Fucked.

William and I discussed exactly what Felmont was Fucked for. And how. As Norma examined the corpse... And Felmont got back to his slobbering.

Norma could Not make sense out of the corpse. She probably figured it was a trick. That's what it would have been if she had arranged it. It's Not a trick. It's a real Deal requiring more sense than a journalist like Norma to figure out how.

Norma did have some sense. She wiped the gun clean of prints prior to leaving the study. Felmont remained there. Slobbering away over the mess.

William and I had to wait four hours until Felmont finally stopped slobbering and quit the study. We collected the corpse, brought it to the Cardinal for a proper Blessing and readied it for transport to the Monastery. It... had been No37.

No37's Debt had been paid. And I envied him.

I felt bad for Norma. Her Kid Brother's transgression had Not been so bad. He had a run in with Big Time Heroine Pusher Fuck. The Job had been easy for me. But the Note, and the gun, had been hard for Norma. Five years had passed.

It was easy to guess how Norma had gotten off Devotion to her Kid Brother. And onto Obsession for what about Nick Turner. Harder to guess how she had gotten onto the where and when of what about my Job.

Norma had made off with Felmont's Note. I usually collect the Note and William collects the corpse as we both clean up the mess. Nick Turner Notes always say the same thing:

End my life for what I have Done.

The recipient of the Note usually refuses. The Note Bearer assures them: The beloved will Not be Redeemed until the Note's request is honored.

Believe me: You would Not leave that room alive if you were the Note Bearer even if you had to pry the gun from a Client's hand and blow your own brains out.

Norma had Not hesitated to pull the trigger. I'm certain that had much to do with her tracking me down. I always knew it inevitably had to happen. I was Not bothered it was Norma. I liked Norma. It bothered me she was a journalist.

A journalist stands for what I do Not: Standard Course of Justice.

Then a journalist makes the stand exactly how I do Not: Notoriety.

I wondered what Norma would make out of Felmont's Note. I had cut the individual letters from out of his favorite Nudie magazine to spell it out for him.

Such was the Felmont Job.

It took another week of work to arrange and finalize the details.

William collected our new Brother for Taken. I worked his Corpse into No73. William transported No73 with corpse of No37 back for the Monastery part of a Job clients know Not their Deal involves.

The Cardinal arranged for disbursement of Job Fees. I finalized the part of a Job clients know they deal for. It was Worthwhile.

Then I closed down Base for until the next Job.

I wonder if the Pope knows about the Cardinal's relationship with the Monastery. A mere hint of our Monastery six hundred years ago would have resulted in much Death.

Then came Fatima. The Virgin spoke to the Kids in Portugal. The Church