The Dogmatist

By Matthew A. Service

PageSlinger just wants to use his powers of musical telepathy to find his purpose in life. In his way are a psychopathic cult leader trying to kill him, an attractive reporter who can make or break his stalled music career, a kidnapped brother, and grizzled cop who thinks he's Page's mentor. When Page becomes a suspect in an explosive midair collision, he'll have to unravel a mystery to clear his good name and save the city and people he loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew A. Service
• Release date: Jun 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227712998

Book preview

Track 1-Blood or Paper by Page Slinger

"W ould I choose you 

Protective eye for how you grew

drain your pain

with a lie and a smile"

FROM THE LAB NOTES of Dr. Rory Emulous

Music floods the mesolimbic system and arouses the listener by increasing dopamine levels. The listener is rewarded handsomely with emotion and a sense of hope. Hope is the air that keeps the heart aloft. Hope can be motivational. Hope can be exploited.

ELSA'S HAND WAS ROSE-petal soft as the Dogmatist held it and invited her to sit on the metal chair across from him in the prison visiting room. He detected a familiar look in her eye when she saw the scars on his face. The way she only looked at him in one-second increments. He wanted to tear her down.

If you'll indulge me a guess, you're two years out of law school. Definitely local, one of the private schools. One of your parents was an attorney—from the cut of your suit and your short hair, probably your mother. You're out to prove yourself, so you want to look professional but your skirt suggests sex. You're playing the part of reformed college tart.

He overlapped his cuffed hands softly on the table that stood between them. Elsa's rouged cheeks and lipstick-reddened lips began to tremor. Her blouse raised and lowered under her suit jacket as her breath sped up.

Quite an ice breaker, saves me the trouble of having to talk about myself, she said, regaining her composure. What about you, why are you in here?

A snort of air flared his nostrils. He already liked this attorney.

Like most inmates in here, I trusted the wrong people. That is the difference between me and the others, you see? I take responsibility for mistakes. I see that my current circumstances are a direct result of choices I've made. The Dogmatist waved his hand towards the door that led to the prison cells and he continued. These other wretched dogs latch onto the idea that what happens to them is someone else's fault. The curs! They live in a nightmare. Everything is unforeseen.

Her gaze moved back to his chest.  She stole another look at his face from under her black bangs.Are you their leader?

His chest puffed up. Her words showered over him and evaporated.

As you've no doubt noticed, I am limited in what I can control at the moment. I have always sought to dominate every circumstance in which I've found myself. It is my nature.

At whose expense? Elsa looked away like a bluffing poker player goaded into showing her hand.

His shoulders relaxed. He knew he would not kill this attorney, he would protect her.

If you mean to ask if I have done regrettable things in the name of success, I would tell you no. Would others find my deeds morally reprehensible? He paused for effect. You blindly think that things are run ethically. There is more to it. Our circumstances dictate our morality. What we experience dictates our perception of right and wrong.

The door opened behind him. Time's up, said the guard.

The Dogmatist's back flexed against the steel chair. He clenched his teeth abruptly.

His monologue was over, as if a hypnotist's fingers had snapped. He stood, keeping his hands on the table. He bent his legs and felt for his center of gravity as the guard's jack-booted steps tapped their approach.

Elsa met the Dogmatist's eyes. I could help you reduce your time. Just sign on the dotted line.

The other attorneys who'd sat in the same chair had made the same promise. Their eyes, too, had darted around like some of the psychopaths he was locked up with. The only difference was the gift-wrapping of business ties and skirts. He liked Elsa, though. If only there were more time to make her squirm.  Now, though, their histories would be irrevocably linked.

You lawyer types are so afraid for your precious careers, you're all rendered impotent. You're simply ushers leading the shackled into a theatre to watch their fates roll up a screen. I am the director of my own movie, said the Dogmatist. He raised his chin as if to the sky.  

All right, that's enough. Time to go back to your happy place, said the guard.

The hair of the Dogmatist rose on his neck. He clenched his hands and his cuffed fists swung perfectly into the head of the prison guard, whose nose crushed like a rotten tomato. The guard fell and the Dogmatist followed him down to the lacquered concrete and rained six years of pent-up rage down onto the guard's head with savage velocity. The sound of cracking bone assaulted the prison walls as the Dogmatist raised his fists and pummeled the guard. Shocked by his own grunts and screams, the Dogmatist stopped with his arms raised and then lowered his hands into a prayer position. 

Amen, he whispered.

Spattered blood was copper to his tongue. He spit. Then he stood and maneuvered a key from his right sleeve and locked the room's steel door.   

On the floor, Elsa cowered into a corner. Please, don't hurt me, she said. Tears and snot flowed down her face.

Alone at last, my sweet.

Outside the door's tiny window, guards' faces contorted with worry and effort. Metallic pings rang over muffled yells as they pounded on the door.

The Dogmatist shook a plastic package the size of a book of matches from his sleeve. He placed it in the right corner of the visiting room. Then he walked to Elsa in the opposite corner and held his arms out in front of him. He lightly caressed the graffiti-covered walls behind her and leaned in, his crotch inches from her face, which she covered with her hands. Then an exploding pop resounded from the package and blew a barn-door-sized hole into the wall.  Beyond it, a Green Giant Sikorsky helicopter hovered.

Hon, as it turns out, I won't need your services. He jumped into the waiting getaway flyer, gave a tiny wave, and then the helicopter whirred toward Taborland city as the visiting room door crashed in. The guards looked out of the hole, their expressions panicked.

A masked man in a cloak piloted the stolen Sikorsky away from the breached prison visitation room. The fashion the pilot had chosen to hide his hideous face from the world was the impetus for the name. The Dogmatist could not remember Cloakman's real name. He was always bad with names, although he never forgot a face.

Thank you a thousand times over, my darling, said the Dogmatist. He leaned and put his cuffed hands on the massive back petting, to show his appreciation. The onyx shoulders, exposed from the Cloakman's t-shirt's torn sleeves, hunched and cowered under the Dogmatist's hands. The metal studs on the collar around Cloakman's neck glistened in the new day sun that shone through the Sikorski's spotless windows. A stirring that he'd forgotten about rustled in the loins of the Dogmatist. Sensuousness that had been beaten out of him in that hellhole prison.We must make haste my friend, he said to his mute pet. We don't want to miss the show.

The Dogmatist marveled at the city below as chopping blades filled his ears with their screaming whir. Taborland City, properly called a city-state, had grown and flourished rapidly after the break up of the United States.

An X-marked landing pad appeared on top of a skyscraper. On the corner of the green, sparkly painted roof stood a uniformed pilot. The highlighter-yellow X grew until the helicopter came to a smooth halt. They were home at last. It was all ahead now. The experience of the prison was a jaundiced light that faded and went out.

Pain surrounded the Dogmatist's wrists, which raged red under the handcuffs.  He raised his scarred hands into the face of Cloakman who slipped a key into the locking mechanism and with a click, the Dogmatist's hands were free.

The two men slid from their seats and rushed into an elevator away from the wind and noise as the Green Giant took to the skies under the other pilot's hands. They were lowered rapidly underground and, within seconds, the doors slid open with a swish. A tall, thin man with grey-flecked hair and a double-breasted suit welcomed them into a tunnel.

You're looking well, Dogmatist.

Alistaire, you always flatter. I trust everything is in order?

Of course, right this way.

The three men crossed the concrete tube into a smaller hall that led to a metal door waiting at the end. It opened with a creaking moan, and the men stepped into a room illuminated by dim fluorescent light that coiled around its cave-like ceiling. Across the expanse, human moans that came from the caged partitions along the walls filled the room like ghosts. The piercing smell of bleach barely masked the aching odor of rotting teeth and the atrophy of its inhabitants.

It's good to see you sir, I will take my leave.

Always a pleasure, Alistaire. The plasticine smile stayed on his face as he walked rigidly out of the pale green light.

The Dogmatist and his cloaked rescuer entered an office in the corner of the giant room. The outline of his muscular pet flexed with every step, and the Dogmatist's legs weakened. With a wave of his hand, he indicated that the cloaked man should sit on a mat on the floor.  The giant complied and the Dogmatist clicked a chain onto his collar. With a groaning sigh, Cloakman lay down and closed his eyes.

The Dogmatist walked out of the office into a room behind it where a surgical table stood attached to bleeping screens from which erupted thick black electric wires connected to to round drum pads. On the table lay a woman strapped down with leather, her eyes open as if held by pins. Janis had been her name before her mind had been blown out by her ear worm. There were only two jobs for the blown-out; manual labor and guinea pig.

She said,Your face, Dogmatist.

Yes, my dear. Lovely, isn't it?

He pulled a mask out of a drawer and slid it onto his face. It felt cool on his erupted skin. Now he was back. He straightened his spine and his chest ballooned. He mock-strutted and then stooped to hide from Janis's view. He crouched for a moment and then jumped up with a monstrous growl.

Janis's eyes widened. My lord? Her voice shook with terror.

The Dogmatist stifled a laugh. People needed to worship someone, didn't they? He was an instrument of the Lord, after all. He alone had harnessed the power of sound. He alone would fix the ills of the world one child at a time.

A shaky breath came from Janis's mouth. Her baggy rags barely concealed her struggling limbs. On her feet, fresh wounds bled, with splinters of glass peering from them under a light that gave her exposed, scabbed arms a nuclear-green pallor.

You were so full of promise. You rose higher in the ranks that I ever would have imagined, he said.

He tweezed her feet and dropped the glass into a metal tray.

What made you believe you could fly? Why didn't you open the window, my sweet little bird?

She closed her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks.

Is it my time, Dogmatist? she asked.

He felt his blood bubble. He was close to perfecting his mastery over music's influence over the mind.

Yes, Janis. I'm setting you free while you're still young. Free to know that your sacrifice for the cause is real. You let me inside you. I know your dreams. I've spied your visions and inner life. His voice became fatherly as he stroked her sweat-soaked hair.

You are going to make history today, my dear. Thank you for coming with me on this journey of discovery. Your sacrifice will not be wasted.

You honor me, Dogmatist.

I would have done anything for you. As I would all of my children. That is how I regard you, as mine, he said, his voice trailing off. His fingers traced the path of wires strapped to her head to a power generator. You are aiding in making history. So many people live vile lives of comatose mediocrity. How lucky you are to be spared that fate. He pushed a button on the machine's console.

The hum of it sounded like a giant wasp and floated around the room. The woman's body stiffened, her face locked in a silent scream.

The Dogmatist aimed a remote control at a wall-mounted screen. The picture held Taborland City's dim early morning waterfront. On a bench lay Page Slinger asleep in the dawning day. There he is. The boy prodigy who went off the grid. Soon Gloria Lovejoy, the reporter who'd sent the Dogmatist up the proverbial river, would arrive. He wagged his finger at the screen. One should never try to stop the Lord's work with petty charges of money laundering and racketeering. Thy work shall be done.

Both Page Slinger and Gloria Lovejoy deserved to be reborn into better lives. Poa from the Buddhist philosophy. The Dogmatist would facilitate this honor.

Track 2-Crash by Page Slinger

"A n explosion of light

A long dreamless sea

We meet to change forever    

How we are

How we see"        

Blades of sunlight slipped through Page Slinger's eyelids rousting him from his park bench slumber. He uncrossed his denim-clad legs and shifted onto his side as the other park denizens slipped out of their sleeping bags to light the day's first cigarette. Scattered around the waterfront, food carts sent herbed smoke signals that teased growling stomachs. A car door slam startled Page.   He sat up to see a woman who walked towards him as if she was in a headwind. Her dirty blond hair stood kinked and she was so vibrant, so alive that everything around her seemed to fade to black and white. Gloria Lovejoy had been an acne-pocked, chubby reporter who'd written a story for the school newspaper about Page after he'd survived a fall from an electric tower. Now she cut a sleek form as she approached. She sat at a cafe table across a water fountain from where Page still lay and crossed her legs.

This follow up interview would restart his stalled music career. He wondered if it was worth having to fly in a helicopter. He avoided flying at every opportunity. It was the motion and the smiles on people's faces, like they knew nothing of the danger they were in.

Gloria'a eyes looked right through him as she scanned passersby. Had he changed that much?

There's no news here, lady.

She glanced up with no hint of recognition and then back down.

You don't remember the guy who put you on the map?

The kids had called him ghost that winter after what she'd written about him. It had been so easy in their small town for kids to imagine a dark apparition appearing from around corners when the trees were leafless and the streets lay icy so long ago. Maybe he was a ghost. He felt like it still.

I was just giving you time to wake up, she said.

A girl, maybe about twelve, approached him, her hair matted, her face flecked with dust and food.

You're gonna play my song today, aren't you, Page?

She threw coins like tiny wishes onto the purple velvet inside his guitar case. Her ruddy cheeks dimpled when she smiled. She ran across the street to a circle of brown grass where other kids waited by a sooty guard rail. A tethered pit bull on a rope was being used as a pillow by a sleeping boy. The morning pedestrians mostly ignored the begging kids, whose faces all shared the same blinking, doe-eyed look. Kids like these hung around everywhere, left all alone to fend for themselves. They were small, like-grade school children, but had worry lines on their faces. What were they waiting for? What was supposed to happen?  

A shiver ran through Page, and he started a song. As he strummed, his breathing slowed and his vision softened into a fog with shimmering sparkles and a looking glass center set around his view.

Passers-by gathered and stood rapt by the shaded bench.Their wide eyes allowed Page to see into their thoughts, which skittered like mice in his mind's eye. Most of them were lost in their morning routines like swimmers flailing in rapids. Page wove musical tapestries with his guitar, offering an oasis from the windless morning heat. Flip-flops tapped and shorts-clad tourists danced while iced coffee cups perspired. The waterfront became a blur of activity. Boats gathered on the river as screaming children splashed through the fountain when it began to bubble.

The whup-whup-whup of a helicopter approached. Gloria started up a spiral staircase which led to a helicopter pad, its steel girders smeared with graffiti.  Page sat over his guitar like a presiding judge and followed each step with his eyes as the shade of the Douglas fir trees sent light shards breaking across her face. 

Time to fly, Page, she said. Or had she only mouthed the words?

His stomach fluttered and the sparkle-fog he used to see into the minds of his audience popped and abated. A broken spell. His strum halted to end his song early and Page thanked his audience, few of whom dropped coins into his case which he gathered as he shoved his guitar in. He clasped the case closed, strapped it onto his back, and rushed up the platform stairs, giving up his prized bench. Two floors up, he arrived at the top out of breath.

Clouds circled like vultures and choked the purity of the blue sky. Page had never flown in a helicopter. Maybe Gloria spun her musician interviewees in the air so they behaved?

She turned around and raised a strawberry blond eyebrow like a flag. He was reminded of how much of their lives had passed since they'd last met.   Gloria, G-l-o-r-i-a, he sang.

You've changed, she said.

His nostrils caught a waft of tea tree oil from her strawberry blond curls which blew in the wind.

Is there going to be a picture of me with this interview?

He pushed hair away from his forehead and looked down at the dull silver of duct tape, wrapped around his cowboy boot. A question about whether or not to ask Gloria for a mirror teeter-tottered on the tip of his tongue. 

As the Green Giant helicopter arrived, the river became a whirlpool and Gloria's hair blew, covering her face. Both she and Page squinted as it came to land and it's blades slowed to a stop.

My father flew one of these in Vietnam, Gloria said.

Page tried to think of a worse job. People shooting at you day and night. You could see on the helicopter's side where bombs had been secured. He wondered if the khaki pontoons attached to the rails meant it could float. Why had he agreed to ride in this thing?

The corpulent pilot looked deadly to no one as he opened his window.Good morning, Mr. Slinger and Miss Lovejoy. I give free rides to my first two customers.

Page clutched the railing as bile bubbled into his throat. This felt a little too real. He forced a smile.

Nice. Exclusivo, said Page.

The pilot slid open the door to reveal banks of seats. Gloria stepped in and turned around to look at Page while trying in vain to push her ginger locks behind her ear. Page looked back at his lost bench, which was now occupied by a woman and boy.

Nice day for a helicopter ride, said Gloria. She pulled out a legal pad from her purse.

Page's legs felt shaky. Was he just scared of flying? He had a familiar bad feeling but he had ceased to trust his inner voice. That inner white downy trill had become a horned and reddened whine. A voice to be disregarded as heresy.

Yeah, right. Is this where you conduct all of your interviews?

Beats my office, Gloria said. Her ample lips raised at the corners.

Page moved his hands over the smoothness of his guitar case and tapped his boot. He looked over at the pilot who took a sip of coffee. Then Page looked down again at his bench. The crowd had broken and scattered. Everything seemed calm.

Let's rock, he said.

Gloria sat by the window and beckoned Page to sit beside her. The burgundy seat cushion was plushly covered in velvet and a seat tray folded into the seat in front like in an airplane. He thought the velvet might be hard to clean if he threw up. He wondered if he should buckle up or play it cool. He sat stiffly and held his guitar case in front of him. 

Gloria leaned in and squeezed Page's hand, which sent a warm surge of blood into his fingertips. I've done this before and survived, she said, her tone soothing like an airline stewardess's. Cold sweat slicked his palms. He'd seen the relaxed faces of other passengers on flights before, during turbulence and wondered why no one was more freaked out. He pulled his hand away.

The helicopter blades whirred and her blue eyes shifted to look out of the window. The pilot waved at them with an amusement-park smirk and slammed the door making a tight seal. There was no turning back now.

Seems like a solid machine, he said. I'll try to concentrate on this, he said pointing to her note pad.

First time? she asked.

Deafening blades that screamed outside the helicopter turned mercifully into a white noise hum inside the passenger cabin. As it rose, however, Page's stomach performed a flamenco dance with the sway of the passenger cabin. He pressed his back into the seat and swallowed, trying to wet his throat.

It'll smooth out when we get higher, said Gloria. Where did you go after the you fell from the electrical tower?

Billboard-ad memories came to him, honed by the perfect brutality of time. And then amnesic blackness just after he'd fallen. An open chasm spread out where his memory should have been. I'm interested in talking about my music. I leave the past in the past. Can't we just talk first? 

Fair enough, she said.

Her eyes softened into oasis-pool blue. Tiny droplets of sweat soaked through the front of her blouse.  A bead of sweat trickled down inside Page's shirt as well and he noticed stains from the day before. A vaudevillian tramp with his hat and guitar case. Girls liked him a little dirty. He got laid on days he didn't shower. Of course, he got laid on days he did shower, too. He crossed one scuffed boot over the other.

Coughs of static blared from the helicopter's radio. A voice twisted its way through the din.Ken, do you copy. Ken. Ken! Ken? The pilot sat like a statue, only his hands moving.

What's with the pilot?said Gloria, hitting Page's shoulder with the back of her hand. Pain shot through his shoulder and before he could comment, she scrunched past him and was at the front of the helicopter, holding onto the seats to keep her feet.

Excuse me, she said. No answer came and she tapped the pilot's shoulder.Hey!

He didn't budge, nor did the helicopter move from its holding pattern.This statue act of the pilot did not arouse confidence.

Then drums began to play from out of nowhere, faintly, at first, then it felt like the beat surrounded Page.

Listen to the drums, Page said You hear that? His vision softened and blurred. Sparkly fog wrapped around his eyesight, a sight he had only seen when he was playing music. This was new.

The big band song Sing, Sing, Sing pulsed deafeningly in his ears. The Gene Krupa beat entranced Page with its floor tom's manic drive. He put his hands to his ears. A trumpet rose and dipped like a wounded bird. He closed his eyes hard. His chest heaved. He went deep inside his mind and tried to calm his breath. Music had always allowed Page into the mind of whomever played it or listened to it. Now all he saw were black leather gloves that expertly emitted the powerful drum rhythm that bent his heartbeat to its will. Page knew something was very wrong.

You don't hear that song?

Gloria shook her head no. Her skin tightened and her eyes widened.

We have to get off this helicopter or we'll die, Page said. He shot up, swung his guitar strap around his shoulders, and shakily moved his hands to the door handle. The door slid open to the sticky air. The drums grew in volume. Whiny horns blared sharp and mixed with the chop of the helicopter blades.

What do we do? Gloria's mouth pursed.

And then an unfamiliar feeling. Page was comforted by one redeeming thought: That he needed to keep this woman safe. Trust me, Page said. 

The pilot turned toward the commotion. His eyes were black buttons in their sockets, his face void of expression with a china-doll pallor. Page stepped out of the helicopter onto the runner. He held his hand out.

Gloria looked down at the river thirty feet or so below. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped."I