Max Payne – The Rising Payne

by David Phelan

Chapter One – Signing My Life Away

I woke up in my single bed, the discarded half-eaten take-aways littering my appartment floor a tribute to my loneliness. But this was no day to feel sorry for myself, today was the day I finally joined the NYPD. I had a uniform to put on. It went on easier than my phony smile but unfortunately you can't dress yourself up in false sentiments, no matter how hard you try the smile will always end up as a grimace.

It was a dark, cold winter morning as I stepped out onto the street, the icy wind trying to slap some life into me. It didn't hit hard enough. I turned on the ignition and the car started. So did the nightmare.

Its funny, police stations on tv are always a hive of activity, with a loud-mouth chief, a dumb white guy and a wise-cracking black guy. This police station was a morgue. Sergent Jim Bravura showed me to my tomb and left me there to decay, the grey of the walls painting my life an even more disturbing colour. I had been left some simple contracts to sign before I could start work properly. I put pen to paper and signed my life away.

It must have been faith that we were starting work here in this hellhole on the same day but just as the colours of the wall were about to push me too far a beautiful girl breezed past my desk; the new secretary and the only person that ever managed to taint my life a prettier colour. I smiled at her, and as the smile remained floating across my face I realised it wasn't a grimace. I believe at love at first sight, but then again, I believe in a lot of things.

The phone rang and shattered the illusion that I could have a minute to myself to daydream hopefully. It was my first job. A shooting a few blocks away with the gunman holed up in an appartment with a gun pressed against the temple of his hostage's head.

I jumped in my squad car and the sirens began to scream. It, married to gunfire, would be a sound that would haunt me forevermore.