5.12.2010
You write the next chapter....here's the beginning
It was quarter to one in the afternoon when twenty-two seventy-seven told dispatch he would go canvas on the 5th floor of the apartment building. He got a ten-four in reply. The door to number 515 was unlocked and open an inch. A bad smell hit his nostrils. He drew his automatic. Pushing open the door with the nose of his .38 he found the room had been tossed. He radioed his findings. He touched nothing in the living room and stepped over the books, broken glass and clothes strewn on the floor. He didn't touch the door frame leading into the study, nor the edge of the end table, nor the edges of the chair, nor the remote control for the television balanced on the arm of the chair nor any portion of the dead man sitting in it. The volume had been muted. His eyes were glazed over. His body was stiff. A tiny few splatters of blood dotted the top of his right ear and the right collar of his shirt. His mouth hung open like he had wanted to say something. The handle hung in the air just behind of his right temple. The blade was pretty deeply imbedded into his skull. The hair was wet and mushy around it. There was very little blood otherwise. First-class ice pick work, he thought. Then he radioed his findings. He was thinking about where to go to lunch while walking back out to the hallway. He pulled the door almost shut then stood waiting for the medical examiner.
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A door creaked open down the hallway. It startled him, sure, but it also grabbed his interest. He had visions of the murderer popping into an open apartment to hide and now checking to see if the coast was clear. He drew his gun again and held it at his side. He faced down the hallway. An image of Dirt Harry flashed through his mind. A shadow fell across the open apartment door just yards away. Then an old woman with a garbage bag in her hand appeared. She looked up and her eyes met his and she dropped her jaw. Her whole body froze.
ReplyDelete"Son?" She gasped.
ReplyDeleteHe froze.
She dropped the garbage.
"Mamma?" He wheezed.
"No!" She cackled. "Kidding." Her hand came up. An uzi was in it.
The muzzle pointed straight at his heart. The barrel looked no bigger than a howitzer to him.
Yet she froze with all the dispassion in her eyes of a wilda beast. Terrified he began sucking his thumb.
ReplyDeleteShe lowered the uzi.
He lowered his thumb.
She snarled and raised it again and a wicked fire came into here eyes.
They blazed with hatred and loathing at the illegitimate kid she never knew. "This is for Arthur." She screamed. A wild animalistic scream and depressed the trigger ready to sate her blood lust.
He stared.
The gun did nothing.
She jammed her finger down again and again.
Nothing.
He breathed.
He slowly unholstered his glock and drew it and aimed.
She lowered the uzi to her side and whimpered "sonny boy."
He blew her f-ing head clean off.
The gun dropped to the carpeted floor of the hallway.
He walked over. He noted her dead body. He noted the hole in her frontal lobe. He noted the time on his watch. He noted that the safety was still in the on position.
"Another crazy apartment dweller thought I was her son. Man what crack can do to a person."
Now he really was hungry for lunch.
All of a sudden Daisy-Lou sat bolt-upright in her wicker chair. The heat of the day made the cornfield shimmer. She yawned and stretched and gazed from her seat on the front porch to an endless stretch of open plains before her for as far as the eye could see. The blue sky was cloudless. The corn fields swayed in the breeze. Her skin got goosebumps. It always happened like this when she fell asleep buck-naked on her front porch setee. And always the same dream—she was a city cop, she was a guy, she was hungry and she was a killer.
ReplyDeletedetective sergeant ron larcy backed into the hallway. he was grinning so hard that salt water squeezed out of the corners of his eyes. he patted the air. he told his partner to shush. then he stepped up right next to the cop who was sleeping in his chair. the guy who had called for backup and the medical examiner. he was sound asleep. ron had to fight hard not to laugh. then he saw the body of the old woman. traces of gunsmoke drifted out of the hole in her forehead. ron stopped smiling. "wake up daisy-lou," he said to the cop. "we're not in Kansas anymore." the cop woke. his cornfields were gone. reality bit.
ReplyDelete"Hey, Batshit-boy," Sarge spit out.
ReplyDelete"Wwwwhat?" He mumbled.
"You," Sarge breathed on him. "Wake the fuck up. You are in big trouble."
His head hurt.
He choked on the spit running into the back of his throat.
He coughed hard and coughed again.
He swallowed.
He gulped.
He unholstered his gun.
He raised it up pointed at Sarge.
The sergeant looked at it, him, and back to it and gently shoved the muzzle aside. "Grow up stump-fuck."
He ducked the muzzle under Sarge's fingers and pulled the trigger.
The gun jumped in his hand and the noise was monster big.
The blast deafened him and his ears were ringing.
The smoke was dense.
The Sarge stood still.
The smoke cleared. A bullet hole was in the wall about a foot from Sarge's belly.
"You never could shoot, puke-shit."
He grinned. He tapped Batshit's head like a doggie. He said "two is nuff fer today." He gently took the gun out of his hand.
"I'm, I'm sorry, I guess I'm a little sleepy."
The "Sarge" dropped the gun to the floor. He peeled off his hair and skin starting at the top of his head. His uniform too. All fake. All disguise. Underneath was a creature of unimaginable horror. It was glistening, blood-red, with fangs and it had bloodshot eyes. The cop skin lay at its clawed feet.
ReplyDelete"Not from around here, huh?" Batshit said as he produced his backup piece, a .45 calibre. "It's got hollow-points, fido."
"Woof," the creature said sarcastically. "Cut me some slack, huh? I'm new to this planet."
"Cut ME some slack, will ya?" Said Batshit. "I just killed an old lady pretending to be my mom. There's a dead body with an ice pick sticking in it, in the apartment, and," he wheezed, a little out of breath now, "you are a fucking alien." He caught himself and gave a little smile. "I mean, an alien from another planet. Fix it back," he said pointing at the human suit on the hallway floor. The beast, without hesitation, pulled it back on and tucked it up at the hair and adjusted it slightly until it was perfectly the Sarge once again. "Now I gotta get some lunch. I'm starving here. How 'bout you 'Sarge'?"
ReplyDeleteIt was one minute to one. Officer number 2277 had seen alotta shit in the last 14 minutes. The creature calling himself "Sarge" had gone. The old lady had gone too. The hallways was as still as a crypt.
ReplyDeleteThe officer rubbed his face with his hankerchief. He had nodded off for a couple of minutes. Where was the damn ME and the forensic crew? How long would they be? He had had enough weird dreams and strange nightmares up here. And that dead body was...was...WAS...
what it was, was still as dead as ever. And it was starting to stink already. The cop rubbed under his nose and turned away. Back in the apartment he found a bottle of beer in the refrigerator and helped himself, twisting the cap and chugging until the suds came back up his throat and made him lunge forward and spew some into the sink. Foamy beer ran out of the top of the long neck Bud. He held it over the sink and it cascaded over his hand. When it settled a bit he drank it more carefully in small portions. He finished it in two minutes that way. He dropped the bottle in the trash can next to the counter. On the wooden counter top was a note with only a single sentence. It read: I want my ice pick back when you're done so leave it in the bridgeworks, east side of LaSalle at the river, in three nights.
ReplyDeleteThe officer looked around the apartment. He felt eyes on him. He looked at the window and the horizon beyond, cut by building. He wondered if someone was long-scoping him. He smiled to himself. He wanted to be the investigating detective, not the uniformed cop. He didn't have the smarts for those tests. He didn't want to wait years to maybe, possibly, get a shot. He wanted it here and now, while he was in his prime. He was only 38. He picked up the sheet of paper. Looked it over again. Found no other markings on it. Checked the other side. Then folded it twice and slipped it into his pocket.
The cop tapped his pants pocket. This one is mine, he mumbled. Just then three men in suits—detectives and a medical examiner undoubtedly—entered the room, nodded at him, he returned the nod toward the adjoining bedroom, and they walked past with purpose and duty all over their strides. The had the strides of a million cases, a million detectives, a million motives and evidence collections. They had lifeless eyes. They hardly looked at him. They looked through him. They looked forward to the scene they knew awaited them. He slowly turned and fell in behind them but a few paces back, raking his time, close enough to hear things, far enough to know his place in the pecking order of cop work. This was a crime scene. Another world to him. But a world he wanted to bust in on. He thought that maybe he had the pass in his pocket. He would keep it to himself for now. And follow the evidence. Follow the ice pick. Follow trouble.
It was a new world for him now.