by David Jobe
Officer Perry watched him. "You headed over there?"
"Yeah. Chris was my mentor when I first started. Taught me a great deal. No, one deserves to be left alone, especially when they have obviously hit bottom. Figured I'd sit with him, cover the suicide nurse's shifts if they will let me,” Lanton yawned at the thought. "Might have to hit Starbucks on the way."
Officer Perry chuckled while digging through his pants pocket. He produced a small bottle like you would find at convenience stores. Those 5 hour energy drinks, the ones that were supposed to help you through a hard day. Lanton had always wondered why it was always five hours when the work day was usually eight. "Here."
Lanton took the bottle and read the label aloud, "Icarus Energy drink? Eight hours of continuous energy?" He looked up at Officer Perry. "My Greek mythology is a little rusty, but isn't he the one who had to push a boulder up a hill over and over?"
Officer Perry laughed. "Naw. This is the guy who built wings and then flew too close to the sun. His wings burnt off and he fell to his death."
"That's not any more inspiring,” Lanton admitted.
"Maybe not, but it is aptly named. You will not be tired for that eight hours, but once your eight is up, you will crash. I swear they are making this stuff with adrenaline or something."
"Thank, Officer Perry."
"Just Perry. Can you do me a favor? Can you tell Chris when he wakes up that I am pulling for him? I caught him once when he did a seminar on signs that a perp might have a gun in the car. You could tell he was serious about his job. Kind of a hard ass, but everyone in the seminar said it was because he wanted to make sure we all got it and got home safe."
"Yeah. That was Chris. Wasn't fair what happened to him. His fault, sure, but not fair. I will let him know. Thanks again, Perry."
Lanton turned to walk away, but Perry called after him. "Sorry about the smirk and the chuckle?"
"What?" Lanton asked.
"When I was talking about Chris's failed attempt. I smirked and chuckled. I know you saw and heard it. Not cool of me."
Lanton smiled back at the younger officer. "I have been in charge of cleaning up some of the most gut-wrenching scenes you will ever imagine. Today was a new one that will haunt me for the rest of my days. Even then, I was making bad puns in my head. It's not disrespect for the dead or the victims, but a self-defense mechanism for your sanity. The public would never understand, but between you and me, I get it. This job is thankless and brutal on the soul. It eats up good men," he gestured to the open doorway behind Perry, "and it doesn't care. Some drink, some gamble, but everyone who walks the beat finds some way to keep the demons at bay."
"Thanks."
"Not a problem." Lanton turned back away and headed for his car, pocketing the energy drink.
Heh, demons.
Chapter Eleven
"Sarah Givens, A.K.A. Miss Fire." The woman before her sat upright, rigid, with features that reminded her of the principal of her high school. The principal she would no longer be reporting too. That job was in the wind, like so many of her plans.
Sarah sighed, resting her head against the back of the large leather chair. She found herself handcuffed to the arms of the chair. Her ankle was already chaffing from the metal bracelet wrapped around it. Her hands were bound as well, though they rested in a single large cone that reminded her of the little yellow things she had seen electricians use to splice wires. She placed the ugly thing on her lap. The irony was that while she needed her hands to focus her power, she was quite sure she could explode the psychiatrist's head with her glare, quite literally. She knew better than to try because that would result in an instant death sentence. The police that had detained her after the flying fat man was all too eager for her to do something that might result in her being combative. She was sure a few hands twitched at the need to end her in the name of justice. Not that she blamed them. She had killed quite a few. She thought it was at six, with a few still in the hospital fighting. Maybe it was more by now.
"Do you know why you are here?" The blonde woman across from her asked, scratching her larger-than-average nose as if it were a nervous tick.
"Don't be dense,” Sarah replied, feeling like she talked to one of her students.
"I don't mean in jail,” Doctor Landers explained. "I meant in my office."
"It's still a stupid question. Don't you have some ink blots to show me or something?"
A twinge of a frown touched the doctor's face. She straightened the papers in the open folder in front of her, then asked again. "Do you know why you are here?"
"Oh, sweet Christ,” Sarah growled. "Because I am a naughty little girl and I need to be punished."
"Cute,” the Doctor said with another disapproving frown. "Do you have no remorse for the lives you have taken?"
Sarah leaned forward, her eyes catching that purple glow. She wasn't going to use her powers, but she wanted the woman to be taken down a notch or two. "Let's skip the foreplay and get to the meat of the matter. You want to know if I'm capable of understanding what I did was wrong. Yeah, I'm all in. But, I can't be bothered to care at this point. Jot that down for me, and let me go back to my cell. There is this rather large woman with a lisp who has plans for a romantic date tonight, and I don't want her getting all sleepy before I can get back."
The Doctor frowned again and wrote something down on the form that was in Sarah's file. From her angle, Sarah couldn't tell what it was, though she found herself wondering why she felt she cared. "Do you know why you are here?"
"Why?" Sarah leaned back in her chair again, frustrated.
The Doctor smiled as if she rewarded Sarah with the smile. "Because you have breached the conventions established by our society."
"Why?" Sarah stared at the ceiling now, counting tiles in her head. Wondering what was above those tiles. Was it flammable?
"Why did society dictate this? Because in order for a society to function, we need these rules."
"Why?"
The Doctor frowned. "Are you truly asking or being petulant?"
"Why?"
"You aren't clever,” Sarah heard her writing something else.
"Why?" A smirk slipped across Sarah's lips. It had taken the Doctor an extra Why to figure out what she had done. Not the brightest bulb in the bunch.
"I see that you are determined not to be helped."
Sarah's head leaned up so she could look The Doctor in the eyes. "Is that what you're here for? To help me? Are you serious?" She leaned forward, slamming her hand cone hard on the wooden desk. "Because from this side of the table, I don't see how you can help me. Unless I am planning on rolling out the insanity defense, your psychobabble bullshit isn't going to do shit for me."
"Ms. Givens–”
"It's Miss Fire, you uptight clown. Miss Givens died when I was able to call fire from thin air like some god." She slammed the cone down again and was rewarded to see the Doctor flinch.
"Tell me Mrs. Shrink, how many people have you treated that had a superpower? Any?" Thunk. She slammed the cone down again. "I am willing to bet you haven't. Do you have anything in your wide array of books," she gestured at the wall of pompous medical books lining the wall behind the doctor, "have anything on how to treat someone dealing with suddenly getting super powers?" Thunk.
"If you would just–”
Thunk. "Do your books have anything on super powers at all, let alone fire throwing? Is that covered? Or are you going to feed me some garbage about how it's a traumatic life event that we can work through together? The details can change, but the underlying fix remains the same? ‘Cause I am going to let you know right now that nothing in your books has anything on what you are dealing with right now." Thunk. The Doctor flinched again, eyes darting. "So, how about you shut your pert little mouth and call for the handsome guard to escort me back to Bertha the Wide, and don't you ever sit here trying to tell me you are trying to help me." Sarah leaned forward, eyes a deeper purple now, like the edge of that beautifu
l climax toward sending fire. "Because the next time you call me in here, you better recognize how flammable this whole damn room is. Including you."
The doctor screamed for the guard, who was already opening the door to inquire about the noise.
Sarah smiled at him, winking. "Ahh, just the man I would like to see. Would you care to walk me to my bedroom?" She giggled, raising her cone, "Sadly, I don't hold hands on the first date. Well, I do, but with myself. I like to play with myself, you see." Another wink.
The guard blinked at her, and she could see red rising to his cheeks. She wasn't sure if it was a blush or anger. She found she didn't care. She could set him on fire too, if she wanted.
The walk back to her cell was quick, and along the way she determined that the guard was angry and not at all impressed with her clever innuendos. Which was too bad because he had decided he was cute when he was angry.
Luckily for her, her cellmate was away, maybe taking her turn with the head doctor, babbling about how she was spanked a lot as a kid, and that she was a big fat meanie. She was sure that her cellmate would return, hell bent on throwing her massive amount of weight around as if she might be top dog of this den. She laughed at that. Well, the large woman would soon find out quick that Miss Fire had no intentions of being pushed around or controlled. Not anymore.
She laid back on her bunk, debating taking the top one and removing the risk of being crushed in her sleep, but she let it go. She liked the dark that the bottom bunk seemed to harbor. She propped her hands up under her head, letting her pillow rest on the obtrusive cone. She began to wonder how her little outburst would play out when she was sent before the judge. With it being a weekend, she still had a day and a half before he or she would be seated to start the process. Just as she was about to drift off to sleep, she heard something at her cell door. She leaned her head up to take a look, expecting to see her large cellmate glaring.
Beyond the metal bars that were the wall and door of her cell, a uniformed cop stood with a gloved hand reaching through the bars at her. It felt like the fool tried his best to do some weird mime version of a zombie. That is, until he turned his head and she saw that half of his head was missing, the remaining bits charred and blackened. The missing piece ran from just above the ridge of his right brow, along the side. She knew who he was. She had killed him in the parking lot. One of the explosions had sent shrapnel that had sliced him open like a rotting melon. Only, when she had seen him, he was on the ground, eyes staring sightless into the night as they pushed her toward the one of the few working cruisers. So much carnage that no one had even gotten to covering him up yet. Others were still alive and wounded. They would get to their dead soon enough.
The dead man slammed his broken head against the bars, the visible inside of his skull shaking violently with the effort. Though she heard nothing, she imagined she could, and that made it worse. The wet swishing noise echoed in her mind like a self-imposed soundtrack. Again the dead officer slammed his head against the bars, his outstretched hand feeling as if it had gotten just a bit closer. The room started to felt too small, too closed in. He was going to get in there with her. She just knew it. Again the man slammed his head into the bars, blood now starting to leak out the open would and coat both his face and the bars. The hand was definitely closer now.
"No,” she told the dead cop. "I will burn you."
The dead cop sneered at her as if to let her know it would not stop his justice. He slammed his head again, and this time she saw the skull under the skin break, sending small flakes of bone onto the floor. The hand felt closer still. A couple more hits and she was sure that she would feel that leather hand close with animal strength around her small neck. The dead cop reared his head back again, this time further back, and Sarah knew this time it was for all the marbles. He intended to get her.
As his head flew forward, she screamed and closed her eyes.
Nothing happened. She knew better than to open her eyes. She knew he would be through the bars, inches away from her face, his dead eyes staring into her. He was here to be her escort to Hell. The fire she had thrown would be the same ones she writhed in. She wouldn't fall for it. She kept her eyes closed, knowing in her heart that he couldn't get her if she kept them closed.
Then she heard the door to her cell opening. Fear and dread flooded her even more, filling every inch of her, smothering her. "Please, no,” she whispered.
The voice of her cellmate broke the silence that hung in the air like a threat. "This place is haunted. Better come to grips with it now, Missy. Otherwise, you'll end up like the others, doing the blanket rope jig."
Sarah opened her eyes to see her cellmate miming the gesture for hanging herself, fat head tilted askew with tongue hanging. "You aren't funny,” was all she could manage.
Her cellmate chuckled, her massive folds jiggling with the effort. "Oh, honey, this place is all full of funny. You just have no idea. Nightie nightie, Firestarter. Let me know if you want to borrow my blanket." A cruel smile and the obese woman climbed into the top bunk.
Sarah found herself curling up at the head of the bed, legs tucked up against her chest as she watched the walkway outside her cell. Every now and then, another prisoner would walk by and see her and laugh. One even screamed "Boo" and lunged at her.
She almost set that one on fire.
Chapter Twelve
Darkness dominated the room save for the tell-tale glow of Drew's computer in the corner under his desk. To Drew, the room felt less like a blanket of darkness, but more a collection of shadows. He felt as if the shadow of every man, woman and child who grieved for the loss of their loved one crowded around him, like mourners at a funeral, crammed so close together that they overlapped and became one continuous shade looming over him. He just knew that if he turned his head away from staring at the ceiling that he would see dozens of glowing eyes regarding him with that mixture of hate and sadness he had seen earlier today.
Somewhere in the darkness of his room, the remnants of his suit lay strewn about the floor, like the rotting corpses of the fallen dead, they lay where they fell. Today was the worst day of Drew's life, and with ever growing dread, he knew that this was just the beginning of a mounting pile of excrement days, each one more mired than the last.
The drive over to the funeral home had started in silence, him like a recently caught criminal in the backseat, while his mother drove and his father sat sullenly in the front passenger seat. His father began to speak less and less, his questions posed in a whisper to a bottle of booze each night. Four nights had passed since Drew had murdered one of his father's friends, and all Drew could do was watch his father spiral into depression.
"Did you know that he saved your father's life, Drew?” his mother asked midway through the drive there. The "he" she referred to being the man whose funeral they were on their way to see. Officer Rubin Cortez, husband and father of one. Murdered by a dirt monster for trying to protect the citizens of the city. A hero.
Drew didn't say anything, fearful that anything that he might start to say would turn into a blubbering confession of his guilt. He tugged at the gray sleeves of his suit and closed his eyes to fight back the tears.
"It's true,” his mother continued. Drew suspected she tried to fill the silence as informing Drew of what a great man this man, not knowing she was speaking to the man's murderer. "Your father was working a particularly nasty case involving organized crime. He had one of the higher ups in a drug ring on trial and it was a slam dunk case from the start. Well, one day as they all were walking into the courthouse, a man runs up and pulls a gun on your father. There were four police officers with your father that day, and three of them went after the gunman. The fourth, Rubin, jumped in front of your father just as the gunman pulled the trigger. The man fired two shots, near point blank at your father, and both hit Rubin in the chest instead. Luckily for us, and Rubin, he was wearing a bulletproof vest."
Drew felt as if he was shot instead. The man that had
saved his father's life was taken by his son's. "He sounded like a good man," Drew admitted, choosing each word with care, fearful that one slip would betray him.
"He still had the hairline fractures in his ribs from that day," his father added in a near mumble.
"I am so sorry, Dad,” Drew found his mouth moving as if to say the rest, but he closed it before those terrible words could escape.
His father had just nodded from the front seat, never looking back at his son.
They spent the rest of the car ride in silence, until his mother turned on the radio, and no matter how she tried, every song was filled with sad lyrics that just drove the pain deeper. She gave up after several stations and shut it off again, mouthing her discontent.
When they reached the funeral, it was packed with men, women and children coming to pay their respects. Police officers from different counties had shown up, all in their dress uniforms with a black band around their arm or over their badge. The whole area was a sea of solemn blue, each with eyes that bored into Drew when they swept over them. Men and women trained in catching bad guys stood next to him, talked to him, and then moved on to share their grief with others. He was sure at any moment that one would stand up and point an accusing finger at him. Then, in a room filled with angry people armed for battle, the accusation would fly, and he suspect that he would die in a hail of gunfire, his last sight being of his father's soul crushed face frowning down at him.
No, accusations flew, and nor did time. The steady march of events played out, with people from all over taking the stage, saying great things about the man in the closed coffin before them.
It was closed because of Drew. Because of what he had done. He hadn't even managed to let the grieving widow and child get a last loving glimpse at the man they loved. As far as villainy goes, Drew was right up there with the worst of them. He sat next to his mother the whole time, hand in hers, weeping with his head down and eyes closed. How could he have let this happen? The real world held pain and anguish that could not be expressed in the video games or movies.