The Cults, the Brain, the Meat Pt. I

It was dark outside, but cool as I walked up the sidewalk to the rear of the apartments to find the investigator hunched down, poking a pen into a pile of something. They had just erected the spotlights on small tripods and everything seemed well defined, albeit off by a few degrees of light here and there.

The pile he was investigating was pink. It was the bright color of freshly ground pork, but not steaming; it was just there, pink tubular butcher-ground flesh in an oblong mound, marbled with fat. It was scattered on the sidewalk, but piled largely in a grass-covered void just below the sidewalk that ended abruptly at a concrete wall that led about three feet down to parking spaces below. This was of note because while the pile was substantial in the void, there was little waste on the sidewalk itself or the space below the wall. There were obvious places where feet had tread through here, but little was scattered around as would be expected in such a sloppy mess. It was so compact, it was hard to tell where the original mass had come from even though it was largely near one particular back door.

The investigator stood up, a white male in his late 20’s. The corners of his mouth were curled downward in disgust and puzzlement while he tried to figure out what this was, where it came from, and how to disguise it from himself from what it may just be. The latter was a reflex by the human mind, but found only amongst those that either still have a bit of humanity left to them or have only had a few years on the job. He looked over at me as I approached and without a word expressed gratitude from the break in having to share this all to himself.

We consulted, and I found that this thing was barely in the infancy of its investigations; a caller reported a flurry of activity, the presence of meat en masse, and what we had left before us. This wasn’t the most common of scenes upon arrival, but for those that tend to death as a profession, the presence of large quantities of meat usually meant two things: Someone was dead, and Someone had to be told about it. This scene was by no means the norm, but the destination seemed inevitable. God, what a shitty job.

I turned back to the sidewalk, and began wondering where this had come from. All the doors aligning the complex seemed the same, but that was almost always the case. I walked along with some uniforms in advance and in tow, and found a door a few feet north that was slightly ajar. It was always the goddamn obvious, and here I was.

There is a dynamic to walking into a place where you know something awful has occurred, and that whatever it was that caused it may not be done yet, and you were likely the next candidate because ‘it’ knew that you were likely to be the last to be through such an opening without advance notice. It’s a lot to think about, but so little to do…when you just go through. I did.

The back door led into a kitchen as they so often do in homes. White vinyl floors broken apart in small squares separated by grey; wood toned cabinets…there was lighting from a small fluorescent above the sink, but the light was sickly. It showed enough, however, to reveal a stainless steel chute near the rear dining room table to a room below.

The chute was littered with the same pink marbled ground meat, but as with outside, there was little clutter of the same around. Baffling.

I approached the chute more closely, and the closer I came the more meat I saw in the chute. I looked around the room to gather signs of life…kids pictures, family photos, generic prints…but saw nothing that made the hairs on my neck curl. It was creepy; there was obviously a murder scene, but without a body or evidence outside of what appeared to be a butchers block. And so while I realized I had already realized it...my rational mind allowed ‘it’ to strike me.

I was in a slaughterhouse, however its architects intended it to be.

It's a 4th Avenue Thang

Recovered: 03.05.2006



The dog was a Weimaraner, a young female, or as I dubbed her--a Grey Dog. She was penned into what was once the playground of a McDonald’s restaurant that was now, of course, a Hispanic Discothèque. I reached through the bars and coaxed her to me, and she eventually came over with her tail between her legs, or what was left of a tail anyway. It appeared to be crudely cut off about halfway up, but had healed well. She had a beautiful silvery sheen and good lines; her resemblance to a Lab is what got my attention at first, but the True Owners notice the difference in the clavicles and hips, and of course that missing spark of Personality that the Lab’s seem to alone possess.

It was cool outside, and there was a breeze blowing off the Interstate nearby under a cloudless sunny sky, and I checked to see what she had in the way of food and water available. The dishes were steel and in an expensive rack setup, but instead of water she had been given beer; there was still foam in it. I emptied it out and went to my trunk where I keep my bottled water—you never know when you need it or why, and if you need it enough you won’t mind if it’s hot, I’ve found—and filled her dish with two of them. She’d shied away again and I went back to the gate where I had showed her why Brown Dog so enjoyed her own ears being rubbed at thumb point, when I heard the squeal of tires behind me from the direction of the Projects. That was not uncommon, but the dog was, so I ignored it in her favor. It was the shrieking sounds of women and screams for ‘POLICE’ that got my attention.


I walked away from the gate where once landscaped shrubbery had turned into tangled jungle growth, and saw a crowd forming on 4th Avenue in front of the East Lake Courts. A vagrant known for repairing vacuum cleaners from parts gleaned in alleyways was shambling across a dusty parking lot towards me and was yelling something unintelligible about someone hitting a baby and ‘getting on the highway’. My pace quickened to a trot, and I got into my Lawmaster to close the distance of a few hundred feet. I pulled up and saw a crumpled yellow coat on the ground near the curb, and as I got out, my pace now quickened to a run, and I called for a ’20 and Fire. There was a kid under that coat.

He wasn’t moving. He was six years old and he was bleeding from the mouth and nose face down on the asphalt, and I could see the side of his head expanding from the fantastic pressure the heart puts on the brain when its protective shell is cracked. I was down on all fours, and the crowd was moving in; it’s a 4th Avenue Thang, but for the first time in a while I wasn’t worried about the crowd forming an umbrella over me in order to better pluck my gun from its holster to murder me with; instead, it was just out of curiosity. The only one not peeking in was a woman sitting next to him on the curb holding her jaw in her hands, neither breathing nor moving, so I surmised her to most likely be the mother. I asked her for his name and she could only slightly shake her head. She was gone, and I ignored her from there on out but without malice. The Clamps had simply come down.

I reached around his neck and with the assistance of the blood, slipped a finger to his carotid pulse and found it present, but labored from the fluid he was unable to cough out. He wasn’t moving or responding to the obvious injuries to his head, much less my voice, so I ordered the crowd back as best I could and sought his name; you don’t perform CPR on those breathing with a pulse. An Aunt came forward, and I relayed what she knew over my radio to the ambulance I’d called for and stayed with him, my leather grinding against the pavement as I sought comfort while comforting. I was curled around him because all children, when injured, become our own.

I heard the skidding of tires and thought briefly about possibly being struck myself—again, it’s a 4th Avenue Thang—and was relieved to see that it was the oncoming shift, fresh from line-up. Their mouths were open as they approached because besides seeing what I was protecting, they saw me lying on the street about as frequently as they heard me talk/yell while running on the air. Chaos was now coalescing into order as muscle memory set in, and the cops surrounded the scene, preserving it while making room for the ’20 that was due any minute/hour/day. Detectives were showing up also, because it was his kid as much as mine, as much as the Paramedics coming in, which they did after the usual eternity of waiting and began taking over, all calm but the apparent student that stopped in her tracks.

I held his cervical spine in all of one hand; he had begun to move, but it was an involuntary curling-in and jerking associated with serious trauma, and not that of an injured boy. His eyes were rolled back. I straddled him as they put a spinal board on the ground beside him, and we moved him onto it in one motion, and I coo’d his name in his ears as I’d done from the start. His eyes were slightly open now and looking into the sky, but the sunlight did not affect the iris’s and my heart sank while my voice held. I stepped back and got into the Lawmaster again, and made efforts to start having other cars start blocking intersections. When under stress and in large numbers, you find work for others to do—including yourself. It worked like a charm, and the boy was in the emergency room before I registered what I’d pumped into the radio from street to street, our City at a halt for the boy inside the box behind me, and I was there in the E.R. listening to his life being dictated in terms of minutes instead of years. They were bagging him now, and double doors throughout the E.R. were being thrust aside straight out of a television show. The firemen gathered in one corner, the cops in another, myself closest to the ICU to hear the status. A hand on my shoulder and a voice in my ear indicated the parents had arrived, and I was off. I would want to hear from me, were I them.

We spoke. It was not quickly. It was personal.

I left their sterile room, and wandered a hall…and found sunlight. A cop was outside waiting by his own Lawmaster, his fledgling in tow, and he asked me if I was alright; he said he’d never seen me ‘that bad’ on the scene, and I remembered him being the first one there when I looked up from my prone position above the kid on the street, and I reassured him I was in fact ‘cool’, and that I appreciated him coming here also. We were quiet, leaning against the fenders of the Prowlers for a moment and said all we needed to in silence, until we parted ways off to home and side jobs. On the way I tried to call my ex-wife to find my own son and found that there was blood on my sleeve still, and as the answering machine picked up I began to wipe that sleeve on my right midriff absently with phone in hand, admiring the setting sun. It was time to go home, and the Boy finally answered. We spoke of Star Wars Episode II and Age of Empires games until he no longer could stand it, and parted ways, but with myself no longer shaking.

I grabbed my log sheet and noted the time and addresses, and an arrow was placed beneath the code for ‘Pedestrian Struck’ after my last entry; it was, after all, a 4th Avenue Thang.

Time for the next shift.


Selah.

Bicycle Blues

Recovered: 05/23/2006



He looked at the victim straight in the eye, and crossed his white, scarred arms. “Yo bike was like five feet from the driveway, how was I supposed t’know it was yo’s?”

“It wasn’t yours son, that much all three of us know.”

He looked at me, clenched his teeth, and spit at my feet.

“Never do that again. Never, ever show disrespect like that, or I’ll spank you son, right here in the middle of 6th Avenue.” A smile faded, and pursed lips replaced objective listening.

“Sheeit. You ain’t gonna do a fuckin’ thing. I’m seventeen. Get the fuck on out of here.”

He was right. About his age…but little else. He couldn’t help that…but that was a failing I had to help him with, and I readily admit—he had already gotten under my skin. My headache was worsening by the second. Millisecond. It was awful.

“You’re wrong. She saw you stealing her sons bike. What I will now do is Arrest you.”

I reached out and touched him with my left hand, cuffs in the right. He had lifted the bike over an eight foot fence, and the owner hadn’t just watched him, she got in her car and followed him around on it. For half an hour, trying to get police there.

When we were called and caught up, the kid was standing in the street, flipping her off. His oversized trucker cap was sitting crooked on his head, his eyes the slits of classic Southern inbreeding, narrow and stupid, but the kid was firm in his resolution. I’ll give him that.

His arms were now locked in their folded stance, and he was making choices. “You’re not putting fucking cuffs on me” he said, and my partner heard this and grabbed him from behind, poorly and with no tactical direction in mind. There was never a time for debate over this as is expected by the Uninitiated liberal crowd, but then…they wouldn’t debate it if they’d ever had to deal with Real People before. At any rate, the ‘kid’ now came unglued, a fight had begun roughly one second before he lost his feet and found the trunk of a Crown Victoria, and reasoning came to him as rusty steel clasps secured his hands. Jesus, I was already breathing heavy; the kid shouldn’t have gotten to me so quickly.

I helped him upright again, as the victim warned against retaliation as it came naturally to her—“When you think of getting back at me, think twice—my brother’s a cop, and I’ll fucking do you, kid.” He wrinkled his mouth and began to spit, and I distracted him by knocking his ball cap over his head and holding his nape firmly while I whispered something personal in his ear, something not for you, avid reader, but me and the kid. He became strangely calm, and I took him to jail.


I thought about how I would have reacted to seeing that all transpire from the side of the road, and used it to do what I always do—remind me why people hate cops, hate their tactics, and love their results without ever knowing it. God, my head was still pounding.

The processing was quick because the attendants at Juvenile believed in what they were doing, unlike the rest of us, but they were nice to be around.

I went back, and looked for a cave to crawl into thinking cool darkness would help, but it didn’t. Instead, I found a house being burglarized by a half dozen kids smoking weed and handing around a pistol.

A pistol.

I am funny, I am getting fat, and I am getting slow…but those that underestimate me rethought things later after I caught two out of three as they fled from the porch of this technically vacant house, and put them both in custody—one 19, one 17, and me out of cuffs. Backup was nowhere in sight, but that didn’t matter. It never was right away in the real world. And I was Alive. And the people that underestimated me always looked surprised when they went from thinking about the price of lettuce one second, then find me me clamped around their throats the next with a grin that would make large men consider a new trade school, or living in there car for now on. Helluva trick, that, but it came naturally. How goddamn aweful. It's also why I pack such thoughtful restraint. Mostly. But I digress.

Someone showed up long enough for me to point at them and be relieved from stepping on their necks so I could go inside, and inside I went, around corners, checking closets, and finding a gun beading with sweat lying on top of a Sony Playstation in a rear closet. The sweat was confusing, until I thought of the refrigerator door I’d closed in the kitchen before checking upstairs. Little bastards had been hiding it there, and while I had found it…I treat pistols like cousins or cats. There’s never just one around.


Weed…blunts…candy, by the pound…I found it all, and a tiny Hobbit-sized door to boot, which I quite naturally entered into an attic area that was reminiscent of the World War Two-era movies I watched as a kid. Slats separated by mortar, yellow newspapers in stacks…and a man hiding on his stomach holding both hands beneath his stomach, face still down, chest moving with labored respirations…and as a back-drop, I could see three copsthrough a window on the sidewalk outside and below, talking and laughing. I wished I was there. Then I keyed up on my shoulder mic, and said “I have one in the attic. Gunpoint.”

I wasn’t so interested in help, as I was their faces. The ones on the sidewalk dicking around stopped in inevitable mid-sophomoric joke, and looked up at the window that had to lead to me. Then, to their credit, they ran. (Ok…a brisk shuffle).

Dude Between the Beams still lay there, until I finally challenged him. He looked up, and he had no expression; this was bad. He stood up, and that, too, was bad; he was between the beams...but not for long. Ah…Physics.

The cops coming in from the street met him as he stopped being between the beams, and fell through them and thusly into their path, but from above, and not the Side, as is so commonly expected from the Average Person.



After the screaming, there was only laughter. My own.

…From the largish hole in the ceiling above them


It was grand, and the day was half-over. But my headache wasn’t.


Oh…this goddamn headache.


Why won’t it go?

In The Fields, We Dance

Recovered: 05.05.2006



I backed my car up to the fence, so that I could jump over it from the top of the trunk.

I was standing there silently when I saw a white hat and a flash of blue shirt; he hadn’t seen me, because he was still piling up equipment that he would soon attempt to get over the same fence I stood on the opposite side from. He passed out of view; I gave him a moment, and scaled my car. I was no slender reed, but I also had no impulse control outside of a hunters basic instincts. I leapt.

…And hit the ground with one hand down on the ground. My heels stung along with the palm of my hand, but I smiled; this was exciting. He had to have heard me, so I assumed this, and began stalking forward. It was an open field, probably the dimension of three football fields side by side, and surrounded by an eight foot fence. The grass is what made it so fun because it was between four and five feet high. The burglar was in here with me for the same reason the grass grew so much—the 86 year old woman running the place had died, and everything but her and her business flourished in her wake.

As I moved forward, I drew my Taser…but I thought better of it, and exchanged it for my pistol. I didn’t want to bring a knife to a gunfight, but then…the sway of the Grass had its way with me, and in the romance of the waving field of fresh green stalks I re-holstered my Lawgiver, and after engaging the safety snaps…I simply raised my hands. I was alive.

I pictured the flaxen grasses of North Africa, and immediately understood why lions never migrated elsewhere: It was exhilarating. I couldn’t tell if I was hunter or hunted, and the sweat began to bead on my forehead. It was hot outside, yes…but I was hot inside, too. I moved forward, examined the pile of booty, and moved on, guessing where he would go based on where I would go were we in one another’s shoes. It went on for an eternity that lasted perhaps nine minutes.

I checked a concrete building with no windows and unlocked doors, but the path to it and inside it was a maze of hubcaps, radiators, grass, and the detritus of 40 years of car parts coming and going. There was no stealthy approach to it, but my holster was in the same place it had been for the last decade of use, and my hand knew this. The building was devoid of thieving life.

Around the corner to the northwest were the hulks of several cars though, and the search began anew. I hadn’t found him, and I was beginning to become annoyed; little infuriated me like one Getting Away. From It. From Me. I passed the cars slowly, checking undercarriages, and peering in windows covered in mildew that began forming when Bush Sr. was in Office. As before, there was no safe way to do this, but those are the cards you are dealt and win or lose, you had to Pay to Play. It was not a relief, however, when I found him hunkering beside a 1966 Ford step van.

He looked left and right, and his adrenaline had been running hot long enough that he probably had time to take a quick nap between its rushes through his system. Out of habit, I let him make the first move (being empty handed) and alas, the move, like many, was the wrong one. His exit was blocked by another Strange Cop, so he charged me—and my smile turned to a grimace. I remember, because my face cracked with the change, so slick with sweat and seeds and leaves was I.

He ran, and I began to decide what to do while evaluating him for weapons. Hands were always the first clue, and his were away from his body, so I took a step forward and let him take care of the rest, one leg bent, one leg braced to keep my ground. I only helped with the two points of contact, which first was the collar of the blue shirt, and the second being what I like to call “His Freaking Balls”. His momentum took care of the rest nicely because I was able to simply lift him up and over my head into an unexpected yet spectacular crash into a pile of stacked hubcaps, my man landing upside down and backwards. He lay sprawled in a state of confusion only known to those landing upside down and backwards into a pile of stacked metal, but it was appreciated all the same since it distracted him while I then threw myself airborne and landed, nearly ‘69’, on top of him. His reaction absolved all thoughts of dieting from my heart, as evidenced to this day and its meals. He made funny ‘sounds’.

I like to distract people first, so I started with guttural bellowing into his face and ears. He was bug-eyed with fear, but also horribly restrained by several hundred pounds of ‘What the Fuck?!?’ on top of him and I used it to my advantage. I keyed up on my mike to call off the Hounds coming in, but felt I should acquaint myself with my new pet while we traipsed across the fields to our point of egress.

I held him closely, and struck up a conversation on how good a new installment of ‘Smokey and the Bear’ franchise would go over this year (in my opinion), but he ignored me, distant, scatter-minded. I had him by the shoulder and the cuffs, but he may have well been on another planet. I just wanted him to listen, but he wouldn’t; it was as if I didn’t even exist, and I began to wonder what I did wrong.

Being nice, I put him through a hole in the fence rather than over it, but as before he showed no response, much less appreciation.

Calls were coming in again, and I looked back over my shoulder at the fields of green waving gently as if there had never been a hunt or a hit there in a hundred years. I was Happy. And the day had only begun, in Eden.


...After it was over, I went back inside there…but it was not the same. But then…what ever is?

Hand Made Divorce

Recovered: Sometime, 2003
[Miscellaneous Internet(s) reply on the topic of Divorce.]


Fuck it.

I didn't just file for my divorce--I typed the goddamn thing, liquor-ey letter by liquor-ey letter from decree to child care agreement. Submitted it. Before the final filing, my not-yet-ex drove away towing the car I bought us behind a large yellow truck that said 'Ryder' on the outside, and bore my five year old son inside, waving 'goodbye' to me shortly before I went to my knees in uncut creeper vines on slope that was not steep enough to hold back a wave of angst that three years worth of calendars couldn’t measure before it hit the high water mark.

I stood at my hearing alone, just as uncontested, just as hurtful, and just as productive--none at all, until I LET it be, where my only comfort at the time were the eyes of attorneys who despised me for undercutting their trade when the judge made the comment "Did you do this? It’s good work--I just see the Font changed here about midway through." They looked when I subconsciously fingered my pistol as I left, eyeing them as well. I had 'held myself out at court' while on the job to do this, and instead of KFC and Xbox, I sat on an old oak bench outside and Lost Time, until I found my car and answered calls that I could not remember handling immediately thereafter.

It sucks.

But it is what we wanted.


Live Now; Die Later. And enjoy the in-between. And don't shoot at buildings, tanker trucks, and petroleum reserves in the mean time. It fucks up your karma, and makes your ears ring.


...Mind these words. For I am The Sign...that serves as a Warning to Others.


Pay Heed.

Any Given Wednesday, Part II

Recovered: 03.13.2006


Part II

...I asked them what had happened to their dog, and they said it had been hurt jumping from a moving vehicle. I asked them where they were going, and they said (naturally) they were heading to the Walgreen’s. I inquired if this was for first aid for the dog, and they said no, but they were going to the veterinarian tomorrow. They had already called him, and the Vet said the dog was ‘perfectly fine, and in no pain’. I looked on blankly, and finally formed a reply as the broken parts of my brain started to mend. (I hadn’t forgotten about the Nursing Student’s exam yet.)

“I have no prior experience in Veterinary Medicine, but I am fairly convinced that walking on its bone with a bent-back paw is pretty far from ‘perfectly all right’. In fact, it’s freaking me out. The only think keeping me from hurting you right now is that it may delay me from putting this dog out of its misery with my pistol right here in the middle of this neighborhood, and goddammit, that hasn't struck me as a bad idea just yet. What in the HELL are you doing walking this dog, you sick freaks?”

The girls looked at one another, genuinely puzzled, and I keyed up to call for an Animal Services unit. Now.

“Because it followed us.”

Now it was my turn to look puzzled. I replied, “It’s on a leash.” They paused. “Well, yes, but that was to keep it from following us outside the fence”, they said with a look of certain fact.

I was starting to shake. “It’s a LEASH. It’s not walking; You’re DRAGGING it. Instead of dragging it, you could have tied the dog to something. ANYTHING heavier than the dog would have done, actually; large rocks, a tree,” I said with a quickening speech and rising volume, “because if that dog is walking voluntarily, it’s ONLY because it thinks that maybe, just MAYBE, you’re taking it to the goddamn DOCTOR. How long has it been LIKE this? That blood is still fresh.”

“July”, the girl said.

“July? As in, SEVEN MONTHS AGO ‘July’?!?” (They nodded.) “And ‘tomorrow’ it’s going to the vet? You sick FREAKS! People like you are beaten and KILLED for less than this! A person? SURE, I get that…but a DOG? A DOG CAN’T HELP IT. IT HAS AN EXCUSE, BUT YOU HAVE NONE!” My supervisor began approaching on foot at this from the original ‘rape’ scene, as did the relatively close Animal Services truck. The Sergeant was about to intervene, when he too saw the dog and began to have the same reaction as myself as he drank this in, and became upset even more quickly than I.

The girls were now inflamed that I would accuse them of being anything other than Upright Citizens since they had obtained what they felt certain was nothing short of Definitive Medical Advice regarding their dogs bloody stump, when the Animal Services tech exited the vehicle and began to speak and, likely, save both the girls lives and my career. “Hey, what’s the problem, I don’t—Oh MAN, AW, that…Oh, that’s gotta GO.” And at this, the girls righteous indignation turned to tears.

“This? THIS makes you cry?” I said. “Not the seven months of bloody-folded-back-paw or hopping-on-a-splintered-bone, but THIS?!” By now, the ‘victims’ had started to take notice and the children in an adjacent yard had lost interest in pelting one another with a mossy wet tennis ball, and began to line the fence to observe. And with that, I finally had something to latch on to and I regained my composure, as many victims do after recovering from a near-drowning. I lowered my arms, slowly leaned in, and quietly told the lead girl “You are a bad person. And you have an empty soul.” The girls were now holding one another, their bodies wracked by sobs and their faces were illuminated by a coincidental reflection off of my large polished-brass nameplate. “You are a bad person and you have an ugly soul, and you are going to lead a sad lonely life.” I backed away and went back to the original ‘rape’ scene where the Supervisor had long-since returned, with the two girls beginning their plodding, sobbing return to the direction from whence they came. It was best that I did not learn their names.


The two year old in question was squeaking gleefully as she played with a stuffed animal in the back of her Daddy’s GMC Jimmy, and Child Protective Services was taking over the scene. 4 o’clock on the dot.


Time to go home.



(‘*Black Bottom’ is the area in which other residents of East Lake consider these people as being ‘Pretty Fucked Up’. As best I can determine, the last time new genes had been introduced to this area President Chester Alan Arthur was serving a rather unmemorable term in the White House and the birth of ‘thick prescription glasses’ transpired on this very spot.)

Bob Corker is a Shithead

Recovered: 1.7.2005
[A miscellaneous Internet(s) reply. This was by no means the first display, but certainly amongst the first public comment on how I 'felt' about Bob Corker--current GOP candidate, and likely winner of the US Senate Seat vacated by Bill Frist...who I now also hate by extension for doing so. Bob is credited with one thing in a unique career, though: He inspired me to leave the corporate aspect of The Job in the Command Staff to go back and work in the field, in the Projects...because they were a better class of people. He also taught me you don't have to be a murderer or pedophile to make someone feel 'dirty'. Just 'politics' will do. My skin crawls even typing the cruel bastards name.]



You beat me to it, Joedog. I believe it was that more than anything.

But what you did NOT beat me to is stating that Bob Corker is a Tremendous Cock-Head of a man, with a vapid, poisonous soul that is fed by Broken Spirits and Megalomania.

Personal dealings with that petty shit-tard are noted as some of the most displeasing professional events of my entire life--and I've been covered by warm, human brains in my past. Literally.

If I could trade in those personal dealings with that bastard in exchange for having been ass-raped by an Unclean Priest as a child, I'd take the ruined childhood and 30-Something Bedwetting that accompanied it, because at least THAT can be written off as something out of my control, as opposed to having to willingly walk into that bastards office on my own power.


But yes, I feel certain the Federal Offices bit was a large part, besides turning from Business so that he could focus on his true passion:


Himself.

More Storms / Love Goes Bad

Recovered: 01.04.2006
[The afformentioned Team of Psychologists never did explain the 'Storms' themes of my dreams. Here's to their Associates Degrees, and all that goes with them.]



The dream was new, but just as confusing as all the others. Second person, I was looking at myself while I was gripping the railing of something (ship? building? seawall?), with grey swirling clouds and flashes of lightening behind me and a fierce wind whipping my hair around (it was 3-4 inches long, with a few telltale grey strands about in it) that was so strong it nearly drown out my voice, what little I had to say. I was in a dark uniform, but not the same as the one I have on now.

"NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" I paused briefly and shook my head, looked behind me into the maelstrom, looked back, then pushed myself off the wall and went into it, never losing eye-contact with the person I was addressing. I knew who the person was that I was screaming to, and that I was extremely pissed off, and I knew that in order to fix it I was going to die in the process--so naturally, I did it. Then the dream ends.



I was reminded of the dream for no particular reason while taking a Love Gone Bad report on the front porch of a house off 6th Avenue near the #9 Fire Hall. It was a repeat of a repeat, the Baby's Daddy wishing to file charges against the Babies Momma for assault, her having slapped him awake from his all-night-bender in the front yard with his buddies as evidenced by dozens of empty cans of Steel Horse Reserve and bottles of Remy Martin strewn about the yard. He had just done two months for beating her with a stick, and was visibly excited that she had awakened him with an open palm so he could now exact legal revenge. He was horribly let down, however, when I informed him otherwise and told him that no one was going to use me as an instrument of revenge, before breakfast at least. His response began putting him into a position to be the one Riding himself instead of her, but in short order he became sullen, accepting defeat while he distractedly tried to figure out how his Lex Luthorian Plan of Vengeance had so suddently put him in the 'hot seat' instead of his intended and once beloved target.

I had deposited "Lex" elsewhere and went back to interview the Baby's Mother; she was in a quandary because she lived with her Overweight Knight and their brood in his mothers house, as they had done since Clinton was still in his first term. They were in their late 30's, and just getting started. With their third child. She espoused her problems like a bad fitting on a water pipe, and I decided to take a moment and sit on a bench on the porch amidst plastic lawn gnomes and animal feces and desperately tried to get her name and date of birth between disjointed stories. Several moments passed and I met with little success, so I took an additional moment to bury my face in my hands as I tend to do before crying, and looked up for a moment between my fingers just as a wire fell from the utility pole in front of the Fire Hall and connected with another to create a fantastic shower of emerald colored flames and sparks, causing the power in the block to go out. As unfazed as I, Ms. Luthor never hesitated like the truly dysfunctional trooper that she was and as the first people in the street stopped their cars to ask me to turn the power back on, I stood up silently, handed her a business card, and departed. She never stopped talking.


I pulled to the side of the road in the shell of a shipping warehouse that had been closed for years (deades?), and worked on that report and the three prior. I could have cut-n-paste'd them if I still worked Brainerd (or maybe even in the South Side), but alas...this was not the case in Eden.

I finished two of the three reports when another call came out ...

The Storm & Super Dad

Dispatches from Bizzarro World by Longshot the Sane

11/8/2005


I had a dream again--this one not in black in white, but in white, blue and black shades. Nothing more. It was strange, but that’s why they’re dreams.

Lightning was all around, and it opened on the large cheap plastic shingles on the false roof of a store front (the modern day equivalent of an old-west block-style façade) blowing off in sections, and it panned down to me by the Car. I was standing by the open drivers side door, gripping the upper edge of the frame at the roof, and gritting my teeth. The storm was here; it was all wind and lightning and no rain, and the lack of rain was maddening, as if a lack of closure was pervading what I knew should be the kind of blistering rainfall that made windshield wipers useless and thoughts of crawling into the attic seem sensible. Again, my hair was longer and this time there was a streak of gray in it a half an inch above my ears, but I was not many years older than I am now.

The fingers of my right hand clenched the roof, my left hand balled into a fist. I was furious. I had been operating without a tether for a long time, years, but not like before when I was New. Then, I was a free agent because the High Command slept and didn’t care what I did unless it made the news, but now, I operated without thought of them asleep or awake. I was my own man, and I knew what had to be done—and unlike before, how to do it. Something bad had happened, but had gone unnoticed and unstopped and was continuing, and it was eating me alive. I knew that I had to stop it or it would drive me over whatever edge remained, but I couldn’t quite catch it and it was getting ‘bad’. People were getting hurt—the wrong kind, and I owed them. I owed them all, and time was short…but for me or the next victim, I could not tell. The collars of my coat were whipping against my disproportionate neck, and my embroidered badge was frayed but still visible. I needed a different means to attack this thing slowly, as if there were such a way, and I wasn’t being allowed to work ‘freely’. Time was short, as was my patience. There were only a few options left…but to call them ‘Out of Policy’ was a stretch, at best.

The dream ends.

I was counseling a man this morning. He had tried to make his 16 year old son a Man the night before by proffering him a fight, 37 year old to 16 year old Mano-e-Mano , and the 16 year old had declined… because his dad was drunk. Again. The dad had the ‘new girlfriend’ drive him to his birth mother’s house, and then after sobering up, realized he hadn’t sent him with a school uniform and driven over to chastise the mother for not sending him to school at all, and called the police to assist him. After all, he was a Righteous Man.

I talked to Superdad at first with my hands in my pockets. It seemed most sensible at the time, given my penchant towards Fixing Things and what not. I asked dad for his scenario of the whole thing. Then I asked why I was Summoned. Then I asked…what he was really worried about. And finally, what he hoped our Presence would Gain.

POWER AND CONTROL, my droogs. The man was an un-illustrated and poorly written textbook on the subject, and his eyes squinted and then opened wide as I Educated him on the topic of Power…and Control.

I let him know that his son was just that—his Son, a kid that at one time or another looked up to him as his father, as his masculine word for the only earthly entity he could equate with ‘God’, but that ‘God’ had apparently fallen a few notches since he currently at 8:34 am stank of cheap malt liquor and scratched at His arms from the Meth he had been consuming the months since. So I helped him, without my hands.

His cigarette began shaking when he realized the Decade of Neuterization of Police was apparently over, and that he had found an Olde One that sensed his amateur treachery and called him out, with the simple statement that maybe…just maybe the solution to his sons perceived woes would not be with the invitation to fight his father, fist to fist…but that his father may have to consider the wildly minute possibility…that his sons Problems may lie in the Fathers mirror. That the son should not be asked to defend himself in such a way for having the audacity to ask to leave his fathers drunken household after declining to fight same, as evidenced by a stranger having to take him home at 1:20 am on a school night, and his father seeking retaliation on both the boy and the mother by scrutinizing school wear he did not supply and so logically making the drive over to address such and calling the police to assist him, while waiting in a car that stank of stale beer, nicotine, and misplaced aggression.


Session was In at the drivers door of his beaten up Beretta, and for one rare instance in his blurry life, Dad was not oblivious of this. I had no shades on, as I prefer the Crazies to see my eyes, and he could barely make contact. I corrected that by means of visual stimulation, and he indicated understanding by way of dropping his half-lit cigarette into his lap. I assured him it was fine when I grabbed his wrist, and continued my Counseling. His son was at an age where he could not morally or physically respond to his fathers methods Properly, and I explained that this is where I came in. That his address in East Ridge, Tennessee made little difference, because Doing Right had no 'jurisdiction' ( I snickered at this inwardly, Josey Wales never being far from thought) and I made him Understand. His Son could not defend himself properly in the face of his father, and that as such it fell to Me to defend him, where no others would. It was all that kept me going, I insisted, and while I held his wrist (and unbeknownst to me his shirt collar, until I looked) I began to see Understanding in his pale, meth-addled face.

I had made a Believer this morning, however brief, and I stepped back. The Fledglings were approaching and still did not understand my Methods…but they Respected them.

I told Da’ to move on now, and find a mirror and think of what I had told him. And the son? I asked him what he thought about doing later in life…and for perhaps the second time ever, suggested he look into the Great Work, and consider joining us. He had a quiet but powerful look to him, and not because he was three inches taller than I at only age 16. He too, looked Lost and Angry, but Patient...whereas most did not.

I bid him well and reassured his mother, and left for the next call, a father wishing to prosecute for ‘Statutory Rape’ of his 17 year old daughter who was living with her 23 year old half-retarded boyfriend who made a living selling hot dogs at Bellsouth Park.


There were clouds in the sky to the southeast above the Ridge, but no rain. Still, no rain, and it seemed wrong…but I drove on.

There was more work to be done, and I felt Incomplete. Not so much as before, but something was missing. I was still looking.

Perhaps, I told myself…the Next Call will answer it All.

Cold Night

Recovered: Date Unknown
[Relax. I have since been visited by a team of psychologists. I have papers. Seriously.]


I remember one night that was cold, very cold…but aggravated by the fact that I was lying prone in the bed of a compact pickup truck that was speeding through the foothills of the Appalachians in Northern Georgia under a full moon and misty skies, stars peeking between sheets of gossamer while the driver, passenger, and occasionally myself screamed and cackled aloud as we drove towards our target, and nowhere in particular. My face was numbed and my cheeks were blazing red, my body’s desperate attempt to get blood close to the surface where it may be warmed, though a rat had a better chance of living a fruitful life in a tampon factory than I did of obtaining warmth from such a harsh night with winds traveling roughly 50 miles per hour…not by coincidence the average speed of the Toyota Tacoma I rode in the back of, over hills that would make a roller coaster fanatic puke from not the G’s, but the likelihood of death if not saved from physics by capture and prosecution as I was tossed from side to side by turns hideous enough to distract one from not How we didn’t wreck, but Why. It seemed I was accompanying something to be dumped somewhere awkward, but it may have just been the only seat left on a ride to shoot at something that offended no one but ourselves…but I do not remember. Like a Harley, it was not the Destination that counted…but the Ride There. I was Happy, as I only am during a high-speed chase with White Zombie blazing in stereo, or a good piano concerto while sitting and enjoying a Good Cigar in Near Darkness.

Rides like that were not uncommon then. I was so desperate to get in trouble that the skies had no limit, gossamer clouded, clear, or shit-pounding rain, but none of it was my fault because I Didn’t Care, and It Wasn’t My Intention. While the latter made it amusing, it was the former that made those days so goddamn dangerous.

I think of these days and speak of them because only recently, have I thought of them with any longing. And that, quite naturally, Alarms my New Rational Mind. Why do I look back with a smile now, instead of the more appropriate shudder that I had so wisely adopted? What is Bothering me again in a similar, but more Rational way? So many thoughts, so many names.

I am completely content at Home. Business? Is that it? The Job? Dissatisfaction again? The Union? Was I not doing enough? The Return of the Prodigal Sister, and the Special Needs God Son/Nephew? My Moral War with the Son of a Bitch of the Earth, Bob Corker and his impending senatorial race that I felt some personal connection with, however repugnant it may be? The constant Battle of the Deadbeat Dad within me as I try to raise a son so many hours from my home? I do not know.

I only know that there is, after a three year reign of Peace…Tension again. “Something horrible is happening inside me…and I don't know why.” I say this because I worry that once again…my mask of Sanity is about to slip.

____________


It’s cold in the Mornings. That’s what reminded me of the trip in the bed of the Tacoma. I also miss my friend that was Driving. We shared the Same Brain he and I, and the connection is somewhat strained by distance and life. It is my fault, but it’s like the first and worst suicide I ever worked; what killed that man was worse than Love Gone Bad, Liver Disease, Cancer, or Car Wrecks: it was Loneliness, pure and simple. Now. we’re still friends, the Driver and I, make no mistake…we’re just far apart. My aforementioned Suicide Victim was a chemical engineer…he called 911, told the clerk that he was planning to kill himself, and that he wanted ‘us’ to know so that he wouldn’t foul the apartment and therefore offend his distant family. He then laid the phone down, and as the clerk repeated the word ‘Sir?’ over and over again, he heard a single shot. And then sent Me.

When I got there, I saw two horrible things. The first was a man in his mid-50’s with a scorched gunshot wound to his forehead; the other was an apartment that hadn’t seen the touch of a woman in twenty years, if ever.

First, of course, there was no TV in the living room. Only stacks of yellowed books and magazines, all technical in nature. From the living room that contained My Man in his easy chair, forever relaxing, I could see the dining room table. It was covered in canned goods, the type no woman would ever look at, much less purchase, much less consume. Then, there was dust. Everywhere. Books, furniture, floors…a consummate Bachelor’s Pad.

I did two things after determining his lifelessness: I found a note near an open strong-box which told investigators/me the whereabouts of his next of kin and financial status, and then I took my ball-point pen and removed his right index finger from the trigger of the semi-automatic pistol he had used to end his life before rigor caused a second and even more inexplicable gunshot wound to his already ruined head.

What bothered me was not the gore…but the Environment. The man was a retired chemical engineer and he died of not natural causes…but Loneliness. Pure and Simple. Since that day, I have seen over one hundred forms of death (count some time; I challenge you to think of twenty)…but his still plagues me the most. He was in good health, financially well off, and simply tired of being Alive.

______________


Is this what it is to grow old? There are two new additions to my Human Condition as of late: Two Grey Hairs grow from my right sideburn. It is common to most, but not My Clan. My father approaches 70 years of age, and has but a smattering of grey in the same area amidst a full head of jet black hair. It is Not Our Way to Age. My family dies in spectacular fits of fire; one in a house, one consumed by the wreckage of a fat-rendering truck and a fire that filled his car and the four corners beyond that left only two foot-filled shoes to show he was ever there... Yet here we are.


I ride in a car alone, take reports alone, deal with Significant Problems and Simple Ones alike as such, and arrive home to the same feeling…and with No Reason.


I think to times in the back of that pickup truck, squealing and not caring and full of relief for such, only feeling solace when I am on the edge and over, and then I think of my Chemical Engineer, and where I am now. And again, I know…that something Horrible is happening inside me…and I don't know why.

It’s not a matter of meeting for a few drinks and ‘talking about it’. It’s not a matter of anything but my taking a figurative knife between my teeth, and crawling around in some unpleasant, pulpy darkness, and stalking what it is that is causing this again, and upon such, having the Steel to take said knife and stab and slash and CUT the culprit to ribbons again no matter the slickness of the blood and the screams of the target until they are Quiet again, and I can REST for God’s sake.

Because else not…and worse, else regardless…this might be what the Rest of my Life is Like. And being halfway there, this is now Plausible. And being plausible…it is Not Acceptable. So I must Fight. And thus renew the cycle. Horrible, eh? But that is how it is to feel like a Slave, I suspect. The future is sealed off, leaving you to grovel, to wait…unless you are willing to wallow in the filth and the sinew and the stink where you are willing to wrestle it to the floor and choke it out as its own hands grasp your neck and seed it with piercing nails and try to fill your lungs with rotting muck and despair and sadness…that is what it is to be a Slave. To anything, really.

Perhaps I’ll try to rest again.


It is, after all, cool again outside.

Do What You Love for a Living

Recovered: 04.26.2006
[A response to a 'careers' thread on Those Internets]


I once met a guy that dropped out of college because as he ignored a lecture in lieu of watching a guy mowing the lawn outside the classroom, he decided he'd rather be that guy outside cutting the grass than the guy teaching the class, or sitting in an office. He has a great tan, a great smile, and a healthy stomach lining to this day. Who's to say he was wrong?


I am envious of the terms 'job' and 'career' used around me, because I haven't known what that was like for about 12 years. What I do is a 'Duty', and that makes me a 'Schmuck'. What I do doesn't allow me to ever be off, so it simply is what I Am. I could be standing on the goddamn South Pole, and would still be what I am paid to be 8 hours of the 24 I work, it seems. Even if I quit, I would be held to the standard of what I 'was'. That makes it pretty goddamn awful.

I am also furious with the quality of life my 'career' provides for me and my family, but I happen to think there is a strong possibility that it is the most important job on the face of the Earth, so I do it. If anything, to keep someone else from having to deal with this shit. I also, however, bear in mind that maybe it's NOT that goddamn important, and no one else would hire me...but I am here, all the same.

What am I saying? I love my 'job'. I just hate the way it is Run*. (*Saying 'how it is Operated' gives it credibility it does not have.)

__________

As for my other true-to-the-word job, because the first was all consuming and really making me...irritable in general, I started another one stick by stick and wire by wire with my own two hands, and as it happens I love that one too. Not the subject or product per se (though making people feel good about themselves and boosting their confidence with a simple process is in a different league, but the same sport as taking care of folk with their backs are against the wall [albeit necessitating armor and pistols to do so, instead of high-voltage lamps]), I love it for similar reasons as others--the satisfaction of doing it on my own. It's my business, and I started it from the first license and lease to the last piece of bead-board and Post-It™. And because it's something more 'normal', it makes me feel more like a 'normal person' myself. And folks, it may not seem like it...but that can be pretty goddamn hard to do.



"Do what you love for a living, and you'll never 'work' a day in your life."

I completely agree with it. Just make sure it's a match with what you can do, and if your match is dealing with shit and brains and corpses, you'll never work a day in your life. Like me.

Splash.

Any Given Wednesday, Part I

Recovered: 03.10.2006



I wasn't so much worried about the tuna as I was the pork rib. This was unusual given the relatively uncooked nature of the Ahi, but the pork tenderloin had been in the refrigerator for twice as long, and it brought me back to a Bad Experience from several years ago which involved a bucket and a commode used in tandem for the better part of a day. Oh...that devil Pork.

"Hell with it." I ate them both.

The meal before had been twelve hours prior, and its memory brought a smile. I had been sitting across from two Destroyer Classes, and they were laughing. It was cold enough outside to freeze shallow puddles of water, but they sat in short sleeves with tiny beads of sweat forming across their shaved heads; Destroyers ran hot, and they tended to be miserable in even average room temperatures.

We rarely had a chance to dine with one another as a team, and spirits were high. There was a Fast Attack sitting to my left, and a well-liked supervisor across from us--a Fast Attack Class himself. These were the most common now, a sign of changing budget and political climates in which the smaller, faster models were more cost effective and Politically Correct. They were numerous and lithe--they could engage from long range, and had high energy levels. Their drawbacks however were their difficulty in subduing what they caught, and they had wildly short attention spans--but they couldn't do much damage to their customers, and the Administrators liked this. The Destroyers on the other hand weren't as effective from a distance, but when they were close they were both as effective at stopping a situation before it started as they were at ending it in a Precedent Setting splash of blood and bone. Because of their more plodding nature and metabolism, they also made the best investigators...but they were a dwindling breed, once hired in great numbers for their ability to solve problems with a ham-sized fist, and now avoided because of this same thing. It was a cyclical hiring cycle, and we were on the downward trend of the Heavies, and it made me sad. They were magnificent to see at work, as is any force of nature.

I myself was a Cruiser Class, and we all worked well together in any combination. The Destroyers ranged from 300 to 400 lbs., Cruisers in the 200 range, and the Fast Attacks went from 140 to 180 tops. Cruisers were plentiful as well, and while they weren't as expert as the opposite ends of the spectrum, they were proficient at both and thus worked well with either.

We sat and ate and laughed, until a silence befell us as we watched the cook being escorted down the aisle past us towards the bathroom, shivering and sweating with fever. We looked from our empty plates to the cook, and back again; a price of eating in Eden. We departed.



The next call for service was at a local Roach Motel directly off the Boulevard of Broken Dreams; a vagrant had kicked in a door to find a warm shelter for the night for himself and his dog. He was passive, and we all sat around trying to figure out what to do with him. It wasn't a residential burglary because it was unoccupied, but it wasn't quite criminal trespass either. There was vandalism, sure, but the owner wasn't eager to leave the desk to sign for misdemeanor warrants. As we sat and debated the finer parts of law, the mans starving dog strolled across the room to the kitchen dinette where it sniffed a pile of its own feces deposited hours earlier, and began to swallow it down for lack of any other sustenance at the moment. The indigent man called out the emaciated dogs name to distract it from its crude meal, and at the sound of its name we silently agreed to let them both go and prepare for the next call--no good possibly coming from this.

The dog's name, of course, was "Lucky".


The day rolled on, wrecks, reports, revulsion, the usual. Two o’clock was approaching though, and it was time to start mapping out the remainder of the shift to avoid a Late Call. It was as much a part of the job as stomach lining deficiencies, but just as difficult to ignore. My partner had landed a child rape so I decided to help him. Between the two of us, we’d be out on time, or at least one of us would.

The divorce was going poorly. Oh—they hadn’t been married, but it’s an abstract thought in these geographies. The father was staying across the state line in Ringgold with his new package family and had dropped the daughter off back in Eden with the Baby’s Momma, and Momma had decided that the two year old had been molested somehow. She was unable to articulate how she felt this, but was convinced nonetheless and so quite naturally called her cousin who was a nursing student a few hours before calling the Police. The Student in turn, quite naturally, performed a ‘rape examination’ digitally as we had just discovered and the Student felt that Momma was ‘probably right’. My partner stared at her blankly while he drank this in, holding up a large hand to indicate ‘Silence’, and I could only nod to feign understanding as I backed away, my left arm held across my chest, my right hand caressing my chin.

It was at this moment that I looked across the yard fully expecting frogs and loaves of bread to rain from the sky, when I saw two teenage girls walking a dog on a leash down the center of the Avenue. What happened next was completely my fault because due to my distraction, I had momentarily forgotten that not only was I in East Lake--I was in a section of it known as ‘Black Bottom*’.

The girls were white, in good health, and wearing clothes within two years of being ‘trendy’. To counter this, their dog was walking with a pogo-like hop because its front left paw was broken back at the equivalent of its wrist and was walking on the bloody end of its long bone, punctuated by a coat of both fresh and coagulated blood that had spread a few inches up from the gory base. It had bled enough to spread to the right paw as well, and the normal paw stood in stark contrast to its mangled twin, making it look all the worse. The girls waved to me as they walked past, and I told them to stop. “Come here”, I said.

Walgreen's™ is the Eden of the Bizarro World

Recovered: 10.12.04
[This post is the genesis of the 'Eden' Aspect of where I work/worked. Walgreen's™ was the Control Group in what I consider an on-going experiment in the Bizarre that is the East Lake/Highland Park/Blackbottom areas of Chattanooga.]


The Walgreen’s™ on Rossville Boulevard is a Mecca of Civilization in an Uncivilized landscape; a sanctuary in a place where people otherwise disregard prime-time television in lieu of sitting on their front porches for better play, and occasionally have sex with their sister.

I’ve oft suspected that the bright neon depiction of the Mortar and Pestle somehow serves as a Crucifix to the Weird, or perhaps its very Ivo Shandorian architecture is an affront to unhinged senses, where no Screwheads may pass--a radical corner-gateway concept that confuses the Doomed into submission, and frightens away those with Weak Constitutions.

They sell prescription drugs there by the sack full, yet no one breaks in after hours, or holds them up during the day time.

They sell lowfat and whole milk and Red Bull™ energy drinks alongside neon clocks and Hawaiian shirts, yet no one shoplifts.

Their parking lot smells neither of piss nor oil as are characteristic of all other surfaces in East Lake. There is a complete lack of indigent presence at the base of its walls, and even the litter that falls on the pristine pavement after the store has closed is whisked away as if by magic.
It is a good place; a Clean Place, where one can be as comfortable purchasing disposable cameras as they can be defecating in the unusually clean restroom.

Walgreen’s is a Rain-X™ for the Bizarre, and I, for one, appreciate it. Yet while I bask in its warm glow of Service with Savings and admire the fine landscaping (with its tasteful use of pine strips that are visually appealing, yet excel in moisture retention for the soil), I cannot help but ponder…is the object beauty of the place too good to be true? Is this place too perfect?
It is either the Flaw in the system that will one day prove East Lake is a Vast Trick and I was actually killed that night in the Silver Ball Room instead of carried out…or it’s simply an anchor point to Reality during otherwise unpalatable days.

Whichever the case, I embrace the trick. I hold fast to the anchor…for a little while.

For Eden has a Core.

Parking Violations Now

Recovered: 01.31.05


Fade In:

OFFICER (v.o.)
"Harrison, shit. I'm still only in Harrison. Every time I think I'm going to wake up back in the East Lake. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing... I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to a divorce. When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute the Crips squat in the projects they get stronger. Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.
I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Hours away and hundreds of meters up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable and plugged straight into Brazzell. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Anna Brazzell's memory, any more than being back in Harrison was an accident."

CHIEF
"Officer, you heard of Ms. Anna Brazzell ?"

OFFICER
"No, sir. Not personally."

CHIEF
"You have worked a lot on your own, haven't you ?"

OFFICER
"Yes, sir. I have."

CHIEF
"Your report specifies patrol, intelligence, counter-intelligence,with Fox Sector."

OFFICER
"I'm not presently disposed to discuss these operations, sir."

CHIEF
"Did you not work for the CIA in Alton Park?"

OFFICER
"No, sir."

CHIEF
"I thought we'd have a bite of lunch while we talk. I hope you brought a good appetite with you. You have a bad forehead wound there, are you wounded?"

OFFICER
"A little fishing accident on R&R, sir."

CHIEF
"Fishing on R&R... But you're feeling fit, ready for duty ?"

OFFICER
"Yes, Chief. Very much so sir."

CHIEF
"Todd, would you play that tape for the officer, please. Listen carefully."

ON TAPE
"October 9th, 0430 hours, sector Union 2."

CHIEF
"This was monitored out of Red Bank. This has been verifiedas Ms. Brazzell's voice."

ANNA BRAZZELL (on tape)
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving. "

ON TAPE
"11th transmission, December 30th, 0500 hours, sector Union 1."

BRAZZELL (on tape)
"We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Ticket after ticket, meter after meter, parking space after parking space, Police Service Tech after Police Service Tech. And they call me a double parker. What do you call it when the double parkers accuse the double parkers? They lie.. they lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate them..."

CHIEF
"Anna Brazzell was one of the most outstanding citizens this city has ever produced. She was a brilliant and outstanding in every way and she was a good woman too. Humanitarian woman, woman of wit, of humor. She joined the UnumProvident. After that her ideas, parking methods have become unsound... Unsound.
Now she's crossed to Red Bank with her Comfyshoe army, who worship the woman, like a god, and follow every order however ridiculous. You see Officer... In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical parking necessity. Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be god. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between feeding the meter and ignoring it, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’, and we park wherever and however we want to, without due payment or regard for others. Every woman has got a breaking point. You and I have. Anna Brazzell has reached hers. And very obviously, she has gone insane."

OFFICER
"Yes sir, very much so sir. Obviously insane."

CHIEF
"Your mission is to proceed up the Mountain Creek in a Chattanooga Ducks boat. Pick up Brazzell's path at The Orange Hut, follow it, learn what you can along the way. When you find her infiltrate her team by whatever means available and terminate the Brazzell’s command."

OFFICER
"Terminate? Brazzell?"

CHIEF
"She's out there parking without any decent restraint. Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And she is still in the office commanding her troops."

TODD WOMACK
"Terminate with extreme prejudice."

CHIEF
"You understand Officer...that this operation does not exist, nor will it ever exist."
In the cruiser:

OFFICER (v.o.)
"How many people had I already killed? There was that one I know about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time it was a local and a woman. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit...charging a woman with improper parking in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do? But I didn't know what I'd do when I found her."

Archives of Insignificance

[The following are a collection of Rants and Miscellaneous Tripe I've posted about the internet here and there that have been graciously saved by folks before one insignificant disaster after another would make them otherwise lost online. It is to a man named Felix that I thank in particular for taking the time to cut, paste, and save my ramblings when there is so much more to be distracted by in the all-consuming hobby that is so oddly named...'Those Internets'. Original dates will be posted where available.]