Sunset Vertigo: A Tale of Petrina City

Claire looked out at the desolate body of water. She liked the sunrise and varied colors of sky hanging out the water in the vast distance. A shroud of mist covered the other side of the world. She liked it out here, away from the city that swallowed people whole. She was alone now, where anything could happen but never did. Petrina City would soon become the far off world that may never have existed.
"Claire Mulligan?" came a grated voice.
She whipped around, feeling her privacy violated. The old man was shriveled like a paper bag, puffing on a corncob pipe. He seemed harmless enough, looking like a water damaged woold carving of a child in an over-sized pea-coat.
Course you are, I been watchin' you a long time."
She balked, stepping into the chilled water. Shots of invisible switchblade ice stabbed at her legs and ran up her spine.
"Don't  be afraid sweetheart... it was only inevitable. Consider this one of those full circle types of things, where karma don't exactly take any holidays."
"Have I.... have, I wronged you mister? I'm only out to make amends"
The old man sighed. He took a long puff off his pipe, exhaling smoke akin to a roasted battlefield dancing over a spastic display of corpses.
"Being alone is hell enough."
The old man sighed again "No, it really isn't. 'Specially, when you got a whole slew of people involved."
Almost as an assurance, the old man pocketed his pipe and reached a trembling hand into his moth eaten coat.
Claire emulated the hand with her ragged figure, shuddering  and barely able to stand, clutching a chunk of rotted tree on an abandoned work bench.
"What do I, need to do?" It was a plead for  her world torn asunder.
"How many people have to die? I left everything behind. Everyone believed Claire Mulligan was lost in the fire and they were happy... but someone just wouldn't let go, would they?"
The sunrise was supposed to be a time of rejuvenation for Claire. Today, she experienced the vertigo felt at sunset. The end of day signified curses of shadows and pain. Her mind unwinding a horrific tapestry of misery until darkness lightly flew toward her and stroked her cheek bones in delicate grace.
The touch aroused her senses back to the present. She was now miles away from the calm she felt in nature.
The grim old man had thrown a velvet black glove down at her feet.
There was the eerie quietness in the moment. Any sensations that could have been felt, went numb. This was the ultimate reckoning.
Claire gulped, wide eyed yet still standing tall. She awaited her judgement
The old man gritted his teeth and spat. There was a tired desperation about him. He stared at both of his gnarled hands. They had been mangled in sickening ways over the decades walked.
"I've done a lot and had a lot done to me. Don't  want to waste time anymore, doing what I do and pitying ,what I could've done" The old man raised his head.
He looked tenderly upon Claire "You shouldn't either, but... ques es lavida. It means, 'what is life?' The only lick of Mexican, I know. That's right, Mexican, not Spanish. You understand? This is the way of the world. The will of forces, we can't suppress."
Claire nodded. She knelt down to pick up the black glove. She caressed and softly smiled.
The old man gnashed his teeth and barked "Now, where is it?"
Claire reached inside her and revealed a pearl bracelet.
"Put them on." He growled.
Claire removed her coat. She slowly slipped the glove on her right hand and clasped the bracelet on her wrist. She stood artificially seductive,displaying the hand without expression or movement.
The old man nodded approvingly. His eyes ran up and down her form. A malicious smile further creased his weather beaten features, as he shamelessly licked his lips.
"I'd order you to strip, and you would... wouldn't you, whore? Instincts never die." He crept closer to Claire.
Claire saw that she and I the old man had the same shade of blue of eyes. Her expression softened.
The old man knew what meant and nervously fiddled in his pocket.
"I have two choices." He lamented, holding a pistol in one hand and his pipe in the other.
"I can shoot first, and then take a smoke, or I can smoke... while you shoot yourself."
Claire slyly smile "No, old man... there is another option without letting me go."
The old man return gesture with a grin and respectfully nodded.
"Sometimes a Hell is of your own choosing and not where people want you to be." He chomped down on his tooth marked pipe.
"Hell is being unable to choose. Maybe, both of us should have realized this long ago." Claire said.
"Young lady, after I leave these woods... it's only me and me. You, however can take as many chances as you need."
The old man mechanically opened the gun's chamber: emptying it out except for one bullet, spinning, snapping and shutting it, in a blur. He ran the gun down Claire's neckline and fondled her breasts with the barrel; he noticed scars and put the gun in her hand.
"Who were you?" She asked.
"A man like any other, only more so... I fell, but never hid my didn't how to or what to do. Who are you, girl?"
She brushed the unloved man's face "Black glove and pearl bracelet."
The old man snickered to stifle a sob. He looked more the child than ever, kicking a pebble in which a ladybug clung upon.
"Be seeing you, on the other side of eternity." He lit his pipe and casually strolled off.
"Isn't that the way, everyone's history ends?" Claire whispered to herself.
The gun felt like a feather. The glove and bracelet weighed as heavy as armored car in a not so distant past: filled with conjured promises and a toxic mirror romance in an imaginary shack in the Garden of Eden and that ended on a dirty patch of street, where her father once laid twitching and bleeding.
She remembered, how his eyes darted "why?'
That was the first time her world, would tilt and spin.
Claire opened the chamber. She spun and closed the chamber , several times but not as fast as the old man.
The day had begun to wane.
Soon would be the sunset and then the vertigo.

Man Against Time: CM -EP 4

 It can't rain all the time, but it does... it rains blood, blood that needs to be shed or blood needing to be avenged. My name's Milo Denton. I'm a disgraced cop turned an even more disgraced P.I. and I'm wearing someone else's face. My job is supposed to consist of investigating: cheating spouses and crooked business with made up problems. Truth of the matter is, I'm not much of a detective, for me detective work is made up of bribery and beatings to get the info you need or get someone to manufacture what needs to be done or said. Sometimes there are people who aren't totally agreement with the way things tend to get done.
That's when I talk hard, sometimes harder.
I tighten the bandages on my face, as I don't want to risk going out looking like some snitch who snitched out the wrong person and now has a hit on him. I put on the dark blue suit, my best suit I've always wanted to die in; I put it together with a linen white shirt and cheap polyester grey and black striped necktie because that's what I want to wear on this hard-boiled night to say my long hard goodbye in.
I take one gun. My police issued firearm. It has memories because it's not mine, mine got stolen from some crook who went around committing various armed robberies, this I took from another guy while on a wild FG-5 binge. I remember fighting the perp a mud-hole and as we struggled nobody dared to fire a shot because nobody could tell who was who.
Still don't remember the outcome of that night or what was done to shelter the events.
I leave my father's watch.
I think of the cracked face and the cracked mirror in the bathroom and what was reflected underneath my coverings. I don't think about the dead guys in the office. I won't be coming back.
I've got a new face. I don't know what it means or who did it but once I find out, I definitely plan on not being me anymore.
I put on my gray trench coat and before I do, I check the pockets and find a small silver egg-shaped thing. It's unblemished. This is FG-G in its most concentrated form. Inside is a blue glowing liquid that turns into a faded pink smoke as it hits the air and to place it underneath your nostrils at that the moment gives you the  most paradise enhancement of reality you'll need.
I crack the seal. Do what's right. Getting high on FG-5 before going out into the night.
 A man against time.
On the way to suicide.
My pores are on fire, feeling the shock of the atmosphere parting ways for  razor-blade structure. I smell strawberry fields. Walking down  Penny Lane toward the Blue Angel Bar.
I'm not a horror-show  mummy in some dorky suit and tie. I'm a stone-age brute on a quest for fire.
The temperature drops. My chest is still heaving  like a blast furnace but the drops of rain that look like liquid prisms become shards of crystal.
It's a freezing rain.
Got a volcano inside my heart  pumping lava in my veins to prevent my blood from going arctic.
A neon blue angel looks down upon me and winks with golden lashes. She can't get back up to heaven caught in the wire of sculpture holding her form, so she curses us down all below in hopes we poison ourselves enough thanks to her allure, in the desperation that the lord of the damned will consider her captivity long enough and let her go where she may not be welcomed anymore.
Time's running out... for all of us.
I walk in, the doorman can't even look at me. He turns away and lights a cigarette knowing who I am even without a trace of what used to be my face.
There are bruisers, pimps, addicts, and femme fatales who suddenly separate themselves from an orgy of carnal and destructive intent. They know but pretend not to know. All of a sudden their drinks or bottom of the glass or even the game on the set is more interesting  than what was going on in the nasty spiderweb they were all weaving together before I entered the room.
I don't put my exterminator bag on the table but I sit down at the center of the bar. The waitresses retreat. Sam the man of granite with the off-center nose, who forever cannot taste the flavor of his favorite candy bar asks "What's the good word, Milo?"
"Not in jail. Yourself?"
"Pouring drinks for boozers, whores and dirtbags. Speaking of..." he takes down a bottle of Irish whiskey and raises an eyebrow, a glass already in the other hand wanting a pour.
A piano plays softly. Ivory tickles copper wire. The player, besides Sam is the only one who makes eye contact with me.
 He smiles at me and nods, like he knows everything. He's wearing a cream suit with a white shirt and red scarf. His skin is like the color of salmon. His hair so blonde, it's almost white. Can't tell the color of his eyes from the smoke in the room. There's an intense feeling between us.
He's no fairy. I can tell. He's good with the world but in a shameful way. I'm comfortably in a nervous manner.
I point at the glass and nod approvingly to Sam "What's with the fairy?"
Sam snorts and grimaces a broken smile "He's owns the place. Owned it for quite sometime."
"Awfully, young isn't he?" I take a swig and point at the air in my glass.
Everyone goes back to business. Taking no notice of us, like we're in a vacuum. Silence all around us and at a great distant from the rest of bar. All I can hear is Sam, myself and the piano playing something from another time and place I never heard of. It's a sad melody but sounds like there used to be a hint of joy to it thousands of years ago.
"He's a bit older than any of us realize. Someone, told me... mind you this was a superstitious individual but not of a cowardly lot..." he smirks then continues "that the owner here was the Devil himself, exiled from his own inferno by the good lord for not being wicked enough. For offering a chance at redemption."
A moment passes.
The man at the piano waves. I get a cold and unusual feeling of vertigo.
"Pour me another."
Sam hesitates and as he fills the glass to the brim "Or it could all be the talk of drink mixed with desperation of loneliness."
I can feel the owner at his piano absently shrug.
I slowly sip as Sam stands over me, looking at the others in the hopes that they beg for his attention.
I push the glass aside.
"Sam, I want my fortune told."
He looks off to the side with his head down and eyes closed. "Milo..."
"Sam, I feel time slipping away. Don't f---around."
There are two doors. The one to the right leads to the kitchen, the other is a red beaded doorway.
The lady or the tiger.
I want the lady who rides the tiger.

The Blue Angel Departure: CM-EP 3

It’s not death , if you accept it and the other side of eternity nowhere near you expect it to be… right here! Sometimes though, you're not even in your body and time out of mind is only way to describe what happens when FG-5 fever hits. 

Everything happens in a crimson blur and razor blade slashes of obsidian. The only thing that matters are the frozen moments in time preventing you from experiencing the here and now. 

My name is Milo Denton, I tried to kill myself after being disfigured, only to realize the face in the mirror didn't belong to me and now someone is sent Smiley Face kids to kill me and an FG-5 fever has hit and a landslide of ultra-violence and horrific family movies is going to bombard my pulsating brain. 

I have been outside myself realizing, my mind cannot prevent nor momentarily block the withdrawal from FG-5 anymore.

Streak of silver wind across my chest, severed tie, force  my knee into something plastic and the gorilla goes down with a slimy piece of meat shoved out of place.

The room goes crooked. Television set on the desk stretches out into an obelisk with the screen sporting the figure with a goblin nose and fangs hanging over the blonde virgin innocence...No. No. Not that movie. Not that image.

Cut to: Movie Theater. There were velvet chocolate chairs. (so I remember). Something hot and wet started happening, as the gaunt ivory hands stroked the neck of damsel in all her purity in deep slumber. I wanted to go to the movies. Mother held my hand, wearing fake pearls. Dad didn't care just did his duty watching but vacant without a soul. 

Mother "Really the pearls, Milo? They should be saved for special nights."

Milo (stupid seven year old me) "Couldn't be going to the movies be a special night?"

She kisses me tenderly on the forehead "Alright, for you. Tonight, we'll make it a special night."

The clicking of the projector sets a tense tempo for unknown motive swelling in the loins.

THE MONKEY LAUGHS AND PULLS DOWN THE MAN IN THE BANDAGED FACE.

The little boy's face is flushed. Father is distracted watching the teenage girl, ignore the teenage boy with the pizza face staring for a kiss and Mother's eyes widen at the seductive giant sized horror played about on the screen. The little boy grips harder as the vampire hunches over the girl. He wonders what it's like to be a painted soft-machine being touched by a supernatural being or to be the supernatural being doing the touching of the painted soft-machine. 

TWO FISTS SMACK THE MASK OVER AND OVER, UNTIL SOMETHING SLIDES BETWEEN THE RIBS OF THE BANDAGED MAN.

Harder. The wetness is rising. Over and over enter the pocket, pulling down the zipper as fangs drip spittle and begin puncturing the soft-machine's shell of silk. Her eyes flash open! The creatures eyes widen!

SWITCHBLADE EQUALS SLASHING RED RIBBONS ACROSS THE VISION. FISTS FROM ABOVE GENERATE BLACK-HOLES. THE ROOM BECOMES A MELTING REALM OF SWISS CHEESE DRAPED OVER BY A SHARDS BLOODY RIBBON ALL SEEN THROUGH SOMEONE'S BLUE EYE THROWN INTO AN OUT SPACE OF BURNING STARS.

The little boy doesn't care about any of that. He knows that could be his eye but instead watches the  movie gripping his mother's firmer, in an effort to feel what is going in front of him with the other hand working something he doesn't quite understand quite yet but something is about to erupt and as the vampire grins miniature red eyes erupts and something unholy ejects from the boy. 

Shame. Joy. Lust. Relief. 

She looks around straightening her blonde hair. It's not wavy like the girl on the screen. The wetness disgusts her. 

Mother "Milo! How dare you?!"

He's torn from his seat and his father barely follows, feeling quite like the shadow of two people he rather not know. 

Then the voice of crushed glass set amid sizzling smoke spoke "Nice pearls."

Piano wire wrapped around her neck. 

Father hands in pocket, slouching with hands in pocket. "Hey, don't do that." he quietly protested.

Little Milo screaming and jumping. Father slugs him across the face without a sound. Metal clinks. Thunder and lightning father falls giving Milo a final rueful look signifying an ultimate fall from grace.

Boy is cold and wet in a place that doesn't feel right. Mother's leg spread in a van more than one shadow hunched over her. A door slides closed as rubber peels against wet street. 

He never saw the man fully nor the face but something wasn't quite right with the jagged grin.

I AM MILO DENTON THE BOY WHO BECAME THE MAN. THE MAN AGAINST TIME WHO BURIED THE BOY SITTING AGAINST THE LAMP POST IN A TIN BOX CHAINED ACROSS THE HEART UNTIL THE POLICE COULD GET THERE AND NOT REALLY LISTEN BUT SHUFFLE HIM ACROSS GUARDIAN TO GUARDIAN UNTIL DEAR BONNIE COULD FINALLY GET CUSTODY, WHORING HERSELF OUT TO GET MONEY TO BRIBE THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

SPREAD THE GORILLA'S ARMS LIKE CHRIST ON CONCRETE. BOTH OF THEM BROKEN.

Her curves were like the grooves of a cabbage. Age sixteen. The taste of peaches in sugar and something sour almost corrupt. Milo exploded inside. She held him and caressed auburn hair as he cried "Momma" over and over.

Bonnie "Shhh, baby, it will be alright." then she hummed a lullaby not just for him but for the dead stillborn son and husband dead of exposure on railroad tracks who first drowned himself in a dead sea of gin and gambling in the sport of black market organ theft. 

KNEES INTO THE SPINE. A DEVIL'S TWIST. THE GORILLA GROANS. DON'T CARE WHO SENT WHO. AN OUNCE OR MORE AND HE'S CRIPPLED, ADD ANOTHER TWO AND HE'S DEAD. THE CRYSTAL ANGEL APPEARS, LOWERING HERSELF TO THE GROUND, TRANSPARENT WINGS WRAPPING AROUND WHIRLING RED AND BLACK ROOM. BLUE LIQUID SWISHES INSIDE AND ALL AROUND HER.

BLUE ANGEL "YOU LOOK THIRSTY, MILO. HOW ABOUT A DRINK?"

MILO "THEN MAYBE A VISIT TO THE GYPSY LADY?"

BLUE ANGEL "WHATEVER YOU NEED. JUST FINISH THIS FIRST... THEN PAY ME A VISIT."

IT'S MOURNFUL SMILE AND EVERYTHING REVERTS TO NORMAL EXCEPT THE HAZE...

Grown-up Milo approaches Little Milo. Little Milo looks up.

Grown-up Milo "No one will ever love you." The gun goes off.

Grown-up Milo enters the bedroom with Teenage Milo wiping away something that is cross between joy and shame. A pure dirty feeling. Teenage Milo looks up with a nervous grin in all his moist naked glory.

Grown-up Milo " It's sick what we do for lack of love, isn't it?" The gun goes off. 

Grown-up Milo in the land of fog and darkness,  a full length mirror in front of him. The reflection isn't quite the reflection he thought it to be... Bandaged Milo reaches out and strangles him.

Bandaged Milo "Here's a glimpse of the future, now the lights going out." Two fingers enter the eye sockets.

THE APE SCREAMS. FALSE PRIMATE FACE THROWN ACROSS THE ROOM. 

Images of Milo killing Milo killing Milo fading as everything returns in a technicolor swirl amid white noise.

No one, I recognize. Find my stash of FG-5, take a hit and go down to the Blue Angel Bar and see that gypsy lady. 

Maybe find out everything that's happening in the deciphering of a devil's riddle.

Operation: Power Grab (DG - Ep. 4)

"On top of the misses" Bruce begins laughing, "talking about kickin' me to the curb last night, now I gotta…" The chief loses his focus and gives Bruce a fierce glance, who is standing against one of the windows of the chief's office. "What's so funny, Bruce?" he says sternly.

Normally Simon would have at least been grinning at the joke the chief inadvertently made, but on this morning he was especially somber and concerned about losing his job, or at least receiving a serious demotion. Had the killer he was following struck at the heart of his professional life, now, as well, by practically framing him? Whoever it was was deliberately trying to frustrate the already frustrated one-eyed detective. 

The two detectives glance at each one another, pushing the other with their looks to come clean on the childish joke and move on. Bruce chimes in first, realizing he's on the chopping block.

"Well, Skip…It's just… you said… 'on top of the misses.'" this time Bruce is not even smiling as the phrase enters his head again. The chief looks at him disapprovingly.

"Let's move on, children." the chief straightens up and crosses his arms. "Last night I had to deal with that shit at home and now, this morning, I get this call, putting Internal Affairs directly on my ass wondering first, why two of my top guys left a drugged-out witness's house moments before she was murdered, and second why one of those detectives has a constant target on his back from either a copycat or the original 'scarring killer'. You're too close to all this, Simon." Simon puts his head in his hand, and Bruce straightens up.

"So, here's what we're gonna do, fellas." Simon looks up gravely. "I talked to Internal," the chief turns concerned for the two, "and we came to an agreement. First, is that the two of you cannot work together anymore. As much as it pains me to see my little project fail, you two are sort of a liability individually--for quite a few reasons--but definitely a fucking liability when you're working together."

"Finally!" Bruce lets out a partially-sarcastic gasp.

"Oh what-the-fuck-ever, Bruce!" Simon shouts, "Good riddance… I've put up with your bullshit for so long. you're holding me back." The chief begins looking at both of them fake-patiently, waiting for their childish argument to seise.

"Holding you back?!?! Change that shitty record already, I'm tired of that old disco tune." Simon begins imitating the Bee Gees, making his own melody. "Holding me back!…He's holding me back!" The chief's stare continues, but gradually changes to astonishment at the two for ignoring him and continuing to be fixated on their own petty quarrels.

"A big joke. Everything's a big joke! It's all so fucking hysterical." Simon attempts to imitate Bruce but instead imitate's Connor Rooney from Road To Perdition, and almost loses his edge, but doesn't, clearly having upped his morning dose of FG-5.

"It is pretty funny, though, right, Skip," he looks to the chief for approval, as he attempts to complete his thought, but, upon seeing the boss's face, begins to trail off simultaneously, "that we are both losing really and…"

"Are you two dip-shits ready for number two?" Bruce fights laughter again but becomes stern seeing that the chief got this joke and that his patience, again, is starting to wear very thin.

"The second change is that--despite my greatest efforts to keep the thristy detective from the drug teat--we gotta transfer Simon here to the FG-5 division." Simon's eye narrows, as he looks directly into the chief's.

"You can't be serious chief." Simon says confidently, defiantly, and quietly.

"Right… I mean don't they have, like, some policies about a user of the drug not being about to catch the guys peddling said drug, Skip?"

"It seems their restrictions have become slightly less strict, and they want to use cops addicted to FG-5, like our friend here, to infiltrate larger FG-5 gang rings, as detectives seemingly in other departments simply trying to score the drug--and a little cash--for themselves. Apparently they've had their eyes on Simon here for quite awhile." The chief suddenly looks like he's surprised himself. "Shit, I've said too much with Bruce here already. I'm just so damn excited to get this four year mess you two might call a partnership off my hands."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Skip, you mean you're marriage?" The chief gives him a defiant and violent look.

"Fuck you, Brucie boy! And remember, you still work for me." he walks to Simon and puts his hands on the cyclops's shoulders. "Simon, it was nice to work with you, and you know my door is always open to you. Hopefully, before that time you won't get your damn head blown off, BADDA BING!" he makes the apparent Godfather reference "all over your shitty-detective, cigarette-smelling, FG-5-bullshit suit." he loses his train of thought and releases his grip on Simon. "Now get out of my office both of you, I've got murderers to capture and shit." He points to Simon. "Oh, and Simon?"

"Yeah, chief?"

"Remember what I always told you." Simon nods. "And here." He hands him a thick manilla envelope with the words "Operation: Power Grab" written on it in permanent marker.

Strange Reflections: Cracked Mirror (EP 2)

“Not my face.”

Grab the bottle. Take a swig.

Steady the nerves.

Slowly put bandages back on face.

“Am I really who I am?” Milo’s mind is set ablaze. Whiskey burns down his throat; liquid fire coursing everywhere else, who the hell is the man underneath the series of the wrappings?  The greatest joke ever played the dis-figuration of a disgrace that is in fact not a dis-figuration but a physical reconfiguration capable shattering the mind but it can’t shatter something that wasn't entirely there in the first place.

Milo Denton feels sick in a good way… or is it good in a sick way?  Goodbye to the old life? Hello to something new? Paying for the hell of vintage wrath in a never-ending cycle of torment contained in a flaming bullet-train, full of screaming retarded children and blaring horrific electronic dance music. Something like breakfast, which is really just phlegm laced with uranium infused tobacco, stomach lining and whiskey hits the immaculate white toilet.

Bonnie keeps the place as clean as one of those old 1950’s sitcom settings. She’s a real mothering type, despite the slight indiscretion years ago it was like a mother and son relationship but Bonnie just wasn't missing her son and Milo wasn't just missing his mother and needed something more than nurture for his carnal nature. She was just as carnal as well but when all was said and done, nothing was ever uttered or hinted at again and both liked it that way and Milo entered high school that year as a man or was it the piano that actually raised him and took him to the glowing celestial skull altar where he knelt to vomit and weep with leather belts lashing at his back?

FG-5 alters perceptions. Creates memories and implants what you don’t want because it is secretly what you want and where you need to be in order to push the boundaries of intellect and body, which is what FG-5 does or what drug allows the user to do. You don’t like the drug but the drug likes you because you are the in itself the drug.

Knock. Knocking at the bathroom door, a gentle rapping, Denton, get the head out of your sickness. Cock the hammer. Don’t wait and pull trigger. Slugs chew through wood and paint in order to devour the meat on the other side.

Never expect company when on the way to suicide.

Kick the door off the hinges, gun points left and right.  Look down. Two men dead, not leaving the world any poorer; young men, yellow smiley-face masks, baseball bats, one sawed off shot to the side, black leather jackets. Smiley-Face Kids, local gang thinks they can create a new reality through building a chaotic empire out of crime while constantly operating on FG-5. 

This is bad. Hell is coming, as if Hell itself wasn't bursting through the payment and not stopping; a portal is opening up and swallowing the lives of everyone on this street and soon the whole damn city.

Don’t overreact. Go see the gypsy woman at the back of Blue Angel.

Boots stomping up the stairs, office door is swings open and there’s a hulking mass built like a mountain pretending to be a man in a gorilla suit. It’s not funny. The gorilla suited maniac grunts, and pulls a samurai sword out of its sheath.

Click. Click. The gun is empty.  Death wears combat boots, a gorilla suit and wields a samurai sword. Milo Denton considers the other side of eternity.

Or Can I Assume it's the FG-5? (DG - Ep. 3)

"And, would you say you've had any enemies, Mrs. Frost? You, your family, your husband?… your daughter?" Bruce lights up a cigarette, as he and his one-eyed partner sit a little too cozily on a small love seat in the living of the Frosts, A suburban type family: Mother's a drug-addict empty-nester housewife and father's a law professor. They live on the prestigious lower-west side of Petrina City, where the dogs are quite small and the egos are (among some other parts of people) are quite large.

"Would you say your daughter ran with any strange sorts of people?" Simon asks, as Mrs. Frost lights up a smoke, no doubt under sedation from FG-5, staring blankly at Bruce, who has yet to say a word, but decides to take over.

"What we are trying to do here, Mrs Frost, is make connections between your recently dea--" Simon bumps Bruce hard, and Bruce clears his throat, "your recently deceased daughter, and whoever would have taken her life." He clears his throat again. "What we are trying to do is" he begins dividing an imaginary pie in front of him, as if showing blank Mrs. Frost presentation, "develop what sorts of motives somebody might have for murdering your daughter." She continues to give Bruce the FG-5 trademarked hopeless stare, he throws his hands up as if giving up, and turns to Simon, both standing suddenly "I can't take this." he says, "I gotta finish my smoke outside. She must have been pretty damn good at losing touch and being frighteningly silent before the drugs… and now she's just…" He makes a motion with in the air of one hand taking off from the other quickly makes "PJJJJWWWIIIIIOOOO" noise with his lips.

 They stand, backs to her, and lower their voices as well as their demeanor, "If she won't give us information that could solve her daughter's homicide, then we're wasting our time here."

"Give me five minutes with her, Brucie. She is one of the closest ones to the victim." Simon lights up a cigarette. "Besides, maybe she'll warm up to me once you leave." He puts his arm around his partners shoulder, somewhat condescendingly, "I don't think she likes you very much. She's giving you the death stare." They both look directly at Mrs. Frost, who is pushing Bruce to leave her house with her eyes.

He gives Mrs. Frost a cold, frosty stare of his own and states matter-of-factly, "Ma'am, you need some serious deliverance," before leaving the house.

Simon sits on the couch again, and Mrs. Frost almost immediately opens up. "I really don't like his types."

"Not many people do," Simon smiles and gets out his pad, ready to jot down Mrs. Frost's words.

"He has an evil way about him."

"Yes, he does, Mrs. Frost." He puts his warm smile away and begins to look more frustrated, before clearing his throat. "Now, can we talk about your daughter, please?"

"Sure." She looks coldly across the room at the Frost's prized family portrait, now lying about its members. 

His mannerisms become more welcoming again. "You don't seem too concerned about your daughter's death, Mrs. Frost, you mind telling me why? Is it a bad relationship thing, or can I assume it's the FG-5?"

"I know you're on it too," she says, pointing at Simon. "Everyone on it seems to be able to pick out whoever else is, so how do I know I can trust your amplified characteristics, Mr. Murphy?"

"It seems you can't." Simon uncomfortably adjusts his tie. "Can we at least rule you out on being the murderer, because she's your daughter, and assume that you would feel remorse if you weren't popping so much amp?" Her eyes begin to well up the slightest bit, which concerns Simon, who knows she will soon need a new pill. "Do you need another pill, Mrs. Frost?"

"No, I'll be fine."

"Are you sure, I have some."

"I only take my own, I mix 'em myself. I just ran out, so I might try to quit." She tries to light another smoke, but cannot because her lips, hands, and eyes are beginning to shake rapidly. "Starting now" she faintly and tiredly whispers.

She begins sweating profusely, and Simon gets off the couch, rushes to the front door side of it, and backs away. "You're not supposed to do that, Mrs. Frost. Either of those: mixing your own or quitting suddenly. You know what the immediate withdrawal can be like, Mrs.--" 

Before he can continue, she snaps her neck from side to side and she begins yelling mostly useless babble at him, with an occasional "you don't know him, he's different," or a, "she was supposed to be our little princess." She starts throwing some of the family's expensive trinkets at Simon, as he throws a pill at her and urges her to take it, without success. Bruce hears the racket and looks in the front door, only to have a chair thrown at him. "Get that lunatic out of my house!" she screams pointing at the door Bruce has already exited again.

Simon quickly eases towards Mrs. Frost to grab his coat off the back of the couch, nabs it and runs out the door yelling, "Thank you for your time!"

On the way to the car, Simon says, "I don't think she's fucked up enough to murder her own daughter."

"Who knows, Simon," He pushes his index and middle finger pressed together onto Simon's chest, "you can't trust the statements either way with an Amp-head." He releases Simon from his gaze, straightens out his coat, begins to smirk, walks towards the car. "I'm surprised I trust you as much as I do."

"Shut the hell up, Bruce," Simon pops another pill quickly, this time washing it down with whiskey from a flask from his inside pocket, "before I decide to kick your ass." They both get into the car. "I need to get home and get some sleep."

-----------

Simon is awoken suddenly from his slumber by his cell phone ringing. "Huuulo?" he answers thinking about going back to sleep and reading 4:55am on his bedside clock.

"This is the chief, Simon."

"Do you sleep at all?"

"not as long as people get murdered."

"What's happening?"

"Mrs. Nancy Frost was found dead late last night."

That's a Good Motto, Chief (DG - Ep. 2)

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SOME MILDLY FOUL LANGUAGE.

"You have any idea how frustrating this is, Murphy?"

"I'm starting to get a clearer picture, chief." Simon smirks a little, and swallows hard, "the larger the vein on the side of your forehead gets."

The chief just sighs, looks at Simon with puzzlement, and crosses his arms again. His gaze changes from Simon to Bruce, then back to the somewhat nervous, one-eyed detective.

"I'll break it down a little more for you fellas." The chief begins talking in his daddy-knows-best voice, and throws a thick manilla folder down on his desk. "I get this report this morning about a victim discovered last night, and what this killer did to this guy looks so eerily similar to all that S*** that whats-his-name did when he was copycatting the killer you were following, Murphy." He begins to look confused as Simon's eye widens, "or, is the guy we didn't find the copycat. I can't keep all this straight myself, and I'm the d*** chief of this bureau." The chief leans on the front of his desk, picks up his handgun from the top of his desk and fingering it with his trigger hand, signals to Simon to close the blinds, which he does, and faces Bruce, who's snaps back to attention from checking out Melinda, the detective many in the department gingerly call the hottest crime-fighter in Petrina. When he sees that the gun has gotten Bruce's attention, he puts it back on his desk.

"Do you remember, Brucie boy, when you lost your finger paying homage to that guy, Larry Gardini, while off duty, might I add." He says something demeaning under his breath and with such gruff that neither detective can understand him and continues. The two look at each other with puzzled faces. "And you came to me for help because the bureau you were in was going to transfer you to where was it…again…?…my mind's blurry from all the drugs I'm not doing." He snaps his finger at Simon without breaking his stare on Bruce.

"Waterton, chief."

"WATERTON! That's right! No room to move up. Career cops 'aplenty in Waterton and not a hard crime happening as far as the eye can see!"

"That's a good city motto, chief." Simon hardly states while fingering the blinds and briefly looking out the office window.

The chief quickly points to Simon. "You're d*** right it is, champ." He crosses his arms and faces Bruce again. "Do you remember all the S*** I was saying before we got off on that awful tangent about that S***hole town down the road?" Bruce nods. "Good. So here's my problem. I took you in ooo…How many years ago?" Simon begins responding like he did for the first question, but the chief silences him with two fingers and low eyebrows, "I got this, buddy."

"Four years ago I took you on and all you had to do was catch bad guys who kill people, and keep an eye on our man, Simon, here, and from my estimations, you've done a piss-poor job at both, but 

I pay you a high salary because you continue to have potential. So now, I have a murder case that I need both of you on, but I have dumb-a$$ number one here," he points to Simon, "who can't see any homicide case clearly because his head's so far up the a$$ of a serial killer--who may either be in jail already or dead." Almost imitating a robot, the chief changes his pointing from one to the other, "and dumb-a$$ number two here, who can't do the job he should be doing anyways, that is," he begins imitating himself from earlier, "…Catching the bad guys and keeping an eye on his partner, blah blah blah," he begins a shooing motion with his hands. "Quit wasting my time, fellas. I got a killer to catch."

At this, Simon's intrigue about the case turns to anger and childlike disappointment, and he can't help himself from getting extremely close to the chief, "We can't be on this one, chief?!?" 

"Not until you clear your head."

"I think that's a brilliant call, skip."

"Shut the h*** up, Bruce. We need this, chief..." Simon pauses and looks frantically around the office,"I need this!"

"It really chaps my ass that I can't put my best guys for this case on this case, but you two are too much of a liability lately to me and the Bureau."

"You boys need to show me that you can handle the big cases again, and until you do, I'm going to give you the smaller ones." he throws a different, much thinner, manilla folder down on the desk, "Like Rebecca Frost, age 22, killed this morning. Looks pretty cut-and-dry." The cheif's cell starts ringing, he looks at it, and his face turns dark as he mutters, eyes still on the phone, to the two detectives, one pleased and one angry. "Now take the folder" he begins raising his voice "and GET the H*** out of my office."

Bruce grabs the folder and the men exit his office. The chief answers his phone "Hi, honey…I told you not to bother me at work…" and quickly slams the heavy metal door in their faces as they stand in the doorway.

The Cracked Mirror (CWO - Ep. 1)

It was a Raymond Chandler kind of evening where you really thought the body on the stairs could be your's. Milo Denton didn't care. He sat on the toilet fingering the bandages on his face and sipped from a whiskey bottle, an inexpensive copper liquid that really wasn't the good expensive gold kind. He wanted to strip the mummy-like wrappings off his face to determine if what was underneath, even resembled what used to be his.  The only thing Milo certainly knew wasn't his was, Petrina City and how the rain hitting the windows  was God mocking the world with something that was certainly not tears.

Everything the past three decades had been a fluorescent film-strip motion, lightning fueled haze; from being boiled hard in one of the cities toughest neighborhoods to working up in the ranks of the police force (the press loved him, even called him "Dangerous Denton") only to be disgraced by a minor affair with the wrong girl. Forced to work as a sleazy PI catching husbands and wives cheating on each other (sometimes with one another in crazy costumed get-ups) yet not really giving them accurate information to retain the "privilege of  being on their payroll with promise of "an explosive oncoming revelation".

Then the real explosion came. The opening of the envelope and then the voice of the fire.

He remembered his hands shaking for the anonymous envelope, certain that it was a check from one of his well known and distinguished clients. He needed the alcohol to keep the tremors at bay to hold the real suffering that was dealt his brain from the withdrawal of what made him smarter and stronger from the rest of the members on the force (then again, wasn't everyone on it?). FG-5 didn't just arouse paranoia and anger but kept stuck in a particular moment in time with no place to go and that was a place , he needed to steer clear of, no matter how fast he drowned his brain cells in bottled hilly-billy dishwater, acid water with a tinge of honey bought at the Taylor and Tyler Drug Store across the street.

He didn't care about the reason this was done to him.  The scars bothered him. He was perfectly content to die in disgrace a slow miserable of death of loneliness and substance abuse, taking pictures of  random prostitute's and john's rear-ends until the wrong man or woman put a syphilis into his brain.

Venereal disease wasn't going to be serving his warrant for death in the evening, tonight it was going to be pure ugliness and indignity. So what, if it was a little rushed, he never had to pay for tail with the looks of a slum-dog archangel, why start now?

No point to living if you can't get what nature entitled you to get for free.

Another drink. The final drink. From a crystal shot glass. Hand carved bumps put in by child laborers from wherever. Reminder of the girl that got away or rather the girl that did away. The drink courses a fiery river through vessels and arteries and the wicked montage goes clockwork with the opening of the yellow envelope sealed with a kiss, a white burning,  bright lights, scalpel hitting bone, he doesn't know what was done or what actually ravaged his flesh. All he knows, is "doctors cut my face" and he woke up with Bonnie, the motherly secretary sitting next to his bed weeping and apologizing for something she couldn't prevent.

He pretended that after this weekend of recovery, it would be "business as usual", he dismissed Bonnie after accepting her home-made meals sitting in his fridge. He bought a crate of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes to last him the weekend. Then decided just to meditate on existence, while sitting on the toilet with a bottle of whiskey and  a gun on top of the sink.

The medicine cabinet has seemingly been raided, all that remains is shaving supplies and anti-ich cream. Milo closes the cabinet and looks in the mirror. Cracked like a spider web, like the web of lies his police career was mostly based on. Time to die with the greatest indignity: pants at the ankles, ass on a toilet with a bottle of bottom-shelf whiskey in hand, with an unwrapped face resembling a surrealistic pus filled meat-sculpture done by the Devil himself  blown apart by a bullet in the mouth.

Hammer cocked. Set it down. Eyes shut. Unravel. Gun in mouth. Eyes open.

Gun in the sink. Take a swig from the bottle. Lean in that mirror. Touch the Grecian hawkish features and fish-hook half smile.

Milo "This isn't my face." It's a whisper and an empty prayer for wanting that suicide even more.

Murder Most Fowl (JWK - Ep. 1)

Are you…kidding me? Anna Porter stood just inside the chicken coop, her eyes and mouth wide open. On a second level nest Margarite, a five-time blue ribbon prize winning black Cochin, stared back, her curvy drumsticks spread in a full split like she had jumped straight up and landed, splay-legged. Daniels is going to effin kill me.

She walked back to her car and speed dialed the office. Then, in a flash of brilliance, she hung up and dialed another number.

“Chuck! Good lord, you’re never going to... Daniels sent me to the farmhouse to feed his chickens and Margarite is dead! Just dead! …I don’t know, but it’s weird like – I don’t know! …He’s going to murder me and then fire me and then murder me…no... Oh, would you? And maybe a little wooden cross? I’ll suggest a nice funeral, maybe a pot luck…Oh you’re the best!” Anna hung up and redialed the office number.

“Sharon, hey, it’s me. Could you put me through to the boss?” Anna brought her hand up to her forehead, pushing her hair back. “Hey, hi, so I came to feed them and I only saw two out in the yard so I checked the coop and, I’m so sorry, but Margarite is dead.” She let a little silence grow, letting the news sink in. “But listen, Chuck has offered to build a nice chicken-sized coffin and I thought maybe the office could have a potluck or something in Margarite’s honor. How does that sound?”

Daniels cleared his throat. “That’s very kind of you, Anna, but I think you should just toss her out.”

“What?”

“There are some grocery bags in the kitchen and the garbage barrel is in the garage. Use the black one with the lid.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. And I meant to tell you earlier, but you don’t need to come back in today. I’ve got a dentist appointment, so,” his voice trailed, like it did whenever he became distracted by his computer screen.

“OK. All right. Don’t you worry. It’ll be all taken care of for—”

“Great, thanks, kid.” Her boss hung up.

Anna found the bags in the kitchen and carefully selected two without holes in the bottoms. Thank-You! was printed in big loopy script on both sides. She fit one inside the other, lining up the words and smoothing the creases, then went back into the coop and gently slid Margarite into the bags. She pressed the bundle against her chest and pushed out the air before tying the handles into a neat bow. She carried Margarite like a chicken on a platter out into the bright sunlight and clean mountain air.

The two remaining chickens, Beatrix, an Appenzell Bearded Hen, and Duffy, a pretty little Dominique, followed her to the garage at a discreet distance. Anna laid the bundle on top of the garbage bags already in the bin and slowly closed the lid. She thought maybe she should say some words, but then thought better of it. What do you say to chickens about a chicken?

The three of them ate under a gnarly apple tree in front of Daniels’ wide wooden steps. After lunch, Anna leaned her head back against the trunk, trying to dislodge a piece of turkey with her tongue, but only managed to push it further under her gums. Regardless, she was content, comfortable, and warm. It was nice out here. Nice and calm and quiet, clean and clear.

About two and a half hours west from this idyllic little farmscape lay Petrina City. There, bikes zoomed between tightly jammed cars and exhaust made up thirty percent of the atmosphere. Petrina City. More like Putrid City. Petrified City. Fetrina City. Anna smirked. Ah, the cleverness of me. What was that from? Oz? Alice?…whatever. She stood and brushed away the crumbs. Beatrix and Duffy followed her to her car and watched it with bright little eyes as it headed back to the city. 

Anna climbed the three landings to her apartment, frustrated about being bogged down in traffic and irritated at the asshole who double parked outside. Even with half a day off she only ended up with her key in the lock thirty minutes earlier than usual. But half an hour early is still early and how fortunate for Mikey Schultz, since it’s his murder Anna’s early entry interrupts.

Once Saved, Always Saved (DG - Ep. 1)

WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SOME MILDLY FOUL LANGUAGE.

    "Earlier a woman was found dead in her apartment near the intersection of 45th and Alvin st. Police have refused to release further details, including the woman's identity," Simon leans in to turn up the radio on the center console. Bruce, who's driving, turns the radio off as soon as Simon's hand is clear.

     "When are you going to let this s*** go, anyways?" Bruce asks Simon as they cruise down 65th avenue in their beat-up black 1980s Grand Am.

     "I'll let it go when I catch the guy--"

     "--or guys, you don't know if there's just one or what, the media's been blastin' that damn case of yers for years now, there hasn't been a related homicide in years, and the skip took you off the damn thing so you could get your head straight and move on." Bruce lights a smoke and takes a long cool drag as he cranks the window down, letting in the crisp autumn air.

     "But the connections--"

     "--SCREW THE CONNECTIONS!" Bruce exclaims, now swerving the car the side of the busy two-lane bridge, and stops the car completely, cars behind them honking, and drivers yelling. Bruce turns to Simon and grabs the sides of his face with his rough hairy hands (one missing an index finger), looking straight into Simon's working eye. His voice diminishes to a whisper, "You need to move on, Buddy." 

     Simon, whose one eye is quickly becoming blood-shot, shakes his pale hand down to his pocket to grab a pill, still looking into Bruce's eyes, and pops it into his mouth. Cars line up behind the two detectives, who are quite busy working out their crisis, and a man in the car directly behind them gets out as if to fight the two. Bruce instantly lets go of his partners face with one hand, reaches into his overcoat, pulls out his badge, and holds it out the window without looking. The man backs up slowly and gets back into his car as Bruce returns his hand to Simon's face.

     He raises his voice a little. "You need to move on." both men swallow loudly, almost in unison. "It's bad enough you've been putting that poison into your body for more years than you can remember," Bruce says matter-of-factly, speaking slowly as if talking to a dope fiend, "but what's worse is that you've been following some criminal's stench for nearly a decade now and haven't come up with S***."

     "You're right." Simon attempts to concede a little, as Bruce lets go, and puts the car in "But how do you explain the feeling I've had that someone's watching me?--"

     "--paranoia, pop a few more ah' 'dem pills, pal."

     "And the messages left on my car sometimes?"

     "Simon," Bruce begins laughing a little. "You're a detective in Petrina City, you're bound to have thugs, hookers--hell, I don't know, even eligible single females--writing you notes and putting them on our car." His laugh becomes a steady arrogant smirk, "and do you remember when you swore that they were written in blood and we took 'em to the lab and they abruptly put the kibosh on that nonsense, do you remember that?" Simon nods and Bruce continues.

     "All I'm saying is that in this city, notes and feelings don't mean S*** to anyone with any sort of power." Bruce looks at his phone and back at Simon before looking back to the road, downtown Petrina ahead. "Now get your head in the game, we got a meeting with the skip, and you know how I like to make the best impression." He begins to smirk again. "Plus, he said its important, so maybe its a promotion for me and a demotion for you!" He looks to Simon for re-assurance, but only receives a tremendous lack of amusement, "Cheer up cupcake, I'm sure you're rival, or villain, or whatever you call him is dead in a gutter by now. And even if not, you're one damn fine detective," he changes expressions to mimic a damsel in distress, "so I'm sure you'll figure somethin' out."

     "Let's just get to the station," says Simon, now crossing his arms and leaning back, as if forfeiting the conversation, "we're late as it is."

     Bruce cups his hand over his mouth and tries to sound like Darth Vader, futilely attempting to get a smile from Simon "As you wish, my lord."

     As Simon and Bruce pull into the parking garage at the downtown police station, Bruce turns to Simon and says, "seriously, my one-eyed friend," while reaching over to ruffle Simon's hair as Simon swats his hand away. "Don't blow it in this meeting like you have been lately. This is the homicide bureau chief, buddy,--homicide, the biggest bureau in the city--and although you may know him well--sordid past taken into account, yadda yadda yadda--I was transferred in no more than, what, four years ago now?" He begins to sound sarcastic, and Simon rolls his eye, "And why was it again that I got assigned to this bureau again? You remember, buddy?" He raises his voice, "to keep an eye ON YOU!"

     Simon looks at Bruce with a scornful, resentful, and bitter expression as they find a spot, get out of the car and tread up the cement stairway corridor to the 5th floor and a single metal door with the city's police logo, the words "Petrina City Bureau of Homicide" arched over the logo, and the words "Once saved, always saved" spray-painted under the logo. A sick joke, no doubt, but no one has ever known who sprayed the motto on the door or why.

     They open the door, go through the metal detector--not a machine, in fact, but a semi-retired gumshoe named Emilio with a metal-detecting wand and a box of donuts that seems to refill itself every two hours. He says "you know the drill, fellas" every time any one enters, without fail. 

     "We most certainly do." Simon says, somewhat sarcastically, as they take their handguns out, place them on a large metal tray, and raise their hands to make their bodies into lower-case tees.

     Once through inspection, the men walk to their spot, two small desks facing each other at the far corner of the large, hanger-style corridor, Simon always taking his sweet time to say "hello" when walking by the receptionist's desk near main the entrance. They put their coats down on their chairs, and Bruce tightens his tie as Simon quickly checks his email on his laptop. 

     "I got another email from that lead…?" he exclaims, accidentally questioning his own statement halfway through, as his eye widens. Suddenly Bruce slams his laptop shut, startling Simon, and causing him to suddenly reach down to his side, not for a gun but for a pill. "I have to go to the bathroom."

     Bruce becomes smug. "Oh, why don't you just take it here and save us the time. Everyone here knows you do FG-5--hell, half the force does it--and even if someone questions you do what everyone else does. Say its for heartburn, or kidney stones, or anxiety, which it sort of is in a way" Simon quickly pops the pill, smells a half-empty (or half-full) cup from his desk with water in it, shrugs, uses it to wash down the pill, tightens his tie a little, and turns confidently to Bruce.

     "Alright, Brucie. I get it. Let's go see what the chief wants."

     "That's more like it!"As they walk closer to the chief's office, which literally a very large sectioned-off cubical in the center of the corridor with large windows on all its walls (part of internal affairs's attempt at transparency), usually covered with blinds installed by the chief himself, many of the other detectives look up from their desks or briefly pause their conversations to look at the two, before going back to their business. 

     This doesn't bother either of them, until Simon looks at his wristwatch and exclaims, "Damn! We're late!"

     "Whatever, bud, we'll be fine."

     "No, we're like really late. about a half hour."

     Their faces seise to be casual and quickly turn to troubled excitement as they begin to power-walk to the center office, blinds now open on the window facing them, and the chief--a darker, burley man who looks like he watched Gangs of New York too many times--is standing in the window, arms crossed, staring down the two detectives. He breaks his crossed arms stance to powerfully point at the two with one hand. They put their tails between their legs and knock on his door.

     "Come in, you two." Bruce slowly turns the doorknob. "We need to talk."