The Alleyway (Skid – GTT character sketch)

Skid stood in the mouth of the alley that ran behind the Westminster church.  His languid gaze casually strolled both ways, trying to pierce the damp fog that shrouded the London nightlife around him. He couldn’t see any flatfoots patrolling the area, and if he couldn’t see them then they couldn’t see him.

A hooker quickly walked past him, wrapped in a thick fur coat with her shoulders slumped, giving the impression that she was ragged and beaten, and not caring enough to show her wares on this cold night.

Her jaded and tired eyes quickly looked him up and down – sizing him up as she passed.  But she saw only a fourteen-year-old street kid wearing torn jeans, a ripped shirt, and a frayed gray trench.  He was definitely not John material, at least not for a few more years.  Then she looked back to the pavement before her feet, not wanting to stare too long – afraid of baiting him into attacking her.

He thought about rolling her for a moment, but shrugged the idea off.  Juicing whores always pissed off the pimps and they were real trouble.  Those guys where colder than ice and they would as soon slit your throat as look at you.  Besides, she had obviously been at her job for far too long and was loosing what looks she may have once had. The hag probably wouldn’t have much dough on her anyway.

Ugly whores were always fairly broke – but they stayed alive because there was always some schmuck who couldn’t afford to buy anything better.  Once she was a bit further down the block he reached into the depths of his faded and beaten trench pulling out two cans of stolen spray paint.  One was black and the other red.  Now: to do the job that he was really here to do.  He grinned and turned into the alley.

The Alleyway was dank and smelly.  The fog was dampening everything there, and as a result the fine layer of dew was covering the trash.  The added moistness only made the trash rot – which added to the putrid stench.  Skid grimaced and tried to only breathe through his mouth.

As thoughts ran through his head he began to get a bit giddy from the adrenaline rush – which made it easier to ignore the fetid smell.  Tagging the house of God.  There was no act deemed greater in Skid’s skewed reality.

Skid hated God, and his hatred coursed and flowed in his veins with a dark passion love could never know.  He had grown up mostly in orphanages and catholic charity boarding schools.  His parents hadn’t wanted him, so had given him up – and he hated them too for not loving him.

But the lord of mankind held a special place in Skid’s blackened heart… But the way he figured it his heart was no worse than anyone else’s.  After all: look at all the messed up thing people do to each other every day.  But God he definitely hated most of all.  It was hatred so deep even Lucifer Morningstar would envy it and place it on display for all in Hell to see.  God had hurt him more than every other.  God had given him every piece of pain in his life.  Every shard of Skid’s shattered soul, every wasted tear, shed only to mingle with his own blood, was God’s responsibility.

Throughout his entire childhood the nuns had all beaten him for reasons he couldn’t understand.  Three of the priests had raped him and then, feeling guilty over the act, had him beaten for being the temptation that led them to sin.  He remembered the faces of all the nuns and priests.  In fact, he remembered with a perfect clarity every single face that had ever caused him pain over the course of his brief life.

Someday he would… he would get even.  Someday he would do much worse to them than they had to him.  After all, was he not taught that what you cast unto waters you receive tenfold?  He would have his revenge.  And right now he was starting it.  He was going to tag this church with his name.  He was going to make this house his spiritual property and take it away from a useless God… and he would do it to every church in London.

He quickly scanned the alley.  It was filled by cardboard fantasies of homes never had and visions of a soulless future.  It was obvious that homeless often tried to camp here but were booted out by the coppers.  Right now the only life sharing this space with Skid was a homeless old man, dirty and pale, asleep under a pile of newspapers.  Skid walked up to him and planted his steel tipped toe right into the old geezer’s ribs.

“Oi, grandfather.  Shove off!”  Just to make sure his point was gotten he planted another kick into the man’s midsection.  Much to Skid’s surprise the old man didn’t budge.  He didn’t even groan at the force of the kick.

Skid was young – he knew that he didn’t have much muscle –but his life had made him tough.  He knew how to throw his entire weight into a kick so he would break bones – a trick he learned quickly so that whomever he was fighting with would not be getting back up.  Skid looked again at the man, this time much more closely, and realized that his chest wasn’t moving.  Well, the skagger was stone cold dead.  What d-ya’ know, it was turning out to be Skid’s lucky night.  He could roll the body and at least come away with a decent pair of boots.  If he were really lucky the old-timer would have a half-consumed bottle of booze.

Skid knelt next to the man and started pulling the newspapers off.  One of the headlines, briefly glimpsed, amused him.  It read “London’s Abused Homeless Population: Death Rate Up By Twenty Percent.”

Sure enough the man was clutching something to his chest.  He began to pry at the man’s cold stiff fingers, eager to see what prize tonight’s treasure hunt would reveal.  But the corpse’s fingers – locked as tightly as they were – wouldn’t budge despite Skid’s best efforts.  Skid braced himself and yanked with all of his fourteen-year-olds strength, not caring if he ripped the guy’s hand off.  He wanted whatever it was the old man had valued so dearly.  He wanted it very badly.  And finally the death embrace of the old man’s hands broke – without tearing off any body parts.

Skid looked in awe at what he saw revealed.  The old fart had been hiding a fragging sword under his trench.  The blade was some type of blue gray metal and it looked sharp and really old.  The hilt was leather wrapped, and there was some writing etched into it in a language Skid didn’t even recognize.  It looked vaguely like Sumerian, or at least what Skid vaguely remember Sumerian looking like from the ancient history course he had been in right before he ran away last time.  He couldn’t even begin to read the fragging letters.  Talk about luck! This was an awesome find – hell, this was probably his best find ever.

Skid’s greedy little eyes lighted up – he should be able to pull at least fifty or sixty pounds out of this find at the right place – and that was a whole lot of money to someone like him.  He reverentially reached down and let his fingers wrap around the hilt.  It was cold to the touch and seemed to slightly vibrate almost like a heartbeat.  The old man’s eyes fluttered open and his hand shot out faster than lightning and seized Skid’s lapel.  Skid jerked back in surprise, and the fingers of his free hand tore at the old man’s fist.  Again Skid found that he couldn’t break the bum’s grip.

“Let go of me you old asshole!  I’ll cut your hand off and fucking kill you if you don’t let go of me!”  Skid was panicking – this guy should be a corpse, not alive and stronger than Skid – but he remembered enough to not shout.  Never do anything to attract the attention of the coppers.

The old man’s voice sounded like the creaking of an ancient door, rusty and feeble but with faint hints of golden times that were so much greater.  “Listen to me…  please…  please… Oh gods…  the caves… I remember them so very well.  You were so young… so innocent… so naïve and trusting… So simple – and yet you were so beautiful.”

Cloudy, dull eyes, which should have been blind, drifted to Skid’s hand and locked their feeble gaze onto the sword.  “Please… You can have the sword; just listen to my story.  I have to tell my story before it passes from this world.  Please.”

Greed instantly overcame Skid’s panic, calming him.  His hands stopped shaking and he stopped fighting the iron grip holding him down.  “All right.  You got three minutes.  Then I got work ta do.”  Fifty pounds to listen to some dying old man rant for a few minutes…  hell; Skid could be generous and do him a favor.  This was easily earned money for him, so why not.  Besides, he was pretty sure he couldn’t break away from the hand gripping his lapel, and he didn’t want to loose his jacket.

The old man imperceptibly nodded his acknowledgement.  Skid had accepted the terms so a bargain was struck.

“Thank you.  You do honor to the needs of a dying old man.”  Came his feeble voice.  “How well I remember it all – looking at you humans in your youth.  You were so weak and helpless…  But you had such strong minds, willing to believe with a force even we did not posses.  We decided to help you to rise above the caves – to nourish your type and give the gift of enlightenment.  We saw a way to gain for ourselves a much longer life span by insuring the continuance of your race.  By giving you something to focus that powerful belief on.  Ah…” The man’s voice sounded pained.  “How brightly the Morningstar shone for your sake.  How brightly…  for it was his idea to help you – and his idea how as well.”

Skid didn’t really understand what the hells this guy was talking about and finally realized that the guy was seriously deranged – a total fucking loony.  He must think he was some alien or something.  But then again a lot of the old farts eeking out a pitiful existence on the foggy streets of London were mostly delusional anyway.  Skid shifted his weight to make himself little more comfortable and waited for the story to continue.

The old man drew a ragged breath then continued.  “First came the paintings…  such bright and vivid pictures… and how wondrously you sang our praises for us.  But how very quickly you became clever too…”

Skid saw a tear forming in the old man’s eye.  “Why?  Why?  You could have given us forever…  and we would have given you everything you wanted…  We would have gifted you everything you could ever hope for.  Life immortal and every other desire your hearts had ever dreamed of…”

Skid was beginning to feel the overwhelming pressures of panic again.  What if this crazy wouldn’t let go?  What if he died and rigor mortis set in?  He’d have to cut his fragging jacket and man it was too cold out to rip up his jacket.  But again greed showed its ugly head and he managed to settle back down – after all the money made would more than pay for Skid’s troubles.  He’d go ahead honor the rest of the three minutes.  After all, there is a shifty type of honor amongst thieves and criminals… and by Skid’s reasoning anyone the cops hassled was a criminal – and the cops hassled the homeless more than anyone else.

The old man seemed to realize that whatever internal struggle Skid had been facing was finished.  Sighing, he continued.  “But you are all fickle.  Even more so than us…  And you had no idea what it was that you actually wanted.  You’ve never known your own hearts.  Oh, Morningstar I loved you so.  You were brighter than any of us…  brighter than all of us combined.  Why did you have to die out?  Oh why did you have to leave us?  We needed you…  Why did I have to witness you fall to a mere human?”

The man bit back a sob.  He seemed to be talking to someone out of the past, someone only he could see.  “You taught them to write, to read, to think.  And they killed you.  We guided you through your lives, your so short but so bright lives…  And in the end you betrayed even us…  We gave you the gift of immortality, a way to live after even death…  to be a part of the universe.  And you threw it away.”

Sorrow deeper than any Skid had known passed across the old man’s face  “All we ever asked was your praise and love – in such a way that we could find strength and will in it.  We guided your kings and princes.  We led those whose love flowed most freely to the greatest victories.  We allowed them to lead other men and conquer nations.  They were allowed to inspire the hearts of thousands.  What a small price to pay…  only a year or two from each life.”

Skid felt Goosebumps crawling up the back of his spine.  The last thing this guy had said…  hadn’t life spans been going up over the last few centuries?  This guy was really starting to creep him out.  He didn’t – and couldn’t – really understand what the old man was saying.  But deep down, in the tarnished soul that Skid held in nothing but contempt, the words resonated with truth – and that scared Skid even more than when the old priests had told him about the little ‘games’ they would be playing.  These words scared Skid more than anything ever had.

Numbness spread throughout his brain but he heard his own voice quietly echoing in the space between them.  “But what changed it all?”  Some deep part of Skid’s brain seemed to be comprehending the story being told to him.

A deep chuckle came from the old man’s throat.  He was seeing some grander joke in Skid’s words, but still retaining his iron grip on Skid’s collar.  “One of yours did it.  He shone brightly, that one did.  He had the fire and passion to rival any of us – with a mind to match.  He almost burned as brightly as the Morningstar himself…  But young Jeshua did not understand the depths of our love or the tenderness of our compassion.  He told me once that he felt like a slave – destined to live by the decree of another.  He could not understand the gift we gave both him and you…  We tried to teach him the ways of the universe – but the dedication we showed was invisible to him.”

The old man stopped talking and began to cough.  The fit seized him and racked his entire body, rattling deeply in his lungs, but he never released his vice-like grip.  The old man obviously only had a few moments left to live.  Skid was so lost in the man’s words he didn’t even think to try breaking free and didn’t realize that the three minutes had elapsed.

Once the coughing fit subsided the old man hungrily sucked air into his lungs and then continued with his confusing story.  “So he turned against us.  He betrayed the ones who had loved him so – and we had shown him a love greater than any of you ever has or ever will know.  He left us… and once he had left he used the fire and beauty of his vision to attempt to lead our children against us.  The monks called him the great teacher and gifted him the title of Christos.  So he led them and he taught them his warped version of the truth inherent in us…  He used the very concept that we had created to benefit you – the greatest of beings who watched over all – against us.  He tried to turn and warp that worship to himself, or at least away from us, to reap the rewards of ages of our workings and take it away from those that loved you all so much.  He tried to destroy us to free humanity and never realized that so doing would eventually destroy humanity as well.”

The man’s voice wavered with sorrow and regret.  “Oh that our most beloved son would turn against us so…  The pain it caused within us all – that such beauty and tranquility in one of you could turn to such hatred and loathing upon us.  It was a heartbreaking time for us…  We were all so unsure of what our course of action should have been…  You see, we wanted so badly to save him, but in the end we simply couldn’t.”

“We all mourned so much for him, but he left us no choice – If we were to survive we had to take his essence.  It had to be done, and publicly, to stop him and his followers.  It was necessary to stop him before it went too far… before he could succeed.  We mourned so at doing this terrible deed, but should he have triumphed in usurping us it would have meant all of our deaths.”

The old man’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.  “But In the actions we took we only managed to sow the seeds of our own downfall.  The Morningstar tried to save us all – he foresaw what none of us could have…  He assumed our beloved son’s form three days after his death – thinking to spread a new gospel through our dead son’s disciples.”

A chill ran through Skid’s body.  He was finally beginning to understand…  and with his dawning comprehension a wave of nausea slid over him.  His hushed voice came out barely audible and filled with a dread chill.  He feared what the answer to his next question would be.  “And what did the Morningstar tell the disciples… what did he tell them when he came back as Jeshua?”

The old man coughed for a moment more then refocused on Skid.  “He sacrificed himself in the attempt to save the rest of us.  That was what his words brought.  How noble he was…  but how naïve – although I suppose we all were back then.  He named himself as the true evil, as the counterpart to the one we had created, hoping that fear of evil would get humanity to love the rest of us that much more…  he fed himself only hatred and disgust.  It was such a foolish sacrifice.  How twisted and dimmed he became before he… before he finally died.  He was only the dimmest of shadows compared to the intensity with which he used to shine.  Even so, with corruption and hatred eating at the very essence of his being, only I amongst my kind actually outlived him.”

Tears were now running unfettered down the ancient’s face.  “His last attempt at survival spawned such evil…  He used the visage he assumed to twist the minds of millions and plunge the world into one of its darkest ages… to kill millions upon millions more… and he turned against the ones who were our first children.  Plunging the entire world into war was not enough for him.  He created camps of slaughter, trying to reap as much hatred, fear, and death as he could.  In death and corruption he hoped to find the power he lost when he gave up the love of your kind to try to save the rest of us.  And that much death is what ended up killing him.  It almost finished me too – and I was half the world away, hiding from it all.  Despite my hiding it would have killed me too, had it not been for my particular aspect…  Throughout the ages I have become used to the mass death of your kind.  It is why I have found the strength to continue as long as I have.”

Yet another coughing fit racked the man’s body and Skid gazed down upon him.  The ancient one was standing one the threshold of death’s door.  The puzzle pieces of what he was saying were finally clicking together and reaching the greatest depths of Skid’s mind and soul – and something that was not a part of him was burning deeply inside of him.  Skid felt the beginnings of a sickening vertigo – a sense of loss that was coming from him – and was slowly seeping into the depths of his soul.

Hatred and rage boiled inside his twisted heart and they were slowly worming their way through his being and into his every level of consciousness.  His mind was swimming and his thoughts were becoming numb – forlorn with knowledge unbearable by even the strongest man.  He was slowly understanding that his greatest enemy did not exist in a way which he could wreak his vengeance.

The old man looked up through fading eyes – greed and recognition shone from behind those eyes.  He began the final stretch of his tale.

“The Morningstar’s great plan failed.  None of us could see past the need for love… the need for essence.  It burned in us and consumed us.  In a way it twisted us all.  We created an image that humanity could love, and stole the love for ourselves by placing us as His seconds.  But the only one of you to ever shine like one of us undid everything.  For he had found such a burning hatred for our kind that it easily bested all of our love.  But a few of us learned to live on the hatred instead, forsaking love, even though it only twisted and blackened us.  We did it – though it drove most of those who learned how insane.  The need for survival was far too great.  And then the need for vengeance became to strong to forsake by dying off…”

The old man burned with an inner rage of his own and his words came out like fire, forever searing themselves into Skid’s head.

“I curse you and your kind.  We loved you.  For aeons we loved you.  And you killed the God we made for you… you killed Him.  And then you fed us nothing but hate and in the end you took even that away leaving us to die… we shall have our revenge…”

And Skid snapped.

Years of hatred and fear – years of being the underdog, forced into action by the whims of others – welled up in his spiteful little mind and took over.  Ripping his jacket free he stood up, towering above the dying old man, sword raised high above his head.

The old man looked up with mutual hatred shining in his eyes and a smile crossed his face.  “You’ve spent the last two thousand years killing us off and now I am the last.  But I will survive… In one of you if I must!”

Spittle flew from his mouth as he rushed to get his last words out.  “You alone still hate.  Why?  What do you live on?  I must know.”

His eyes locked with Skids but found only emptiness.

And Skid brought the sword down as hard as he could.  Every muscle in his young body focused into that single stroke of the sword.  There was a sickening crunch as the sword sliced through skin and crushed the ribs in its way.  Blood splattered over Skid and the wall he was going to tag.  The blood was gold and icy to the touch.  As it hit the wall frost formed around it.

Unseeing and unthinking Skid began to kick the body.  Over and over again he smashed his boot into the corpse while tears streamed down his cheeks.  Years of hatred, fear, and self-loathing had snapped his mind – and his innermost psychological defenses could not find a way to heal the fracturing.

Skid had walked into that alley to make the house of God his own.  But now all that stood in the alleyway was an empty husk slowly filling up with something else, kicking over and over again, the tears streaming down its face the last vestiges of its humanity.

And finally the body broke down.  There was no energy left to continue.  It slumped to its knees and started rocking back and forth.  He curled into a ball, sobbing and letting his frail human psyche try to rebirth itself.

But finally there was not even energy for that.  His body shut down and he slept.

Much later he woke.  It was still dark.  A faint smile played across his lips.  He stood up, tall and proud, lacking his usual slouch.  He hefted the sword and gazed thoughtfully at it.  A dim golden glow was barely visible in his pupils.  Suddenly the blade burst into a bright and warm flame.

His eyes wandered to the sky as he savored his newfound essence.  The sun was just peeking over the horizon, adding a rich red glow to the encompassing fog.

“I finally understand.  Your fear is so great you have only apathy to survive on.  Your race hides from its own passion…” He said in a voice that was not Skid’s.  The figure seemed to ponder this for a moment.  “Even Morningstar never foresaw this.  But I can survive with this.”

And the Archangel Uriel, flame of God, the angel of transformation, stretched his new body and strode into the foggy London morning to avenge the death of his kind.

David Carradine :(

Goodbye to an amazing actor, always with a fun roll.

This was an actor that was present in the cinema that I watched throughout my life till now. Everything from Kung Fu, to Deathrace… I will miss him.

Writing and wishing… the instant manuscript

Sometimes, I wish life was a little more like Harry Potter..  You know?

So that I could just tap a wan against my temple, say something like ‘Creatus Manuscriptus!”

and..  poof…   there it would be!

sigh.  Back to typing :p

Rick Haskins, Pt 2 of 2, GTT character sketch

And now the thrilling conclusion!!

Haskins grinned impishly.  “Yeah..  well..  I heard.  I had to swap a shift and break a few traffic laws to get to be the on call for this.   You know how much I love reading mystery books.”

Hayes chuckled.  Yeah, I do.  I’m not surprised you pulled favors for this.  So, you’re the lead.  Sorry, D.A. asked for me on it, I’ll try not to step on your toes.”

The grizzled Sergeant nodded.  “Don’t worry about it.  Lets just start with you bringing me up to speed on this mess.  The labtechs get anything off the DOA yet?”

Hayes glanced back.   “Nope.  It’s a forensic nightmare.  Carpets are waterlogged, but no foot prints.  No prints.  Nothing under the fingernails.  No hair…  just…  a blank scene.”

Haskins tugged at his moustache and thought for a second.  “But the room was so tightly sealed that you had to blow one of the doors off.  Hrmph.”  He looked Jack in the eye.  “Alright.  I’m ready.  Start at the beginning.”

Hayes reached up and rubbed his neck as he thought about where to start.  It had obviously been a long day for him.  “Alright.  First off, security company called in the DOA.  Mountains had his company set to call a friend in the DA’s office if his house triggered the ‘dead man’ code.  Which is why you got called last.’

“Dead Man’s code?”

Hayes nodded.  “Yeah.  You know those microchips in pets that have all their information on the?  Well, the DOA has one of those microchips too.   This entire house, all of his cars, and his offices are wired as receivers.  They detect motion, they start scanning.  They pick up on his microchip and they start biometrics scans, monitoring heartbeat, stuff like that.  So if he has an accident, or is under stress, or one of a thousand other little things, and the building he is in sends a specialized code to his security company.  They reported two heartbeats coming into this room, with the DOAs stopping at seven twenty two p.m., and the second one vanishing from this room about six minutes later.”

“Did the house track where the second one went?”

“No.  Rick, you don’t get it.  It vanished.  It didn’t leave.  Let me explain the security protocols, and Mountains’ particular brand of psychosis.  Maybe he watched his own movies too much, but he was paranoid as all hell.  Every room in everything he owns is set up with ‘dead man’s’ booby traps.  He was convinced that a demon from one of his early movies was hunting him.  I found out from the company that he paid them a lot of money make sure that only they, his butler, and he knew that juicy little tidbit.  Anyway, the fear of the demon made him design a very special setup.  Each room goes into instant lockdown if his heart stops.  Hydraulic driven bars through doors, etcetera, etcetera.”

Hayes briefly motioned to the door that had been removed with explosives.  “But the intention was to keep people out as well as in.  Can’t unseal it from either side.  He had a reason for this.  Sixty seconds after his heart stopped, if the biometrics didn’t come back on line, the room’s hermetically sealed air supply starts to pump vaporized Holy Water into the room until there is enough volume that every surface is covered and there’s a decent amount free floating.”

Haskins had to fight to choke down the laughter.  A picture was starting to form in his mind and he didn’t want to break it before it had time to finish coming together.  “So you mean to say that he wasn’t trying to trap a killer… he was trying to keep authorities out long enough for the house to kill a Demon?”

“Nailed it in one,” Jack sighed. “And you can forget the ‘throw the dagger from the door and run’ scenario because the room’s biometrics recorded the second heartbeat’s vanishing almost five minutes after the lockdown.  So, Rick… as you can see there’s no one here.  No dead Demon.  And a Dead man found in a perfectly locked room.”

Haskins nodded.  “This is gorgeous.  No footprints.  No fingerprints.  No hair.  Ha.  You’ll need a miracle to solve this.  Did you check the suits of armor?”

Hayes jerked a thumb at the closest suit of armor.  “Yeah.  No dice there for two reasons.  One, they’re all glued together and you can’t pull them apart.  Two, the security company says you’d need a heavy duty gel to make a heartbeat vanish.  And since none of the suits are dripping, it’s a safe bet they’re empty.  We did check for joint squeeze on them all also.”

Haskins leaned back against the wall and lost himself in thought.  Another Idea sparked.  “What about the secret passages in the house?”

Jack blinked.  “How the hell did you…  No, never mind.  Security and blueprints show five secret passages.  But none of them hook up to this room.”

“Didn’t think so, but I had to check.”

While Haskins kept reassembling the puzzle in his head, the rookie from downstairs walked into the room, brandishing a twenty dollar bill like it was a shield.  He held it out to Haskins.  “Sarge, you were right about the food in the kitchen.  At least its normalish down there though.  Up here its like walking through an x rated episode of Scooby Doo.”

Hayes raised a questioning eyebrow at Haskins as he snagged the twenty.  “Thanks, rooksticks.  It is, isn’t it.  Oh…”  Haskins realized his intuition had been right and started laughing.  The laugh picked up momentum until he was clutching at his sides and gasping for air.  He looked up through an ear to ear grin, while the other two men just stared at him, confused.

Sucking in his breath, he finally managed to clamp down on the laughter.  “Oh god, that’s rich.  Its right in front of you Jack, and you all missed it.  Let me make a guess at something here.  You’ve already checked in with his legal staff, and since he doesn’t have family, all his money is willed to various staff that work for him right?”

Hayes nodded.  “Yeah Rick…  But that doesn’t solve the murder; it just gives us a suspect list.”

“Actually, it does.  God, he got you guys good.  I may have to go back and watch his movies now, because this is just far too clever.”

Jack blinked in annoyance.  “Excuse me?”

“Think, Jack!  He was a master of suspense!  Stop look at the forensics.  Stop looking for the who done it.  Stop being a cop for a minute and think like a horror movie director.  You have to find the surprise twist if you want to figure this one out.  Get it yet?”

Hayes chewed his lip for a moment then shrugged.  “Sorry, no.  Explain please?”

“Ha.  Alright, here’s your first clue, Jack.  He concocted the whole demon story.  It was a trap – for you.  He wanted to box the police and the security company into a specific way of thinking just to get revenge on whoever killed him.  He knew this was coming, bet you anything you find death threats in a safe, or a desk, or something.  I think he even figured out who was coming for him.  So he made up this whole thing, and the killer is sitting in the room with us right now.  Don’t you get it?

“He set this up so that if the killer DID get to him, they’d have to go through their own personal hell, a horror movie of his devising, listening to us and praying to god that we wouldn’t figure it out.  And he set up the whole thing by making you think that he was having paranoid delusions; just to throw you off the scent of what’s really happening here.”

Again all Jack could do was blink and say “Excuse me?”

Haskins reached up and clamped a hand on Jack’s shoulder.  “Think it through.  Locked room.  No windows.  Sixty seconds till water is introduced to the room’s closed system.  Yet there are no footprints… which means that by the time the water settled onto the fabric – the killer was immobile.”

Hayes looked around.  “So someone is in this room with us, but dead?  How do you explain the heartbeat vanishing otherwise?”

Haskins glanced around.  “Easy.  The killer knew the security setup, otherwise he’d already be nabbed and in cuffs.  And the killer’s motive was money.  Otherwise why use the dagger off the plinth to kill him?  He made it look like a botched robbery.  You said a motive, but you missed one thing.  Only one person could have known about the will and the security setup.  There was one important fact missing from the killer’s knowledge.  Suits of armor are usually held together by a wireframe..  and all Mountains had to do to build the perfect prison was grind powdered glue onto the edges and joints of the suits of armor.”

Hayes’ eye lit up and he slowly nodded. “Oh lord that is devious.”

Sergeant Haskins nodded.  “It sure is.  The killer locked himself into his own prison.  As soon as the holy water was pumped into the room, all the suits of armor got glued together – and the glue doubled as the gel to hide the heartbeat!  The killer’s clever hiding spot becomes a prison, and he’s listening to us right now.  And since only one person could have known both those details about the will and security..  wha-la!  The damned Butler did it!  And you’ll find him as soon as you grab a blowtorch and start cutting up the suits of armor.”

Jack’s eyes went wide and the entire forensics team hurried over as the suit of armor next them coughed and said in an affected British accent.  “Um, burning me up won’t be necessary.  I give myself up.  But..  please..  hurry up?   He lined the inside of the suits of armor with the glue too and I’m having trouble breathing…

Rick Haskins, Pt 1, GTT Character Sketch

The Scooby Doo Who Done It

Featuring:  Sergeant Rick Haskins

Haskins carefully angled the cruiser between the other emergency and rescue vehicles.  He felt and heard, rather than saw, the shrubbery; just a moment too late to avoid flattening it.  With a grimace, he said “Screw it” and finished parking.

Carefully, so as not to scratch the ambulance parked next to him, he opened the door of the squad car and squeezed himself out.

Haskins had been a fairly heavily muscled youth, and age was beginning to make those muscles go just a little bit soft.  Combine that with a P.D. standard issue vest and he wasn’t left with much room to get out of the car, or through anywhere else that might be considered a narrow exit.

He paused for a moment and took stock of his surroundings.  The sun was setting low over the Rocky Mountains, with its lights bouncing off the cloud cover, creating wide, rich bands of yellows, oranges, and reds across the sky.  The mansion’s entry drive was crammed to the point of being overflowing with emergency vehicles.  Squad cars, SUVs, ambulances, and somehow even a fire truck were all packed like sardines in a tin into an area meant to hold two Rolls Royces and a butler.

He shook his head.  The whole scene reminded him of nothing so much as a big top circus.  Running his fingers through his closes cropped salt and pepper hair, he clutched his clipboard and strode forward into the mansion.  Inside the house the décor was trying so hard to be cultured and sophisticated that that it seemed more packed than the zoo of a parking lot outside.  Expensive paintings, tapestries, vases, ancient pottery pieces, and clashing modern art sculptures covered every wall and available surface in the entry room.

Haskins ignored the rookie cop standing by the door for a moment just to try to fully take in the room’s aggressively forced culture shock.

This just screams white trash with way too much money he mused while critically scanning the room good grief… I wonder how much he paid to have someone figure out how to make people this uncomfortable as they walked in.

Nodding to himself, he decided that the ambiance felt just right for a b rated horror movie director who’s movies had all become cult legend.  Just right.  Finally he glanced at the uniform by the door.  “So, anyone look in the kitchen yet by chance?”

The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.  They seemed to be getting so much younger these days. “No, sergeant, sorry.”

Haskins grinned.  This was way too easy, but the kid would learn with age.  “Twenty bucks says that you find… lets see… three foods in abundance.  Doritos, frozen dinners, and Hamburger helper.  But before you go check, could you point towards the scene?”

“Sure Sarge.  You’re on for the twenty; no way a posh guy like this liked that crap.  Corpse is upstairs in a gallery room.   Up those stairs, down the spooky hallway, take a left where it does a T.  You can’t miss it, they had to take the door of the room off with explosives.”  The kid grinned weakly and pointed to an ornately banister stairwell that curved up to the next floor.

Stroking his mustache, a lifetime ‘I’m thinking’ habit, he glanced once more around the room, looking at all the little details and things that we’re wrong with it, then he walked over to the stairwell and headed up.

If anything, the second floor was even more aggressive in its theme than downstairs had been.  The theme here was ‘creepy and cobwebby’.  All of the paintings up here were portraits, and they seemed to be of unknown and unremarkable people, all of whom seemed to have large thick foreheads and ugly features.  It reminded him of…  Oh, good grief.  So perfect! He shook his head and strode through the ghostly gallery, took a left, and walked up to the scene of the crime.

The entryway before Haskins was a wreck.  Twin steel doors had once filled it, but now one of them was propped open and the second was blackened around the hinges and handle, and was leaning against the wall next to the doorway.  Striding through to the room on the other side, his initial impression was of vastness.

The room was gigantic.  At least fifty feet long, and almost as wide.  Haskins’ faded blue eyes glittered as he took it all in… and a grin slowly started to spread across his face.  Suits of medieval armor stood to attention around the walls of the room, each sporting a different livery.  Numerous glass cases were placed between the armors, showcasing beautiful pieces of ancient weaponry, all apparently authentic with papers displayed under them.  Scottish claymores, folded katanas,  African tribal spears…  this whole room was a shrine to the ancient art of warfare.

And the cherry on top was a series of tapestries, hung off of support frames in a grid pattern around the room.  And finally, in the very center… a bloody corpse at the foot of an empty plinth trimmed with glowing fiber optic cables.

The cause of death was readily apparent, since most people couldn’t survive having a main gauche shoved through their heart.  Jonathan Mountains, horror icon, had been dressed in a red velvet smoking jacket, khaki pants, and blue fuzzy bunny slippers when he met his violent end.

Several figures, hard at work documenting every detail of the scene, surround the body in a halo of black-lights, finger-printing dust, cameras, and lab coats.  Two of them wore suits with I.D. badges flipped open and hanging from the breast pockets of their blazers.  Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was softly playing in the background on the house’s speaker system, and could almost see the crimelab team moving to the music as then hunted for clues.

One of the two detectives stood up and carefully took a couple of steps away from the corpse before straightening his jacket and sighing.  He walked up to Haskins.  “Hey Rick.  Sorry that you got the call so late.  You Glendale’s on call tonight?”

The detective was mid thirties or so, maybe ten years younger than Haskins.  He was tall, thin, and so clean cut that he looked more like a banker than like a cop.  Haskins shook his hand.  Jack Hayes might look out of place, but he was a damn good cop, and often got bounced around jurisdictions because he had a reputation for delivering air tight cases to the D.A.’s office on unsolvable crimes.

“You lucked out.  This is an honest to god Locked Room Mystery.  First real one I’ve ever heard of.”

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of “The Scooby Doo Who Done It!”

Random Thoughts: Our World

1)   The meaning of words does not always match the perception of words.   For instance:  The perception of the word philosophy.  Great thought, asking questions, trying to find the true nature of things.  Yet the meanings the word is built off..  wow…

Philo- Love
Sophis (Sophism) – Deceptive or philatious argumentation.

you do the math.
__________________________________________________________________________
2) When you find something you truly hate, look closely at it – for within it, you will find a reflection of something in yourself that you must learn to love.

___________________________________________________________________________
3) Time is an illusion.   Like a painting, Matter is the paint, energy the brush, space itself is the canvass..  and time is the way the mona lisa is ALWAYS looking RIGHT at you.

___________________________________________________________________________
4) People wear masks all the time..  cope.  Just learn to be thankful for the bits beneath the mask you do get to see – just as you should hope poeple are thankful for what you show them occasionally beneath your masks.

___________________________________________________________________________
5) Movies rot your brain.  Television rots your brain.  Age rots your brain.  Society rots your brain.  Its gonna happen, so enjoy the things you do!

___________________________________________________________________________
6) If you can’t beat the game, change the freaking rules.

___________________________________________________________________________
7) Beaurocracy is to be tolerated with patience, virue, a healthy respect, and a bulldozer once you are out of those other things.

___________________________________________________________________________
8) Faith is an amaing and beautifull thing – which each person should hold onto and cherish as thier own.   Religion is what happens when you mix greed for money into Faith.

___________________________________________________________________________
9)  Society and education are built on little lies to help us understand bigger truths.  Sometimes to learn you don’t have to study something new, but instead learn to look at the old with new eyes and thoughts.