Passing Through #7
The teens were right. Higgins knew many of the people in the theater as well. Many were married and those folks had split off to engage in sex with others. Every position and combination available happened under the lights of the silver screen.
Higgins stepped further inside and waited for his eyes to adjust. Once they did, he stripped off all his clothes. His initial worries at being interrupted so that he would be unable to solve the most cases ever came true. He was not going anywhere. Let people figure their stuff out he thought.
Tonight, he was not a cop; he was simply home.
***
Sandy sat against the wall of the Fast Stop and lit a cigarette.
Smoke poured out of her crooked nose. Bruises and abrasions covered her face.
She handed the cigarette to Dan, who occupied a part of the wall right next to her.
He sported a deep black eye, one that would not heal quickly. He nodded and took a drag.
“Thanks,” Dan said.
“Any idea when your friends vanished?” Sandy asked.
“Nah, I was too busy getting my ass kicked to notice,” Dan said.
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short. My kidney is killing me. I expect I’ll be pissing blood for a few days,” she said.
“Really? Gee, that’s nice of you to say,” Dan said. “I’m the runt, so they always pick on me.”
“Yeah, well, not anymore when you tell them how you beat up a cop.”
“After I get out of jail. Am I under arrest?”
“Hell no. I started it. I just wanted some respect out of you turds.”
“You got it, props.”
He handed the cigarette back. The kid from inside appeared and handed off two bags of frozen peas. Sirens roared in the distance. Sandy and Dan nodded thanks and applied the bags to different wounds, wincing as they did so.
“Strange night, huh?” the clerk asked. “What do you think is causing it?”
“Not a what. A who.”
Sandy remembered the weird conversation with her boss. Sandy figured it was worth checking in on their prison guest as soon as she could find her feet again. While she felt like absolute crap, she also felt more alive than she had in years.
***
The sheriff drove toward the station, lights flashing. She ignored all the street craziness while speeding toward the source of the town’s ills. Once there, she walked straight to Crevice. She ignored Dolores sitting in the adjacent holding cell. Dolores raced to the bars.
“What happened to you?” Dolores asked, eyeing the red liquid covering the sheriff’s body.
Lindsey ignored the woman and looked inside the other cell. The man’s clothes fit perfectly now, but only because the man had shrunk. He looked to be about five-foot-seven, and thin, lanky even. Petite, the sheriff thought.
He looked up at the sheriff. “Rough night?”
“You knew it would be,”
He nodded. His voice matched the image of the man. The voice was almost comically high, like a kid in puberty. The sheriff did not question the change. She simply unlocked the cell.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Crevice rose without question and joined the sheriff. She did not cuff him, only gestured to the front of the station. Crevice exited while Dolores sniffed the sheriff and backed away from the bars.
Lindsey led Crevice to her vehicle. The man stopped short, awaiting instructions. She came around and opened the front passenger door.
“Guess you better sit in the front seat,” she said.
He nodded and got in. No trouble at all since he was so petite. They drove in silence for some time before Lindsey spoke.
“How does it work?” she asked.
“You know those water purifiers? The charcoal filters?”
“Takes all the garbage out?”
“Exactly. Think of it like that. But I must keep moving. When I do, I scoop up all the garbage that a location harbors.”
“But when you stop? Like when a cop forces you to stop?”
“It’s time to change the filter. I’ve given up trying to explain to law enforcement in advance. Would you have believed me?”
“Never.”
“Exactly. If I am not moving or sleeping by sundown, it all comes out. Everything I scooped out of your town, and everything else cleansed from other towns along the way. I tried to nap in the cell, I did. But sadly, my cycle is off. Could not work up a snore. Therefore, at sundown it all came out.”
“All the evil?”
“I prefer to think of it as impulses. But it’s all semantics. Come sundown when I’m not moving or sleeping as I mentioned, then whoomp there it is.”
“The things people do in such a case. It reveals their true nature?”
Crevice nodded and looked in the rearview mirror, finally taking in some scenery. The sheriff checked the mirror as well to see what the man was looking at. He turned back to her. The warm smile version.
Lindsey flushed. She longed for a romp with the stranger. Clearly, she remained under the influence of the voodoo garbage charcoal-filter man brought with him. She wondered about her own true nature.
“There’s a chance your town was innocent and is only experiencing the fruits of my journey. I have passed through many a place.”
“Including Ledgerton?” the sheriff asked about a notoriously decadent town up north. “Place is one big strip club and drug factory.”
“And might contain some of the most decent people. Urges acted on sometimes cleanse the soul. Allowed to build up, and well, I grow large. It’s a heavy burden to carry.
I’m the size I need to be to support the weight of darkness on my back.
I started at my current size when heading into the Bible belt once and popped a button before I made it to the town border. ”
They arrived at Lindsey’s town border. A large wooden sign wished visitors a fond goodbye. The sheriff considered just such an action. She pulled her weapon and placed her finger on the trigger.
“And if I shoot you, it stops?”
“No. Things get worse. Much worse.”
“Worse than all this?”
She trusted his grey eyes when he locked them on her own and nodded. She released her grip on the gun. He tried the door. Locked. He waited for her to release him. The sheriff tilted the rear-view mirror and looked at the back seat.
“I truly loved him,” she said.
“I’m sure you did,” Crevice answered.
Lindsey stared at her husband, Glenn, in the rear seat. His eyes were open wide, a single bullet hole in the center of his head drooled blood in a straight line down the man’s face. The shot was merciful compared to his other injury.
A thick rectangular cut of flesh rested in the man’s lap.
Blood drooled from the large piece of flesh.
Like a puzzle piece, the skin chunk would have fit exactly in the spot where someone sliced it away from the man’s torso.
Placed properly, the fleshy puzzle piece would fit into the gaping wound in the man’s side.
The opening in the man’s side exposed a rib cage.
The slick red liquid covering the sheriff’s uniform was from more than barbecue sauce. Before heading back to the station, she visited her husband for rough sex, but he whined too much. (Asking for ribs while she rode him? Really?) She decided if he wanted ribs, she was going to give him ribs.
He was already handcuffed to the bed, so she exposed his rib cage with relative ease, surprised at how the carving came out in one piece.
While pleased with her work, her husband’s screams brought her to her senses long enough for her to unlock him, place him in the car and head toward the hospital.
But oh, how he continued whining. Worse than over the phone, the way he carried on. His cries went from wanting ribs to screaming about how he could see his own. There was no pleasing the man. The single gunshot made things right, brought peace to her world.
She explained the entire scenario to Crevice, but the man appeared unmoved by her plight. She supposed he had seen it all. The sheriff pushed the button to unlock the passenger door. The man got out and walked off into the night. A man just passing through.
The End