Fiction.

Some time in between mind controlling cops with donuts and seeing a girl I used to know with a meat cleaver sticking out of her back, the sun had risen on Richmond. This in no way made the previous twelve hours any less creepy or disturbing. In fact, the lack of people on the streets and the morning haze was freaking me out.

Luckily, by this time sobriety and I had reacquainted ourselves and were getting along smashingly.

After James gave his award winning and grief stricken performance for Channel 12 I managed to convince him we needed to get the hell out of there. We were two dudes who broke into a murder scene and also happened to have close personal connections to the victims. We did not need to be there.

We ended up at Monroe Park surrounded by the unwashed masses — literally. At least the only people to hear us chatting about, oh say, double murders would be crazy bums. Monroe Park is always full of crazy bums, and today they all seemed to be asleep. Which was a bit odd as the cops usually make them “move along” before they could get a chance to doze off.

Just as we sat down on one of the few open benches a beat up grey Honda Accord tore down Franklin St. and skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. The woman driving threw the car in reverse and hastily pulled an excellent parallel parking job — which is unusual for a woman. The blonde got out of the car, along with the passenger: a cute girl with a nice rack. The blonde’s tight jean cutoffs bounced rhythmically towards us and then I finally remembered what was causing the nagging regret I’d felt for the last couple of hours:

NAME: Amelia Montgomery
DATE: February 4, 1998
PARTNER: Ben. Ben reminded me a lot of my dad before Mom died. He was gregarious and a great person to have at a party. I didn’t know he’d turn out to be such an asshole.
SETTING: My bedroom. Dad was working his night job which meant I had the house to myself. We could have done it anywhere, but the bedroom seemed safer for some reason.
PARTING THOUGHTS: It was terrible. Not the actual “business,” but the whole experience was awful. The business part wasn’t that splendid either to be honest. We drank a bottle of wine to cut some of the tension and then had about ten minutes of brief and awkward sex before I passed out. While I was sleeping he snuck out of bed and took a handful of polaroid pictures of me posed in various positions. I guess I must have been drunker than I thought. Of course he showed the photos to all of his friends, and of course I was humiliated.

Wow, I definitely should not have told her that the possibly most embarrassing moment of her life was “classic.” Sometimes I am such a dick.

The park was dead still except for a solitary bum shuffling up one of the paths. As Amelia marched up to our bench with the younger girl in tow she began to talk at us very rapidly and almost incomprehensibly.

“I don’t know who you two are but we need to talk. If you had anything to do with those murders I’ll murder you myself! Did you know those girls? Did you kill them? Also, I don’t need new tits, for your information.”

Amelia stopped, took a deep breath, and turned to me.

“Who exactly are you? How did you know those terrible things about me? He” she waved her hands wildly at James “is an asshole which makes you guys perfect for each other. By the way, thanks for puking on my shoes. Asshole.”

Lauren mumbled and rubbed her swollen eyes. I sat, somewhat bewildered, and James said “At least Lauren’s got some tits on her.”

Lauren, awoken from her daze by James’s comment, finally spoke up. “Lily was my friend! It was terrible … ” she began to trail off. “Hanging like that … from the ceiling … so much blood.”

James sat upright. “Sounds like you were up in that apartment last night. It was pretty gory wasn’t it? Blood splattered all over the floor and such. What were you doing up there, sweet tits? Covering your tracks?”

Amelia and Lauren both stared with wide eyes at James. “How, how could you know what it was like in that place? What were you doing there? Oh my god …” stammered Lauren as a look of fear started to spread across her face. It was dawning on her that she could be standing across from a crazed murderer.

James said, catching on, “Oh don’t worry. I didn’t kill your little friend or anyone else. Kaiser here has banged half of the city, and when we heard of some trouble up on Navy Avenue we thought we’d check it out. You know, to see if it was anyone Kaiser knew.”

By now the shuffling bum had turned off of the path and was shuffling his way through the grass directly towards us. He actually seemed to be limping rather than shuffling. Long dreadlocks hung over his bulky trench coat and his eyes stared, unfocused, at some indeterminable spot behind the four of us.

“Time out.” I said, turning on James. “Don’t give me that shit, man. You knew that girl swinging from the ceiling. I know you knew her. You’ve had sex with her. Plus don’t think that just because the lights didn’t work in there I didn’t see you swipe that picture off of the fridge. I don’t know what you’re trying to hide, but you better come out with it. I’m tired of fucking around.”

At the mention of the lights Lauren swung around and looked accusingly at Amelia. “The lights … the lights. Amelia, you!” Amelia took a step backward as her mouth moved but no words came out.

The way I figured it I was the only one there who wasn’t being accused by someone of killing a couple of kids in their spare time. I was about to point this out to the group when the bum limped past me and brushed my arm. Then the weirdest thing happened: I pulled up his card.

NAME: –
PAST: gulf war — xenophobia — violence
FUTURE: violence

This was exceedingly strange on three fronts. First, he was a dude, so I shouldn’t have been able to pull up his card at all. Second, the information seemed incomplete or missing. Third, the information on his card didn’t pertain to sex at all, and whatever it did pertain to looked like bad news.

The bum limped three steps into the middle of our heated argument when his eyes suddenly changed. Instead of staring vacantly forward his eyes now sparkled with something deeply disturbing and primal. He spun around and with a grunt reached into his trench coat. With a metallic hum he pulled out a two foot hand saw covered in either blood or ketchup.

In one quick motion — reminiscent of the move that sent James crashing onto the hood of a police cruiser the night before — the bum grabbed Lauren by her hair, pusher her on to her knees, and jammed the blade under her jaw.

Lauren looked up at me as shiny new copper pennies fell out of her eyes onto the path.