The Worst Thing I Ever Saw as a Cop nosleep

As a cop, you get used to hearing certain questions:

"Have you ever shot anyone?" No. I've pulled my gun three times, but never had to fire it.

"Have you ever been shot at?" No, or I would have responded in kind.

"What's the worst thing you've seen on the job?" Now there's a hell of a fucking question. I still can't believe anyone has the nerve to ask a thing like that. I should probably explain how thoughtless and insensitive it is, or tell them to screw themselves, but I just answer that one too...

I tell them about a murder scene I saw my rookie year. It was summertime, and the killing was easy. When the mercury rises, tempers get short. There was this junkie, Howie Brighton, who apparently got into an argument with his wife, Janice. He smacked her around a bit, which his arrest record showed was among his many bad habits. But that night a beating wasn't enough to satisfy him, so Howie fired a load of buckshot into Janice's face, painted a Pollack on the wall with her brains. He must have come to regret it, because he scrawled a note saying he was sorry, then ate his shotgun. More modern art on the ceiling. Unfortunately, he forgot about their twin daughters locked in the other room, so little Katie and Gina Brighton, just three years old, died of dehydration and hyperthermia in that sweltering shitbox of a house the family lived in. The whole reeking, maggot-ridden, flyblown mess was found two weeks later, and I got to spend six hours and change taking it all in.

The curious folk with all their questions pretty much love that story. Lets them look down on the poor, people of color (they always assume the Brightons were black, which they weren't), people not like them. A better man would challenge them on that.

But I'm not a better man anymore.

Anyway... Those questions I told you about; the answers I give are lies. I have shot people and been fired on too, not that there's any official reports recounting those occurrences. And the worst thing I've ever seen? With any luck, the Brighton house probably would've been it, but then Kessler arrived on the scene, and he would show me things that even the worst violence paled in comparison to.

Although, if I'm being honest - and it seems I fucking am - the mess of bodies in the Brighton house hadn't bothered me at all, not even the children, shrivelled and blackened with rot. Could have been Janie's Cabbage Patch dolls as far as I was concerned. It had started to occur to me that there might be something seriously fucked up going on in my head, because death had hit me pretty hard once upon a time, and it didn't faze me at all anymore. Sometimes I wondered if maybe after everyone I'd lost - my parents, my wife, my daughter... Janie...

Christmas week, the whole family was staying at our place. My parents, and Shelly's. Grandma. One night, the tree went up in flames, and everything and everyone followed. Except me. I was the only one left... For a year after the fire, I was useless, an open wound infected with grief. Then suddenly my immune system, or something, kicked in. I healed up, and there was nothing left of me but scar tissue. I felt nothing. Sometimes I stared at the urns containing the ashes of everyone I'd ever loved, and I almost laughed at the absurdity of having them cremated after they all burned to death...

God damn it...

Enough of that shit. Back to the crime scene.

I had needed a smoke, so I was out front taking a drag, not thinking about much, when I first saw Kessler, not that I knew his name at the time. He was a lanky, pallid wraith of a man in a charcoal suit climbing out of a black sedan that had come gliding like a shadow up the street and abruptly screeched to a stop in front of the Brighton place. I made him as in his fifties, but I was never really sure. His face was heavily lined, but not wizened with age. He had short-cropped salt and pepper hair. His eyes were a sickly shade of green and too big for his narrow face. No eyebrows though. First thing this odd fellow did was come stalking straight towards me. He looked me up and down, sizing me up from head to toe it seemed. "Were you inside?" he asked, sounding somewhat amused, though I had no idea why.

I just nodded, trying to play the strong, silent type. Back when I was young, I was so desperate to come off as tough. Solid. A Real Man.

"I hear it's rather ugly in there, and with a rancid stench," he said with a vast smirk, like a slash across his face. "Were the sights and the smells of the poor Brighton family too much for you? Did you leave for a good puke so you could purge them from your system?"

"I've got a strong stomach," I said defiantly, which was true. "I've been in that house longer than anyone." Also true. Got there at five p.m., and it was eleven when this guy showed up. "Right now I'm taking a nicotine break. So what?" Playing the tough guy again.

"So what, indeed," he laughed. "Quite right. My name is Kessler. I'm with the Health Department. You'll be accompanying me the rest of the night, officer."

"Who the fuck are you to tell me what I'm doing tonight?" I snapped.

For the first time his bemusement slipped away, and the hot summer air seemed suddenly chilly as he narrowed his eyes and sneered. "As I said, officer, I am Kessler... from the Health Department. My position empowers me to enlist any police asset I might need to carry out my duties. Tonight, you are such an asset. If you doubt my authority, I suggest you call your sergeant so he can confirm these immutable facts."

I tried to tell him to go to hell, but I was stammering like some scared kid, completely unmanned by this Nosferatu-looking son of a bitch. So I slinked away and called my sergeant. Just like I was fucking told. I started explaining the situation as best I could, when I uttered Kessler's name, and my sergeant interrupted me. "I don't want to know any more," he said nervously. "You do what he says, and whatever that is, you keep it to yourself. That's all I can tell you."

"Guy’s a fucking head case! I need some answers, goddamnit!" I yelled, and I knew I was pushing my luck with him.

There was a long moment of silence on the line before my sergeant sighed and finally answered. "Kessler was around when I was just a beat cop. He was a squint in the morgue used to freak us all out. He went MIA for a few years. When he came back, he was working for the Health Department. Had a badge of his own and a habit of nosing in on random cases. I don’t know why. No one does. Those who work with him get favored, it seems. But don’t fuck it up, 'cause it goes the other way too. Now get your ass back out there and don’t you fucking dare call me again." I had more questions, but he cut me off. "Kessler is your commanding officer now! I'm sorry... Be careful." And he hung up.

I trudged back to Kessler, standing stiffly in the same spot I left him, except now he was holding a big, bulky metallic black case with stainless steel latches at his side. It looked heavy, like something a roadie would lug equipment around in, most likely wheeling it on a dolly, but it didn't seem to weigh Kessler down any. His good humor had returned, and he flashed me a ghastly grin. "Everything is in order, I take it?" he said pleasantly.

"Yeah," I replied icily. "So what will I be doing for you?"

"Not for me," Kessler insisted, frowning absurdly and in a mournful tone. "With me. We are men on an important mission together, you and I."

"So what are we doing tonight?" I said with a frustrated sigh.

Kessler's pallid face brightened, and he smiled beamingly. His mood swings were unnerving in their swiftness and severity. "First we shall examine the corpses of the dearly departed Brighton clan."

"Why's the Health Department interested in this?" I asked. "It's just a junkie blew his wife away, then offed himself. And their kids..."

"The Health Department has no official business here," Kessler replied, "but I most certainly do."

"What kind of business?" I said dubiously.

"I can't just tell you," Kessler said. "First you must be shown." Kessler stepped past me and entered that house of horrors, and after a moment's hesitation, I did the same, resigned to following him wherever he led me, to doing whatever my duty required of me, and to making sure I was alive when morning finally came.

When we entered, Kessler stopped in the middle of the room, with a disconcerting grin on his face. He almost looked pleased. Janice Brighton’s corpse still lay slumped against the wall, her body black, blue and swollen. Her scumbag husband sat, head hanging back, or rather the little that was left of it, by the table across the room from her.

If you've ever been in the same room as a corpse gone ripe, you know the smell. If you haven't, there’s no point describing it. I hope you never have to familiarize yourself with it, but if you already have, try to imagine that stink magnified to the power of x, and you'll have some idea of what was souring the air in the Brighton house. There's a trick cops use to avoid the worst of it: we put Vick's VapoRub inside the masks we all wear at crime scenes. Covers the worst of it. Kessler didn't bother with VapoRub, or even a mask. In fact, he inhaled deeply through his nose, his head rocking gently back and his thin lips curled into a beatific smile. The stench had me wincing beneath my mask, and this freak I was stuck working for was drinking it in like the aroma of a fine wine.

"Kids are in there," I said nervously, gesturing to my left. "You, uh, might wanna put on a mask, Kessler."

He grunted dismissively and kneeled down by the entrance to the children's room. His nostrils flared rhythmically as he sniffed at the doorknob, the hinges, the crack between the door and its frame.

I heard him giggle.

"Now, officer. What I’m about to show you is need-to-know. You’re working with me now, so you need to know. But what you also need to know is that no one besides you and I needs to know. Know what I mean?"

I was about to say something, I can't even remember what, but I thought better of it and nodded instead.

"This apparatus," Kessler began, as he set down the massive case he had been carrying and pried it open, "uses a spectroscopic technique that exploits infrared light. It's rather fascinating, you see... Well, the technology isn’t the important thing here. It's what it does that matters. You see it allows us to see smells. This is for your sake, of course. I am already able to observe any odor or aroma." He must've sensed my doubt. "I have a condition called synesthesia. You can google it if you don’t believe me. It's ironic really, because I’m also what they call smell-blind."

I didn't buy that bullshit for a second, and I was going to tell him so, and to fuck himself, because I was done with him, but then he turned his contraption on, and a high-pitched, grating whine, like a dentist’s drill on meth, filled the room. I could feel it vibrating in my bones, in my teeth, in my brain, and that's when I saw them, four smoky grey shapes hovering in the room. I was vaguely aware that Kessler was still talking, but I didn't hear a word he said. To the exclusion of all else, I was focused on the... whatever they were. One was floating next to Janice Brighton, wispy tendrils reaching out to the ruin of her head, seemingly stroking her tangled, matted hair. There were two tiny spectres beside Kessler near the door to the children's room, their vaporous forms appeared to be holding hands and... whispering to each other. Then there was the apparition towering behind Howie Brighton's corpse. It wasn't like the others. It was darker and... I'm not sure how to describe it... I couldn't see it as clearly as the others, like it was flickering in and out of the visible spectrum.

I came around, emerged from my trance, when he switched the apparatus off and those shades drifted apart, dissipating like cigarette smoke in a high wind. A fragment of a song had entered my mind: One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing.

Kessler's voice drifted in. "And my anosmia was the result. Since I could no longer smell after the incident in Khartoum, I looked for ways to replace what I had lost with technology. Can you imagine a world without smell, officer? It really is the most evocative of the senses. Eventually, my search led me to both the Health Department and this apparatus. After much study of its workings, I made a few... modifications, shall we say, which suited my purposes."

Kessler had suddenly developed an odd habit of tilting his head at the end each sentence, somehow making his menacing countenance even more so. He looked feral. Like a mother jackal protecting her young, or perhaps preparing to eat them. "Not only was my lost sense of smell replaced, but as you can see, there are certain tangential benefits that came from my modifications and augmentations. Everything dead has a smell, officer. Another immutable fact of the world you now find yourself in. And with this miraculous contraption, we can see those remnants of the dead floating in the ether."

I had that disorienting feeling you get when standing on the shore when the water shifts the sand under your feet. Everything was changing, rearranging around me. Things I knew to be true with rock-solid certainty were being ground to dust slipping through my fingers. I had the sense Kessler was going to say more, but I wasn’t ready for it now. I needed some time to digest what had already happened and make some semblance of sense of it.

"I need a smoke," I blurted out, voice cracking with panic. "And some more Vick's," I added, pointing at the mask covering my mouth and nose. Just saying that word - smoke - brought to mind visions of those pulsating shapes, the way one caressing Janice Brighton's hair, the pair that were so childlike, but most of all that monstrous, incomprehensible presence. I had to get out of that fucking house.

"Very well," he said with a roll of his eyes and a dismissive wave. "Five minutes, and no more." Turning to the apparatus, he hunkered his lanky frame into a half-crouch and began adjusting knobs and levers. When he slid open a chrome panel, I swear I saw the glistening pink of organs inside, something muscular moving sinuously. He shut the panel with a snap and looked at me, his sickly green eyes fixed intently on me. "When you return, officer, I’ll finish our little orientation. I have much to share, and you to learn. Until then, there's something of the utmost importance you need to consider."

"What’s that?" I asked wearily.

"Smoking kills, officer, and it ruins your sense of smell."

I headed outside that rundown hovel and stood under the eaves in front of the living room window. A light rain was falling and grayish purple thunderheads were roiling in the distance, flashes of lightning flashing in their bellies. I shook a Lucky Strike out of the pack, my last. My hands were shaking so bad, my Zippo wouldn't stay lit. It took me three tries to get my cigarette lit, and the next instant, a fat drop of rain landed right on the burning cherry, extinguishing it with a hiss. I genuinely wondered if Kessler had sent the rain to fuck with me, as I pinched off the wet end and re-lit it. He’s really gotten to me, I thought. Not just him. That shit in there. Those things... That machine... What was going on? Questions leading to more questions, replicating and dividing, metasticizing like cancer. My head wasn’t ready for this. I'd always been more of a doer than a ponderer. Dad always told me, You’ll never till a field by turning it over in your mind, and I took that to heart.

I had the feeling that everything was about to change; for better or for worse, I had no idea. That song popped into my head again, and I could hear the mournful horns accompanying the next line:

But 'til that morning, there ain't nothin' can harm you
with daddy and mammy standin' by...

Then I remembered: Mom's favorite song. Summertime by Etta James. She taught it to Janie, and the two of them would sing it together, sometimes Shelly too. But the last I'd heard Summertime, it was during the wake, and I...

I crushed out my cigarette on the cement foundation of the house, then stuck the butt in the empty pack, which I pocketed. Back inside, I found Kessler running a hand over his close-cropped hair as he preened in front of a mirror. The gesture struck me as oddly feminine. "Ah, officer," he said as his reflection's gaze turned my way. "Welcome back! I trust you are finally ready to begin in earnest?" His wan face produced a smile that stopped at his eyes.

"No," I said. "I'm not ready for this. I will never be ready for this. I have to go." I was trying not to break down in tears.

He sighed and looked down at the floor. He tapped the tip of his shoe on the dirty carpet a few times. He seemed suddenly weary, as if he'd heard this all before. "Some fear, some doubt, and... uncertainty is normal when faced with the unknown." He glanced around, eyes roving the mess of gore and filth in room.

I said nothing, just watched him. The room was still and silent, except for a low rumble of thunder from outside.

"What if I told you that your presence here, your joining me tonight in this foul and tragic place filled with pestilent vapors, is no accident? You may not want to be a part of this, but you already are, and inextricably so. A sequence of events, of causes and effects, is in motion, and you and I must see it through to its completion. If we don’t..." He trailed off, staring off into the unfocused middle distance for a second. He snapped to and looked at me. "That is not an option. Now come, I beseech you."

And so, for no reason I could fathom, I followed Kessler further into the house, wondering what he meant, what any of this meant. All I knew was that I had to find out. Kessler descended a stairway leading to the Brightons' basement, then entered the pitch black space therein.

"Officer!" he called out from a moderate distance. "I have foolishly neglected to turn on the lights, and now I'm lost in the dark... Could you, please? The switch is... or should be... to your right, just inside this room."

I rolled my eyes. Everything was a game to this guy, and yet again I was playing along. Groping blindly, it took me maybe twenty seconds to find the switch, long enough in the dark that the sudden flourescent glare made me blink.

"Gotcha!" Kessler exclaimed as I felt a jab to the ribs, and suddenly there he was, waving a device that looked like an electronic ice pick attached by a coiled cord to the spectroscopic thingamajig he was carrying.

"What the fuck?” I howled, grabbing my side. I realized there was blood soaking into my shirt.

"Sorry, officer," Kessler cackled, "but I needed a sample."

"OF WHAT?"

"Of you, obviously..."

"I'M BLEEDING GODDAMNIT!"

"'Tis but a prick, I assure-"

"YOU'RE THE PRICK, KESSLER!"

Well the moment those words left my mouth, Kessler started laughing so uproariously he literally doubled over, slapping his knees, his whole body wracked by an outrageous fit of hysterics that lasted a full minute at least, then ended abruptly when he righted himself, once again adopting his typically stiff posture. "Fair enough, officer," he said warmly. "I most definitely am a prick. But I am one of the good pricks, I promise you. Or at the very least, goodish."

"Fine," I muttered. "Why the hell did you do that?"

"Everything has their own smell, unique in color, shape, size, and... other less tangible qualities. This includes the living as well as the dead. I just uploaded your data into my device to exclude you from certain processes. As I said, what you saw is only a fraction of what it can do. It is imperative that this apparatus be able to distinguish between you and the dead surrounding you."

"Surrounding me?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

"You’ll see for yourself soon enough," Kessler replied grimly. He looked down at the device, then back to me. "Have you always kept the dead so close at hand, officer? Their ashes, I mean."

I was taken aback, my thoughts turning instantly to the urns holding Mom, Dad, Shelly, Janie, Grandma, all arranged on the mantle. But... they weren’t the only urns in my house. I had my great-grandparents and my in-laws in a storage room. The family dog was by the garage door. I had the remains of a childhood friend who had drowned one summer when I was eight. There were even urns I couldn't account for, random strangers I had somehow stolen. All of them gathered in my home, and I didn't even know why. I just needed them. I just...

"What the hell are you babbling about?" I cried.

"They cling to you, you know. Like an aroma cherished from a warm memory but that sweet scent has long since festered, and it's why I am here tonight, officer."

"My life is none of your business!" I shouted, desperate for this conversation to end. "I’m just... waiting for the right time and place to scatter the ashes," I told him, the same, familiar lie I kept telling myself.

"You have the stench of a graveyard about you. Do you know the reason we keep the dead in such places, officer?"

"No!" I snapped. "And I don’t care either!"

"We are meant to let go of the dead, to bury them, to entomb them, to scatter their ashes, to separate from them, for their good and our own."

"No!" I shrieked.

"You, though... You are different."

"No," I sobbed, and without even realizing it, I had drawn my gun and it was aimed at Kessler's center mass. My hand was trembling, but my aim was unwavering, and my finger was on the trigger, squeezing not quite hard enough to fire.

"Why are you doing this, officer?" Kessler asked, his voice fearless.

"I... don't know..."

"Because something has taken hold of you, officer," he said. "And that thing has finally figured out that I'm here to free you!" With lightning speed, Kessler's arm whipped out, hurling his massive, metallic black case at me. I fired my weapon just as it struck me like a wrecking ball to the torso. My shot went wild, and I was sent flying across the room. I landed hard on my back, saw the apparatus sailing overhead, then heard it crash against the wall behind me. The copper tang of blood was in my mouth. I tried to sit up, but I felt cracked ribs scraping, so I laid back down. I was amazed to realize I still had my gun. Couldn't think straight, but it didn't matter. I was going to kill Kessler.

kill him...

burn him...

keep his ashen remains...

But I... I couldn't... I would not do that.

That wasn't me...

There was no me... Not anymore... Hadn't been for the longest time...

The truth was, I should have died that night... with my family... I should have stayed with them...

"It's never too late to die," I whispered. Tucking my service weapon under my chin, I shut my teary eyes tight, hoping they might open to find Shelly and Janie, and they could take me away with them to the other side of the world. If there was one. I didn't know anymore, but I was ready to find out...

That's when Kessler grabbed my gun from me with such force he broke seven bones in my hand and three of my fingers, and I passed out from the pain.

When I came to, I found myself handcuffed to a pipe connected to a broken waterheater. For the first time since I'd entered the basement, I really took in my surroundings - the grimy, litter-strewn floors; dilapidated and rusted out refrigerators, washers, dryers and assorted appliances lining and stacked up against the mildewed cinderblock walls. Kessler was there too, out of reach of course, his back to me as he hunched over his device to tinker with it. "Good morning, officer," he said, somehow knowing that I was awake even though I hadn't moved or made a sound. "Your breathing sounds different when you're unconscious," he added, answering my question before it had even formed in my foggy brain.

"How-"

"Approximately an hour," he replied, then giggled girlishly.

"Stop doing that!" I snapped. "What... What are you doing?" My head cleared a little more, and I felt my shattered hand throbbing dully, too numb to feel the pain of the injury.

"I am repairing the last of the damage suffered by my apparatus when I tossed it at you," Kessler said. "That was unfortunate. But you left me no choice, wouldn't you say?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't-"

"No need for apologies, officer," he said, and for the first time there was only sincerity in his voice. "The wretched parasite that's latched on to you took over in that crucial moment when you shot at me, but you regained control afterwards. Granted, your exercise of free will led you to attempt suicide, but still, bravo. Allow me to offer my own unnecessary apology, for in my haste to prevent your foolish act of self-destruction, I rather mangled your hand."

"You should have just let me die."

"It's never too late, remember?" Kessler said. "There's no hurry. Everyone gets around to dying eventually, I assure you. In the meantime, there's a rather obvious corollary to what you said."

"What's that?"

Kessler practically sang his response: "It's never too late to start living again, of course!"

I just had to laugh, that he of all the people I'd ever met, would say something like that. "So what's next? An exorcism?"

Something clicked and whirred and... squelched in the case containing Kessler's apparatus, and he stood up and finally turned to face me, a satisfied smile plastered across his ghoulish face. "All fixed," he said. "What was that, an exorcism? In effect, I suppose, but there's none of the entertaining pageantry. I work with science, not superstition. My apparatus is going to pull the horrid creature that's tethered itself to you, pull it like a rotted tooth and grind it to dust so it never troubles you or anyone else again."

"You planned this didn't you, Kessler?" I said. "You made sure I was dispatched here, all so you could get at this thing inside me."

"I did," he replied mischievously. "I knew a scene of such carnage and misery would distract it, for a while, at least. Not all went according to plan, though. There certainly wasn't supposed to be any gunplay. The whole 'trying to kill me' phenomenon was a surprise, as was the 'trying to kill yourself' debacle. None of that's ever happened in this sort of situation before. This beast is unusually tenacious. But no matter; the beast is about to be bested. But first..."

"What?"

"First, you have to see it, truly see it, so that you may truly understand it."

"All right then," I said. "I'm ready."

"I am going to activate my apparatus, now," Kessler said, and he turned away from me, crouching down to attend to that machine of his.

I heard the clicks and clacks of toggles and dials, then came the return of that keening whine, pitched even higher and rattling my bones more furiously before, and now the beast appeared, standing before me, a dark golem of roiling filth, like an army of maggots squirmed from an oil slick and coalesced into the shape of a man. The sight of it sickened me, and I realized that's what it was - sickness made manifest. But worst of all, I saw now, was the pulsing, twining tendrils emerging from all over its wretched, and all of them stretched toward me and anchored to my chest, sinking into my flesh to the very center of my being. I swiped at them, desperate to get them off of me, out of me, but my flailing hands passed through those spectral chains like they weren't there. But now I felt their grip on my very soul, and I began sobbing at this horror that had taken hold of me, that had been a part of me for God only knew how long.

"LOOK AT HIM!" Kessler screamed.

"I am..." I whimpered.

"LOOK AT HIM, YOU FOUL CREATURE!"

And that rancid, malformed approximation of a man slowly congealed, slouching and slithering closer and closer, until finally it was hovering inches from me and the rancid, wriggling clump of disease that served for a head twisted around, and suddenly I was face to face with it.

And that face was mine, crudely sculpted upon a mound of living shit, but unmistakably mine. Its features were an emotionless blank, but there was malevolence oozing from the empty hollows where eyes should be.

I heard Kessler's voice, gentle as I never imagined it could be. "Do you understand it now?" he asked.

"I couldn't let them go... of my family... and this thing, it..."

"Go on, officer," Kessler encouraged me.

"It took root inside me," I sobbed, "and fed on me and my grief and used it to control me... but..."

"Yes?"

"This thing... is me... gone rotten..."

Suddenly the wailing of the apparatus ceased and the pile of filth that was a twin conjoined to me vanished from sight, and I found myself shivering, soaked with sweat, catching my breath. Kessler was there looking down at me. "That... that thing is me..." I gasped.

Kessler dropped to his knee and put a firm hand upon my shoulder. "Only a part of you," he said. "How would you like to kill it with me?"

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Not much actually. It will be somewhat anti-climactic from this point on. Just the press of a button really. The process will hurt, certainly, but you'll pass out the moment the agony begins. Although, you'll still be in a considerable amount of pain when you wake, so I suppose-"

"Enough talk," I said. "Let's just get it over with."

Kessler dragged the tip of a slender finger across his lips. He then offered me a mouthguard, like mental patients wear during electro-shock therapy, which I took and clenched between my teeth. After that, he held out a pair of ear plugs, which I took and inserted. Finally he reached out and placed a bulky pair of welder's goggles on my face, adjusting them until they were snug and secure.

That left me alone in silence and darkness, a solitary place where the hauntings and horrors I'd seen were gone. I was at peace, content to stay there as long as it took for the nightmare to be over. Suddenly I felt Kessler's hand on mine, and then a cold, smooth, metal cylinder in my palm. I explored the object with my thumb. At one end was a cord, presumably leading to the apparatus, and at the other a button, and the instant I knew it was there, I pressed it.

A week later, I woke up in a hospital bed. They'd put my hand in a cast, and my ribs were taped up. I had a morphine drip, but there wasn't a part of me that didn't ache like it had been pounded on with a ballpeen hammer. If I tried to move, my joints burned like hot coals sewn up inside me. Nevertheless, I felt good. There had been a weight dragging me down, and now it was gone, and I was light as a feather. I spent another month recovering in that bed. All the while, I was waiting for Kessler to check up on me, but he never showed up. I kept wishing he would. I had so many questions for him, but most of all, I wanted to thank him.

On my last day in the hospital, I received a heart-shaped box of chocolates, the cheap kind you'd buy as a last-minute gift on Valentine's Day. It came with a note:

Officer,

I'm overjoyed to hear that your convalescence has finally come to a conclusion. In preparation of your happy homecoming, I have taken the liberty of removing the various urns and other vessels containing ashes of the deceased from your residence. Have no fear, your loved ones' remains are safe and waiting for you whenever you decide what it is you'd like to do with them. The rest I have returned to their proper places, as best I could manage.

Now that you are fully mended, I would like to broach a subject that would have been previously inappropriate to discuss with you. I rather enjoyed working with you that awful night. You may doubt it, given the circumstances, but you were quite impressive. I could use a partner like you, someone I can rely on, and whose trust, perhaps, I've earned. This line of endeavor can be terribly dangerous, as you've seen. I have the utmost faith in you should you accept my offer. Now, far be it from me to suggest that you owe me. That would be unspeakably uncouth. Still, you might, quite reasonably, feel a magnitude of gratitude that cannot be fully expressed with a simple "thank you."

There's no need to decide in this very moment, though. Go home. Get back to living. (It's never too late!) I'll ring you up sometime, and if I'm very lucky, you'll tell me yes.

Until then,

Kessler

So, yeah the worst thing I ever saw in my career in law enforcement was myself, of what was hiding within me, waiting to unleash itself. That may seem like a cheat of an answer, but frankly, I've found that's the case with a lot of the cops I know.

Did I end up working with Kessler? Yes, I am an idiot. I could tell you a few stories, but you really wouldn't want to hear them.

Submitted July 31, 2016 at 06:42AM by Stark_Writing_Mad http://ift.tt/2aFAK0A nosleep