Believe Me

He has been watching over me for these days. He's looking for someone else; I am taken but I am not worthy.

I will wake up tomorrow, and I will go to work like normal.
I will take my new boss.
I will sleep with the rest of the nonbelievers.

Happy New Year?

Dirty taste in my mouth

These past few days have been drearier than most. I've been going to work, greeting our new boss, driving out to patrol, dealing with whatever sorry sights I've been encountering, and then going home and going straight to sleep.

If you believe, you will sleep with the rest of the nonbelievers. If you don't believe, you will sleep with the rest of the believers. Close one eye, step to the side.

Memories Fading

I had no idea what was down the path where it always snows. The thing that I can no longer call a "man" led me down there, my boss left dying in the snow miles behind.

The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed with severe pain in strange places. I got up to go to the shower, and I didn't even care that there was a lanky man with dirty blonde hair standing in the bathroom mirror.

Dead Leaves, Dirty Ground

He had told us he was a clown. A lot of us were too afraid to go with him; they were the smart ones. But we were the ones whose youths had not yet outgrown our imaginations. Here was a man who had promised to show us worlds we had never seen, events that could never take place. He wanted to teach us the things our teachers never would, never could. Never could know.

All we had to do was look into the picture. Follow the straight line. The magician of all tears was ready to obfuscate our fears, and all he told us to do was to follow the straight line. To close one eye and step to the side.

"And ignore the funny noises the trees make at night there." And so he took us. And so we walked. And so, his straight line led us to a grim pathway in the woods, the pathway our mommies and daddies had made us promise never to ask about. It was the pathway where no leaves lived yet all leaves eventually blew.

Yet here we were, following the straight line. "If you have any fears about this path, just close one eye and step to the side."

A long way down, we passed by another pathway, one leading from ours and down into somewhere where the snow always fell. "That's not for you. That's where grown-ups go when they don't want to close one eye, when they can't step to the side."

And here I was, about to go down that path too many years later.

Frozen in the Snow

I woke up today with both a feeling of dread and thrill. The dread was because this was the subject of every unturned nightmare I had been having for years, the thrill being that now I knew the thing was here; now I could kill him.

It was cold today, too cold for a jacket. There was a fresh coat of snow on the ground and trees from last night's storm, but lucky for me the snow had stopped falling since.

It wasn't until I had parked at the station that I realized my mistake in leaving my boss alone for an undetermined time: His office was empty. I was about to write it off as him being late when I noticed the trees outside his window were bent artificially. I wasn't gonna just write that off that easily! Out in the ice of the morning wind, I spotted footprints going deeper into the forest.

I got pretty far in before I saw a tree that had no snow on it, just pure black. I tied a red scarf to it so I would know my way back. It felt warm. I assumed someone had been here already, so I kept moving.

I found my boss with a startled scream, back facing me, seated on a stump. I realized I should keep my voice down; "It didn't know you were here. Now it does." He sounded a tiny bit strained.

I asked him where the sorry excuse for a 'man' was.

"Back there."

I turned and tried to sneak my way back the way I came, hands prepared to whip my pistol out on first sight. I had been training for this very moment for two years, seven months, and four days. I wound up using it on far more than just this bastard, but those others were nothing. They were child's play. This was to be my kill proper; after this, I was to hand in my badge. Those were my plans.

The first thing went wrong shortly after I began heading back. The tree I had tied the scarf to got covered in more snow, so I couldn't tell where my landmark was. Oh well. I wasn't that worried. If all else failed, I'd just ask my boss for help getting back.

I spent a good fifteen minutes looking around for anything out there, but got nothing. And that's when my stupidity hit me like an ice cube to the throat: It wasn't fucking snowing. How could I have lost the scarf so easily?

I spent another good five minutes retracing my steps and looking for my red scarf on every single tree. And that's when I questioned my own sanity. I realized that "no snow" didn't just mean my scarf would be visible; it'd mean the tree would be, too. The only goddamn tree that wasn't covered in snow. So where the fuck were they?

I blinked, and suddenly, the tree and the scarf were before my own eyes. I was about to scream when I remembered my vow to keep quiet, at which point I just mentally laughed it off as being the adrenaline getting to me.

And then I blinked again.

Now the tree was.. a lot shorter. Now I could see that it was never a tree. The black of the bark I had seen was his business suit. I had tied my scarf around the fucking thing I was hunting.

...now, in retrospect, that brings up a lot of questions. How in the world could I get a human and a tree mixed up? Why didn't I realize as I was tying the scarf around his waist that it was clearly not a tree? How did blinking change his size? Was I THAT tired? Of course, at the time, I was too busy pulling out my pistol to contemplate on any of these.

Before I could shoot, I heard my boss say "Don't piss it off more, Veronica." As I was turning around to face him, I remembered thinking he sounded strained on the stump. Well, that made perfect sense when I saw his empty eye sockets and open chest revealing missing lungs.

I was just about to scream when I felt a hand touching my back. I looked up and saw the face of every nightmare looking down at me. I saw the blonde hair completely stationary despite the cold wind, I saw the bloodshot hazel eyes blinking at 120 beats-per-minute, I saw the still and uncurious frowning mouth (lips torn off, looked to be scratched off).

I could never forget that face.

Similarities

He made me come to work today, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

I was sitting by an empty Christmas tree when my phone rang, and he told me to come down to the station. "There's something you need to know." Normally, I would have cussed him out there and then and then hung up on him, but this time was different. "There's something you need to know" isn't what a man would say if he wanted you to work on your day off. If it was a lie, it would have been a bit more extravagant.

So I went down to the station. Amazingly enough, his was the only car in the parking lot. I mean, yeah, it's Christmas, but we're the police. Crime waits for no man, not even the fat and jolly kind. First thing I did when I saw him was ask why no one was in today.

"All units are covering a Christmas fire downtown."

Made sense, I suppose. Next question was the important one, what did I need to know? It prompted a peculiar response out of his person; he started hacking an awful one right there on the spot. I was sure his eyeballs were going to pop out of his skull, and I almost wanted to make them, myself. But my grudge against that asshole had to wait; I was more curious than angry.

His cough calmed after quite a killer; he was out of breath afterwards. He looked at me, tears in his eyes presumably from the throat problem, and told me we were after the same thing.

I'll tell you right now that the first thing I thought was Sex? Is this guy seriously going to say "Sex?" I had my baton ready, but when he pulled out a bottle of pills that were Ibuprofen and not Viagra, I eased myself.

He took his pills as I just sat there, awkwardly. His office didn't smell like the cigar and stained Playboy magazines it usually did. Today, it smelled like the forest. And death.

He really took his time with this next part, taking caution to take deep breaths after every sentence, making sure to make every syllable count.

"I got your counselor to give me your blog address. I wasn't expecting much good; I admit I was a little hoping you'd post some pictures of yourself in that nightie of yours that exposes a little too much." I didn't want to ask any questions; I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. But then he did something that made me uneasy for different reasons.

He turned around to look out the window behind him. He let his eyes wander everywhere except at my breasts. He was paranoid. That man is never paranoid, not like that. I may hate him and think he's a disgusting piece of trash, but he's a smart enough cop to know to never show your fear. The fact that he was openly afraid of something made me reconsider everything about my situation.

"I saw your first post. I read what happened to you." He looked over me at the door behind us. Sweat dropped down his face. "We're both after the same thing. The thing that we can no longer think of as a man."

I honestly had no idea what to think about this. I wanted to hear more, so I asked what happened to him.

"Five years ago, my family was murdered in a..." His face contorted in a look of desperate exasperation, like a man pleading sanity. "..the official report called it a 'freak accident.' It was a murder. They were found dead in the woods. Banna.. my wife.. was found with all her organs in plastic bags. Gary and Jeffrey, my children, were not found with her. At least, not in the same area."

I began to get goosebumps. I suspected and fully expected what he was going to say. I was right.

"They were found up in a faraway tree along with a group of other children, all neatly placed in some sick act of.. as you put it, ritualistic sacrifice."

I suddenly figured out the rest of his story without him even having to say it. Still, I listened, though by this point it felt more like someone telling you an old story you know too well.

"No culprit was ever found, no hint of a culprit was ever found. No witnesses. No nothing. I had no idea what to do about this, so I became a cop. I wanted to track down the bastard responsible for this. I wanted to find the sorry excuse for human life that resulted in too many nightmares."

And then I wanted to scream, I wanted to run, I wanted to grab him and take him far away, but above all else, I just wanted to wake up. I wanted none of this to ever be happening.

Because the scariest thing is not that I knew exactly what he was talking about, the scariest thing is not that I fully understood exactly why he became the type of man I look down upon today, the scariest thing is not even that there was now a man standing outside his window, looking in on us.

The scariest thing was that my boss stopped looking.


I sat, frozen with fear, goosebumps all over, eyes darting between the man seated in front of me and the tall man standing outside the window. I wanted to know if the man outside was wearing a business suit, but I couldn't tell from either the distance or my own inner panic.

My boss continued speaking, but I couldn't figure out what he was saying. I only wondered if he knew.


It felt like hours passed in this frozen state. I heard my boss wrap up his monologue with a nervous laughter and a mention that the suited man in the station yesterday reminded him of all this, prompting him to talk to me.

I looked back outside the window, and no one was there except the trees.

I laughed loudly, almost fakely. I caught myself and told him "It's okay, thank you for sharing that secret with me." And then I excused myself and left. As soon as I was out the door, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me to my car, where I drove straight home and locked my doors.

And shut my blinds.

Sneaks

The bastard I mentioned yesterday who turned out to be the wrong guy seems to be fucking with me. I saw him down at the station today reporting some kind of crime. My boss doesn't want to let me find out what he was reporting; I'm told I'm "too emotional" to take on this case.

My boss is the kind of conniving little rat who will stop at nothing to get under your skin. He once called my colleague on her sick day and said her husband was found dead outside the station just to get her to come in. It was a blatant lie, and I'm ashamed to call myself an officer in the same town as him.

He's the kind of sneak who'd make you work on Christmas.

It wasn't the guy.

Lucky him.

Danger Time

There's something strange afoot in Franklin, Tennessee.

I was coming home from throwing some other criminal's ass in jail when I saw a lanky man in a business suit heading in the direction of the elementary school.

This is my chance.

Dark Times

I have something like respect for the common schoolteacher. They do well at teaching our children to read and write, and they occasionally get lucky and bring a wave of complex concepts to the world. At the very least, 90% of them don't let kids get hurt.

I just arrested some sicko who not only let the jackasses come into his kids' classroom and hold them hostage, but he even arranged it. I want that disgusting excuse for a man out of my sight.

Sometimes I don't see why humans have to have emotions in the first place.

...or memory.

Lamentation

I found a crackhead sniffing some panties today. They looked a little too little to be legal.

People sicken me. The sun beats down on a beating of children next door, but the barbarians known as man give not a beat of pause. Criminals black and white speed past in their shit-laden expensive cars; not a second glance is spared to the poor people on the sidewalk being mugged by some anonymous neanderthal desperate for his next fix of avoiding the justice system.

This is why I wear my badge. I refuse to part softly with the courage invested in me. I refuse to give permission to the dirtbags and the gangsters. I refuse to allow the continuation of the negative human species; how fast we grow, we must move on.

Justice is fair, and fairness is just. Fairness is just too much to ask.

Silent Tears

When I was a child, I was involved in a ritualistic sacrifice. Seven other children all of my age were killed in a most vicious of methods, and I was next in line. The campfire below us smelled of fox and steaming bone, its sparks crackling in the night's low hum. The thing I can no longer think of as a man put his hand behind my back and led me up to the bloodstained tree where my friends met their disgusting fates. He told me to put my hands on the tree, and I had seen what was left of my friend Suzanne-- she had resisted, and the lung on the branch above my head was the result of this-- so I complied, the heat of the campfire drying my silent tears away.

A crying child is often considered to be one of the biggest nuisances of the modern world, but few people know that it's dangerously close to one of the most terrifying sights in all of history. If ever in your travels you should happen upon a child who is crying in silence, goosebumps should befall your frail body. Most children yell and scream when they cry, as they want your attention, they want you to fix a problem. It is only once a child has seen life's "innocence," when a child knows no one can fix their problem and had enough time for it to sink in along with the rest of life's pathetic cynicism, that a child will cease screaming and allow the quiet of their tears to be their only comfort.

I was about to die. I could hear the branches shifting to allow for another cadaver. I have no idea what that thing formerly known as man was planning on doing with us after the sacrifice, nor am I ever certain how many more children there were lined up behind me, nor will I ever be sure what it was about that beast that convinced all of us to follow him into the dusk of the woods in the first place; all I know for certain is that I got out of this alive. An officer of the local police department walked in on this, and the complete monster connived its way out of trouble by running off into the woods.

The police never located him. They put up a search for a lanky male with filthy blonde hair and an unnaturally clean business suit, we survivors tried our hardest to describe his face to the best of our abilities and the sketch artist had his piece photocopied; that bastard's face had to have been plastered all over towns in every direction. But he was never found. His face haunts my nights, and I can no longer remain on my own for more than a day. I'm afraid he'll find me.

Sixteen years have passed, and I got a job in the police force. I want to save lives like the hero who saved me. But I still have frequent flashbacks. My therapist advised me I should write about my experiences, so I made this blog.

My name is Veronica, and I'm after the thing people used to call a man.