"Eternal War" by Blasphemous Creation

Sit at My Feet

Sit at my feet, little one, for Father has a story to tell you...

Dr. Sam was a kindly sort, last in Milford County who still made house calls. Only a few knew why. You see, Sam Watson was a physician who believed in giving his patients what they wanted -- within reason, of course. The law might argue with Dr. Sam over what was reasonable, but he was always up for a challenge. Sam was a plain ol' country doctor -- with a bent for leather. His being the professional he was, however, he never mixed work with pleasure, nor fraternized with patients.

Sally Kimbrel and her husband, George Kimbrel, were patients of Dr. Sam's. When George called him one Saturday afternoon at home, he knew something was wrong. He grabbed his medical bag and dashed for the Dodge Ram 4x4, a vehicle well-suited for the rough country in this part of the state. When he reached the Kimbrel place he could hear Sally's screams coming from the rear of the house. His first instinct was to drive onto the lawn and to the gate to save time, but there was something in the quality of the scream that eased his worry some.

"What the --?!" shouted Dr. Sam, as George Kimbrel, prostrate on the bedroom floor, wildly waved him in through the arcadia door. Sally was hanging from the ceiling by a rope attached to one breast. One of the hooks affixed to the ceiling had torn out, leaving her dangling from the other, and she was desperately trying to keep her toes from touching what appeared to be scalding hot water in the trough beneath her. Thinking quickly, Dr. Sam retrieved the scalpel from his bag. Clenching knife in his teeth, he wrestled to the edge of the trough a dresser, hopped atop it, took Sally under one powerful arm, and with his free hand sawed through the rope cutting deeply into her dark purple breast.

Dr. Sam had just cut the rope binding Sally Kimbrel's breast, and very nearly decided to amputate, as the extremity had all but died. Instead, he used an old Indian trick, fishing a few leeches from the nearby creek on the Kimbrel property, which proceeded to suck the bad, anaerobic blood from the woman's breast. Within a few hours, the color had turned from a nearly black purple to a dark red. The organ was far from healthy, but Dr. Sam thought it would become so, given competent care. After what he'd seen today, he was sure that was impossible in this household.

Dr. Sam Watson was not a risk-taker where the health and life of a patient was concerned. He decided that Mrs. Kimbrel was not safe under her husband's care, and declared as much to George Kimbrel, stating unambiguously that if he didn't turn over Sally to his care, at least for a few days, he would "beat the living shit out of you, George." Said Dr. Sam, "George, not only did you like to burned off your fingers and face, but by dumb luck did you not kill your wife. What fool thing were you thinking, pouring perchloric acid into a tub of sulfuric? Don't you know you could have leveled the house, not to mention blown Sally and you to bits?"

Still tending George's facial and digital burns, it was all Dr. Sam could do to refrain from breaking his drooping jaw. "Not only does the Oath proscribe it," thought Dr. Sam, "but the man doesn't have the sense God gave a goose. What good would hitting him do?"
"George, I'm going to leave you with this cream, which you're to apply to the burns on your face and fingers every night before bed, every morning, and every midday, till I say otherwise. Understand?"

"Yep, Doc," nodded the dull-witted man.

"And no driving. I'll drop by in a couple days and see how you're doing, give you some new gauze.
Clear?" Again George nodded, and Dr. Sam closed his bag with an angry snap.

"And another thing," he added, as he poured another bag of lime into the now-muddy acid bath and stirred it, "When this tub is full, carefully dip the bucket and dump it out back. When there's room for another bag, pour one, stir it in, like I just done, then repeat, till the lime's gone."
"Sally, let's go," commanded Dr. Sam, and the two left George to his bailing and walked out to Dr. Sam's Ram.
With all his might he managed not to laugh, knowing the dumb brute had the strength to pull a tubful of heavy slop, but not with one hand.

...

Dr. Sam was a sound sleeper -- which was why, this night, he'd locked his bedroom door. It was also why, while having a vivid dream of Sally Kimbrel's climbing through the window, he did not awaken right away. When he finally opened his eyes, half-wanting not to, but too curious, he was shocked but not surprised. There was Sally Kimbrel, busily working him over with a skillful mouth.

His first instinct was to push away the woman, fending for his reputation, livelihood, but most of all, his work, which he dearly loved. Why, he'd delivered every one of this slithery thing's kids with his own hands. But he was also a man, and an honest one not about to start lying now. He wanted her. He had little like for George Kimbrel, and less respect, but this was not why he let George's missus continue. Though he'd never made a move or given Sally any clue, he'd always had fantasies for this unusually sensual, criminally comely woman.

Evidently she'd seen it, stowed it away, probably thought of it while hanging by one breast over George's lovingly poured acid bath. It was now, with Sally's muscular mouth clamped onto Sam's cock, that he understood the odd quality in her screams as he'd driven up to her place the day before. In fact, he wondered as best he could, considering he was about to heave a hot shot of semen down her throat, whether she had sabotaged that hook in the ceiling.

Much as Dr. Sam wanted to fuck her, he knew Sally's breast was in no condition for such jostling. He was content to lie there and ejaculate down her throat. Man, it was good! She was good, with that vacuum pump mouth of hers.

He rolled her over on her back and proceeded to examine her breast. "Coming along well," said he.

Sally bawdily retorted, "Damn."

"Oh, it'll be a few days yet."

"Mmmmmmm."

Sam smiled, smacking her ass sharply. "When did George and you start the insane edge play?"

"We started off tamely enough, Sam. Then -- I don't know; we both just sort of -- got bored."

"I'll say...by the way..." Sam looked into her eyes, "What made you so sure the one hook would hold you?"

"I wasn't." To this, Sam just shook his head.

"What's for breakfast?" queried Sally jauntily.

Sam laughed, "After that bob-job on my kielbasa, you're still hungry?"

"Can't a girl get breakfast in bed at Dr. Sam's Bed & Breakfast?"

"I should have restrained you when you climbed into my bed; your breast is a long way from healthy, you know."

"Promises, promises."

"Oh, don't worry," Sam said, glancing at the apparatus lining the wall, then giving Sally a long look. "We'll get round to that."

...

From this high -- or god's -- vantage point, the woman appeared even more striking than normal. Her face was perfectly symmetrical as the human eye could detect, her high cheekbones, nose, and dark complexion, hair and eyes (O, those eyes) suggesting Native American blood, her long, supple neck, breasts full and well-shaped, belly flat, legs long and lean.

The woman was gagged down her throat with a dildo attached to a C-clamp-like affair affixed to and going over her head, down the back of and up through the seat of her chair, forking, terminating in two dildo-tines, one in the anal canal, the other in the vaginal. (The doctor had suggested that he might stretch her cunt over both tines). In the end (pun) he'd decided two filled holes were better than one.

The woman sat there, strapped to it "by arms and legs." (The C-clamp, wedded to the chair and containing controls along its spine including a strangely glowing device, was more than enough restraint; to pull free from it, she thought, she would have to rip herself open, or...
The straps were more for decorum, and to lend a sense of security, or familiarity, for he knew she'd traveled regularly to Dallas to satisfy such appetites. More than a few times he'd tended those war wounds).

"Are you ready?" he asked.
As best she could in her nearly statuesque position, the woman nodded anxiously, for though she'd never admit it, the hanging over a tubful of acid had been nothing, but now she was terrified.

The doctor stepped away from the controls and walked round front of the woman "strapped" (clamped more precise) to the machine, to "speak" to her. (The chair was equipped with, among other things, a thought transceiver). The doctor began the conversation, his mouth completely still.
"Do you know what's about to happen, Sally?"

"I think so, Sam," she "said."

"Sally."

"Yes?"

"Your eyes belie the calm in your words. Are you frightened?"

"No." She jerked slightly as the C-clamp tightened, compressing her spine, forcing the oral and pelvic dildos deeper into her.

"Do you see how this works?"

"I am Crazy Horse." The clamp tightened down more, and the woman stifled a cry in her throat.

The doctor smiled, "Far from crazy, and too stubborn for a horse," the chair registered her nervous but sublimely beautiful laugh in the doctor's mind.

"I have sat in the Chair, and made the journey," he said.

"Where did you go?"

"How is your breathing? And don't lie this time. The clamp will become too much for you, and the experiment, for you, anyway, will be done. Do you understand, little one?"

"Don't call me that. I'm a bottom, not a slave."

The doctor sat and closed his eyes. Time passed.
"My proudly flaring nostrils are sufficient, thank you."

The doctor's eyes remained closed, "I went to see my father."

The woman remained silent, waiting. The doctor said nothing.
"Did your body leave this chair?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, yes, if I'm unable to return."

"Are you sure you'd want to?"

Now the woman paused, thinking. "If I didn't return to the chair, where would I be?"

The doctor opened his eyes and looked into hers, "Another question might be, 'What would I be?'"

Again the woman thought. "What are you, Sam?"

"Like you, I'm spirit trapped in a shell."

"Please show me?" Again the doctor closed his eyes. The woman felt a strange presence in the chair. The servos began to whir, and the clamp reciprocated slowly, modulating her breathing. "Sam?"

"I'm here, baby; I'm in the Chair." His words were no longer emanating from him. In the ecstatic fluttering of her eyelids, she had not seen his body disappear. He let the machine feed him her sensations: shock, terror, lust -- then fed them back to her, the amplification rising geometrically. The orgasms became too numerous, too compressed in time to count. He caught himself thinking, "She'll die."

"Do it! I'm ready!"

"Release," commanded the doctor, the last thing he remembered doing as his chair-self yanking his power supply from the wall, his body, now yards away on the floor, jerking as though lightning-struck. The machine's reciprocation halted, the cranial harness released and withdrew the oral, as simultaneously the pelvic dildos withdrew, but the woman'd already gone. The doctor tried to rise but couldn't. He felt the lightning-like shock again (for they were somehow one organism now) as she instantaneously pressed into his flesh, her body next to his. Thought he, as a photon scalpel of knowledge cut through his haze, suffusing his brain, "She teleported without the machine!"

"I'm okay," the woman assured him, still speaking telepathically, but now without need of the machine. Blinking, he saw her image still on his retinas, of her exhausted form still sitting in the chair; gradually she came into focus, "I'm o-kay," she reassured him. Now they lay together a moment before animal abilities reasserted themselves, and croaked their first awkward words via vocal chords, laughing together for the primitiveness of it. For in that moment they had intertwined psychically and exchanged tomes, and tomes, and tomes of thoughts, feelings, hopes, desires, dreams.

Even as they laughed, the doctor admonished the woman that in this state they might dematerialize permanently. "But isn't that the point, Sam?" she rasped. "To transcend?"

"What's the rush? It's taken Earth four and a half billion years to produce this."

"What will we do now, darling Sam?"

For the first time in his life, the doctor had no facile answer. "Your guess is as good as mine, little one," Sam smiled warmly. Sally returned a resigned but proud smile.

They clutched now in unbearable bliss, but dreading the humdrum of life facing them, for the things which must be done now -- if done responsibly -- would take time.

...

Sam was in excruciating pain. (We gods -- or Elders -- don't understand pain any more, for it has been too long, too many generations removed). He had pierced the barely-healed skin of his breast, winding the two hooks through quickly with skilled surgeon's hands. This would be only the second time ever he had sat in the Chair. The only luxury he allowed himself now as before, as he hung, standing, though at a slightly reclining angle, in the way of the Lakota (Sioux), was a place to lower himself when the dance was done: the Chair. Though Sally was an inured masochist, she loved him, and literally feeling his pain, stood by, wincing.

"I am going to see my father again," he groaned soundlessly, for since their first unaided psychic moment, they had shared telephathic ability.

"Where is he?" Sally silently asked.

"He is with the Elders." Sally listened quietly. "They wish to meet you."

"Why?"

"They wish to instruct you in the raising of our child." Sally unconsciously moved her hands over her belly, barely swollen. "He is the first Ascendant in many millennia. They call him 'Moasi,' Navajo for 'cat.' Like the cat, he is
in-between." Sally was unclear, but did not interrupt. Continued Sam, "I am to negotiate the nature of the meeting, perhaps bringing back an Elder with me for it."

(Sam was unable to travel unaided as she had. He had nonetheless disabled teleporting, determined to succeed, this time. [Yes, little one, it was a manly matter of hurt pride that he was yet unable to move as she, unaided] ). Only as a last resort would he have Sally enable teleporting, should he fail! His face contorted hideously with the pain
of this thought. Sally winced again.
"They do not understand the inherent danger in travel by the Chair, and though aware of your ability, are unwilling to let you -- or Moasi -- be guinea pig, and I agree. So go I must."

...

"Moasi must not be jeopardized," said Wakan Ankh, addressing the Council of Elders as its head. "As on Earth, so it is here: if there is danger and potential sacrifice, it is the eldest adult who is to be endangered, not the youngest child. I shall go to Earth to meet the mother of Moasi and instruct her in the Way. If you do not respect my wish, I shall resign, which, as you know, would mean far more disruption than were I lost on Earth."

There was much mumbling in the hall for a long moment before Wakan Ankh gaveled them to order with, "Council, you shall render your decision now."
Wakan Am spoke, "Master, whom do you name as your successor, should you not return?"
"Moasi has within him the wisdom which is outside time, and will interact with the Council through the Interloper." The mumbling now rose to a dull roar.
"Order!" he shouted, and the noise ceased.
"Moasi shall lead the Council from the womb if I do not return. Parliamentary procedure demands your decision. Render it, Am."

...

Spoke Wakan Am, "Master, we cannot in good conscience let you go. The Council forbids it."
Without a word, Wakan Ankh gathered his robes and left the hall, amid cries of "Master, please!" and "No! Don't go!" They had endured many ages since a crisis as this.

Wakan Am gaveled the gathering to order, "The Council will come to order...order..."
"Order!" he thundered finally, and the hall grew quiet.
"The question now is succession. As Master Ankh is the only Elder who speaks with the Interloper, we are left in Limbo. Interloper, what have you to say?"
Sam rose from his seat and strode to the podium of the well, and took stock of the entire conclave's faces, one by one, taking a full three minutes before beginning his address. He spoke:

"You speak of my son as though he were a slab of meat on the butcher's block. It is true: he might not survive travel to this place; one of you must go to him. Master Ankh alone has the courage, and in an effort to hide your own cowardice, you deny him visa."

...

Sally flinched with a mixture of wonder and fright, for as she watched, the space which her husband had occupied became a pair of swinging bloody hooks. "He did it!" she shouted, and as she did, she had an even greater start, Moasi's kicking her so hard, she could see her flesh flex for an instant. Her hand went to the place, found his heel, and gently stroked it.

She had communed psychically with him almost from the moment of conception, but the form of it was not words or symbols, rather images. Fantastic forms and beings paraded, marauded, pillaged and loved -- places and flesh, foe and friend -- through her consciousness, overwhelming her thoughts, for the images told the stories of myth. Was he giving her scenes she could comprehend, or were they literal reconstitutions of what (his)? eyes had seen? What was it Sam had said -- Moasi was outside time? She asked her son the scenes' meaning, but he only increased their intensity. She resolved to quiet her mind and simply revel in the beauty, confident that sleep and dream would sort it out for her. Yet she was anxious to share on Sam's return.

...

Sam finished his address to the Council and exited the hall. He had not come here to plead, but to protect his precious little family. What they did now was on their shoulders, their conscience. Ascending through the labyrinthine layers of the city in a series of microwormholes which read his intention and destination, he made his way to Wakan Ankh's quarters. He found the Master sitting on a cantilevered patio with an impossibly omnidirectional view -- from at least a mile up, Sam estimated -- he froze with vertigo the very moment Ankh grasped his hand with a warm, calming smile, for the floor beneath him had become transparent, revealing the vast marvel below.

"Please, sit," uttered Ankh warmly.
"Thank you, Master Ankh," regarded Sam, grateful for the reassuring handshake, and sat in a nearly invisible chair.
"What will you do, Interloper?" queried Ankh.
"I will go home to my family."
Ankh nodded, paused for a long moment, and said, "He will act of his own volition, if the Council does not find its courage."
"How?"
"He will forgo his human trial."
"I don't understand."
The Master's tone imparted fierce strength and solidarity as he looked Sam in the eye, "Your wife will miscarry, Son."

...

Sam was a stocky, fullblooded Blackfoot, average height, barrel-chested, fit, face angularly hewn, eyes merciless obsidian spearpoints, mouth smirking stone. He was back on Earth, and courageous Master Ankh with him, in defiance of the Council of Elders.
Ankh would instruct Moasi's mother in the Way, and she in turn her son, whose gifts, including his very being, carried great responsibility for himself and his parents.

...

Sam could not bring himself to address Ankh as "Father" (again), at least not yet. He had brought Moasi into this world, and he must see safe passage of the grandson of Ankh through it, as long as he was able. He was coThousands of miles away, a young Sally tagged along to her mother's musical performance, as always. A precocious child, she would sit through a concert at the soundboard, adjusting monitor, bass, treble, or whatever else her keen ear deemed. This night her mother played a Brahms cello work at a small, upscale restaurant in Austin, just a few miles from their suburban home. The crowd, as they always were, was transfixed. Little Sally regarded her role as important to the creative process, and though she too played, her passion was not music, but engineering. Though she could wield a bow nearly as deftly as her mother, she was much happier with a soldering iron in her hand.

...

Sitting, rocking the child in her womb, wondering at the images he poured into her mind, Sally looked up with a start. Smoke. Looking round, she spied the source: the Chair. She rose to her feet quickly, but wisely, and raced to the machine. The digital readout of the frequency meter was pegged at the machine's maximum working level, and Sally could see that some sort of feedback harmonic was at work, an obvious manipulation, sabotage. She tried to override the interference, but was unable. Something had hijacked the machine. Reluctantly, she turned off the power. Remembering their time in the Chair, she yanked the cord from the wall socket, just to be sure.

What was happening to Sam and her father in law, Master Ankh? Were they in danger? She could wait no longer. She would recreate the state of mind she had committed to memory during her time with Sam in the Chair, would seek his distinct light, and go to him. Every few seconds, Moasi would kick her, and the kicks became more insistent.
"Yes, Moasi," she cooed, her strength's and confidence' calming him instantly. The kicking ceased, and the images slowed and dropped in intensity, as though a part of his mind were now occupied with the problem of retrieving his father, and grandfather.

She had internalized the process, perhaps because she had physically internalized the Chair more intimately than had Sam. "Here we go," she told her son, but even before she could brace herself for the journey, she felt his pulling her into his light. Moasi knew the way! Together, mother and son shimmered, a single mirage with two distinct centers, then were gone.ncerned that the obstinance of the Council stemmed in part from their misplaced suspicion of nepotism. His years-long estrangement was not neglect, but concern for his father's esteem in their eyes. He would learn, if he hadn't by now, that his father deserved far better than the Council, and that his father, in his heart of hearts, would see Sam his successor. Even as he considered these thoughts, those who controlled Earth's military were surveilling them and their portal, preparing to seize Ankh on his return.

...

Young Sam's father could barely believe his eyes. He saw his son in the distance, leading their hounds, Phobos and Deimos, who were harnessed to a travois. Tied to it was a bull elk, the head mounted to the front like a Viking prow, the rest of the beast quartered, sealed in cheesecloth. Their progress was slow, for he was in snowshoes, but he had been wise enough to wait till morning to travel, taking advantage of the hard snow. For this purpose he had fashioned a half-sized pair of shoes, carrying the larger ones on the travois. The dogs pulled their food, water, and camping supples also. What was a few more ounces, when they pulled the thousand-pound elk with ease already?

This close to home, in open valley, Sam kept his bow on his back. In the foothills where he had taken the buck, however, he was unhindered.
There, amid the rocks and trees, your Bowie knife never left your side. For where there was game, there was the cougar, and he wouldn't politely wait for you to nock an arrow.

Two Bears was a proud man, and even prouder this morning. Under the canopy of a bluish-gray Alaska sky, he shook his head in wonder and ran to meet his son. As he approached, Sam raised his hand high and waved, smiling brightly. Something was wrong; Father had fallen. Sam untied the deerhide rope holding the great elk's quarters and used it as a lever to roll the meat onto the snow, jumped onto the travois, and drove dog. Sensing trouble, the hounds no longer bayed with joy, but put down their heads and ran, the travois' weight barely fazing them.

Sam jumped from the travois and knelt beside his father. "Son."
"Yes, Father?"
"I am going to be with the Elders," he wheezed.
"No, Father!"
"Sam!" scolded the older man gently. "It is time. You must care for your mother and brother now." Weakly, he grasped his son's long hair and pulled his face close, kissed his cheek, then spoke into his ear. "Visit me," he could only whisper.
"How, Father?"
"Become as the child," breathed John Two Bears, and breathed no more. Stowing his cries deep inside, Sam silently wept over his beloved father.

...

Thousands of miles away, a young Sally tagged along to her mother's musical performance, as always. A precocious child, she would sit through a concert at the soundboard, adjusting monitor, bass, treble, or whatever else her keen ear deemed. This night her mother played a Brahms cello work at a small, upscale restaurant in Austin, just a few miles from their suburban home. The crowd, as they always were, was transfixed. Little Sally regarded her role as important to the creative process, and though she too played, her passion was not music, but engineering. Though she could wield a bow nearly as deftly as her mother, she was much happier with a soldering iron in her hand.

...

Thousands of miles away, a young Sally tagged along to her mother's musical performance, as always. A precocious child, she would sit through a concert at the soundboard, adjusting monitor, bass, treble, or whatever else her keen ear deemed. This night her mother played a Brahms cello work at a small, upscale restaurant in Austin, just a few miles from their suburban home. The crowd, as they always were, was transfixed. Little Sally regarded her role as important to the creative process, and though she too played, her passion was not music, but engineering. Though she could wield a bow nearly as deftly as her mother, she was much happier with a soldering iron in her hand.

...

Sitting, rocking the child in her womb, wondering at the images he poured into her mind, Sally looked up with a start. Smoke. Looking round, she spied the source: the Chair. She rose to her feet quickly, but wisely, and raced to the machine. The digital readout of the frequency meter was pegged at the machine's maximum working level, and Sally could see that some sort of feedback harmonic was at work, an obvious manipulation, sabotage. She tried to override the interference, but was unable. Something had hijacked the machine. Reluctantly, she turned off the power. Remembering their time in the Chair, she yanked the cord from the wall socket, just to be sure.

What was happening to Sam and her father in law, Master Ankh? Were they in danger? She could wait no longer. She would recreate the state of mind she had committed to memory during her time with Sam in the Chair, would seek his distinct light, and go to him. Every few seconds, Moasi would kick her, and the kicks became more insistent.
"Yes, Moasi," she cooed, her strength's and confidence' calming him instantly. The kicking ceased, and the images slowed and dropped in intensity, as though a part of his mind were now occupied with the problem of retrieving his father, and grandfather.

She had internalized the process, perhaps because she had physically internalized the Chair more intimately than had Sam. "Here we go," she told her son, but even before she could brace herself for the journey, she felt his pulling her into his light. Moasi knew the way! Together, mother and son shimmered, a single mirage with two distinct centers, then were gone.

(to be continued)

Quentin's Queue

Quentin's Queue -- a Nick Serpico "killer" crime series story

Quentin looked round furtively. This was the hottest (near-freezing though she was) he had seen in some time, and he'd had his eye on her gunshot wound since they rolled her in the night before. The security guard would be napping now, he knew.

Quentin's heart's pounding so hard he thought it would explode through his rib cage, he opened her drawer, barely breathing, light-headed. He steadied himself, drool dripping from his chin, pupils damn near as big as that hole. He tortured himself, opening the drawer slowly. When her head finally appeared, he shouted in horror.

"Damn that kid!" muttered the security guard, startled awake, and out of long habit unsnapping his gun, nonchalantly (so he told himself) resting his hand on the grip, ready for fast draw. He rolled away from the well of his desk and stood, stretched, muttered again. The last thing he saw was the flourescent flash from Quentin's axe...

Quentin had surreptitiously watched the security guard before, violating Quentin's girls. Veronica was different. She was to be Quentin's wife! And this miserable, fat, fucking slob had desecrated her on their wedding night! (Quentin had not had the courage to confront him before, but would watch, waiting, shaking in fear and rage, his massive, blanched fingers gripping the axe handle so hard, the wood would creak). This time, the dam of fear had broken, his rage roaring through the gorge of his broken brain. For finding this semen-sacrilege, of his Veronica, was too great to bear. Quentin might have only beaten the man with the flat of the axe, had he only penetrated her pelvis, but left her sweet head alone. No, the demon had to leave his demon seed in her wound, knowing it would hurt, infuriate him. Her poor, hurt head. "No one will hurt you again," he'd promised, and had stalked away with his axe.

He stood over the dead man, axe gleaming red(der), like the lake growing from the neatly cleaved cranium, in the garish light of this, his and Veronica's wedding chapel.
"You raped the wrong girl, this time, Walt," he blubbered.
"I had heard the screams of the others, but had been too fucking scared to help! We (Quentin gestured in the direction of his Veronica on their morgue marriage bed) were betrothed! Didn't you know? Didn't you care?" Quentin paused, looking expectantly at the man, who would remain rigor-motis-free indefinitely, here in the frigid air of the morgue. "Liar!" shrieked Quentin. "I saw you laughing at me as I stroked her hair and kissed her wound and sang soothing songs to her, you bastard! And didn't I warn you don't dare defile her, leave her alone, keep your filthy fucking fingers away from her head? It's your fault you're dead!" Tears frolicked with the blood below. Quentin weakly choked, "Is nothing sacred to you?" Walt only stared.

...

It wasn't your standard busy East Coast police precinct, with the parading pimps, whores, petty thieves and muggers. It almost had a Bobby and Bloke lack of combativeness, in a town with the musty feel of New England and her unique regional and cultural memory, her worn edges, time-honored, wicked independence.

Nick Serpico liked it here. He'd had a buttful of Boston, and couldn't be happier to be hundreds of miles from his litigious ex, up here in Stanton. Taking a deep breath of this sweet New Hampshire air, he decided today to walk to the morgue, saying aloud, almost shouting, "It's too damned gorgeous to drive!" Then muttered the young detective, "Besides, I've never done a fuckin' necro before -- can't wait to meet the perp."

...

"Homicide!" barked Serpico into the phone. It was three days since the morgue incident, and he was no closer to figuring out what the fuck had happened there.
"I know, Mrs. Blanchard. We're doing all we can to find your dog's killer. We'll call you the moment we get a lead." Mrs. Blanchard, the batty widow, had rung off, and Serpico slammed down the phone, got up, stamped across the littered floor to the coffee pot.

"What's eatin' you?" asked Jim "Slim Jim" Barnes, his gargantuan partner, between bites of his Cinnabon. Barnes didn't look it, but he was a dynamo of detective energy, and more than once had surprised Serpico with his agility and speed on the racquetball court.
"You know that fuckin' morgue case's fuck-insane, right?" answered Serpico.
"Nick, it's not a 'case.' Ok, I'll humor you: what do you have?"
"Nothin.' Not a fuckin' thing, Man. I mean, nothing makes sense. We know someone did that corpse, but it wasn't Short." (At seven foot one and over four hundred pounds, Quentin was as inaptly named as they came). Serpico continued, "He's still at County Mental, gibbering. Doctors and staff there got nothin.'" (They had called the paramedics to the morgue on the morning of Quentin's call, whereupon the near-catatonic, muttering giant had had to be subdued and sedated after throwing several men like rag dolls, including Barnes, himself nearly four hundred pounds).

"Leave it, Nick. It'll only grey your hair."
"I can't. I can't sleep for three days. Can't eat."
"You got a crush on 'er too, Nick?" chortled Barnes.
Serpico ignored the crack, saying, "Barnes, there's something about this kid. There's no question he's batshit, but my gut tells me he saw something."
"You mean someone?"

...

"Impossible!" cried Dr. Julie Kramer. "That is a level five security ward with twenty-four-hour guard on the patient's cell. He couldn't've just disappeared!"
She put down the phone and sat up, looked at her soundly sleeping husband with a shrug, rose to dress. "Shit," she cooed, "no time for coffee."

...

"What's the situation?" Kramer queried her assistant chief, Dr. Melton, a thorough professional whose icy stare thoroughly unnerved her.
"We've locked down the hospital and conducted a thorough search. No sign of Short."
"How did he escape?"
"According to the security guard posted at his cell, he had -- and I quote -- 'disappeared.'"
"Dr. Melton, we're on this side of the padded cell, remember?"
"I'm reporting facts, Dr. Kramer." (That fucking stare).
"What do you suggest?"
"I suggest either the entire shift is hallucinating, or Short has disappeared into thin air, and is now a ward of the police. A Detective Serpico is interviewing patients now."
"Patients, Dr. Melton?"

...

"Detective Serpico, I'm Dr. Kra--" began Kramer in the doorway of her office, as Serpico stepped around her and went inside.
Circling her slowly, continually driving away her eyes, Serpico chawed, "Dr. Julie Anne Kramer-Zunino, M.D., Ph.D., J.D., summa cum laude, Columbia -- twice, summa cum laude, Yale, magna cum laude, Harvard, Associate Director of Neuropsychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital,"
"I'm sorry, Detective, but is--"
"You're right, Doc. Mind if I sit?"
"Please." Serpico waited for her to sit at her desk, then sat, intently studying the doctor's gaze.
"I want to know why you've been interrogating my patients."
"I'll bet you do, Doc."

"How long has Quentin Short been in the program, Dr. Kramer?" drilled Detective Serpico.
"Program, Lieutenant?" she blurted. (Only Serpico's precinct captain could have known his promotion was in the works. She might as well have said, "I'm fucking your precinct captain." Hell, he hadn't even told Barnes). Serpico's eyes narrowed; he rose, walked behind and leaned over her.
"Program, Doctor," Serpico fired back, his face so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her throat, his eyes flashing as though to say, "What. You think we don't have eyes and ears on you?"
"Tell me about Project Cerberus, Doctor." Kramer went two or three distinct shades greyer, Serpico thought. He was going to nip this in the bud. "We can do this here, or downtown, Doc. Doesn' matter to me. Oh -- you don't mind if I record this, do you?" Kramer shook her head. She rose, trying her damnedest to brush his cock as she did. A piece of work, she was. Her loathesomeness was a healthy dose of saltpeter. She slank to the window and spoke.

"We were approached shortly after 9/11 by an agency--"
"What agency?"
"They wouldn't say."
"Go on."
"They wanted us to create an experimental program using psychotropic drugs and radiotelepathic trans--"
"Don't give me gobbledygook, Doc. Use layman's terms. I want something a Grand Jury can sink its teeth into."
"We were ask-- told -- to create a drug-based, sound-based program of mental control of subjects -- patients -- they said it was for 'national security,' that it was our 'patriotic duty.'"

...

The plan went off without a hitch: the plant in the control room had rigged the camera to play a loop, while Quentin made himself into an 'x' on his cell's ceiling; the guard, having seen no Quentin through the window, rendered unconscious by over four hundred pounds of dropping patient, propped up against the cell door and adorned with sunglasses, appeared to be on duty, albeit a bit Palace Guard. In a fluid motion the laundryman had fit the glasses on the incredibly life-like mannequin and scooped up the diving Quentin in his cart, barely breathing harder at the extra weight.

...

"How do you feel, Kid?" Serpico asked the giant, who'd barely left the bed since they'd brought him to the safe house, rising only for food, water, and toilet. He'd drawn Quentin's blood himself, overnighted it to Boston, where an FBI buddy'd isolated the shit-cocktail concocted for Quentin at the "Agency's" behest: Thorazine, Haldol, Stelazine, Prozac, half a dozen others in trace amounts -- so far, so good was the "care package" Kramer'd provided -- but there was one whose identity Serpico's man hadn't yet determined. He'd said it might be days, maybe never. Whatever it was, he'd said, "It's one fucking long, complex molecule."

"Kid, you need to get up and move around. Lyin' in bed's not healthy."
"Where am I?" queried Quentin, raising himself to sit upright.
"I'm Sergeant Nick Serpico of the Stanton County Sheriff's Department," offered the older man, most of his hand's disappearing in Quentin's as though it were a child's.
"Quentin Short. Always hated that," he simpered.
Chuckled Serpico, "I'll bet. Look, Kid, I'm going to the deli. Anything special I can get you?"
"Twelve-inch roast beef and swiss, everything, large Coke...three bags of Fritos?"
"You got it, Kid. I'll be back in thirty or less." The kid wasn't going anywhere, if he'd had the idea. Serpico'd picked half a dozen good, big men. He spoke to them in the front room, then walked to his lime green Dart, put the cherry on top, and sped to County Mental.

Serpico needed that drug, and he needed it now.
While watching Kramer get into her car, her having ignored his instructions, it hit him, just as federal assets rolled into his peripheral vision -- he managed the thought, "Damn you, vain, stupid woman!" and the next instant Kramer's little Mercedes, and she in it, became a blinding fireball. She'd chosen to run to the Agency with the note he'd passed to her in her office, and now she was dead. Hey keyed up his microphone, breaking radio silence to order his inside crew to take firing positions. Until proved otherwise, anyone unknown was an enemy, and known, a potential enemy. He drove, engine roaring, toward the buzzards moving in on the flaming wreck, nearly running over one in an FBI jacket, whose attention he directed to his sniper teams moving into position above. He sped toward the hospital lobby.

Taking them at a slight angle, he drove up the steps and through the lobby's plate glass facade, spraying glass and metal for a screaming audience. As far as Nick Serpico, young namesake of the great New York undercover cop was concerned, everyone in that building but patients and his crew, complicit. All he was as a cop, and as a man, was focused on finding one Dr. David "Mengele" Melton.

...

Serpico never called him "Jim." This was heavy, Barnes thought.
"What the Hell, Nick? You want me to believe the Cap's dirty?" Nick threw the photos on the table.
"As a sewer."
"You put a PI on 'im? I don't fuckin' believe it. This is low, Man."
"Keep lookin.'"
"I'm lookin!' I'm lookin!' So the Cap's fuckin' the head shrink. Old news."
"You'll see."
"Fuck me."
"Yeah. Cap's on the take, with the Agency. Look at the eyes buggin' out of his head."
"And Walter Redd's being yanked into the WPP. What the fuck is that?"
"Yeah, what is that?" winked Nick.

"What you got?"
"We got a jolly green giant, my friend."
"The kid? He's fuckin' bananas."
"Is he?"
"Nick, you know he is. Come on."
"Remember the black light sweep, how clean it was?"
"Yeah, so?"
"It was too fuckin' clean. Not so much as a drop of spit. Does that seem odd to you? Not even Felix fuckin' Unger's that clean."
"Redd's dead." Barnes flicked his temple, then, "Cleaners?"
"Yeah. Not a fuckin' trace."
"Agency?"
"And how. They make CIA look like cub scouts."
"So Short had some help that night. Too bad he knows nothin.'"
"He knows plenty."
"How do you figure?"

"You heard Mengele. He'd trained the kid to be detached.
Fucked him almost from infancy, the sick fuck. Know what that does?"
"You mean besides break brains?"
"In addition to developing detachment, it causes the child's sensory sensitivity to be many times normal, and eidetic, photographic retention, high intelligence. Quentin's is huge."
"A fuckin' walking video recorder. Hypnosis?"
"Hypnosis. But here's the rub, and you can bet your ass Mengele's is puckerin.'
You have to get the regression right, or the Defense will try to have it thrown out for bias.
Motherfuckers think they can get away with it, that a kid knows nothing! They know. An' we got us one."

...

Serpico exited his freshly modified Dart, gun in hand, badge in the other, disarmed the security guard in the lobby, and impolitely letting his gun do most of the talking, had the guard lead him to Melton. On reaching the nursery, he was shocked to find Barnes standing over a partially nude Melton with a quaking trigger finger.

"Easy, Partner, easy. I got 'im," a calm Serpico assured Barnes. "Keep an eye on Barney Fife here, while Dr. Melton and I have a talk. What did you see, Partner?"
"Caught him in flagrante delicto with child, anogenital penetration. Told the nurse to sit tight with the kid till the paramedics showed; one of our counselors will be here any minute, to ride in with him. One of your crew's watching the nurse, with instructions to keep all -- and I mean all -- paws off that kid; I don't care if it's Mother Theresa with a medical bag. The rest have buttoned down all hospital facilities."
"Good job, Bro. You and Barney should have a look at the lobby. Real mess, and a circus in the parking lot, too. Give the media the lowdown."
"You got it, Lieutenant."

The "doctor" sat in the examination room on a pediatric table, hands cuffed behind his back, expressionless. Serpico stalked him in a tight arc, gun pointed at his head, a hungry, caged cat who'd just been thrown a poodle.
"If it were up to me, Doc, you'd be dead. Fortunately for you, my partner and I are good men, and mostly by-the-book. I've filed down this
trigger -- gun might go off if you fuck up. Where's the secret sauce? The drug, Doc. Where is it?" Serpico jerked a round into the chamber,
grabbed a handful of Mengele's hair, put the barrel to his temple. "Take me to the drug, Doc," he cooed, almost whispered, and Mengele obeyed.

"Get this shit to 'em right away," Serpico commanded a crew member, handing him a supply of the drug. He turned his attention back to Mengele.
"Let's take a walk, Doc."
"What are you doing?"
"Shut up and move," Serpico directed, still guiding him by gun barrel. He wanted to send a message to this fuckin' place that their former boss and his weird ways were out of service. "We're going to look in on the media, Doc."

...

Whatever it was: the blindness of arrogance, or a bulwark of good beyond which the Agency was barred, IAD was onto the captain, and an interim captain had given Barnes the go on Mengele. They blew open the Agency's infiltration of the WPP and corroborated Serpico's theory that their cleaners had destroyed Walter Redd's body. They arrested dozens of County Mental "doctors" and staff, and prominent "citizens" involved in the morgue rape and snuff parties Mengele had hosted and supplied with female mental patients.

With help from Quentin and a co-operative Melton,
Serpico and Barnes had pieced together the case, and with Quentin's retrieval of stashed evidence, abandoned Serpico's hitherto working theory.
"What Melton hadn't known," wrote Captain Serpico,
and Lieutenant Barnes, fellow field-promoted cops,
"was that he, not Quentin, had killed Walter Redd, the complicit guard."

"An extremely intelligent young man intent on survival, Quentin had devised a plan to turn Project Cerberus on its head. Using Melton's arrogant belief in his own invulnerability against him, Quentin regularly adulterated Melton's food and drink with the drug intended for himself, gradually addicting Melton and weaning himself from it.

"Simultaneously, he'd created elaborate electronic decoys: the first, of the computerized radio signal program -- the robotic assassin program intended for him -- tuning it instead to Melton's unique signature; the second, a digitally created scene showing Quentin as the murder weapon's wielder, while making a recording of what had actually transpired.

"Quentin had wished to give us the authentic video recording and the murder weapon that morning, but from the early stages of his plan had created the theater of his psychotic breakdown, forcing Melton to adjust the experiment. Quentin's ruse, his being unsure of how thoroughgoing the Agency's conspiracy, served him well on the morning of the murder. Having seen from his hiding place (one of the drawers) the diabolical results of the assassin program in action, and the Agency cleaners' work, he had believed himself in mortal danger, and decided to take his chances at County Mental Hospital."

Serpico turned in their report, which met the Prosecutor's satisfaction.

Their handling of the media circus at the hospital would have made Ziegfried and Roy blush. It was a watershed event, triggering the arrest of several top officials of the National Security State, dismantling of their robotic assassin program and its radio/satellite network, and had sparked heated debate over the constitutionality of indicting a sitting President of the United States.

Serpico and Barnes sat in the lieutenant's car.
The People would probably see Doctor David "Mengele" Melton live to a ripe old age in prison. Serpico vomited. Barnes hooked a large paw around his shoulders, hauled him upright in the passenger seat of his Caddy and gave him his handkerchief. "We did good, Brother," Barnes said.
"Yeah. We did...I'm buyin.'"
"You'll spit more than puke!" barked Barnes, showing him his fist.
"Okay, okay," chortled Serpico. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
Tonight they would go to bed drunk, but many would sleep better for their work.