The Boy in the Rain

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Challenge: The story starts during a police investigation. The story takes place a year into the future. A character will drink something alchoholic. A character is deceptive throughout most of the story. During the story, a character gets a promotion.

Theme: Fiction, Mystery
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Rain is dropping down, no sign of relenting, the streets aglow in the sheen of the watery surface in the night time lights and signs. Water falling from the sky, water falling from the suspended clothes lines, water falling from the rusted steel fire escapes, water falling off the hats of the investigating officers. The alley was filled with the alternating blue and red lights of a few police cars, a fire engine and two ambulances. I lite a cigarette, a terrible habit, I picked it up after my promotion, probably a few months afterward. I was a bright and eager young man, just made detective, thought I could be a real sleuth. Could not have been further from the truth. Its not all Sherlock Holmes, detective work. Now days its all murder, gang violence, informing families of dead kin, filling out paperwork. There was no evil villain with a dastardly plan to over throw a regime with their wealth and power and influence, just the next punk with a pistol. There was no picking up even the smallest piece of evidence and concocting an elaborate scheme with pin point detail, that was crime scene investigations job. I don’t think I can tell you about a single case where I actually had to go out and follow leads, do any actual investigation. Except for now. Opening the small flask I carry with me, I take a large swig of the burning rum inside of it. Its not a crutch, its not like I need the stuff, it just helps deal with situations like this one.

There is small boy in front of me, his blonde hair was mousey, although at this point it is matted to his head by the rain. He looks up at me with near dead eyes. Eyes that were ready to cry at any moment, and yet wouldn’t, they carry a heavy sadness in them. I can’t look at them, not my job, I gotta get this kid to tell me what he saw, C.S.I and the others first on scene told me that he was blank, wasn’t talking. This kid, who was mere moments from growing up all at once was my only lead to this slaying. I don’t need to ask him yet, I’ll check out the scene first, see the bodies, get a hold of the situation, so I can get as much of an idea as I can before I talk to the sprat. Before I go though, I take my fedora and place it on the wet child’s head, and wrap him in up in my coat. Never had kids before, never been married, but it was time to act like I knew what I was doing, like I was some sort of parental figure. I don’t smile, I don’t nod, I just tap him on the shoulder and walk away.

I walk towards the bodies, five in total, it was the most brutal slaying to take place this year, and we were not even halfway through it yet. The crime and murder rates have shot through the roof from 2009 to 2010. Some of them are emerging cults, all prepping the world for 2012. Bunch of psychopaths who think these next few years they can do whatever they like, cults performing ceremonies in accordance to their fiction writers doctrine. I’m a piss poor protestant myself, piss poor in the fact that I find it hard to love or forgive, maybe would have made a better catholic. I flick my cigarette onto the ground and turn into the direction of a gruff and groan coming from a investigator.

“Piss off Vance, you’ve had a bloody hour and a half with this scene, that’s time enough to get what you want.”

I lift the sheets on the first body, then the next, and the rest consecutively. Probably the strangest things I had seen yet, most brutal to be sure. It was definitely the work of some kind of cult, symbols scratched into the heads and arms, single stab wounds in the middle of the throat. Not sure how the kid managed to get away, baby sister managed to get the same treatment as the others, maybe he hid. Either way, I give a nod to the E.M.S and begin to make my way back to the kid. I place a hand on his back and begin to lead him out of the alley. Its odd, he doesn’t fight, doesn’t run back to his parents, he just walks away, never looking back.

Cut to a small P.O.S diner, and a eight dollar milk shake, and I am sitting across from a kid that has not eaten a bloody thing, and hasn’t spoken a damn word. But I keep the façade, I remain patient…looking. I dip my fry into ketchup, start to play with my food a little, hope I can get a laugh from this kid. But all he does is hold that deep, heavy sadness. I could slam my fist on the counter. You get impatient thanks to monotony after a while. You get used to the same in and outs and if something disrupts that, it makes you impatient, even if its something you want.

“You ain’t touched your food. Come on kid, even you gotta eat, they serve a pretty good milkshake here.”

There crap actually.
“I gotta ask you some questions, its important that you answer them. Otherwise we’ll never catch the bad people who hurt your family…”

Even with the details, I doubt we could catch them, this whole thing is just another file for the basement archives. The kid looks at his milkshake and just pushes it away and lowers his head to the table, burying it into folded arms. Small muffled sobs vibrate off the table, and I put a comforting hand out, or at least I try to. He probably knew it wasn’t sincere, or real. He just looked up at me, his face stained with tears and dirt. I found myself hoping he didn’t ask about what was going to happen with him, it would be more lies, end up in a boys home or something like it, can’t tell him that its all “going to be alright” or that he will be “well taken care of ”. Instead he just sits there, with those muffled breaths you get when you cry and your breathing can’t quite catch up.

“Its ok son, your safe with me. I need you to tell me who the bad men were.”

He wipes his face on his sleeve and begins to retell what happened. Talk of old men, dressed nicely, playing cruel games with his family, leaving him alive to watch, to witness and to tell people of the cruelty he witnessed. He was told what to tell people, to say it was the activity of some kind of pagan cult, to spread discord and confusion. Maybe its true, its hard to tell anymore, so many wacko’s out there. I sit and I listen and I lose more things to say until it finally goes a little quiet and I can only say the one lie I have left in me.

“Don’t worry son, its going to be alright, your going someplace where you’ll be well taken care of.”

I pay the tab and I usher him out the door, back into the rain and uncertainty of a world going to chaos.