Morning People

This one started out as a practice and turned into something cool. Tell me what you think.

It was a dark and stormy night. A shot rang out in the park, and a body drops to the ground. The sound of footsteps can be heard running away but no one is there to see or hear any of this. Morning comes and in the drizzle of rain a police men happens to find a young woman lying dead in the park shot in the chest. He phones it in tapes off the area and waits as others soon arrive on the scene. Enter the detective. He is tall and slender with deep set brown eyes with short brown hair under his hat to match and unshaven. He takes out a pair of thin rimmed glasses and examines the body and the surrounding area, then he asks questions of the police officer who found the body and writes it all down in his little pocket notebook. He walks to a near by bench stairs into his little note book and starts to ask himself the really hard questions.

The detective’s young assistant, who has arrived slightly after him approaches. He is a good looking man with a wisp of short blond hair and pleasantness about him. He looks down at his boss and speaks. “What are you thinking boss?”

The detective grizzled out a reply, “the hard questions.”

“Are we to that already then?” says the assistant. “Who, what where, when, how, and why. I’m sure you have the preliminaries all ready for me, fire away boss.” The assistant takes out his own pocket notebook and turns to a new clean page as the detective reads from his own.

“Who; her name is Samantha Wilson of 1425 south Hampton row not far from here. She is twenty five and an organ donor, that’s all we have so far. And nothing on the man who shot her.”

“Are we looking for a man?” the assistant asks.

“Statistically yes, if it was a robbery then I would say most definitely, but if she knew her killer then the chances go down, but not by much. Let’s see here, what; what killed here is a shot to the chest, presumably by a hand gun. We’ll know more later on. What was it all about? That’s a more difficult question. Where is pretty obvious, here in the park? Where did her killer go is another one of those hard questions for later on as well. When; the coroner says between two and two twenty. The cold front bringing all this rain has chilled the body more then he likes. And now how.”

“Didn’t we answer that already boss?” asked the assistant. “With what killed her.”

“Your quite right, but what about the harder ‘how’. The one that is fallowed by a come. How come no one heard anything? We are hardly within the parks entrance with city all around us. Some one would have heard a gunshot.” The assistant scribbled furiously nodding his head the entire time. “Then comes the whys. Why was this woman in the park four blocks from her home at two in the morning? Why is she shot in the front and not the back? And why is she off the trail among the trees? That only leaves the big one left.”

“Why is she not wearing a rain coat?” the assistant chimed in. the detective looked up quickly, stood, turned round to face the crimes scene and smiled.

“You are on your game today. I completely missed that. Dang you morning people can’t stand you fellows my self but some times you do come through.”

“Thank you boss, I think. But what is the other why?”

“Oh yes, why would somebody want to kill her? Find that and you’ll win your self a cigar.” The detective closed his note book and put it in his pocket along with the glasses. “I’m going to get you started on that how come. Take some men and knock on doors around here, but before you do get some copies of here picture made up to show. I’m going to her place to find out more and find a number for someone to tell. By the time you get the copies made and start going round I should have told them already. We’ll meet up at the station around noon to compare findings. You got that?”

“Sure thing boss.” Said the young assistant. He trotted off back to the body wile the detective walked out to the street. He convinced a cop with a squad car to give him a lift to the victim’s home, but before he left he had to return to the crime scene to get her keys. “There aren’t any.” The assistant said after he looked.

“Add that to your list under where.” The detective said before returning to the waiting squad car. The entire way to the apartment he grumbled about morning people and about the rain and the cold. He would continue to grumble as he always did till nine thirty. That’s when his brain finally kicks on, that is the absolute earliest time that detective Mark Briton comes to life. Lucky for him his assistant, Sergeant Anthony Rogers is a morning person. The only morning person he has ever liked.

Alone

I wrote this about three years ago. Its prompt was the lyrics from the Hootie and the Blowfish album Cracked Rear View.


Alone, on the road. I left my home and I don’t know why. It’s all I thought about these past five years on the road. Filled with the pain of the parting keeps me in eternal dusk and dawn. I never see the sun shine. Following the eternal trail of I know a guy who knows a guy, looking for work. I don’t know why I even try anymore. I always come with a few bucks and that’s the way I leave. Continually avoiding places I’ve been and pretending to have already been to the places I don’t want to go. I haven’t felt clean in all these five years. I’m covered in a dirt water can’t wash away. It’s come to the point where I don’t know why I continue to compromise myself for people I will never see again but I can’t swallow my pride and apologize to the ones I love? My mind is plagued with doubts. Are they still there? Will they want to see me? Can they ever forgive me? Of course I know the answers to all the questions but I let doubt linger. The big problem is I don’t think I can ever get things back to how they used to be.

I get off the bus in my hometown and walk down a deserted main street. It’s right before dawn and my world is dark. I spend the morning in a diner nursing a stomachache. I spend the rest of the day hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and a hat, walking to all the places I used to know by heart. Looking at them from the sidewalk or through a fence. Never touching or entering in. I only stay long enough to update the photographs in my mind. I walk my suitcase past my house a dozen times that day. I want to vomit each time I do so. I left there so loudly and with such confidence, and now to return so meekly doesn’t sit well with me. I end up planted on a bench just off the main street near the bus station. What made me think I could return? Too much time has passed, everything looks old. I feel older. What right do I have to inflict myself on these people again? As I stair at the bus station down the road someone sits next to me and in a familiar voice asks if I thought I could hid behind sunglasses my whole life. He claims that my face tells him everything and that I don’t have to say a word. He tells me that I’m wanted and cared about. I ask him if I can come home and that I want to try to be part of a family again.

“When did you stop?” my father asks. He reaches up and removes my sunglasses to expose my tears. We stand and he puts his arm around me and leads me home, and for the first time in five years I see the sun.