Funny How
By me, Turtle
Disclaimer: To think that I can borrow these wonderful characters without mentioning that they aren't really mine and not expect serious karmic (and legal) repercussions would be a failure of imagination. There. Kiff, however, is mine – A tribute to one of my co-workers. On with the show!
Tuesday 9:23 am
Tru Davies rolled over in bed and flopped her arm onto the empty side, half expecting it to land on Luke. Of course it didn't. It never did, never had, and never would. Luke was dead.
Tru opened her eyes to the rainy morning outside her window. She hadn't finished up at the morgue last night until almost five. Though none of the corpses had spoken to her all shift, she was exhausted. That didn't mean she was going to get back to sleep – especially since she had been awake for thirty seconds and already the phone was ringing.
She groped for the receiver.
"'Lo?"
"Morning, sunshine!" sang the voice on the other end.
"Harrison," Tru groaned. "I went to bed four hours ago. This better be good."
A pause.
"This wouldn't happen to be one of those, you know, REWIND days, would it Miss Cranky Pants?"
"No, Harry."
"Good, because I need you to come pick me up."
Tru sighed. Her little brother had a lot of things going for him: Decent looks, wit, charm. Too bad he squandered those assets by wanting something every time he called.
"Harrison, sometimes I wonder if I'd hate you so much if you weren't my next of kin."
"I'm serious!"
Tru sighed. "Pick you up where?"
"This bar on Third and Arthur."
"A bar. At nine-thirty in the morning?"
"It's a long story. Could you just please hurry?"
"Wait, Third and... That biker bar?"
"Tru," Harrison whispered urgently, "there are a lot of very large men here giving me very long looks and the juke box has nothing in it but Poison and ACDC. They're about to play 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' for the sixth time in an hour. No get over here and rescue me."
"Fine. I'll be there by two."
"What??? By then I'll be somebody's girlfriend! Several times!"
"Don't be such a homophobe. I have to get to the dean's office for some application materials and then I'll be there as soon as I can."
"So do it afterwards."
"They'll be closed."
"Ooohh," Harrison groaned. "Eeeev'ry cowboy sings a sad, sa-ad song..."
"Good by, Harrison."
Click
Harrison gave the payphone a look of despair before hanging up. He glanced at the ancient clock above the door before he noticed the fellow at the bar who was smiling a gap-toothed smile under the brim of his leather hat in Harrison's direction. He gave Harrison a wave. Harrison haltingly waved back, and then went to hide in the men's room for a while.
Tuesday 1:54 pm
Tru pushed her long brown hair away from her face, as much to wake herself up as to keep her view of the road clear. Sometimes she wondered if she had been some sort of marauding pirate in a past life and was paying for it now.
Any such thoughts fled however when she turned the last corner and saw an ambulance, flashing lights and all, parked in front of the seedy little bar. She pulled to a stop just behind it, all sorts of horrible images of Harrison's slashed and lifeless body shattered in a bar brawl flooding her head. He'd tried to tell her he was in trouble. Oh God, why hadn't she listened!
She jumped out of her jeep and dashed for the doorway.
"Harrison? Harrison!" she called.
"Looking for somebody, Miss?" one of the dozen or so beefy, leather- clad men at the bar asked politely.
Tru paused just inside, taking in the scene. The floor of the smoky establishment was littered with broken glass, beer and blood. On the floor next to an overturned stool, a skinny fellow sat grimacing while a handsome, blond EMT held his bleeding arm aloft. His partner, a small woman with brown hair, was winding kerlix over the wounds.
"What happened to him?" Tru asked the biker.
"Fell off his stool with a beer in his hand. Dammit Pike, how many times do we have to tell you to quit before that happens? And if it happens, to not break your fall with your beer hand?"
"Sorry, Screwdriver," Pike slurred.
"I'm looking for my brother," Tru said. "Would've been here since about nine this morning?"
Screwdriver peered over the scored counter at the floor beyond.
"Hey, little buddy. I think you can come out now."
Frowning, Tru looked with him. There was Harrison, huddled behind the bar in a tight ball. When he saw her, he sprang to his feet.
"Tru, thank God! Let's get the hell out of here before they start coming onto you too."
With that he fled for the door and the car. Tru gave Screwdriver an apologetic look.
"Thanks for watching him."
"No problem," he said, saluting her with his beer. "Seems nice, but you should get him to quit flattering himself."
Tru smiled and headed for the door herself. She was about halfway there when she slipped in the beer. She was fully airborne for a moment, the glassy floor rushing up to her back –
and her fall was broken by a pair of thin, strong arms.
Letting her breath out in relief, she let the person behind her lift her upright and then looked back to find the female paramedic, whose nametag read K. Frink. For all that half of Tru wished she'd fallen into the arms of the cute guy, she couldn't help but be impressed: The girl looked even smaller standing up, and yet had pulled off the stunt with seemingly no trouble.
"Thanks," said Tru. "Nice catch."
"Watch your step," said K. Frink with a nod. "Come on, boys. Hey Pike, where's your frequent flyer card? Two more stamps and you get to ride shotgun and run the siren."
Tuesday 2:41 pm
"Jesus, how long is this gonna take?" Harrison moped.
"Maybe there was an accident. That's what happens when it rains."
"But an hour? Don't you think they could've scraped the bodies off the road by now?"
To tell the truth, Tru was wondering the same. She peered past the busy windshield wipers at the traffic that seemed to stretch ahead to the horizon.
"Harrison, why were you in a biker bar at a time of day when most bars are still closed?"
"I..." Harrison cleared his throat. "I was meeting a friend."
"What friend?"
"Business friend."
"You mean like a bookie?"
Harrison folded his arms and pouted, refusing to answer, which was answer enough.
"Your bookie wanted to meet you in a biker bar at nine in the morning."
"No. My bookie wanted to meet me in the park at eight in the morning and then had his thugs chase me to a biker bar where I stayed until two in the afternoon because they were too scared of the place to follow me inside. Hey, we're moving!"
The car inched along the road and eventually they could see the flashing red and white lights of emergency vehicles about a block up the street. Great: Rubber-neckers, people slowing down to gawk. They made life difficult not only for other drivers, but for the people responding to the scene, including morgue attendants like Tru.
However, as they slid past the accident itself, even Tru found it hard not to look.
"Holy..." Harrison breathed as he stared wide-eyed out the window. "What the hell happened here? The epic battle of Third and McBain?"
"I don't know," said Tru. "Looks like a car accident, but there's only one car."
One SUV among two cop cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. The car's radiator was a concave, twisted, leaking piece of modern art. Whatever it had hit, it must've been going pretty fast. But what could it have hit? Nothing around seemed damaged.
And then Tru saw the cluster of emergency personnel kneeling on the ground, working furiously, passing equipment and bandages and aiming flashlights. At the center of the huddle, Tru could just make out a limp, ghostly hand on the asphalt.
"Oh, no."
With a sinking feeling, Tru continued to drive. Twenty minutes later, just after dropping Harrison off at his very secure apartment building and reminding him not to open the door for anyone (not even girl scouts), her cell phone rang.
"Hey, Tru."
"Hi, Davis," said Tru, easily recognizing the voice of her supervisor. "How'd the D-and-D go today?"
"Great. We played for four hours and I got slain by a Halfling. Listen, I know it's early, but we need somebody to do a removal at –"
"Third and McBain?"
"Yeah. How'd you – Wait. Rewind day, right?"
"No. Not yet."
Tuesday 3:22 pm
The rain was finally letting up when Tru arrived back at the intersection. She flashed her ID at the uniform guarding the perimeter, who lifted the yellow police tape for her to duck under. Another uniform, a plump middle-aged guy with a graying mustache, caught up with her as she made her way to the center of the scene.
"Ms. Davies?"
"That's me."
"Officer Fielding," he introduced himself. "Your office told us to expect you."
"Nice to meet you. Can you tell me what happened?"
"It's like this: One of the ambulances gets a call this afternoon for chest pain at this here apartment building. A little later, the medics are just coming out of the building to get back in their vehicle and one of them gets smoked by that goddam subaru. Er, pardon my French."
"Sounds like it's called for here, Officer."
Fielding nodded. "Anyway, bystanders are saying it must've been doing about seventy. Another crew was here zippity-split and they worked the medic for a long time, but... that was pretty much it."
"What happened to the driver?"
"Took off on foot. Funny, huh? We've got about a hundred witnesses here and not one of them can tell us where the asshole took off to. But that's not the half of it. The real kicker is the first call turned out to be a prank."
"All right. Thanks for the info."
"All right, then. Um, if I could ask a favor?"
"Sure."
"Keep a light touch while you're here, would ya? Cops and medics work together a lot, and a lot of these guys here – You know?"
"I will," Tru assured him. "And I'm sorry about what happened."
Fielding nodded again and then took his leave. Tru headed for the center of the fiasco, past a group of retreating forensics experts with their dozens of evidence baggies. As she neared the sheet-shrouded, inert form on the ground, she heard the crying on her right. Looking down, she saw him sitting on the curb, the cop who stood over him with an awkward hand on his shoulder: The blond EMT from the bar. He was wailing into his hands as though his heart was breaking.
Tru knelt next to the body and pulled back the sheet. K. Frink's sightless eyes stared back at her. She was covered in blood, and there was a large dent in her chest. Her ribs had been crushed like twigs.
Suddenly, one ghostly hand reached up and seized Tru's wrist. Gasping in surprise, she looked down and saw the dead paramedic's eyes boring into hers.
"HELP US."
Then, in the split second between the plea and the "rewind", Tru had the strangest feeling, stranger even than reliving a day. She looked up and peered through the foggy air across the street. On the otherwise deserted sidewalk, there was a man standing there. A young man in a long dark coat. A man with cold, cold eyes who had haunted her dreams since Luke's death, and he was looking straight at her.
Before she could bolt across the street and strangle him as she'd so often fantasized, she found herself sitting bolt upright in her own bed. Her alarm clock read 9:23, and the phone was ringing.
She picked up the receiver. "Harrison, I don't have time to –"
"Hello, Tru."
Tru's tongue froze along with her blood. She knew the voice well, and it wasn't her brother's.
"Jack."
TBC...
Ps – It gets more exciting, honest.
By me, Turtle
Disclaimer: To think that I can borrow these wonderful characters without mentioning that they aren't really mine and not expect serious karmic (and legal) repercussions would be a failure of imagination. There. Kiff, however, is mine – A tribute to one of my co-workers. On with the show!
Tuesday 9:23 am
Tru Davies rolled over in bed and flopped her arm onto the empty side, half expecting it to land on Luke. Of course it didn't. It never did, never had, and never would. Luke was dead.
Tru opened her eyes to the rainy morning outside her window. She hadn't finished up at the morgue last night until almost five. Though none of the corpses had spoken to her all shift, she was exhausted. That didn't mean she was going to get back to sleep – especially since she had been awake for thirty seconds and already the phone was ringing.
She groped for the receiver.
"'Lo?"
"Morning, sunshine!" sang the voice on the other end.
"Harrison," Tru groaned. "I went to bed four hours ago. This better be good."
A pause.
"This wouldn't happen to be one of those, you know, REWIND days, would it Miss Cranky Pants?"
"No, Harry."
"Good, because I need you to come pick me up."
Tru sighed. Her little brother had a lot of things going for him: Decent looks, wit, charm. Too bad he squandered those assets by wanting something every time he called.
"Harrison, sometimes I wonder if I'd hate you so much if you weren't my next of kin."
"I'm serious!"
Tru sighed. "Pick you up where?"
"This bar on Third and Arthur."
"A bar. At nine-thirty in the morning?"
"It's a long story. Could you just please hurry?"
"Wait, Third and... That biker bar?"
"Tru," Harrison whispered urgently, "there are a lot of very large men here giving me very long looks and the juke box has nothing in it but Poison and ACDC. They're about to play 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn' for the sixth time in an hour. No get over here and rescue me."
"Fine. I'll be there by two."
"What??? By then I'll be somebody's girlfriend! Several times!"
"Don't be such a homophobe. I have to get to the dean's office for some application materials and then I'll be there as soon as I can."
"So do it afterwards."
"They'll be closed."
"Ooohh," Harrison groaned. "Eeeev'ry cowboy sings a sad, sa-ad song..."
"Good by, Harrison."
Click
Harrison gave the payphone a look of despair before hanging up. He glanced at the ancient clock above the door before he noticed the fellow at the bar who was smiling a gap-toothed smile under the brim of his leather hat in Harrison's direction. He gave Harrison a wave. Harrison haltingly waved back, and then went to hide in the men's room for a while.
Tuesday 1:54 pm
Tru pushed her long brown hair away from her face, as much to wake herself up as to keep her view of the road clear. Sometimes she wondered if she had been some sort of marauding pirate in a past life and was paying for it now.
Any such thoughts fled however when she turned the last corner and saw an ambulance, flashing lights and all, parked in front of the seedy little bar. She pulled to a stop just behind it, all sorts of horrible images of Harrison's slashed and lifeless body shattered in a bar brawl flooding her head. He'd tried to tell her he was in trouble. Oh God, why hadn't she listened!
She jumped out of her jeep and dashed for the doorway.
"Harrison? Harrison!" she called.
"Looking for somebody, Miss?" one of the dozen or so beefy, leather- clad men at the bar asked politely.
Tru paused just inside, taking in the scene. The floor of the smoky establishment was littered with broken glass, beer and blood. On the floor next to an overturned stool, a skinny fellow sat grimacing while a handsome, blond EMT held his bleeding arm aloft. His partner, a small woman with brown hair, was winding kerlix over the wounds.
"What happened to him?" Tru asked the biker.
"Fell off his stool with a beer in his hand. Dammit Pike, how many times do we have to tell you to quit before that happens? And if it happens, to not break your fall with your beer hand?"
"Sorry, Screwdriver," Pike slurred.
"I'm looking for my brother," Tru said. "Would've been here since about nine this morning?"
Screwdriver peered over the scored counter at the floor beyond.
"Hey, little buddy. I think you can come out now."
Frowning, Tru looked with him. There was Harrison, huddled behind the bar in a tight ball. When he saw her, he sprang to his feet.
"Tru, thank God! Let's get the hell out of here before they start coming onto you too."
With that he fled for the door and the car. Tru gave Screwdriver an apologetic look.
"Thanks for watching him."
"No problem," he said, saluting her with his beer. "Seems nice, but you should get him to quit flattering himself."
Tru smiled and headed for the door herself. She was about halfway there when she slipped in the beer. She was fully airborne for a moment, the glassy floor rushing up to her back –
and her fall was broken by a pair of thin, strong arms.
Letting her breath out in relief, she let the person behind her lift her upright and then looked back to find the female paramedic, whose nametag read K. Frink. For all that half of Tru wished she'd fallen into the arms of the cute guy, she couldn't help but be impressed: The girl looked even smaller standing up, and yet had pulled off the stunt with seemingly no trouble.
"Thanks," said Tru. "Nice catch."
"Watch your step," said K. Frink with a nod. "Come on, boys. Hey Pike, where's your frequent flyer card? Two more stamps and you get to ride shotgun and run the siren."
Tuesday 2:41 pm
"Jesus, how long is this gonna take?" Harrison moped.
"Maybe there was an accident. That's what happens when it rains."
"But an hour? Don't you think they could've scraped the bodies off the road by now?"
To tell the truth, Tru was wondering the same. She peered past the busy windshield wipers at the traffic that seemed to stretch ahead to the horizon.
"Harrison, why were you in a biker bar at a time of day when most bars are still closed?"
"I..." Harrison cleared his throat. "I was meeting a friend."
"What friend?"
"Business friend."
"You mean like a bookie?"
Harrison folded his arms and pouted, refusing to answer, which was answer enough.
"Your bookie wanted to meet you in a biker bar at nine in the morning."
"No. My bookie wanted to meet me in the park at eight in the morning and then had his thugs chase me to a biker bar where I stayed until two in the afternoon because they were too scared of the place to follow me inside. Hey, we're moving!"
The car inched along the road and eventually they could see the flashing red and white lights of emergency vehicles about a block up the street. Great: Rubber-neckers, people slowing down to gawk. They made life difficult not only for other drivers, but for the people responding to the scene, including morgue attendants like Tru.
However, as they slid past the accident itself, even Tru found it hard not to look.
"Holy..." Harrison breathed as he stared wide-eyed out the window. "What the hell happened here? The epic battle of Third and McBain?"
"I don't know," said Tru. "Looks like a car accident, but there's only one car."
One SUV among two cop cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck. The car's radiator was a concave, twisted, leaking piece of modern art. Whatever it had hit, it must've been going pretty fast. But what could it have hit? Nothing around seemed damaged.
And then Tru saw the cluster of emergency personnel kneeling on the ground, working furiously, passing equipment and bandages and aiming flashlights. At the center of the huddle, Tru could just make out a limp, ghostly hand on the asphalt.
"Oh, no."
With a sinking feeling, Tru continued to drive. Twenty minutes later, just after dropping Harrison off at his very secure apartment building and reminding him not to open the door for anyone (not even girl scouts), her cell phone rang.
"Hey, Tru."
"Hi, Davis," said Tru, easily recognizing the voice of her supervisor. "How'd the D-and-D go today?"
"Great. We played for four hours and I got slain by a Halfling. Listen, I know it's early, but we need somebody to do a removal at –"
"Third and McBain?"
"Yeah. How'd you – Wait. Rewind day, right?"
"No. Not yet."
Tuesday 3:22 pm
The rain was finally letting up when Tru arrived back at the intersection. She flashed her ID at the uniform guarding the perimeter, who lifted the yellow police tape for her to duck under. Another uniform, a plump middle-aged guy with a graying mustache, caught up with her as she made her way to the center of the scene.
"Ms. Davies?"
"That's me."
"Officer Fielding," he introduced himself. "Your office told us to expect you."
"Nice to meet you. Can you tell me what happened?"
"It's like this: One of the ambulances gets a call this afternoon for chest pain at this here apartment building. A little later, the medics are just coming out of the building to get back in their vehicle and one of them gets smoked by that goddam subaru. Er, pardon my French."
"Sounds like it's called for here, Officer."
Fielding nodded. "Anyway, bystanders are saying it must've been doing about seventy. Another crew was here zippity-split and they worked the medic for a long time, but... that was pretty much it."
"What happened to the driver?"
"Took off on foot. Funny, huh? We've got about a hundred witnesses here and not one of them can tell us where the asshole took off to. But that's not the half of it. The real kicker is the first call turned out to be a prank."
"All right. Thanks for the info."
"All right, then. Um, if I could ask a favor?"
"Sure."
"Keep a light touch while you're here, would ya? Cops and medics work together a lot, and a lot of these guys here – You know?"
"I will," Tru assured him. "And I'm sorry about what happened."
Fielding nodded again and then took his leave. Tru headed for the center of the fiasco, past a group of retreating forensics experts with their dozens of evidence baggies. As she neared the sheet-shrouded, inert form on the ground, she heard the crying on her right. Looking down, she saw him sitting on the curb, the cop who stood over him with an awkward hand on his shoulder: The blond EMT from the bar. He was wailing into his hands as though his heart was breaking.
Tru knelt next to the body and pulled back the sheet. K. Frink's sightless eyes stared back at her. She was covered in blood, and there was a large dent in her chest. Her ribs had been crushed like twigs.
Suddenly, one ghostly hand reached up and seized Tru's wrist. Gasping in surprise, she looked down and saw the dead paramedic's eyes boring into hers.
"HELP US."
Then, in the split second between the plea and the "rewind", Tru had the strangest feeling, stranger even than reliving a day. She looked up and peered through the foggy air across the street. On the otherwise deserted sidewalk, there was a man standing there. A young man in a long dark coat. A man with cold, cold eyes who had haunted her dreams since Luke's death, and he was looking straight at her.
Before she could bolt across the street and strangle him as she'd so often fantasized, she found herself sitting bolt upright in her own bed. Her alarm clock read 9:23, and the phone was ringing.
She picked up the receiver. "Harrison, I don't have time to –"
"Hello, Tru."
Tru's tongue froze along with her blood. She knew the voice well, and it wasn't her brother's.
"Jack."
TBC...
Ps – It gets more exciting, honest.