Boredom
By: Turboencabulator
It’s just past dawn and Sergeant Mitchell Harrington is nursing a cup of milk with a spot of
coffee in it. He’s staring at a skinny beanpole of a man, covered in blood and viscera,
handcuffed to the table on the other side of the one-way mirror mounted in the wall of
interrogation 3.
Harrington is turning the past few days over in his mind. Did he accidentally knock over a
gypsy woman? Did he forget to genuflect at some point? Maybe he spilled the salt and forgot to
throw some. It had to be bad luck that he got handed the crazy guy covered in tats and blood
with unidentified chemicals in a backpack.
Or the captain was fucking with him again.
One of the patrol officers ducked in. “Sergeant, I’m afraid we’ve got nothing. No prints in the
system, no tattoos in any database, and he wasn’t carrying ID. We’re running national stuff but
I’d bet this guy is just a one-off whackjob.”
Harrington grumbled and tossed the empty coffee cup in a bin. “Of course. Has he said
anything?”
With a shrug, the officer responded, “Just asked for tea and if he could have his rolling
tobacco.”
With an expression like he had a bad taste in his mouth, Harrington turned back to the glass,
glowering at the man sitting, quite as if nothing was wrong, in interrogation 3. The officer
took a moment, then quietly ducked out, leaving the Sergeant alone with his thoughts.
The handcuff keys landed on the table with a loud clacking sound, making the man turn to look
at the person walking in the door. A moment later, he had the cuffs off, only making a brief
rolling motion with his wrists to free himself.
Harrington sat down opposite, dropping the man’s tobacco pouch on the table. “You got out of
those fast.”
The man grinned softly, rubbing his wrists. “A gentleman never tells. Mind if I smoke?”
Harrington shrugged, leaning over to open a window.
“So,” he began, opening a thin case file. “Let’s start with the basics. You were found on
private property, covered in quite a large amount of blood, carrying a satchel with two
containers of as yet unidentified white powder, some bottled water, tobacco, and some
trash. You were on foot, walking north north-west along a dirt vehicle track when officers were
alerted to your presence.”
The man is nodding, rolling a cigarette. He holds it up, offering to Harrington, who shakes his
head. With a shrug, the man lights the cigarette and leans back.
“Nearby deputies were tasked and found you further up the trail, where you were detained and
brought in for questioning. Is there anything you want to add to this?”
One slow, thoughtful French inhale passed, the man putting on an obvious ‘thinking’
face. “Well. I do admit this does sound like I am a violent fruitcake carrying drugs and
trespassing after I did something horrible. Entirely wrong, but we’ll get to that. Only thing I
would like to add is that the officers in question seemed to think I was either gay or a call
of duty gamer.”
After a moment, Harrington looked up, confused. “What?”
“Well they kept screaming ‘get on the ground, faggot’, so you can understand my confusion.”
A long, silent beat went past, Harrington slowly closing his eyes and sighing. “I apologize for
the officer’s conduct. Let’s begin. Your name?”
“Will.”
Harrington looks back up at Will. “Full name please.”
Will shifts, letting out an exhale towards the window. “Oh right. Sorry, early morning for
me. Vaclav Dobrzyszczylańczyk.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Dobrzyszczylańczyk.”
The sergeant sighs and rubs his face. “How is that spelled?”
“Usually incorrectly.”
After a moment, Harrington slides the form over, and Will fills it in, going half an inch into
the margin.
“Jesus Christ man, where is that from?”
“My grandfather was Czech.”
After a brief moment looking at the filled in form, the sergeant closes the file and
sighs. “Look, we’re going to need to get straight on this, you’re in deep shit. Trespassing is
minor but drug trafficking and murder is bad enough, so why don’t you tell me where the body
is.”
Will blinks. “Body?”
“Yes. Body. You’re covered in blood.” Harrington says, pointing. “Your clothes are being
analyzed right now. The woods you were in are being searched. You don’t get that much blood on
you unless there’s a corpse involved.”
With a chuckle, Will sighs and stubs out his cigarette. “No I mean body as in singular.”
The air is palpable as Harrington leans back slowly. There’s a dead, cold feeling going down
his spine. “There’s more than one?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Thirty. Eight.”
“Fluffies.”
There’s a dead, still silence. Will offers him a cigarette. Harrington takes it, lights it, and
sighs out a cloud. “You did that on fucking purpose.”
Will grinned and shrugged. “Yeah, well, fuck you guys for arresting me on property I had
permission to be on.”
“I’m going to guess the white powder isn’t coke.”
Will shrugged, rolling his own cigarette. “No, not at all. The property is owned by a chemist
friend of mine, he slapped the stuff together for me. One is a mixture of MSG, vegetable broth
base, some crap to make ya salivate more, and some other shit.”
Harrington nodded, confused. “Okay. That’s weird.”
With a grin, Will lit the cigarette, a flame jumping up from his bare thumb. “The other one is
a moisture-activated wood glue. I mixed the two together, used a little water to make a paste,
then painted it on the railroad tracks. Stuck some cheap bagged salad mix to it and let it dry
in place.”
Harrington slowly put his face in his hands. “And you got every feral fluffy nearby glued to
the tracks.”
“Yeah, guess I was too close when the train rolled through. Splat.”
With a sigh, Harrington stood up. “Mister… uh, Will, once we validate that it is fluffy blood
you’ll be free to go. I’m sorry for the confusion.”
“Oh not a problem.” Will grinned. “Saved me from boredom at least.”
“How’d you do the magic trick anyways, you were searched.”
With a wider grin, Will waggled his fingers. “Magic, officer. Magic.”
Three hours later, Will stood on his porch, focused on a house in the distance. Hickory sat
with him, looking between Will and where he gazed.
“Wiww, wut is it?”
Will had things moving around him. Like currents of water, or the smoke of a fire. “Over there
is a saggy old bint in a ranch house. Her nose has gotten into my business again. Nearly ruined
a performance this morning.”
Hickory followed the line of Will’s vision, following in the trail his eyes led, until he was
seeing her as well, sitting with a pair of binoculars and watching as Fergus worked metal in a
forge attached to the scrapyard. He could feel the heat of Will’s anger, and the dull,
bruise-like air around the old woman, the spite and pettiness leeching the joy out of the
environment around her.
“I think we’ll send her a message tonight.”
Hickory smiled, and turned away from the scene, returning to the deck and trotting inside for
the litterbox. Tripping was not a time you wanted to be worrying about good poopies.
Muriel Gardner glanced with distaste at the mantle clock. Five minutes slow again, that nasty
little Jew must have shaved some gold off the cogs when she had it in for adjustment last
month. Heaven’s sake you can’t trust anyone anymore, she thought, muttering to herself as she
wound it, like she did every Saturday at exactly nine, because you had to be precise
with these things don’t you know good lord impreciseness is what let the commies in.
After a moment polishing the glass cover of the clock, she turned back and sat down in her
armchair by the window, a marvelous louis the fifteenth style wingback in shot silk and
mahogany, just like the rest of her matched set, which she got back when they didn’t allow
darkies to shop at Bloomingdales unless they were picking up their employer’s orders.
Muriel’s fluffy, a perfect show pegasus called Periwinkle trotted up and sat down. “Mummah, is
nine o’cwock, need outside pwease?”
With a little smile, Muriel let Periwinkle out. She wouldn’t have bothered with a fluffy if it
hadn’t been a perfect compliment to her decor, and it was so sweet when it didn’t have the
rumbly-toots after too many lima beans. Periwinkle went out, did his business, and came back
in again, taking a moment to wipe his hooves and let Muriel adjust the little pink bow-tie.
“Nighty-night mummah, wiww see yu in mowning.”
Periwinkle was tired earlier than usual, but Muriel did not mind, since he had extra time out
to play today after she had spotted one of those faggots from next to that horrid scrapyard
wandering around all bloody and horrible. She had taken a special kind of glee to be able to
note in her daily diary that she got to call the police on one of those degenerates. Too bad he
turned out to be on his own land but a little shock now and then kept them in line, even if the
law said they had to be treated like mentally sound people.
After going through the rest of the day’s entries, and making a special note to let Gammy know
at the next bingo night that the whore down the lane was in violation of her lease for having
someone stay over an extra night than was allowed, she closed the marbled-and-leather notebook
her dear sister Gilda got her from a stationery store on Fifth Avenue of all places, so
tasteful, and put it away in the honest to the lord handmade roll top desk her grandfather
brought over from Saint-Germaine.
An hour was spent setting up for bed, before she went in and kissed the urn of her late husband
good night, god rest his soul he was a real man, and turned in.
It was dark.
The house was colder than normal.
Muriel woke up, listening to a strange, child-like giggling sound.
“Mmh. Periwinkle? Is that you dearie?”
She got up, sliding into her slippers, and shuffling quietly down the hall.
A dim red light flickered under the door to Periwinkle’s safe room, instead of the crisp, soft
white light of his night-lights.
There was a sound in her ears, like insects being ground underfoot, or meat being torn very,
very slowly, like it was inside her head. Hand shaking, she reached out, and gripped the ornate
brass handle. It was cold as the grave in her hand, and turned with more effort than normal.
The door swung open after she turned the handle. In the middle of the floor was Periwinkle. The
night-lights were out, and instead the fluffy was surrounded by a fractal-like tracery on the
floor, glowing red. The fluffy was contorted, nose nearly to tailbone, making a choking,
giggling sound as his eyes rolled up in his head, limbs askew and stretching slowly out of
joint.
Muriel watched, hand slowly rising to her mouth in horror as Periwinkle slowly snapped and
cracked, turning himself inside out, and leaving behind a moist, smiling… thing.
It was a red, fuzzy, black-eyed thing, smiling with unnatural clarity at her. The giggling grew
louder, and Muriel slowly backed away and slid down the wall.
It jerked, snapping, and it began to elongate, growing, stretching out of proportion, its mass
increasing as it grew more spider-like, slowly spasming and heaving closer to her until it was
standing at the doorframe.
She was holding her hands over her mouth, trying not to scream, wishing she could remember a
single prayer, or where her pendant was.
Its mouth opened, a deep no-light shining from within, and deep in her head she heard the
voice.
“You should not meddle in affairs not your own.”
With a half-choked shriek she looked into the no-light, and was lost to it.
The next day, Will stood on the balcony, sipping an espresso and watching the movers work to
empty the ranch-style house. Sam wandered up, looking out as well.
“Huh, old bat finally moving out.”
“Yup.”
“Hey where were you yesterday anyways?”
Will shrugged. “Eh. I got bored, went wandering and got some shenanigans going. You know how it
is.”
Sam thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah I suppose so.”