Gorgias

There were lots of dead bodies in the building. Apparently someone had been in there with a weapon, and killed them. This was clearly a case for the police. Just not for this guy. He arrived having eaten — a simple meal, something everyday — and left with a broke stomach.

See, the thing is, he wasn’t trained to appreciate dead people. He was trained to deal with mysteries and think hard about problems that other (living) people had caused. Nothing about dealing with corpses in his guidebook. And so when he arrived and saw the piles of empty shells of people, having bled all over the hardwood floors, bullet holes in the walls and in the heads and bellies and chests of the dead, he regurgitated, swallowed, then disposed of his entire meal, right onto the lobby floor.

And so his first murder case turned out to be a terrible thing to tell to his grandchildren as a bedtime story.

Blood. It was everywhere. It came out of me. I was pretty sure of that. Something both hurt and felt numb. Nothing, then pain, then nothing again, in quick succession, constantly tearing me apart. I faded into and out of what felt like sleep, but was probably just solid fainting.

At some point, I regained enough consciousness to think something coherent enough to make sense to myself. “This is a gunshot wound.” Then I nearly fainted again, but persisted. “I’m a police officer.” So far, so good. From the sore feeling in my right hand, and the heavy object still resting in it, I had probably shot someone else first, or maybe after. No idea. Maybe after. I did not hear anyone else, but did see a lot of light. I didn’t hear anything at all, actually, I realised. My right ear was pretty warm. A shadow moved over me and I left the scene.

Now I was moving rapidly. There was a lot of noise. Someone told me “You got ’im! Hang in there!” and I could only think about my shirt, which was probably soaked in blood now. Hey! I could hear again. I still could not see much, but maybe I was keeping my eyes closed. Another voice told me everything would be just fine and I fell into a sleep. A solid blue backdrop contrasted well with the leading character in my fevered dream, the character who was bleeding copiously from every pore in his body. I didn’t panic, figuring I was still doing a lot better than that guy. Streaks of white and yellow crossed my eyes and settled sometimes. Sparks left his eyes and mouth and floated upwards, where they disappeared in more streaks of yellow and white. The sounds tried to talk to me, but I was busy bleeding and looking at the guy who was bleeding a lot more but stayed upright and didn’t seem to mind the blood at all. Everything turned yellow, then white, then yellow again. A streak of white became my world, it became more, I became the white, I was white, then I left the dream and drifted into a bigger sleep still.