Clarence was cold. He jerked awake, his cheeks itched as he peeled his face off the floor. Sitting up on the freezing tile, his eyes were drawn to the broken Harry's razor. Great. He made a face. Now he was going to have to go to band practice with stubble. He hated being shaggy.

How the hell had he ended up on the floor? He rubbed his face, only to feel some stuff flake off. What! He bounded off the ground to face the mirror....

Oh.

Wow.

Confronting Clarence in the mirror was a visage caked with dry blood. Streaks of maroon ran from his eyes and nose, converging at the point where his face had met earth. The new icy eyes in his head cut through the brown giving a striking contrast. With trembling hands he inspected his tear ducts. Yep, ok, he had for sure been crying blood. And... Well, the shaver was definitely on the ground... In fact it looked like someone had stomped on it... Really hard...

No.

Couldn't be.

As he washed the blood off his face his mind raced. He was probably dying, brain tumor for sure. He had just passed out from the tumor, and knocked the razor off with, like, a seizure, or something... Maybe, but what if instead he was just fully schizoid, hallucinating everything, fully losing his mind to fantasies of power. There was only one thing that he could be certain of- there was no way he had destroyed the razor with his mind. Don't be ridiculous.

He wiped down his face and looked back at the mirror. Seeing past his newly gray eyes he noticed he was looking far more androgynous then he usually did. He was always kinda spindly, but somehow his face had softened considerably. On top of that, his stubble had disappeared. If he put on a dress he could pass as a flat chested woman with a pixie. That made him feel weird. He was clearly losing it. The sink dripped aggressively at him as he tried his hardest to swallow the fear.

Fuck it, he needed a distraction. Wandering back out of his bathroom to his nightstand, he checked his phone, 1:07. Shit, band practice was in an hour. His eyes drifted over the mess of his bedroom. Clothes scattered across the floor. Banjo haphazardly on the couch. Acoustic in the bathroom. It had been a bad night of drinking alone.

Clarence rushed as he threw off his PJs and put on overalls with a Black Bird Raum tee. He popped open a window letting the hippie stank out of his room. Fumbling he searched for his pack of Spirits and one of his many lighters. He lit up, taking one of the better drags of his life, sucking in the chill Bay winter air, holding- letting the warmth of the smoke soothe the cold, and letting out as he scanned the San Pablo shoreline. San Pablo was huge, a boom town during WW2, it had eaten all the surrounding municipalities before the post war era suburbanized much of the bay. By incorporating much of the area whites could flee to it was able to experience a relatively mild urban decline, it had been run by the Green party for over two decades to mixed results.

Still, it was nice to have a rent controlled duplex out by the shoreline, even if it was falling apart with the sea breeze. He stubbed out his cig on the siding, and closed the window, shivering a little from the wind. No need to think about what just happened. Just put one foot in front of the other, and everything will be just fine.

~~+-0-+~~

Det. Jeffery Kovech Had been reading the Facebook of a woman, a college girl who had been attacked by a masked man on her front porch, for hours. He was ostensibly looking for clues and cross referencing facts from her statement, but he had been distracted. She was so happy in the pictures she posted, it was hard not being jealous. He kept going back to a striking photo of her and her friends all grinning together. They wore silly feather boas and shitty fake tiaras. Recreating girlhood innocence for the purposes of sex. It was titled "girls night out". He felt bile in his throat.

He clicked off the image, sweating. He was lonely, sure, but it shouldn't be this bad. The idle statistic floated through his mind: most serial killers try to become cops. Was he fixated on this woman because he wanted to kill her? A bit of wolf showing through the sheep dog program? His hand shook.

Kovech knew he had to keep the monster in check. If not for the health of himself but for the good of society. He was thirty-fucking-four. Lusting after a co-ed... Jesus. He pushed his glasses up to lay his palms on his eyes.

He needed to drink. Last sip of coffee: gone. First flask: empty. Enough desk work, it was 11:21, good enough to take lunch. He hopped in his car to weave three blocks through the chaotic San Pablo downtown. Double parked next to the best deli in town, Tasty Bagel. It was 40% off for LEOs. couldn't beat it.

The building it was in was a multi-use commercial building made out of brick. However of the three storefronts the Deli was the only open store. It was nestled between a small failed boutique, and pharmacy that had been stripped bare last year. The apartments above seemed to be full of life at least, with various political slogans hung in the windows over the downtown.

And there it was... Kovech grimaced. A particularly venomous anti-cop slogan had been hung in the window of the left most house. Nowhere was sacred, not even under blue-friendly businesses. People are stupid. Give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves every time.

He pushed into the store, the motion detector emitting a loud beep. The Deli was dingy. Full of cramped metal seats and small round tables, none of which didn't wobble. The brickwork was exposed not for any artistic reason, they just never got around to it until it became trendy. The counter was full of various machines for quick preparation, and displayed all the various types of bagel.

Jeff ordered a coffee and a cheese bagel with ham and cream cheese, the usual. 6 bucks for the whole thing. Who said that being a cop was all bad? The Chinese man had already started making the order the moment he had stepped through the door. The perks of being predictable.

He took the food over to his favorite corner to eat. Other law enforcement came and went opting to eat in their squad cars with their partners, or eat far away from Jeff's table, civilians too. It was okay. It meant he could work while he ate. His union rep told him not to do that, but fuck her, she got Donny Kelridge off.

Everyone knew Donny just killed that guy for fun. It had caused a riot. Some sheepdog are just wolves pretending. Not worth the blue wall of silence's protection if you asked him. Causes too much social disturbance.

Anyway he worked, because his partner was too lazy to, and because you could mindlessly fill out reports with a bagel sandwich in your hand. He reserved this work for lunches because it wasn't worth being paid for. Forms to the higher ups so they know LEO's were making metrics. Maybe a single point of information will be read off and added to a suit's presentation. The rest goes in the file system to be referenced maybe once or twice in historical studies down the line. Bureaucratic efficiency.

Point is no one minds if he gets a ketchup stain on the document. He wiped a bit off the form he was currently filling out- 5 hours on Facebook research, 4 hours interrogations, 3 hours transit, 2 hours voluntary interviews, etc. It had been a busy week already.

Idly he tapped his pen wondering what Roy was up to. As much as they were technically partners they pretty much worked separately. Kovech was a documents guy. Usually written records and the pervasive surveillance of the society were enough information to convict. Martin Roy was a gumshoe. He liked to follow people without their knowledge, go through their trash. Real deal private eye shit.

One time Kovech had overheard Roy talking about how much of a prissy pansy he was for not getting his hands dirty, but Kovech had tried to shadow Roy right after he had been promoted. The veteran gumshoe had joked about stalking the girl they were surveying off the clock. Jeffry had felt he was covered in ants the entire time. Never did anything like that ever again. Too close to the wolf for his liking.

Better to work separate, and out the perp while comparing redundant evidence. Better for conviction rate too. He finished his irished coffee and crumpled up the remains of his bagel. Back to the real work.

FriendlyPastoralist

So yeah, I'm trying something new. The parts very in size and the perspective changes can be quite short. I'm aiming for about 2k per chunk. Unfortunately, this first part is establishing everything and so isn't as meaty, hopefully when we're really off to the races it'll be a little more satisfying to get these chunks! I'm *trying* to make Tuesday/Thursday but editing on top of finishing up seems kinda daunting rn so I'm prolly gonna slow down to weekly

PLEASE make sure to leave speculation, questions, and spelling mistakes in the comment section below!