“Justice will find you!” With blood in her lungs and a slowing pulse, those were the last words of Tara Greenlee after being gunned down by Officers Frank Hennessy and Sylvester James. Her head dropped to the sidewalk and her mouth expelled a puddle of life juices. Everyone around her recorded the scene on their cell phones. Some of them screamed in horror. Others burst into a waterfall of tears. Frank and Sylvester laughed at all of them and rubbed their eyes in mockery. All of this violence over a bag of medical marijuana, which Sylvester was dancing around with and flashing in the faces of bystanders.
Because Tara Greenlee’s killers were on-duty cops, they didn’t get the death penalty or even life in prison for their heinousness. They were suspended with pay for a whole month. There were factory workers, teachers, grocery store clerks, and others who worked their asses off their entire lives without getting so much as a day off. In Paulson City, if you were on the police force, all you had to do to enjoy a month-long vacation was brutalize civilians.
How would Frank and Sylvester spend their vacation? They could have gone on a Caribbean Cruise. They could have gone mountain climbing in the Rockies. They could have sat on their asses on a Florida beach. But since Tara Greenlee’s “contraband” was still in their possession, they had other ideas of how to kill a month quicker than they killed her.
The “festivities” would take place at Officer Frank Hennessy’s house, particularly in his living room where the flat screen TV hung on the wall and a bowl full of potato chips was resting on the marble coffee table. Frank was already stuffing his pudgy, bearded face with chips when there was a knock on the door followed by, “It’s me, Sylvester!” Frank answered the door and the two corrupt cops high-fived and hugged each other like their bromance was much more than that. Frank was especially cheery when his skinny buddy flashed the bag of Mary Jane they had unlawfully taken from Miss Greenlee.
“So, what are we watching tonight, my friend? Are we gonna go all out and watch The Matrix? Maybe we should watch a Tim Burton movie or something. Or how about that Pink Floyd movie!” said a giddy Sylvester James.
“I got something better than all of those,” said Frank. He pulled a DVD out of his collection called “The Best of Both Worlds”, the container showing naked hermaphroditic women drooling for sex.
Sylvester clapped his hands and laughed like a little kid in a toy store. He bounced his way to the couch and allowed Frank to put the DVD in the player. The two rogue cops began rolling up little marijuana cigarettes as the “hot action” was being shown on the video screen. As soon as Frank pulled out a Zippo lighter and lit both of their joints, the two cops sank into the couch like quicksand. With dopey red eyes and drooling smiles, they watched the porn movie with fluttering in their hearts for the double-organ actresses.
The first twenty minutes of the movie revolved around Sylvester and Frank sitting crouched forward to hide their “little problems”. They laughed like donkeys as they smacked each other with couch pillows and jokingly called each other “fags”. The fun and festivities came to an abrupt halt when Frank relaxed in the sofa and started seeing the porn starlets in a much different way.
One of the naked women’s skin started necrotizing into a black and red lava mix. She grew fangs that looked like little daggers as they hung down to her bottom lip. Red scaly dragon wings sprouted from her back. A brown hairy tail sprouted as well. Her fingernails grew to the size of Freddy Kruger’s blades. When she screamed at Frank, she sounded like a grizzly bear ready to maul its helpless prey.
“Dude, is this some good shit or what?” said Sylvester, who at this point looked less like a mop-haired beanpole and more like a fire-eyed zombie with blue skin.
Frank was hard-pressed to disagree with his partner’s statement. “Yeah, man. That bitch had some good shit on her. I love the war on drugs!”
The demonic woman got on all fours and crawled out of the television set, shattering the coffee table upon making her arrival. She let out another beastly roar, which caused Frank to wet his pants and Sylvester to laugh like a fool. “Come on, man, this shit ain’t real! It’s just a hallucination!” said Officer James, who then got his whole head bitten off by the frightening woman.
Frank was crawling over the couch arm and screaming in terror while Sylvester’s headless body squirted a fountain of blood in the air. The demon woman licked her lips after sloppily masticating what was left of her victim’s dome. “Mmmmm, delicious!” she said in a throaty voice before roaring again.
Officer Hennessy crawled on the hardwood floor and let out panicky groans. The demonic woman jumped in front of him and revealed her true face. She now had the scraggly dark hair and bloodshot eyes of Tara Greenlee. Frank got into a fetal position and cried like a little bitch. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what I did! Just please, leave me alone!”
Tara grabbed Frank by his white shirt’s collar pulled his face close to hers, smiling like a skeleton with slimy dental hygiene. “It’s too late for atonement, my friend!” she said in her growling voice. “You took something from me that I fought for since I was a little child! That marijuana was for breast cancer! I was about to make a full recovery when you and that bloody piece of garbage over there shot me in cold blood!” Tara was breathing deeply and grunting in between cadences.
Tears were dribbling down Frank’s cheeks as he kept saying, “I’m sorry!” over and over again. Tara smiled her sick smile at him and chucked him halfway across the room, where he crashed through his desk and screamed with a mixture of fright and pain. The monstrous avenger pointed at Frank Hennessy and laughed while taking pictures of him on a smart phone she produced with her magical powers. She even rubbed her eyes sarcastically and said, “Boohoo!” with even more mockery.
The irony wasn’t lost on Frank, who in his moment of crippling pain and grueling tears felt around for something he could use to defend himself. It was then he remembered the desk was where he kept his pistol. Tara continued to horse laugh, but Frank would have the last word when he found his pistol and opened fire.
Every bullet hole that pierced Tara’s skin let out a volcanic eruption of blood and organs until the whole living room floor was flooded up to Frank’s ankles (now that he was standing on wobbly legs). He limped and trudged through the murky flood until he saw Tara on her knees screaming and crying in agony. “You little bitch!” yelled Frank before he jumped on her and rained down relentless fists upon her horrifying visage. Her cheek bones, nose, and teeth were cracking and splitting with every hard shot. Frank even held Tara’s head under the blood flood in an attempt to drown her. After a while of kicking and bubbling, the demon stopped moving.
Frank, ignorant of the pain he felt crashing through his own desk, held his arms up in victory and shouted, “Yes! How does that feel, you little skank! Nobody screws with the Paulson City Police! Nobody! We’re number one!” He repeated that last line over and over again until the pain finally caught up to him and he passed out on the bloody floor.
A bright new morning was shining its sunlight through Frank’s windows. The rays felt like little flamethrowers against his eyes. His head was thumping like a bass drum. He coughed violently as he woke up for the day. After rolling on his back and slowly opening his eyes, he saw his fellow police officers looking down on him and confirming he was alive.
The cops pulled Frank to his feet and he suddenly got a better view of what was going on around him. No demons. No fangs. No claws. No dragon wings. The only blood stain in the whole living room was the one left behind by Sylvester, who was being carted away on a gurney with a light blue blanket draped over his corpse.
“Franklin George Hennessy? You’re being placed under arrest for the murder of Officer Sylvester Kenneth James. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to legal counsel. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided to you by the state. Do you have any questions about these rights?” said one of the cops while Frank’s hands were being cuffed behind his back.
Frank did have a question and it was a good one too: “What the fuck just happened here?!”
