Crow Cop

“Read me the summary on this one, Hammy,” said Dexter Young as he cocked his magnum while sitting in the passenger side of the van. He tucked the weapon in his pants and pulled a pair of black ski masks out of the glove box, one for him, one for Hammond O’Hara a.k.a. Hammy.

Hammond sat in the driver’s seat flipping through various pages in his binder until he found what he was looking for. “Toni J. Mathews. Age 39. Recently divorced from her husband of five years after citing irreconcilable differences. Part of the settlement deal with her husband was that she was to receive a topaz ring worth fifty thousand dollars, maybe more on the black market. According to my research…”

“Ha! You did research…” chuckled Dexter as he winked at his partner.

Hammond got a good laugh out of it too. “Anyways, from what I’ve seen, she keeps the topaz ring in a safe in her bedroom. As far as I can tell, she has no security systems other than that safe and the only occupant living with Miss Mathews is a parrot named Mirko.”

Dexter blew out some air, shook his head, and said, “I asked you to canvas possible threats in the neighborhood and all you could come up with was a fucking bird? No cameras, no alarms, just a fucking bird? You know what? Maybe we won’t have to stop by KFC after work. I just hope the bitch has a working stove in her kitchen. I don’t see why not. She is a woman, after all; that’s kind of her thing.”

Hammond shook his jowly head and chuckled, “You’re awful, Dexter. You’re just plain awful.”

Dexter slapped Hammond upside the head and warned him, “Remember, no using real names. You’re Hammy and I’m D. Got that? I don’t want you forming bad habits when we’ve got the biggest score of our lives just waiting in there for us.”

“Sorry, man. My bad,” said Hammond as he tucked his ski mask in his jacket pocket. Both burglars dressed in dark clothing that blended in perfectly with the night air. They exited the van and sneaked across the street like ghosts, not prompting one porch light to flare up.

Once they reached the front porch, they pulled their ski masks over their heads and pulled out their magnums. “Ready to roll?” Dexter whispered.

“Ready as I’ll ever be…D!” whispered Hammond as he pulled out his lock picks and worked his magic on the doorknob. Slowly, carefully, and silently, The chubby burglar unlatched the bolt and even held the door open for his partner like a true gentleman. “After you, Dex, I mean, D!”

“I’m warning you, dip shit, if you blow our cover, you’re a dead motherfucker!” snapped Dexter. The two burglars crossed the threshold and Hammond gently pulled the door closed behind him. The entire house was as dark and silent as the streets themselves. Still, Dexter and Hammond weren’t going to take chances and tiptoed across the hardwood floor like ninjas.

They nearly jumped out of their skin when the light came on in the bedroom and a weary female voice asked, “Hello?” Dexter caught his partner drooling through his ski mask when the two of them saw Toni Mathews wearing little more than a sports bra and tiny shorts in the lit doorway. Not bad for a thirty-nine year old, thought Dexter. She had her blond hair up in a ponytail, which Dexter knew was an advantage for a horny partner like his.

Toni rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes and turned on more lights in the house until she found herself in the living room with Dexter and Hammond. She wanted to snap awake and let out a shriek of doom, but the two burglars wrestled her to the ground with Dexter keeping his gloved hand over Toni’s mouth. The divorcee struggled and writhed while her stifled screams vibrated off of Dexter’s hand, but Hammond was already playing his role to perfection when he was wrapping duct tape around her ankles and knees.

Binding her hands and mouth became a much easier task when Dexter pressed the barrel of his gun against Toni’s nose and angrily whispered, “Shut up, bitch! Shut the fuck up! You make one more sound and I’ll blow that pretty head of yours off your shoulders!” Shaky and teary, Toni had no choice but to lay still while Hammond wrapped tape around her wrists and gagged her as well.

The two burglars dragged her bound body against the couch and sat her upright against the cushions. Dexter kept his gun pointed against Toni’s forehead and silently, but tensely said, “Listen good, lady: we’re not going to be staying a while. We just want one thing and then we’ll be out of here. If you try to resist us or call the police, you’re going to have splattered brains all over that pretty sofa of yours. You understand?”

“Wah! Call the crow cop! Call the crow cop! Wah!” squawked an avian voice from out of nowhere.

“That must be the goddamn bird,” said Hammond with a look of concern behind his mask.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. Go find the fucking thing and shut it up!” ordered Dexter. Hammond’s heavy and clunky movements towards the back of the house prompted Dexter to snap, “Can you make a little more noise please?! I’d love to have the cops on my ass!”

“Wah! Make some more noise! Make some more noise! Wah!” squawked Mirko again. A subsequent yelp of pain from Hammond followed by the sound of wings flapping caused Dexter’s adrenaline to pulsate throughout his body. The heavy burglar came back into view holding his now bloody nose. “What the fuck happened?”

“That little bastard bit me! I don’t care if I get the chair, I’m killing that bird!” said Hammond.

“Wah! You’re gonna get the chair! You’re gonna get the chair! Wah!” squawked Mirko.

“Shut up, you little piece of shit!” shouted Hammond before firing a round into the dark and prompting Dexter to wrestle him to the ground.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Hammy?!” snapped Dexter as he held his hand over his partner’s mouth. “You can’t be doing shit like that, you fat fuck! One more outburst from you and I’m putting one between your eyes! You and queen bitch over here can let the bird sing melodies to you for all eternity!”

Hammond removed his partner’s hand from his mouth and said, “Wait, wait! What if we take the tape off of the bitch’s mouth and make her call the little fucker over to us? Are we really going to be outgunned by a goddamn parrot?”

Toni sobbed through her gag and shook her head no at the burglars’ plans. Dexter creepily crawled up to his victim and said, “Oh, yes, yes, yes. You are going to call that little bastard over to us and it’ll be winner, winner, chicken dinner. And just so there’s no confusion, we’re under no obligation to keep you alive during this heist. We’re only doing it out of courtesy. Well, that’s not really true. We do have to keep you alive. After all, the last time I checked…Hammy and I weren’t into necrophilia!”

The two burglars chuckled at the rape joke while Toni’s sobs grew progressively louder even with tape on her mouth. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” snapped Dexter. The third hey was said with enough force to get Toni to stop making noises. “The only noises you should be making are the kind that bring the future KFC meal over to us. I’m going to rip the tape off of your mouth and I swear to god if you scream for help, you’re going to join your birdie friend on the dark side.”

Dexter ripped the tape off while Toni stifled a painful scream, too frightened not to take the threat seriously. “Now that I’ve restored your first amendment rights,” said Dexter. “You know what you need to use them for. Call out your monster.” Toni could do nothing but sob hysterically until Dexter’s “Now!” scream gave her extra motivation.

Trying to keep her lips steady, Toni whistled and said, “Here, Mirko! Come on over to mommy!” The unstoppable sobbing weakened her voice to where she couldn’t pull off a full whistle.”

“Oh, what the fuck was that?” condescended Dexter. “Put some gusto into it, you crazy bitch!”

“Wah! Put some gusto into it! Put some gusto into it! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

Dexter and Hammond pointed their gun in the voice’s direction while Hammond shouted, “Where are you, you little shit?!”

Dexter felt a hard double kick in the back of his knee, causing him to drop on his ass and accidentally fire a bullet into Hammond’s ass. Dexter’s eyes bulged out of his skull as he watched his partner trying to suppress a shriek of pain while holding his bloody anus. He could see Hammond’s chubby lips quivering like a boat motor. “Hammy…” the burglar said softly. “It’ll be okay. Just lay down and…”

Toni repeatedly kicked Dexter in the face with her bare soles as if her life depended on it. The burglar felt his nose snap in two and a few of his teeth fall out of his mouth. Meanwhile, Mirko flew threw the shadows and nibbled on Hammond’s nose some more, tearing flesh and dining on blood. Both burglar’s screams were as obvious as fire truck sirens and the whole neighborhood’s lights started to flare up.

Dexter could hear the sounds of doors opening and slamming shut in between face distorting kicks to the face. Neighbors with shotguns and handguns burst through the front door and rushed to the scene of the crime, pulling tape off of Toni’s body and asking if she was alright.

By the time Mirko flew back into the shadows, Dexter and Hammond were lying on the floor with gashing faces and rearranged features. Once Toni was free and steady, she removed both of their masks to reveal their ugliest features, to which the armed neighbors made gagging noises of disgust.

“All this crazy shit over a topaz, huh, Dex, I mean, D,” slurred Hammond.

“Sorry, sweetheart. There’s no topaz here. We just like to encourage intruders, that’s all,” said Toni with a sickeningly benign smile.

Dexter opened his swollen eyes as wide as he was allowed and asked, “What the fuck are you talking about, lady?”

“You think you’re the first ones to try to pick apart this neighborhood?” asked Toni rhetorically. “This place used to be a popular gang neighborhood. And then we cleaned it up and lured more scumbags like you to come and join us. We’re making this city a better place one dead motherfucker at a time.”

“But I did research,” whined Hammond while spitting out blood. “I did fucking research!”

“Wah! You did research! You did research! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

“Shut up, you stupid fucking bird!” shouted Dexter as he reached for his magnum and instead was showered with a hailstorm of bullets from the neighborhood crime watch. Hammond didn’t stand much of a chance either as his body instantly became a pool of blood and organs on the hardwood floor.

The last thing to go through Dexter Young’s mind, aside from the bullets, was a little child’s voice asking, “Can I pet your birdie, Miss Mathews?”

Demon Axe, Chapter 18

This heavy metal opera had to end somewhere and Daniel Mercer pictured all the possible ways it could in his sick and twisted mind. He rode in the back of the SWAT van staring daggers into his magical microphone as his imagination ran wild. Was it as easy as screaming in Roger Zee’s ears and making his head explode? Did there have to be a special message behind the song? For all Daniel knew, he could sing the elf zealot a lullaby and slit his throat in his sleep.

Since it was the life of Raven’s father at stake, perhaps she could be the one to finish him off. Slice his head off his shoulders like a circumcision (because he was such a dickhead). Sodomize him with the blade. Cut his legs off and watch him crawl away. Such thoughts brought a wicked smile to Daniel’s face. Watching his newfound love sharpening her blade with a whetstone brought a flutter to his heart that not even a cocaine high was capable of.

Daniel snapped out of his violent fantasy when the SWAT van took a huge bump and bounced his head off the roof. The heavy metal god growled in pain and clutched his head while unleashing a horde of colorful swear words. Raven patted him on the shoulder to see if he was okay and he said in no uncertain terms, “I’m fine!”

Shawn Henry, the driver of the van, slammed on the brakes and caused Daniel and Raven to lurch toward the front, almost like being taken for a nickel ride. The Lord of the Pit shouted, “Hey! Quit driving like a fucking drunk! You got to be careful, damn it!”

Through the partition, the rock and roll couple could hear the door slamming shut and booted feet sloshing in the mud while Shawn appeared to be yelling, “No, no, no, no!” Daniel and Raven looked at each other with confusion and concern before exiting the vehicle themselves to see what was going on.

Shawn stood over two corpses with his muscles tightened, his fists clenched, and a shaking complexion reminiscent of tears. One of the dead bodies was a grown woman in a sundress about Shawn’s age. The other was a small child who looked barely old enough to register what was happening to the Henry clan. Deep gashes covered their bodies to where bones were showing. Organs poured out of those wounds like rotten milk. Their groins and inner thighs had bruises the size of mountains. Shawn Henry had seen a lot of death in his career, but nothing prepared him for this: the sight of his wife and daughter discarded on a muddy rode like common trash.

Raven tiptoed toward Shawn and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, to which the sobbing detective waved it away and shouted, “Don’t touch me! Please, don’t touch me!” She honored this by slowly backpedaling in the arms of Daniel. The detective dropped to his knees and held the heads of his wife and daughter against his chest before letting out a combination of a lion’s roar and a sorrowful burst of tears. Even a brave warrior like Raven couldn’t help but shed a tear or two.

For Daniel Mercer, watching death never got any easier. He had been exposed to so much of it over the course of this quest. He even glorified it in his music, hence the genre death metal. All he could do was wrap his arm around his girlfriend and stare blankly at the emotional trauma Shawn Henry was going through. When would enough be enough for someone like Roger Zee? How many people had to die because of his strong beliefs? What was the point of all this? Whatever joy Daniel felt fantasizing about Roger’s death was blown away like ashes in the wind at the sight of this honorable cop in a vulnerable moment.

“Great plan, Einstein,” said a familiar voice in Daniel’s head. With wide-eyed hyper-vigilance, he scoped the muddy forest for the source of the voice and saw the mangled ghost of Bear Man haunting his mind. “Complete disregard the safety of someone’s family and now look what happened to them. Nice job, buddy. Sounds familiar to me.”

“You shut the fuck up! I’ve had it up to here with you!” bellowed the Lord of the Pit.

“Daniel, who are you talking to?” asked Raven in a worried tone.

Lady Killer was next poltergeist to invade Daniel’s mind. “Why should we shut up, Daniel, are we saying things that you don’t like to hear? But isn’t that what you’ve been doing this whole time? Didn’t you make your living that way?”

“I’m sick of you motherfuckers blaming me for everything! You want to blame someone for all of this, blame Roger Zee! He’s the one who’s doing this to us! Go torture him instead of me! I’m the one trying to help you guys!” screamed Daniel.

“Daniel, stop it!” cried Raven.

The rest of Daniel’s band mates, Demon Axe or otherwise, floated in a circle around him and barked insults at him to deafening levels. Daniel held his ears and groaned loudly while Raven was trying to shake him out of it. “Daniel, please! Stop it! You’re scaring me!”

“That’s right, Lord of the Pit!” said the ghosts in a unified demonic voice. “You’d better stop it before you drive another loved one to their death!” The ghosts snorted and snickered while bathing in red electricity and purple smoke.

Even more lights began to flash in Daniel’s mind, much like the strobe pattern of when he was tortured with his own music. Right then he was being tortured by people he thought were his friends. True friends didn’t pass blame or judgment. Shawn’s wife and daughter would never blame him for their deaths. Neither should these band mates.

Daniel released his head and shouted into the skies (sans microphone), “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” The electricity and smoke faded into nothingness and the ghosts were silent with shame. “Nobody put a gun to your heads and made you join my band! You came here on your own volitions! But I can tell you guys don’t want to have anything to do with me anymore! If that’s what you want, then give me your masks! You’ve lost your right to play music with me! Come on, fork ‘em over! I’m sick of this goddamn shit! Hand ‘em over, now!”

The ghosts barely gazed at each other with hung heads before shrugging their shoulders and floating over to Daniel to do what they were told. One by one, the masks came off as the spirits floated away into smoke and dust. As the Lord of the Pit collected the masks, he gave them in return their old identities.

“You’re not Vulture Man. You’re Roman John. You’re not Pig Man. You’re Chris James. You’re not G-Pac. You’re Donald Brock. You sure as shit aren’t Bear Man. Phil Charles you’ll be. Fork it over, Lady Killer. Your real name is CJ Bill. Fuck you, Tarantula Man. Your name is Ahmed Tehran.” Once the last of the masks was collected, Daniel cast his finger off and angrily whispered, “Get the fuck out of my head!” The dust and smoke swirled into a vortex and was sucked into the dark gray skies. The Lord of the Pit threw the masks out in the distance and watched them fizzle out as well.

A solitary tear ran down the singer’s face as his traumatic anger played out in front of him. Whether or not this was a permanent solution for closure was answered when he heard the soothing, opera-style voice of Raven singing into the magical microphone. He snapped out of his trance and gazed at his girlfriend with loving and damp eyes. She sounded beautiful. Where did she learn to sing like that? Did the elves care that deeply about music? Every note of that operatic chant felt as soothing as a warm breeze in a field of flowers, a far cry from the muddy and corpse-ridden forest they had been driving through.

Daniel hugged his girlfriend tightly and said in an emotional voice, “I love you, Raven. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I love you too, Daniel. You’ll always be the Lord of the Pit to me,” she whispered as she hugged him back.

Also snapping out of his traumatic outburst was Shawn Henry, who was now standing over the corpses of his family with vicious confidence on his face instead of sorrow. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch. I’m going to kill him badly. Daniel, you better not act like that in the middle of battle or that shotgun shell will be meant for you. You’d better scream your fucking head off until Roger can’t stand it anymore.”

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Shawn. I want that piece of shit as much as you do. Let’s go!”