The Voice

The Voice

By Lucius Jack & Toast

 

            Ever since he was a boy, Dick had wanted to be a detective. He cared not for the gun fights and other violent acts, he preferred the quieter way of catching criminals where they had no other choice but to come into custody and hope their lawyer could get them out.

            Now, after three different college majors, he was meeting with the chief of police at the Nemometro Police Department. The chief in question was an old man with a big bushy mustache, he wasn’t fat, but it was plainly obvious that he had once worked out, then stopped. The top righthand drawer was bursting with junk, mostly instant popcorn bags. A little secret to know about the police, is that kids working nightshifts at convenience stores will offer cops free coffee and popcorn to keep them around in the crime high hours of the night.

            Dick made his introductions (which were just a formality at this point) and was handed over his badge by the chief.

            That was where it all began.

            “Did you hear that?” asked Dick, having a similar reaction to a balloon pop, or a jump scare in a horror movie. 

            The chief leaned forward and cupped his ear. “Hear what?”

            He couldn’t hear it of course; his mind was not attuned to the greater depths of perception.

            Dick jumped up out of his chair and held out his arms, ready for an attack. From some unseen danger, the type I was constantly surrounded by. “That voice! It sounds just like me, except... like if I lived in the forties? … You seriously can’t hear it?”

            The chief let out a laugh and waived his hand. “Oh that? It’s just your noir voice. Don’t worry all detectives have it.”

            Dick was both offput and comforted by how casually the chief was treating it. The schizophrenic unstopping narration for my now life, filled with darkness, shadows, dames, booze, and darkness.

            “Did it just use darkness twice in the same sentence?” asked Dick, still looking around the room for a speaker, hoping this was all some cruel hazing ritual.

            “I’ve been told that its volcab gets better over time,” said the chief.

            Dick sat back down in his chair. “And why is it past tense?” asked Dick, his voice sounding a bit more like the one in his head.

            “Fuck if I know,” sighed the chief.

            Little did I know the reason it was past tense was because it came from when I was shot dead by a gangster with a tommy gun. Just two weeks from retirement and with a kid on the way.

            “Waitwhat?”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the City of Giants - Chapter V

             Tilian analyzed the structure of the giant robot, it seemed to be rather crudely put together, but he could not quite figure out how.             Suddenly, two figures in black armor rushed from the other side of the dig to in front of Bard. They were the BMC soldiers from before, the ones that Tilian and his siblings could not hope to survive against in a real fight.             “Looks like we got a prison break,” said the BMC Soldier on the right.             “And it seems to have been orchestrated by that Language Consultant the boss just fired,” said the one on the left. He looked directly at Bard. “Oh, you didn’t hear? Yeah, our employer does not want the secret of his new weapon getting out, so he is having us kill you, just like the last translator.” The two soldiers began to raise their swords into the air. Within that split second, Bard had pulled out his flute and Tilian, along with his siblings, instinctively covered their ears.             Bard blew int
Read more

Shabaka's Pride - Round 4

            Shabaka slowly got back up to her knees. Her first loss was painful, a depression fell over her, one that made her enraged. She felt as if the world had come to an end, and she had to wonder why she cared so much about this game with her siblings. The fight to hold back the tears was even harder than the one she just had with Smalls.             A large green hand reached out to her. Shabaka looked up and saw the gentle giant smiling. She wanted to knock the hand away and spit in the face of the one who had beat her, but she couldn’t. Not only because she knew it was inherently wrong, but because she was not really angry at him, she was angry at the concept of defeat itself. She took his hand, rose, and hugged him. She felt comfortable in his humongous and strong arms, feeling the rhythm of his heartbeat and his chest rise and fall. This gentle and kind creature had just been extremely violent, it was that family fire.             Shabaka went back to the sidelines and
Read more

Shabaka's Pride - Round 5: Match 1

             Three could still win the tournament, two could not. Those three were Amare, Smalls, and Shabaka. The match order was not announced yet, but only two possible matchups remained. Shabaka vs Amare, and Smallblade vs Tilian. If Smalls won his match, Shabaka could no longer win the tournament, at best she could match his score and he would win the tiebreaker. In this scenario Shabaka could purposefully lose to Amare, drawing the scores of those two and giving Amare the tiebreaker win. She threw off this idea, winning the tournament was secondary to winning as many individual matches as possible. But if Smalls lost, or even tied, Shabaka’s match against Amare would be winner take all.             “Alright,” sung Bard. “Go rest my children, and when you return, the order of this climax shall be determined.”             Everyone knew their final opponents through process of elimination. That was why Shabaka handed the watch over to Vito. It was also why she avoided making eye
Read more