Martin stood beside the front door he’d just opened, gazing at an undulating sea of blue uniforms.
Someone screamed, “Bloody! Fucking! Bitch!”
Ever so slowly, while this latest shock ate at him like a fast-acting acid, Martin realized he was the one who had screamed.
The nearest cop spoke. But just then Martin felt something insidious shift inside his mind. What had the cop said? He couldn’t hear over a terrible ringing in his ears. All he could do was seethe at the thought of that bloody, fucking Jennifer turning the tables on him and wonder what the even-louder grinding sound was…until he realized it was his teeth.
The nearest cop said something he couldn’t understand again. Could his terror and so much nightmare-interrupted sleep prevent him from understanding what was presumably English?
Another cop spoke loudly and very slowly.
“What?” Martin snapped. ID. They probably wanted his ID. He looked down as he fished it out of his pocket and saw the floor beneath him was undulating just like all those blue uniforms. Were those huge insects crawling up his legs? Or were they just shadows and he was really wide awake and…hallucinating?
He looked up and squinted, hoping it would help him to see straight, and for just a moment he was sure he detected something odd about their uniforms. Meanwhile the cop who’d taken his ID shook his head and handed it back quickly. Martin thought he heard someone laugh. Then the first cop started in on what was obviously a canned speech of some sort, though Martin still couldn’t understand him. Probably reading him his rights.
Suddenly the ringing in his ears climaxed, and it wasn’t Jennifer he was seething over; it was himself. How knackered was he to think for a moment that she wouldn’t obnoxious her way out of anything, including a murder rap? Would picking up her dry cleaning and getting it up for her till he’d had the time to work out a viable way to get rid of her…or just discovered what was on her phone, damn it all to hell!…really have been so bad?
Gone, his mind was completely bloody gone! The cop even said something Martin actually picked up vaguely about blessing his soul. Then he shoved some papers in Martin’s face.
“It was self defense! If I hadn’t killed him, Frank would have killed me!” Martin wiped the foam from the corners of his mouth.
The undulating sea of blue uniforms seemed to jerk to attention at that, then get sparse and start to disappear.
And they were gone. Martin glanced at the papers. Subpoena? Looked like bible quotes and a big-ass old cross at the top.
No matter. He wasn’t taking any chances. He grabbed a few things, tripped over the pink monster undulating its way across his vintage atomic-inspired rug, and ran out his back door.
