Part 1 of 1
Read the full text at http://flashpulp.com
Tonight, Sgt Smith recounts a tale from his time with the vice squad.
The Skinner Co. Network
177 - Sgt Smith and The Discovery, Part 1 of 1
[music] Welcome to FlashPulp, episode 177. Tonight, we present Sergeant Smith and the Discovery, Part 1 of 1. This week's episodes are brought to you by the Shrinking Man Project. [music] Doc? Laura, hi. Oh my God, I almost didn't recognize you. You've lost so much weight. Oh, thanks. I've been working on it. You look great. What's your secret? You know, everyone keeps asking me that. I'm just doing it with diet and exercise. The only real secret seems to be getting your head on straight before you get started. I actually started a podcast about it. I'm not getting your head on straight. Sort of. It's about my weight loss and about the ways that people trip themselves up with the attitudes that they have going in. I do episodes every week talking about what I've had to deal with and every couple weeks I throw in some philosophy. The idea is to help someone else figure out what they need to do to make it work out for them. That sounds pretty cool. What's the podcast called? The Shrinking Man Project. The URL is TheShrinkingManProject.com. I'm trying to keep it simple. Well, it certainly seems to be working for you. Flatter. More. More. [laughter] [music] FlashPulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age. Three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Tonight, Sergeant Smith recounts a tale from his time with the Vice Squad. Sergeant Smith and the Discovery, Part 1 of 1. Written by JRD Skinner, Art and Narration Biopoponix, an audio produced by Jessica May. [music] My dear is Dundernoggin. Your mention of the sweets last Sunday, and the hullabaloo surrounding that poor boy's death, brought an old memory from the depths of the leaky sieve that my gray matter has become. Late in the 80s, I was working capital city vice. There was this place at the far end of the industrial patch, a two-floor shanty that had been rezoned commercial and sold cheap. I knew the owners, Cooper and Collins, for a long time. They were nice, but their luck was poor, and they were born into the wrong era. The bar was named the Discovery, after Shackleton's ship. There were massive history buffs, although I doubt any of the south transvestites that frequented their place ever took much notice beyond the occasional opportunity to participate in themed costume nights. Anyhow, they kept a relatively tidy place, and even if it was in a rough end of town, any naughtiness happened off the property. Despite its reputation, my memory is a barroom full of folks just looking for a conversation with those of a like mind. Which isn't so different an idea than the place your granddad frequented when I was a lad. Doesn't mean that the surrounding locals didn't put up a lot of hassling at the station to have us do something about it. A different era, I guess. I wasted many evenings drinking soda trying to blend in and keep an eye out for anyone who might be attempting to pull a trick. I'm not saying it never happened, but I could have listed a half dozen street corners my hours would have been better spent watching. The thing was, in some cases, the situation worked in favor of the regulars. That July and August, three guys had had their faces butchered, and one had found himself nearly castrated, all while walking home from the night's worth of drinking. For a few weeks, my presence was actually pretty welcome. There was a fellow, Daniel. He knew I was a cop, but he always seemed happy to have me in hand. Skittish, when you first got to know him, put eager for a conversation once he realized you weren't going to slug him. This night, I'm sitting at the rail, underneath a picture of Arctic explorers posing on an ice-flow with a British flag, and I'm thinking it's time to slip down the back way and through the alley that patrons looking to be a little more incognito usually took, when Danny starts heading to the washroom. I remember it distinctly because I thought at first he was stumbling my way for a chat. He wasn't, however. He was just listing from too many glasses of rosé, and his high heels were thrown him off course. There was a pause, no longer than a minute's worth, then he comes back. He's a lot stiffer, and he's got his hands in front of him. Frankly, at first I wondered if he'd been shot in the belly. When he finally made it back to his table, he was coming around from his shock a bit, and every eye on the upper floor was on his slight face. He held up a freshly severed thumb, not his own. He could see a nib of bone protruding from the gory end, and it was still dripping. Now, Aunt Clarice, the bartender, and the only natural woman in the building, was a stodgy broad. I'd seen her extract shattered glass from beneath a clumsy-handed reveler's blood-stained toga, and I'd seen her clench her fist against the occasional confused hick that would wander in to prove how not gay he was by starting a fight. In this case, she just stood there, sputtering. I can't blame her. There's something greatly unsettling in seeing a lone thumb. Although wordless, it asks, where is the person who ought to be attached to this digit, and how did they go about misplacing it? At least a blood-drenched victim tends to babble an explanation. The party was over immediately. No one had any interest in answering questions during the inevitable police response, and the place emptied in a glittering human explosion. Made deluge, I was guessing at the most likely destination for the newly four-fingered man. The nearest exit to the bathroom was the route I'd considered earlier, so I dropped a few bills on the bar for Clarice, then threw myself into the flow to be carried out to the cool night air. Then y'all came to a sudden halt. I had to push my way up to the front, as the group had formed a sort of semi-circle, with the open end facing a cinder-block wall. Standing on a split trash bag was Timothy Buchanan. I knew at a greasy little bugger because he spent quite a bit of time with Bobby Sweet after they'd met in a halfway house. Anyhow, Buchanan was holding this ridiculously oversized folding knife. You know, brass with a faux wood veneer? The kind of thing you buy for twenty bucks at a shady convenience store. It was stupidly huge. You'd expect the A-Team to mount it on the front of their van. You seem to be getting tired just waving it, but that might have been because of his missing ear. Not a van go half-job either. The whole bloody thing was hanging from where his lobe had once resided. It was held on by a stringy bit of flesh that looked like hot-dog skin. As I moved to the opening, I saw Mint, another regular, being directed by friends back towards the bar. His cheeks were full of blood, and his thumb was missing. I'll be damned if I'd ever seen forty fitter men in one place. If I hadn't dried Buchanan off to serve his sentence, he would have been missing a lot more than his quality of hearing. I think they'd have likely found him in a dumpster somewhere on the east side of town. He was only tried for the single assault, and for a while I felt like maybe he should have gotten a longer sentence, as when he went in, the attacks stopped. Later on though, after nesting with a lifer, I heard he decided to settle down pretty permanently on the inside. Everyone has a path to walk, I guess. Love you, Dad. Flashpulp is presented by http colon slash slash Skinner dot FM. The audio and text formats of Flashpulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 2.5 license. [Music]