INHUMAN

A loud sputter tears through the silence of the night. Hot rubber dragging through the paved streets of Sansurban.

"To hell with this car!", The detective shouted, his palm slamming onto the hard upper leather exterior of its steering wheel. The hand of its fuel gauge reaching at its lowest point, the car's engine sputtering, almost in a pleading manner as its lights flicker and eventually die out.

Samuel Erickson, 31 years old, Chief Investigator of Monnoroe County, Station 13... stinking of cigarettes, alcohol, and regret. Wifeless and chronically alone. A shameless husk of man, yet one that continues to live without any drive or reason.

His hand reached for the glovebox of his car, a loud clink followed by debris of rolled and balled up paperwork, half empty bottles of yellow stained beer, and crunched up cigarette boxes. Finally, he slid his arm inside of what was left of the mess he had shoved into the innards of his glovebox, pulling out a tattered wallet, badge barely clinging onto its strap, covered in splotches of yellow and ashy paste.

Samuel sighed, watching as haze began creeping into the scene, his tinted windows occluded by the thick fog, result of the nearby factory's fumes. An ill pitch color decorating the clumps of smog and mist that surrounded his vehicle. It was cold. The brews he'd drank prior burning at his chest, yet insufficient to remedy the icy breezes of wind that slipped into the semi-open window of his passenger seat.

He grumbled. Opening his wallet and finding .20 keslas worth of stamps, similar in shape, rounded with broad zig-zagging borders, decorated by a smudged ink figure splattered across its surface, capturing the fingerprints of the man who he once was. He eyed the side-mirrors, noting of the faint streaks of amber that shone from the city streetlights.

His mood sputtered into a reminiscent melancholy. Reaching for the lukewarm half empty brews, he took a swig of the contents of the 4 day old concoction of paper shredding, beer, and lint... puking it out after just a single second of entry. A sulfuric smell had filled the car's insides, overpowered by the stench of rot coming from the back of his car. Rot-like wafts coming from the seven month old unwashed laundry, piled together with case files, pizza boxes and unknown substances gluing the pile together.

He would reach for another bottle, this time taking in the full amount of whatever mix had been inside of its glass exterior, disregarding the vile taste and stomaching the curdled mix of solids and liquids. He would tilt the rearview mirror to himself, smiling and revealing the brown-stained teeth behind dried and scarred gum lip tissue. Finger gunning the air, whimsically ignoring the loud voices that began taking over his headspace.

"You don't need her" he spoke, slicking back the lengthy locks of unruly strands of keratin on his head, stroking his beard, combing out miscellaneous debris with his hand. He smiled again, eyeing the pitiful sight of his dead pupils, ever so dilated by the constant high of his own hubris. A face worth leaving to dissolve in the smell of rot in his backseat.

"The world's your oyster" he grinned at himself, shrugging off the pressuring weight of his current situation. He would then rummage through the foul trenches of his backseat, pulling out his issued pistol, the Krazcut-11, loaded with only 3 out of the 14 bullets its magazine can contain, the barrel stuffed with soot and damp powder.

He would put on his pants, covering the hairy surface of his legs an thighs, strapping the holster onto his belt and placing his gun into it. He let out a sigh, steeling his composure and stepping out of the car, looking for someone to ask for directions towards any inns or motels. He placed his index finger and thumb onto the bridge of his nose, pressing onto it, frustrated by the pounding of his temples.

The detective proceeded to reach into his coat pockets, pulling out a disfigured and half smoked cigar, lighting it with his grime covered lighter, finally letting out a puff of that tarry goodness. His pupils ever so slightly shrinking. Samuel made his way towards the streams of amber lighting, his face illuminated as he stepped closer and closer from the dark, watching the streets and the eventual wave of nothingness that comes at 1:00 in the morning.

His eyes shifted towards the buildings, similar in hue, yet discolored due to the different shades of pigmented polymer-laced bricks it had been made from. Watching the shifting colors ever so slightly, until he would spot a shadowy figure stretched across the wall... waving, slowly moving its arm from left to right with the scale of the shadow shortening, escaping from his sight, slinking out of whatever lamp-light they had been around and moving into the shadowy parts of the city.