What If? First Exercise

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, really it was. Dew point was somewhere around 76, so you know the fog was thick as thick can be. Earlier there had been thunderstorms, lightening shredding the sky, hail the size of golf balls, gully-washing torrents that had left it feeling more like the barrier islands of f Savannah than Saint John, New Brunswick. You could see the neighbor’s yard light next door, but similar lights across the street were obscured.

Fog does funny things to sound.

Things that you know are miles away, like the clock chime on town hall, sound like they are just down the road. Waves washing over ledges gurgle and snap as though they were in the back yard, not on the other side of the spit of land called “The Point” by the natives and “John Brown’s Landing” by the tourists. The wail of the siren sounded miles away and seemed to be fading now as the ambulance made it’s way over the causeway and on to the main road to the city.

Chief Constable Eric Sloan sighed and turned to go back in to the house. “Fucking drunks,” he said under his breath, as he climbed the rotting wooden stoop to the one story bungalow. Standing in his way at the door, gasping for a bit of fresh air, I coughed the stench of decay out of my lungs and asked Eric for his jar of Vicks™ Vapo-Rub.

“Left mine at home,” I said, my voice echoing hollowly in the fog. “I’d been asleep for hours when the call came in,” I added, trying desperately to cover my ass.

I’d been no where near home when the call came in. I’d warmed a barstool at Mulligan’s until closing, chatting up R.C.M.P.Constable Barnstable in a vain attempt at getting into her pants. Again. And Eric knew it and I knew that Eric knew and felt just as foolish as I appeared in the dark reflections in his eyes.