Defenestrationism.net

by Muhammad Musa

On a stormy evening, a cab scrambled through the streets of Manhattan. The wet road didn’t seem to trouble the driver. The four o’clock looked like an hour after dusk. The periodic thunderclaps indicated that it was gonna take a while to calm down. The cab screeched to a halt in front of the 20^th precinct. The passenger appreciated the pace and granted a hefty tip to the driver. A black lady in her early thirties emerged from the vehicle. The outfit and the lack of umbrella or raincoat told that the weather wasn’t as rabid when she had taken off. The cabbie screeched off as soon as she was no longer his responsibility. She held a plastic file on top of her head and rushed to the main gate. Fortunately, an officer was waiting for her with a spare umbrella. She gladly accepted it. Not much damage had occurred to the file.

“I guess Dorian isn’t as heartless as they say he is”, she spoke to the African American officer escorting her inside. The officer chuckled. Something in his laugh gave up that he begged to differ. Well, he was the one standing in the storm, waiting for a woman he had never met.

“So, what’s this about, Jeremy?”, she tried to strike up a conversation with the guy. He was shocked to hear his name but then he saw his ID dangling around his neck. He wanted to avoid any interaction with the woman who had caused him to stand in the rain for half an hour.

“Cap didn’t tell me nothing. He just ordered me to receive you. That’s about it”, he responded with a shrug. They made the rest of the walk in silence. The precinct looked deserted from the outside but the inside was another story. The officers scampered around the center with paperwork to be processed. A number of them waited on couches with apprehended suspects with their hands cuffed behind their backs. The suspects glared at everything with sheer hatred. There was little doubt that they would burn the place down to the ground if given the narrowest opportunity. The officers responsible to get them over with did not look thrilled with the company as well. A tattooed suspect was hurling all sorts of profanities at the officer responsible for his arrest. The officer took it with a “Yeah” every now and then. It only infuriated the guy even further. The only thing common between the two sides of law was that they were all soaked. And of course, the janitor was pissed.  Lieutenant Jeremy led the lady through the labyrinth of corridors to a room that stood out from the others. The plaque said, “Captain A. S. Dorian”. The Lieutenant slightly opened the door and announced her arrival.

“Send her in!”, a rough voice was heard from inside. Jeremy motioned the lady to step inside and she did. The Lieutenant disappeared. Captain Dorian extinguished his cigarette and stood up to welcome her. He looked in his fifties and wore suspenders to make his pants cling to his plump frame. There were no facial hair and the head was bald except for the crescent at the back.

“Detective Gloria Henderson! You haven’t aged a bit!”, he exclaimed and reached out his hand. “But you have!”, Gloria responded and shook his hand. Dorian chuckled. “Still the fox in the guise of a sheep”, he whispered just loud enough for her to hear it. They had a lot of catching up to do. They hadn’t seen each other in almost two decades. It started from kids and family, and ended on cholesterols and diabetes. Both of them seemed to enjoy it until Gloria remembered that she still had no idea why her friend from the past had called her from miles away on such a short notice. Surely it wasn’t for nostalgic purposes, she thought.

“So, is everything alright? You sounded troubled on the phone”, Gloria tried to revert to the matter at hand.

“Yeah! Yeah! Why I called you, yes!”, Captain was back on track. “Sorry I called you so far from your precinct. You remember? The shitstorm at the Reverend Orphanage?”, he added. Gloria remembered the events too vividly. It was one of the first cases assigned to her and everyone else in the department happily let her take it. The most scarring series of events that made her question everything she believed in. Gloria saw a burning orphanage in front of her as her ears filled with distant screams of despair and a group of children, blackened by the smoke, stared up at her. Their eyes asked all sorts of questions she wasn’t ready to answer.

Gloria snapped out of it. “Yes. The senior most nun jumped to her death, the orphanage burned to the ground a day later and we were left with a dozen orphaned children to scatter around into different orphanages. Did I miss anything?”, Gloria responded and gave away that she still wasn’t at peace with it. Dorian sensed her uneasiness with the memory. She was staring into nothingness every now and then. He was starting to think if he had made a mistake hauling her into this.

“I was thinking that you worked on the case so …”, the captain tried to soften the impact.

“It’s fine. What changed?”, Gloria rushed him to the point.

Dorian was slightly relieved. “Umm… You remember the siblings? The brother and sister?”, he asked. He had assumed that the two had left a mark in her memory and right he was. Her eyes widened as soon as she heard about them. They were the strangest children she had ever met. Not one thing about them was ordinary. Mere memory of them gave her the creeps. She managed a nod.

“The sister is waiting for you in the interrogation room”, Captain Dorian spoke. It hit Gloria like a truck. She wasn’t ready to see any of those children let alone the ones she dreaded the most. Her feelings transformed and she felt pity for them. She shook her head in disappointment. It wasn’t a rarity to find an orphanage child who ended up a criminal. But Gloria would totally throw something at his face if he had made her come through a storm to tell her that.

“Shoplifting?”, she asked.

“It’s about the orphanage. She wants to tell what actually happened”, Captain responded ready for an onslaught. The calm on her face vanished.

“Come on! You were my superior officer. You could have taken care of it yourself!”, she erupted, “And it was thirteen years ago! She was just five back then. What could she possibly remember accurately?!”, she added.

“She asked for you by your name. It wasn’t my decision. And the few things she told me before asking for you, were precisely what I found in the report”, Dorian explained. He wanted to get this over with. Gloria wasn’t the only one who suffered the toll of that terrible event. He was the superior officer and playing “Too mature to feel anything” was half his job. “I know you want answers too”, he added. Gloria sighed.

She gave in. “Is she still Abigail? Or…”, she asked.

“Yeah, she never got adopted but her brother was taken in by a wealthy family. We don’t know if he is still Cody or not though”, Dorian responded and handed her a file that contained every recorded fact about the orphanage and the children. Gloria’s feeling of pity grew. What further pained her was the fact that the person who relocated her and stayed in her life for only a week or so, was the only person the kid trusted to call. Thirteen years! And she still didn’t have anyone to trust. Dorian was restless to take her to the interrogation room. Gloria agreed.

They entered the observation room behind the two-way mirror. A table and three chairs occupied the dimly lit colorless room. Abigail looked sleepy perhaps because of the endless waiting she had to pull herself through. The officers deducted that she was doing well by what she wore. A black leather jacket that looked right off the mannequin and so did the torn jeans. Half of her hair were dyed pink. Everything about her looked expensive. But when it came to the person wearing those things, she looked defeated.

“Where did you find her?”, Gloria asked after staring at her for a while.

“We didn’t. She found us.”, the Captain’s answer bred more questions than answers. Gloria gawked at Dorian then the file. There was absolutely nothing helpful about Abigail or her brother in the file. Every orphan had some sort of background or history but when it came to those two, Nothing. Not even a surname. The file only stated that they were found asleep at the door of the orphanage a year before it burned to ashes. Gloria gathered up some courage and abruptly left the observation room to get down to business.

As she entered the interrogation room, Abigail had no trouble recognizing the police officer who took care of her and her brother on one of the darkest nights they had seen. She sprang up to her feet and hugged Gloria. Gloria was caught off guard but she hugged her back eventually. They both took seats at the opposite ends of the table. Gloria didn’t want to skip the pleasantries. “Thirteen years huh?”, she muttered. Abigail nodded. “Your brother?”, Gloria asked.

“Haven’t seen him in years. He got adopted and we were separated”, Abigail responded. Gloria didn’t know where to head now. Abigail came up with an assist. “I … wanted to talk about the orphanage”, she spoke.

“The fire?”, Gloria asked, trying to get it as specific as possible.

“Yeah and everything that led to it”, said Abigail. A few cogs turned in Gloria’s head. She remembered the Nun that jumped. The girl caught Gloria’s eyes widen and she added, “Yeah, that too”. Dorian stared through the mirror trying to make sense of things.

“So, you know who did all that?”, Gloria questioned with a confused gape.

“Well, I was the one in the middle of it so …”, the girl spoke. Gloria gave her a puzzled look.

“I don’t know if I did any of it but I may have caused it”, Abigail added. The look of confusion on Gloria’s face didn’t seem to diminish. “I think I am dangerous. I need to be put under watch or more lives will be lost”, she continued with panic in her tone. She was begging to be arrested. Gloria was having all sorts of thoughts now.

“Baby, you can’t claim to have done all that without any evidence. Do you have anything to back your confession?”, She fired. The look on her face had changed. She had seen teenagers trying to get arrested to hide from creditors but pulling a burned down orphanage and a dead nun into it, would be the most heartless crap she had ever seen. Abigail could see it on her face that she wasn’t buying it.

“A group of girls bullied me at the school. Three of them have died and I wanted them to die. You need to believe me!”, Abigail pleaded. Gloria was suddenly more invested.

“When?”, Gloria asked.

“Last week”, she replied. Gloria rushed out of the room and Dorian met her outside with the answers. She asked Dorian about the deaths. He admitted that Abigail was right about the death of three high school girls in the past week and they went to the same school. Gloria was thoughtful.

“But one drove into a tree, one fell off a ladder and one took a bath with a toaster. Two accidents and a suicide. None of them looked suspicious”, he added. “Not even the parents reported anything”, he continued. Gloria rushed back into the interrogation room and Dorian reclaimed his spot on the other side of the mirror.

“One suicide and two accidents?”, Gloria rhetorically inquired. Abigail sighed.

“The cheerleader regularly practiced her act where she jumped from the ladder and all the boys gathered to watch her. I wanted her to die in front of them. The rich brat was too proud of her convertible sports car. Her gang once shot paintballs at hobos. I wanted her to die in that car”.

“The suicide?”, Gloria asked.

“I hated her the most. She was the worst of the lot and the strongest. I wanted to show everyone how weak she was. At some points I just wanted them all to die but I didn’t wanna kill them. Yet they are dead anyway”, added Abigail. Gloria was thoughtful for a moment but declared,” Still no evidence!” after a few seconds. Gloria was starting to think if the long trip was for nothing. If that was the case, Dorian was going to get a piece of her mind. Dorian was also losing all interest in the matter. He suddenly sensed that something was off. Then it hit him that Abigail was staring directly into his eyes through the mirror. He moved to the side but her eyes followed his. He charged into the interrogation room sweating and panting.

“What the hell are you!?!”, he shouted at Abigail. Gloria was stunned. Abigail calmly stood up to deescalate the situation and he flinched.

“I just want you to believe me! I am unintentionally hurting people around me and you just witnessed that I am capable of unexplainable things”, Abigail implored. Gloria stared at Dorian, looking for some explanation. “She can see through”, he whispered, panting. Her shocked gaze shifted to Abigail who looked genuinely sorry to alarm them. Dorian took his time but eventually collected himself.

“But how?”, asked Dorian, still hoping to wake up any time soon from the nightmare.

“My Mother. I inherited it from her”.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I remember very vividly what she told me”.

“But you were only four when you were left at the orphanage!”

“She made sure that I never forget whatever I heard from her that day”, the girl explained.

The room was silent now. Both the officers had given up trying to make any sense of it. They sat speechlessly at one end of the steel table. Gloria felt shiver run down her spine. She would have never been that scared if it weren’t for Dorian’s state when he entered the room. Both of them were trying to figure out a suitable course of action. The Captain left the room and returned, a moment later, with an audio recording device.

“Go on, start from the very beginning. I wouldn’t mind adding something to the empty file of yours”, Dorian spoke as he placed the device at the center of the table. Gloria looked at Dorian, bewildered.

“Don’t tell me you have something better to do. Besides, there’s a storm out there. You’re gonna have to wait anyway”, Dorian convinced Gloria and he didn’t need to try too hard. The thunder claps were clearly audible inside the building. It was going to take a while. “What harm could it possibly do?”, she thought to herself. When they settled at the table, Abigail started to speak.

“My mother’s name was Edna. Can’t remember the surname. She was born in a small village in Slovenia. She belonged to a respected family with a rich history. The family had a tradition of inbreeding. No family member was allowed to step out of the village. When she turned fifteen, her parents let her know about the supernatural powers the family inherited. They helped her control it. Everyone in the family was gifted in some sphere of powers. She had the power to influence people’s minds. Her parents devoted more time to her training than any of her siblings because they understood the threat her powers posed”.

“But how did she end up here though?”, Dorian cut in, irritating the other two occupants in the room. Gloria glared at him.

“I was getting there”, Abigail spoke again. “When she was twenty, a traveling circus visited the village. All the villagers swarmed to watch the shows. She was also among the audience. They had never watched a circus before. To them it was nothing short of magic. The blinding lights, the music, the fireworks, the acrobatics, it all bought the entire village. One of the most applauded acts was the magic show. A young magician with a long coat and a top hat picked volunteers from the crowd. My mother was one of them. Everyone got lost in his acts but she got lost in him. The feeling was mutual. They met after the show and she decided to run off with him. The circus stayed for a week before moving to other cities and when they did, Edna vanished with them. The magician kept her as his assistant. They moved across Europe for a year until a contractor offered the magician a chance to move to the USA. He offered him a contract for ten years. He accepted the offer without any hesitation and moved to the states with Edna. They both loved the country”, she continued.

“If they moved legally, we might get something from the immigration office”, Dorian spoke up again.

“I doubt it”, said Abigail. “He got the gigs as promised and money started to flow in. Edna was living her best life. The two got married. It all went well until the contractor vanished from the face of the Earth. Money went scarce and the magician slipped into depression. He started drinking. Mama now had two children and a drunk to look after. She started working as a maid. Things turned bitter when he started to throw his hands at her but she convinced herself that it was just a phase and it would pass. It only grew. Slaps became punches. One night, she couldn’t be home early for her daily beating so he took it out on me. Mama took one look at my black eye and I saw her face change. She didn’t need any enchantment to make me remember the beating or what she looked like when she dabbed my eye with a warm cloth”, she added.

Dorian’s phone buzzed. It was a weather alert. “Holy shit!”, he exclaimed. He showed videos of floods in different states and cities. Cars were seen floating. People had pulled out their boats to help their neighbors. “What’s the status in NYC?”, asked Gloria. Dorian shuffled in his phone, trying to look for the answer. “I wouldn’t call it a flood but it ain’t a beautiful day either”, he responded.

“Sorry, you go ahead”, the Captain said as he saw the look of distress on Abigail’s face. She sighed. She doubted if the two were even trying to believe her.

“Mama started thinking of doing something about it. Still she hoped if it would pass. One day, he came home drunk and enraged as always and yanked Cody up in the air. Cody could barely walk. Mama decided to intervene. She succeeded in freeing Cody but not before taking half a dozen or so blows. He called her everything nasty that came to his wasted mind and ambled to his room. My mother and Cody cried for hours. It was after a while that she realized why Cody wouldn’t calm down. His right arm was limp. Something snapped in her that day and she fell silent for the next few days”, Abigail continued his testimony. She zoned back into the interrogation room and found the two officers listening to her story wide eyed. Their faces comforted her that at least they were lending her an ear.

“Do you remember his name?”, Gloria managed to ask. She was trying to pick every actionable piece of information to put this story to paper, if it proved to be worth it.

“I remember hearing mama call him Seb but I’m not sure”.

“Your house…”

“Some project in Detroit. Can’t remember more than that”

“What happened after Cody got hurt?”, the officers tried to bring her back to the subject.

“He got run over by a truck right in front of our house”, Abigail resumed. The ease with which the girl spoke of such events, made both the officers rather uncomfortable. Gloria walked out of the room. Dorian waited for some explanation that never arrived. There was a brief silence in the room. Dorian asked her to resume.

“Police came and tried to make sure if Mama was able to keep us fed and clothed. Mama tried her best but couldn’t convince them. My black eye gave them wrong ideas. The cops took all three of us to the police station where they asked me the same questions ten times. They kept asking if Mama had hit me while I kept negating and crying. One of the cops hinted that we could be snatched from our mother. I had no idea what they were doing to Mama”, she continued. Gloria burst through the door with a freshly printed paper in her hand. She threw it on the table in front of Dorian and he examined it. It was the summary of a hit and run case near a project in Detroit. The victim was a Balkan illegal immigrant. The truck driver swore in his official statement that the victim was drunk but all alcohol and narcotic tests came back negative. No living relatives were identified. There was nothing found in his pockets except for a harmonica with “Sebastian” engraved on it but the engraving was deemed not enough to be used as identity. Dorian’s eyes widened as soon as he read the name. He glanced at Gloria and she gave him a knowing look. He looked back at the paper and found the date. Less than a year before the siblings were found outside the orphanage. Abigail was oblivious to the contents of the paper. The interest of the two officers in the testimony had significantly grown. 

“What happened at the police station?”, asked Dorian.

“I was sitting alone in the office of the captain, when mama arrived with Cody in her arms. She sat us both in the car and drove off”, she resumed.

“A car? Didn’t the police take you guys to the station?”

“Yes, they did. We drove away in a patrol car”.

“And nobody stopped you?”

“No”, replied Abigail. Her each word was making Dorian more and more confused. He sighed.

“So, she had no relatives or friends in the country. Where was she headed?”

“Nowhere. She kept on driving for hours and took us to a beach. Cody and I were so happy. She brought us something to eat. We spent the rest of the day on the beach and the night in the car. Since we had a car now, I insisted that we go somewhere new. She agreed and took us to Disneyland”, she went on. Dorian had so many questions. Edna shouldn’t have the money to afford it or to drive all the way there. And that much drive in a patrol car would have definitely raised some suspicions. He decided to let her speak on. “We spent a day there. It was the best day of my life. Suddenly I woke up in the car and we were still at the beach”, she added, expecting a shocked reaction. She received it. The two officers were sure they had misheard her. Dorian was about to confirm what he had heard when his phone buzzed. It was a call from a detective who wanted to speak to him urgently. He expertly handled it and asked for a minute. He hung up and sat there silent.

“That bully group of yours, did it have an Amy Silverton?”, he asked after a long deliberation. The response was a knowing “Yes”. He sighed. “Guess who just got nailed!”, he added.

“Did it involve her father and his temper?”, Abigail asked perceptively. Dorian’s eyes widened and he was starting to feel scared. He wasn’t sure what to feel about all this. All his life he had been trained to believe in facts and logic. The Abigail matter was beyond all that. So, his head decided to stick with fear. Gloria on the other hand was stranded between fascinated and straight up confused. Abigail decided to break the silence.

“As I stepped out of the car, I looked back and saw my brother fast asleep. Mama came running at me and I was trying to put together the words when I snapped back at Disneyland. I spent hours there trying to find a way out. The place where I spent the best time of my life just a few minutes ago, turned into hell for me, knowing that it was not real. The rides, the costumes, the blinking lights laughed at my face”, she spoke and the officers listened, staring at the walls. She continued, “I eventually woke up back into the parked car at the beach. Mama was in the driving seat. She saw me troubled and tried to comfort me. I cried inconsolably and pleaded that we drive away from here. She eventually gave in and drove off. We were going to her parent’s or so she said. She drove for hours on end. We crossed multiple toll booths. I had never visited them. She stopped every once in a while, at drive-throughs and hot dog stands. The long trip left me drowsy and I passed out. Hours passed and the car kept moving. I woke up and found myself back at the damned beach. It was dark outside. I jumped out of the car. Mama was just outside the door. I ran head first into her. She held me in her arms and comforted me. She was crying and so was I. She put her head on my shoulder and wept her heart out. I was walked back to the car and she promised to take me somewhere safe. I didn’t believe it. She caressed my head and told me everything as she drove off”.

“Your father?”

“Yeah. She made him see that he was walking inside the house when in reality, he was on the road. She explained how her abilities worked. She could make others see what she wanted. She told me all about her past and the ‘ever-remembering spell’ she put on me. I can almost hear her speak right now”, she added.

“Spell?”

“It wasn’t a spell. She could make someone remember or forget something”, she responded. “When she was done, she tucked me in with my brother. When I woke up, I was relieved that the beach was nowhere to be seen but neither was mama. Cody and I were surrounded by nuns. They asked us a lot of questions. I couldn’t answer one of them. They took us in”.

“The nun that jumped. Anything we should know?”

“She used to beat the children every time they dropped a spoon or woke up late. Eventually, me and my brother ended up at the longer end of the stick. I hated her with every cell in my body. The night she died, I was in her office on the top floor, waiting to receive a beating. I kept glaring at her as she was freeing herself before she dealt with me. The only thing she enjoyed in her job. She stood up to get to the toilet. I knew where she wanted to go. I closed my eyes and imagined the way to her toilet. At that point, I didn’t even know if I had inherited it. I just wanted to know what it would feel like. In her mind, she turned right for the toilet but in reality, she walked straight into the window in front of her. That’s the only time I have consciously used my powers”.

At that point, the two officers just gaped at her telling the corrupted fairytale. None of them wanted to believe it but the accounts and events were too consistent to ignore. “About the fire, I hated the place but I had no hand in that”, she added.

“What did Amy used to gloat about?”, Gloria dragged her back to business.

“Her father was a thug. Ran with some biker gang. She used him to intimidate other girls and their boyfriends. He even beat up a few of them”. The pattern was simple enough. Gloria didn’t need to ask more.

“If this is some sort of a prank. This is a good time to shout ‘sike!’ and go home”, Dorian butted in.

“I am Dangerous. I don’t know how to stop it. I didn’t want those girls to actually die. I just fantasized about it and it happened”.

“Didn’t your mother need to be near the victim for her powers to work?”

“Yeah. But I guess my crap works from a distance too”.

Captain Dorian pressed a button on the recorder and motioned Gloria to have a word in private. They both stood up and walked to the end of the room with the double side mirror. They spoke in a hushed tone.

“You believe her?”, Gloria warily asked.

“I believed her the moment she saw me through the damn mirror. The kind of shit she claims to be able to pull off, she just might be hearing us right now”, Dorian responded.

“She may be an adult but we risk bloodbath putting her in jail with people looking for trouble”, said Gloria.

“Yeah. We can get her to a mental asylum. Maybe they’ll find some way to numb it”.

“I guess. None of this will stand in front of a jury. We’ll need to skip the paperwork”.

Dorian agreed. The lights flickered and a thunderous gunshot pulled their attention away from the interrogation room. It came from the reception area. Captain was ready to go and check it out when more gunshots followed. He looked back at Gloria and the girl, wondering if they had also heard the ruckus. He found Gloria with a gun in her hands aimed at him. 

“What in the…!?! Put down the fucking gun!”, he shouted and unholstered his own pistol. Gloria was bewildered and pleaded with the captain to holster his gun with her empty hands in the air.

“I won’t warn you again! Put the gun on the ground! Now!”, Dorian yelled even louder than the last time.

“What gun!?! You gone mad or something!?!”, Gloria snapped but all Captain Dorian saw was a woman he brought here as his friend, pointing a gun at his head with an emotionless face he could barely recognize.

There was no weapon on her. Her handgun lay dormant in her purse that sat on the table. The kind of supernatural things Abigail had been telling them, made Gloria suspect her hand in this. She looked at the girl and found her looking genuinely puzzled and scared. The commotion outside the interrogation room grew tenfold. It sounded like a full-scale shootout like in the westerns. Gloria figured some gang had pulled off the attack to free some prisoners.

“Last warning! I WILL shoot!”, Dorian gave the final ultimatum.

“For the last fucking time, I don’t have a …”, Gloria’s response was cut short by Dorian’s gun going off. Abigail gasped loudly. The bullet kissed Gloria’s arm. She dashed to her purse, dodging Dorian’s bullets. She pulled out her handgun, took a shot in a single fluid motion and ducked behind the table as she took the shot and found Abigail there, screaming with her hands on her ears. The chaos inside the interrogation room stopped. The two crept out from behind the cover and found Dorian bleeding from his throat on the ground, gurgling in his own blood. He looked scared beyond comprehension. Gloria instantly regretted pulling the trigger. Her best friend who had been a mentor to her, was dying by a bullet from her gun. She rushed to help him. It was a lost cause. He let out a few strained coughs and fell limp. Her legs felt cold. Abigail swore and pleaded that it wasn’t her but it was all but a distant echo in Gloria’s head. She couldn’t stop staring at Dorian’s lifeless body leaking what looked like gallons of blood. His white shirt was barely recognizable. A shotgun shell pulled Gloria back to reality. She grabbed Abigail’s hand and escorted her, with both of their heads down, to the control room that was in the basement. As she grabbed Abigail’s hand, she felt her arm burning and she remembered that she had just been shot. The control room hosted a dozen LCDs that displayed the feed from the numerous CCTV cameras around the precinct. The room was also the closest room with a gun locker so it made two reasons for Gloria to head there. Lucky for them, the stairwell was just across the corridor. They ducked and ran to it. There was no gunfight in the corridor but Gloria decided against taking any risk.

The room was deserted as Gloria had expected. The officers deputed there were probably in the firefight at the center of the precinct. She darted to the LCD that displayed the live-feed from the area. It was a bloodbath. Corpses were scattered as far as she could see. She gasped and stared in disbelief. The cops and the suspects were all butchered. There were no signs of any survivors. Her vision blurred as her eyes welled up. The scene looked dormant. Shots could be heard through the microphone on the camera but they were coming from the other rooms. She snapped out of it. She wanted answers. Gloria rewound the feed to get to the point where it all started. She saw herself walking through the officers and suspects, being escorted by Jeremy. She fast forwarded it. What she found left her with more questions than answers. An officer pulled out his pistol and shot a suspect being held by another officer. No question, no warnings and no hesitation. The officer looked frightened. It all went south as soon as he shifted his aim to another officer. As he was downed, another officer had an itchy trigger finger. It went on until there were none left to put down the hostile ones. She put the screen back to live-feed and nothing had changed. If she was to get out of here alive to tell the story, she was going to have to fight through the last of the gunshots. Gloria instinctively looked at the gun locker and found it open. The officers deputed there had left in a panic. One shotgun stood idly in there. She grabbed the first aid kit sitting on top of the locker. She placed a makeshift bandage on the wound on her arm. Gloria left the room with Abigail and the shotgun.

“Stay down and close to the walls!”, Gloria said as she led the way. They slowly reached the center. The gunfight had stopped. No survivors, as she saw on the feed. The two navigated through the corpses and made their way to the door. The two warily emerged out of the building. Gloria wondered what she was going to find outside. It was dark now. The rain hadn’t stopped. In the flash of the thunder, she found the first sign of life since Dorian bled out. A young pale boy wearing a gray hoodie glared at her. Gloria clutched her weapon and looked for quick movements. The boy’s emotions changed as soon as he laid his eyes on Abigail. Abigail’s initial response was of surprise but soon she was fuming with rage. She marched right at him and smacked him across his face.

“It was you!?!”, she yelled.

“Nice to see you too sis”, he responded sarcastically as he checked if his lip was bleeding.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing!?!”

“Hunting elephants! What does it look like? I’m busting you out”, Cody erupted. Gloria spectated the weird exchange, wondering when it would start to make some sense. Abigail gasped as if something had been revealed to her.

“The girls at the school. It was you, wasn’t it?”, she inquired and Cody offered a proud smirk. She was furious. She started hitting him on his chest. The blows didn’t do much to the boy. “I didn’t need your fucking help! I was trying to avert all this”, she yelled. He was confused and to some point, irritated by his sister’s ungratefulness. He caught a glimpse of Gloria staring at them and asked, “Is she friendly?”. He raised his open palm and aimed it at her.

“Stop! Don’t you dare!”, Abigail shouted and pushed him away. Gloria felt dizzy and blacked out.

The next day, Gloria woke up in a hospital and as soon as she did, a nurse dashed out of the room. It didn’t take her long to remember why she was there. A minute later, the Chief of NYPD and the DA sat across from her, waiting for her to get ready to be questioned. The chief didn’t look particularly pleased. The DA warmly approached her.

“How are you feeling?”, he kicked off the conversation. She nodded.

“How long was I out?”, she barely managed.

“Four hours tops”, the DA did all the talking on the interrogator duo’s behalf.

“Remember anything?”, he added. Gloria sighed and slowly shook her head. The DA was the more tolerant of the pair. The Chief wasn’t having any of it. He sprang to his feet.

“For fuck’s sake woman! An entire precinct is wiped out and you’re the sole survivor. I want some fucking answers! Who killed my men!?!”, the Chief erupted. Gloria wasn’t shaken. She kept staring at the wall in front of her that had framed pictures of flowers and fruits, unintentionally ignoring the glare of the Chief.

“Why don’t you start with the CCTV footage?”, she spoke after a long silence. The Chief sat back down with a shake of his head. The interrogators weren’t amused with the answer. She couldn’t place why. The DA read it on her face.

“The tapes are blank”, he politely informed her. Her dizziness faded away in an instant. No words could come out. There was no other way to prove what had happened. All those lives lost would fade away as an unsolved case in a forgotten manila file, she thought. All the brave officers, her friend Dorian… Dorian! It dawned on her.

“The audio recorder! Dorian recorded it all!”, she exclaimed. The Chief’s interest spiked. The two interrogators looked at each other questioningly. The Chief hastily pulled out his phone and ordered the team on the crime scene to search for it.

She sat up and felt a restraint on her wrist. She was shocked to see her hand cuffed on the railing of the bed. Before she could say anything, the DA explained.

“You are the lone survivor from a shootout that killed dozens of officers. You were found unconscious outside the precinct with a shotgun on your lap. Fortunately for you, the shotgun didn’t seem to have been fired so you are fine on that account”, he enlightened her. “But that’s not the case with the handgun we found holstered on you. The sooner we find out where that bullet went, the sooner you’ll be out of our crosshairs”, he added. He motioned the Chief and exited the room. Gloria hoped against hope that something would spring up out of thin air to prove her innocence because she knew exactly where that bullet went and it was only a matter of time before the cops were acquainted with it as well. The Chief stood up after a long and thoughtful silence and approached her.

“I’m sorry if I sounded harsh but Dorian and I go way back”, he tried to explain his pain on the matter. “I’ll give you a moment to gather yourself, then I expect some answers”, he said as he picked up his coat and hat, and walked to the door.

“That fucker would have fought like hell if he hadn’t left his gun in his office” he added and left.

______________The End_______________

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