A Bad Case of Forgetfulness

It was a grisly murder, maybe the worst there has ever been. Outside No.34 the cordons were up and the sky was depressed above it. There was no rain, just dark metallic clouds and off in the distance a weird pewter light that spoke of storm and said the world is a wild and dangerous place. Down along the street the trees were dressed for autumn, and amongst rustic yellows and faded greens there were leaves the colour of fire and leaves the colour of blood. From the north a wind blew in which whipped up dust and made dogs whine. And with the wind there came three men, and one was dressed in black.

It was a tall, slightly stooped figure who ducked in under the police tape first and made his way over towards the small crowd of uniformed officers and forensics who were gathered outside the house. A cigarette end hit the pavement and sparked, then a shiny patent leather shoe closed in over it and scrunched it into the ground. “Detective Inspector Mike Ransack, South Thames Police,” he said, shaking a hand here and there. "Where's the body?”

A man in a white forensic suit pulled his hood back and dropped his mask, "What's left of it's in the bedroom 'round back, “he said. “Though be warned, it's not a pretty sight."

“It never is,” replied Ransack, “but I'm not here for a hard-on!”

Ransack didn't hang about. He continued up to the house, tensed his face into a serious shape, and entered waving his small team in behind him. As they followed the general buzz of activity along the unlit hallway Ransack poked his head into various rooms trying to pick up a general feel of who may be shot or battered to pieces in the end room. Over the years crime scenes had become second nature to him and he had acquired a bored, almost cynical regard towards them. He knew only too well that even if the locations are different, or the murder executed in some ever more stupendous way, his job (and everyone's around him) was intrinsically the same each time: they would come, do their thing and then leave. It is slow, formulated work, a matter of capturing every single detail as it was left, and bagging the trail of clues which lead to and away from the body. As a little indicator of his experience in such matters, Ransack would often be seen showing a nonchalant disregard for certain objects of evidence -  handling photographs...  using ashtrays... lifting up pots, etc, classing them as “pieces of shit!” and knowing that they were not evidence at all and would more than likely finish up in  police auction rooms up and down the country. Today however there was nothing to touch, not yet anyway. The hallway was completely bare of any furnishings, the only thing vaguely ornamental being a young uniformed officer who stood guard outside a dark room at the bottom.

Ransack approached the uniformed constable. “Was it you who called the scene?” he asked. 
The young officer pulled his mask down, “No sir, it was PC Barnes. He's in the kitchen still quite shook up. I arrived as backup to his initial alert.”

“And have you entered the room?” asked Ransack.

“No Sir.. not really. I put a foot in and peered around the door, but I never entered. God, seeing it was enough... more than enough!”

Ransack nodded like he understood, but really he didn't. He only understood cold indifference to such sights and viewed any other emotion as being potentially damaging to the investigative procedure. “Has anyone entered the room?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir. Three forensic collectors and a doctor.  But they didn't stay... had a brief look and then left almost immediately.”

“OK, that's fine,” concluded the inspector. “At least this time those arseholes haven't fucked up my investigation before its even got off the ground!”

Ransack then stood silent, kinda looking off into nowhere. He had fussed around enough, asking quite useless questions as a way to build the tension and savour the suspense of the moment. As a final little delaying tactic he moved his eyes over to the bedroom. The door was pushed wide open and a dull depressing light sat low inside. Even from where he stood blood was visible, splatterred up the far wall and also huge smears across the visible stretch of carpet to the right. Ransack moved forward and stopped at the doorway. He looked intently at the uniformed officer who averted his gaze and started up with a slow shaking of his head. Ransack cast a puzzled look back towards his two colleagues then entered the room and froze.

A body. God! More a mash of flesh. Is that even human? Jesus! Blood! An arm. Maybe? Stabbed and torn and stamped and ripped open. Bare bone. Oh no! Jesus, no! Shouldn't a head be there? Is that a head?! Fuck! What the hell smashed that in? And who did the smashing? Oh, Mother of Christ! Slithers of 'stuff'. WTF! A huge grey damaged sack leading from what was maybe once the belly. Intestines? Whale blubber? Haggis? God, no! Skin turned inside out. Yellow fish eggs. Exposed and  ripped flesh. Red fish eggs. No, no, NO! A large room with atrocious carnage slumped in the left corner, where a million things could or could not have happened! Jesus H Christ! What the fuck !

“Oh My...!!!”

“what in the hell???”

“...holy mother of fuck!!!”

“Sir... sir.. sir........”

Ransack was rooted to the spot. He felt that weird feeling he had felt once before on the night he had entered the bridal suite and seen his angelic wife splayed and ready on the bed wearing the crooked smile of a street whore. That weird feeling that had made him panic, feel nauseous and desperate to escape. Which had left him incapable of flapping even a semi hard-on into his disobedient  penis . Indeed, he was suddenly so confused that he was quite unsure as to whether it was he who had even gotten married, and if not, wondering what the hell he was doing in a bridal suite in such a predicament?

“Wedding night nerves!” his doctor friend explained,  after Ransack had closed himself in the bathroom and made a frantic call to the sound of running water. But Ransack knew better. It was more than nerves or panic he was suffering from. There was nothing of him there, just an empty feeling down below and an even emptier feeling in his head, which had froze him to the spot and made all actions seem alien and tricky. Well, now it had happened again... only worse: for the second time in his life, Detective Inspector Mike Ransack had not quite forgotten who he was, but how to do the things he was charged to do. And so, as he did on his wedding night, trying to insert a scrunched up, limp and useless penis into his wife (going as far as pushing his balls in to give more of a pack ) so now it was time for him to improvise again – to rely on skills that go further back than anyone can ever remember...

(to be cont'd....)