M Sellars - Never Burn A Witch

“Enough to make him stop killing?” a voice asked.

“I think so. Not for long, mind you,” I returned. “But, yes, I do feel that it might buy us a short reprieve. I would suggest we find him before he gets over it, however. I’m no psychologist, but I have a bad feeling that he is going to turn this guilt into anger and blame. When he does, I’m betting the blame will end up on the heads of Witches and Wiccans, and like Agent Mandalay said, another spree could be just around the corner. Maybe even worse than last night if he…”

Across the squad room the glass-paned door swung open, and a young, uniformed officer poked his head through. “Excuse me, Detective Storm?”

“Yeah, whatcha’ need?” Ben looked up and across at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he proceeded, “but a unit just came in with an old bum they popped for an assault, and, well… I think you should come down and have a look.”

“What for?” Ben shot him an impatient frown.

“Well, when they searched him they found a Bible in his pocket with a passage highlighted.”

“What was the passage?” I asked.

“Exodus, twenty-two-eighteen.”

Stunned silence layered itself across the room in an almost stifling fog. Colors bloomed and flashed in a sparkling fireworks display that rained outward in slow motion. A distant ethereal scream shattered my ears.

Liquid fire rushes down my throat.

I cannot scream.

The pain is piercing my very soul.

Why doesn’t someone help me?

The colors had begun to spiral back into themselves, and the imagined silence breaking shriek was fading steadily. I clung to the vision a moment longer, fearing it intensely, yet knowing that it had been triggered for a reason.

I’m floating.

Flames lick at me from below.

I cannot feel them.

I CAN feel them.

I still cannot scream.

Something… Someone… A movement in the darkness.

An old man.

Stumbling.

Sudden horror in his eyes

Flames lick at me from below.

Chroma, hue and sound completed their sudden wild pinwheel through the fold of the room and settled back to an even tone. The bloom faded and normalcy once again prevailed. The jangle of ringing phones filtered into my ears as if they had never been absent. I knew my brief excursion into another realm had been just that. Brief. I doubted anyone noticed other than myself.

“Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live,” I recited aloud then glanced back at Ben. “I knew there should have been a Bible at the second scene… That has to be it… He was there…”

“Jeezus,” Ben muttered under his breath.

“Son of a bitch,” Deckert echoed behind him.

“And by the way, Mister Gant,” the uniformed officer added. “There’s a woman downstairs asking for you. Pretty redhead about so tall.” He held his hand up to illustrate. “Say’s she’s your wife. Seems she’s the one who tackled the guy and sat on him until the squad car arrived.”

“So you picked this guy up on an assault?” Ben asked the arresting officers.

He, a pair of uniformed patrolmen, and I were making our way to the lower level of the station via seemingly endless flights of stairs. Detective Deckert and Agent Mandalay had remained behind with the rest of the Major Case Squad to go over the facts of the cases so far and see if they could brainstorm any fresh ideas.

“Yeah,” one of the uniformed men returned. He was among a small number of individuals I had met in my lifetime who was tall enough to look Ben straight in the eyes. “You know Tracy Watson? The meteorologist over at Channel Five with the big…” He made an exaggerated cupping motion at his chest with his large hands.

“Yeah,” Ben chuckled lightly. “The big ratings boosters for the male demographic ages thirteen to still breathin’. She the one makin’ the complaint?”

“Yeah,” the officer returned. “Seems this old dude just ran up to her as she was coming out of a coffee house. He started screaming ‘Tracy I love you’ and then grabbed himself a couple of handfuls.”

“You mean?…” Ben pawed at the empty space in front of him and allowed the question to hang in the air.

The younger, shorter cop nodded, “Yeah. Guess he wanted to find out if they were real. Lucky bastard.”

“Looks like he got more than he bargained for though,” the tall officer snickered. “Ended up with a nice, hot double latte in his face and a psychotic little redhead with her knee in his back. I mean to tell you, she’s a smokin’ little number herself, but I feel sorry for the asshole that’s married to that one if he ever pisses her off.”

The young cop’s face spread into a wicked grin. As he shot a glance back over his shoulder, he began fervently nodding. “Yeah, but you know what they say about redheads. If she’s got that kind of energy in the bedroom then I wouldn’t mind getting some time with her. Know what I mean? I’ll bet she could…”

“Fortunately,” I interjected before he could continue to dig the hole any deeper, “it’s been my experience that she doesn’t get quite that pissed off very easily…but I do try to avoid doing it anyway.”

All forward motion abruptly ceased and both of the uniformed men swiveled their heads back to look at me. The stairwell fell silent except for the fading echoes of our footsteps.

“That’s right.” I bobbed my head. “I’m the ‘asshole’ that’s married to her.”

The cop who had been about to regale us with his lurid fantasy about my wife flushed through varying shades of red, ending at a particularly bright crimson. Slowly, his jaw began working up and down, and he started to stammer, “Well… I, ummm… I… Well… I didn’t mean any offense, Mister Gant…”

“None taken at this point, but it wouldn’t bother me if we changed the subject slightly.” I smiled back. “But regarding that ‘getting her pissed off’ thing-I’d advise against letting her hear your thoughts about what you want to do with her in the bedroom. I’ve never been on the receiving end, but based on what I’ve witnessed I happen to know she has a pretty quick knee.”

Ben grinned at the stuttering cop and clapped him on the shoulder with a massive hand as we started downward once again. “Open mouth, insert foot, huh, Carter?”

“Taking out a few aggressions, sweetheart?” I asked as I planted a light kiss on Felicity’s forehead and gave her a quick hug. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” She returned the squeeze. “Still a bit of adrenalin jitters, but I’m okay. Surely I feel like I could do with a shower. That old man was pretty rank.” She released her grip on me and then leaned back. Out of habit, she reached over and straightened my visitors badge while she spoke, “I wasn’t exactly expecting this much excitement today. I suppose that will teach me not to be going out for coffee when we break then.”

“Wrong place, wrong time, eh?”

“Aye, depends. I suppose Ms. Watson would consider it fortunate I was badly in need of a caffeine fix.”

I leaned in again and made a show of sniffing her hair. She hadn’t really picked up too much of the old man’s malodorous bouquet, and what she had was primarily on her jacket, but I played along anyway. “Yeah, I think you’re right about the shower. A date with some soap and water probably wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Aye, and you’re askin’ for it today, aren’t you then, Mister Gant?”

My petite wife’s voice still held a definite Irish lilt, obvious and musical, though not entirely as strong as it had been the night before. Her speech pattern was woven of a rich tapestry of Celtic design and probably would be for the week to come-the audible results of an evening with her family and her encounter with the whiskey.