Grim Tidings

Grim Tidings

Postby Lent » Tue Oct 16, 2007 12:11 am

Detective Constable Kurt Lentham had spent the better part of the night completing paperwork at the Frog's Tongue, an obscured hole in the wall deep within Myrkentown. It was one of his favorite little taverns, if for no reason than the fact that no one, not even his partner, could find him there. Even the bartender had slipped into a back room to get a bit of sleep. Nothing to worry about with Kurt there, right?

That was why it was all the more alarming when a gruff looking Constable marched through the door, heading right towards his table. By the time the man had reached the table, Lentham's gaze was staring right through him. There was really only one reason for this sort of thing. "Who did it?" His flask was in hand now, and he had already opened it. Nonetheless, his words were cool, his posture collected.

The Constable took a deep, long breath and nodded before reporting. "Karolinger, Lentham. We're fairly sure. You ought to come into headquarters. I have to go tell McCoy's father, but we wanted to..."

"No, go home." Lentham grunted, now rising to his feet. "I'll tell his pa. Right for me to do it, yeah?"

The man hesitated, but only for a few moments before nodding and heading back out to the door.

Lentham remained standing by his table for a minute, two minutes, frozen in place. Eventually, he began to bring the flask up towards his lips, but his hand was no longer steady. In fact it was shaking, first a little, and then violently. "Huh. Would you look at tha..." The last word died in his throat even as eyes rolled backwards into his head and his body collapsed to the ground.
-----
Memories flashed for the first time since Haberdasher's Row. He was there, finding the tattered, eyeless remains of his parents. He was there, digging through the rubble searching for his wife, finding only a dead, lifeless thing instead. He was there, watching the Flux take away the last two things he cared about in the world, watching them pass on with his hand in theirs.
-----
And as quickly as they had returned, they were gone once again. Lentham sat up, sweating, feeling the dried blood by his nose. It hadn't gotten all over his uniform, at least. Hnn. And then, he looked up to see the form of the late Charles McCoy, looking quite alive, sitting at the seat where Lentham had just been. The words were slow to come. He must have swallowed some of his own blood. "Am I dead?"

McCoy shook his head. "No. No, not yet. Not from that." He seemed fairly sad, in his own way, the young Constable.

"You're a ghost, then?" Lentham actually allowed himself to frown even as he was trying to find his legs once more. This WAS Myrken. Stranger things had happened.

Another shake of McCoy's head. "No. I'm just a figment of your imagination, Kurt. You took it all pretty hard, I think. You're pretty sure I'd be sorry about that, so I am."

"Mighty nice of you, or me I suppose, for you to say that." Lentham decided that maybe the ground was an alright place to be for now. "So, you're basically saying that I've gone unhinged and if someone else were to walk in right now, they'd see me talking to myself."

"Yeah, Kurt... Yeah, that's about the sum of it. Sort of wish you wouldn't. Doesn't really do the uniform justice." The smile on McCoy's face was endlessly sheepish.

Lentham just shook his head with a grunt. "Listen to you, son. Die and you get all uppity. I'll stop talking to myself in a minute then. Last wishes and all that. First off, though, I want you, real or not, to know that I'm off to tell your father, then we're going to bury you right. He'll put out the coin, you know that, like a hero, so hopefully you didn't die being an asshole. And then, Karoli..."

"Hey, Kurt." Well, interrupting him wasn't something he'd do in life. "You know I wouldn't want you going after the Marshall, no matter what he did, not if you do it the wrong way too. I believed in the system, you know..."

There was a deep stare. It was a shame too. He was enjoying the company, even if no one else would have. "I'll give Calomel one chance to play along. Bet he will. Would bet you five shillings on that, if you had any left. But if he lets us down, we're going to have to do thing my way. And that means..."

"Kurt.." To Lentham, the voice seemed to be coming from all throughout the room, pleading.

It was dismissed with a shake of his head, a wave of his hand, and then it was gone as well, even as the Detective Constable rose to his feet. "Sorry, son. Figments of my imagination don't get a vote, and whether I've snapped or not, mine counts just as much as ever." The room seemed empty now, quiet, even to Lentham. "Now I gotta get cleaned up and then go see your pa, son. Damn it all." And with that last, soft statement, the man slowly began to walk towards the door.
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