You don’t know what the fuss is about. It’s not like they stopped you from touch­ing the clothes before, back when they were still on the body. Why are you at any more risk of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the evi­dence now than then?

Fed up with the bull­shit, you stride to the ele­va­tor, and plum­met down to the Skull level. It used to be called the M level, but you decided to name your level M instead (for Mag­nif­i­cent, obvi­ously). The morgue was left with a skull-shaped button.

The doors open slowly, and you, an aveng­ing angel, power through the open­ing, stand­ing tall, ignor­ing all in your path. Inci­den­tally, this causes you to step on a live rat.

With a squeak, it dies. You make sure to give a well-timed snarl. It’s obvi­ous you must have intended to step on the rat. Per­haps that’s why you’re down here in the first place!

Except it’s not.

Clothes are the reason.

You come to a fork in your path, and with­out a pause, take the right.

Fig­ures. There’s all the peo­ple who should be cat­a­logu­ing the evi­dence. The very peo­ple who for­bid you to look at it.

“TAKE THAT YOU OPTICAL-NERVE CHEWING FINGER-MASTICATING RAT-MOUTHED SLIMEBALLS! Com’on! Hand over the eye­balls! And be care­ful! They’re prime bright-blue eyes! Worth quite a bit, those! Told you he’d win – ”

You hate to inter­rupt a lovely game of minia­ture golf played with balls made of hair glued together with dead throat slime (you for­get what that’s called) and put­ters made from leg bones, played on a sur­face paved with… some type of inter­nal tis­sue, per­haps intes­tine, and with human eyes for betting.

Or, you would hate to inter­rupt, if it weren’t for the extreme right­eous anger you’re about to intro­duce them to. If it weren’t for said anger, you think you’d put down three bright emer­ald eye­balls on the teen with painted-on acne.

You grab the acne-obsessed teen around the throat, and imme­di­ately wish you hadn’t. It would appear he trans­planted some zits from some of the bod­ies onto his neck.

You slam him against the wall and get right up into his pimple-penned smarmy face.

“You will tell me the loca­tion of the clothes.”

He stares at you wide-eyed. He prob­a­bly expected a reac­tion to the zits around his neck.

“Now,” you growl.

“Box thirty five!”

You toss him at the oth­ers. They dodge. You pay no mind.

Instead, you stride to box thirty five. You open it. You examine.

They are, indeed, the cor­rect clothes.

You search the pock­ets. A few pieces of paper; a wal­let; a pencil.

You un-wad the piece of paper.

A45. The Nile Apartments.

You pon­der as you sink into a handy chair.

“I require some cheese!” you exclaim.

You wait.

No cheese is forthcoming.

Slowly, you stand, and glare at the morgue employees.

They’ve gone back to their game – only this time, it’s clear they’re try­ing to sneak it, with their hushed voices and whisper-quiet taps of the balls.

“I said,” you com­mand, your voice dark and threat­en­ing, “I require cheese!”

They all stare at you.

“NOW!”

They all rush off, trip­ping over each other.

You walk up to the balls of hair and pocket them.

It’s an empty warehouse.

One giant room.

It could be more.

So it is.

And when they drag in the girl, they don’t place her in a ware­house. They place her in a tiny room.

It’s a small, uncom­fort­able room with pol­ished white tiles, shiny uncom­fort­able metal chairs and an equally uncom­fort­able metal table.

They lock her hand­cuffs to the table, then leave.

It has the per­fect green tint of an inter­ro­ga­tion room. The mir­rored, one-way glass, rough cement walls and grimy small white tiles enhance the decor; the slow “drip… drip…” from a nearby leak sets the mood.

The door clanks nois­ily as you step through it.

The girl looks up at you. You tsk.

“CUT!” You yell.

The girl is star­tled and scared. She has no clue what’s going on, and it’s not as if you’re about to tell her: she might break char­ac­ter – well, even more than she already has.

“Next take, don’t look up.”

You storm out.

The door slams shut.

For a moment, you stare at her through the mir­rored glass.

Her brown hair pools around her face, obscur­ing her from you. She tries to move the hair away, but before they reach, her hands catch on the cuffs.

With as much drama as you can muster, you stride once more into the room.

She doesn’t look up.

You sit; not on the chair, but on the table.

She still doesn’t look up.

Promis­ing.

She talks.

“The room is darker. Danker.”

You frown. You sup­pose her words are mys­te­ri­ous enough to be dra­matic; you don’t cut scene right away, but…

“The tiles, once pol­ished, are dirt­ier than ever. The table, once shiny, now bat­tered. This chair – ”

She kicks vio­lently, but can’t move. Her cuffs clank dully against the hard wood.

“ – Well, it’s wood now.”

Your scowl deepens.

You decide to put the law down. “You are not here to state the obvi­ous. You are here for ques­tion­ing in the mur­der of – ”

“I want a lawyer. Not a ware­house turned inter­ro­ga­tion room turned dungeon.”

You smile grimly.

“You can’t always get what you want,” you respond. You lean over into her per­sonal space.

She glares at you, and attempts to pull away, but the chains bind her hands fast to the stone wall.

You hiss into her ear.

“I always do.”

You lick the icing off the cupcake.

That’s what cup­cakes are good for: they are icing deliv­ery vehicles.

Yet there’s also that cake part. You never know what to do with the cake part.

It reminds you of what once was; of the icing; of the sweet­ness, long since devoured.

You want to eat it again – the same icing! It’s spe­cial! Just one more lick; just one more taste.

You want to scoop up some onto your fin­ger; you want to put it into your mouth; you want to let the fla­vor swirl around…

You wish you took your time more than you did; you wish you savored it more. If you but had another chance, you’d do it right this time!

And the cake.

You are unsure whether to keep the cake for the mem­ory, or to toss it, to rid your­self of this loss.

Per­haps you shall bury it.

Instead, you eat it.

Per­haps, you thought, there are traces of more icing! Per­haps, you thought, these traces would not be spoiled by the cake! That icing, so sweet, so perfect…

But in the end, you swal­lowed only the bread, the cake, and no more icing.

It’s not the same.

Maybe you’ll buy a new cupcake…

But it’ll still not be the same.

What’s gone is gone.

You think you are alone. You have too many thoughts to truly be so.

Many thoughts are sealed away, and yet still their noise sur­rounds you as a shroud of impen­e­tra­ble agony.

You hate them.

You grab them with a thought, and twist them, glare at them.

Their scream­ing doesn’t stop. It never does.

Because it is not them who are scream­ing, but you who are hear­ing their screams, for in the end, you are the screamer, and they are mere wisps fleet­ing through your shad­owy mind.

And it’s not their fault.

It’s not their fault that you have crushed them down so they can­not breath; stuffed them into shapes they were never meant to fit inside; hid­den them away where they can but glare at you through the night, when all is quiet, but for your thoughts.

You walk up the stairs of air, and upon the ceil­ing, you sleep, their voices calling…

You really don’t have the time.

So many things to do…

You should be asleep.

You should sleep, do work, do some other work, and then go some­where, and do more work. You are booked solid through next week, and you should at least be doing some of that.

But you aren’t.

You’re star­ing at a screen as you type away, cre­at­ing some­thing which you doubt will have much of any sort of sig­nif­i­cant impact on any good num­ber of peo­ple at all.

You are, some­times a genius.

The stacks upon stacks of paper are piled high around your office, each lit­tle pieces of evi­dence you still should exam­ine, but you won’t.

The hun­dreds of tabs open in your web browser – each you need to look at, but none you will.

The unread email – and the dozens of mes­sages left pur­pose­fully “unread” so you’ll get back to them later – still not read, and still not got­ten back to.

They’re all behind a slew of other things.

Such as sleep.

And, in the end, behind you, sit­ting behind your screen, craft­ing your creation.

You are deter­mined to create.

But you don’t have the time.

So you cre­ate a cre­ation about not hav­ing the time.

You are not sure if you actu­ally are a genius – or if you’ve merely reached genius lev­els of idiocy…

But, some­times, you feel like one.

You call out for help, but there is no answer.

It’s a rit­ual, for you. You do it every time it’s quiet. Every time you are alone. Every time you have time to think. Every time you have time to feel.

You don’t know what you need help with. You don’t know why you need it.

But that you need it, you do know, and you call out, but never is there an answer.

Who could answer you, all alone as you are?

You sit on your own lonely planet, your own lonely spot; no-one else can reach you.

You have more con­trol over the world than you’d like, but none over your­self. You act assured, yet are any­thing but; your own eyes, a thou­sand times over, watch your every move, con­stantly judging.

You wish you could fly away one day, but you already have. You left long ago, and there’s no going back.

Some­times you wish you could return, but that would be worse yet. Back there, you had to hide. Now, you live out in the open on your empty planet, but lone­lier than ever.

Who would answer your call? Is there a God out there who listens?

Yet your will always be done; your wish is The Com­mand. You could destroy the uni­verse, or cre­ate a thou­sand more like it; either way, it wouldn’t take the tee­ni­est effort.

You decide, and it is so.

You may as well be God.

But if you are…

Who then will lis­ten to your prayers?

Who, for God, is God?

---

You decide.

You decide that there must be some­one to guide you; some­one to help.

“Hello,” you say. “Can you help?”

“Hi!” replies The Voice. She sounds very excitable. “I believe I can.”

You turn the key in the lock and step inside.

The win­dow opens with a touch, and the wispy cur­tains, so out of place in such a room, flut­ter gen­tly in the breeze.

You always liked such thin, light cur­tains. Cin­e­matic, yet somehow…

They aren’t cur­tains, really. You are sure they have a name, but if you’ve heard it, you’ve for­got­ten it.

You can hear the room whis­per to you. You can feel the spot under the floor­board call­ing out to you.

But its call has already been answered; it has already been emp­tied: once by you, and what lit­tle was left, by The Father.

You step to the closet, and open the door.

You grab his favorite, bright blue water bot­tle, the vio­lin he rarely used, and his pur­ple hairbrush.

You saw them last time you were here, and you wanted them.

That’s why you are tak­ing them.

No other rea­son. Not like you care.

That rum­bling in your chest is just hunger, after all, noth­ing more.

“Thank you,” you say, your minion’s smile ever so broad. Your own smile, your own grat­i­tude, all so fake and so far away.

Never do you mean the thank-yous, never do you feel them. Noth­ing reaches into your heart, not from the world out­side; you and it are always far apart.

You see, but you can­not feel. Those who should be your clos­est friends; even as they stand next to you, they’re oh so far away. Even as you share hugs, they remain parted from your heart by an ocean larger than any found on Earth.

You are alone.

You have stooges. You have min­ions. You have a mother you’ll not see, and a father who won’t see you.

But in the end, all you really have is yourself.

And then, you real­ize, you don’t even have that.

You are alone.

You do it to your­self, but you can­not stop. You put up these walls that you can­not tear down. They sur­round you. You’re alone, you’re boxed in, you can­not go any­where for there is nowhere to go, not when you’re alone, not when you’re here, not when you’re where you always are, locked inside your tiny box.

You can’t feel a thing. Everything’s from miles away. Things that should bother you pass beneath your notice. Those few that get through stir you into the depths of fury – an impo­tent fury that fer­ments with you inside your lit­tle cage, fer­mets until the dam bursts in a bril­liant explo­sion that, just as quickly, vanishes.

You do it to your­self, but you don’t mean to, you don’t want to. You want to tear down the walls; you want to open up; you want to be free.

In the real world your power is con­sid­er­able. You seek it – you seek it ardently – but it is entirely use­less, for you do not live in the real world, and as much power as you may attain there, you will still live – you will always live – pow­er­less, inside your box.

There’s no-one you can share any­thing with, not even your­self. You can’t believe how you, your­self, feel. You’re not sup­posed to feel this way; you should be dif­fer­ent; things should be dif­fer­ent; but they aren’t.

You’ve locked it all away, and now, even you can­not find it.

You’ve locked your­self into your lit­tle box, but you’re not even there; you tore your­self piece from piece, each into its own box, each with its own key, and then, each key, you threw away.

You have lost yourself.

“Thank you,” you say, but you don’t know what you mean.

You feel nothing.

You are alone.