THE PSYCHIC

Detective Lauren speaks agitated “We have to make an arrest, we can’t let this woman carry on with her crime when we have substantial evidence that she will commit it and that it will lead to the death of three innocent people!” Captain Ogle responds calm but obviously not as permissive in accepting the evidence at hand, “I don’t think the circumstantial evidence is even circumstantial, how are you going to explain that based of a few simple patters detected by a psychic and confirmed by a couple of police officers, which don’t make for objective witnesses you are going to arrest a professional 43 year old woman with a wonderful career her only obvious crime being that she never managed to find herself a husband!” Capt Ogle pauses, but is breathing heavily enough to stop anyone else from talking before he continues… “And you know the supposed would be abductor and killer woman, and you are a young detective with perhaps an axe to grind because for all we know you could be a women hater; I can see now a defense council giving you and our precinct a whole new title, “misogynist central.”” “Oh Capt please you are letting your imagination go wild, its not my fault that she happens to be a former close friend of mine, who else is more likely to discover a crime than someone who knows the victims and the killer?… now Lauren does not wait for an answer, “or have you forgotten your basic training Capt, its usually someone you know that kills you, and if that is the case the most likely to be aware of your pretensions are going to be your friends, assuming that family can’t be objective on these murder matters.”

There are two other detectives in the dark and gloomy room, but they remain silent, they have already mad clear to Ogle that they are not in agreement with Lauren, they think her a bit on the unconventional side of things, and they are not very pleased with what she is proposing.

It all started a while back, Lauren had this friend Antoinette, perhaps even they were best friends, but there was Lauren’s boyfriend, and somehow Antoinette Blite found herself in a sexual liaison with him, and as it happens a million times a year throughout the world, Lauren had the occasion to catch them in the act. The friendship ended, the boyfriend got lost, and both women, at least from hearing Lauren tell it, both women seem to walk around with a Grand Canyon size scar from their mutual separation.

This was, again if one believes Lauren, an event that occurred eight years back, long enough for everyone to forget everyone, long enough for both women to have found other boyfriends or husbands, and yet they hadn’t, in fact the odd thing was how similar their profiles ran, both coming from hard edged homes, both were raised by adoring fathers, and mothers that were none supportive of their intelligent and thriving daughters. Both had found their mutual friendship because not only were they champion professionals but both could revel on how they had managed to succeed in spite of their mothers, apparent jealousies or constant denouements. And now, both could claim that the same boyfriend had separated them from perhaps their real love, each other. Yet let me be clear here, neither had lesbian tendencies, in fact they were both in love with the masculine, so much so that some times it overburdened their personalities, both in the professional world, as well as in their personal character, both lived alone, both were masochistically independent, and both had the respect of their friends and peers for being reasonable and sound minded. Neither had much book intelligence, they were doers not intellectuals, they didn’t have to prepare for their jobs, they were intuitive, highly intuitive, and they could call the shots better than most managers. Lauren had commanded national recognition for her profound ability to get to the details of a case in record times, and her case conviction record was in the 79 percentile, a seemingly impossible record, that included all her cases including those unresolved. Antoinette too was an impressive executive, she was a Vice President with a cutting edge Internet company, she had made millions for them and she had herself a handsome salary and a decent retirement full of pigs, and here was really the most obvious difference between the two, Lauren could not claim financial independence, much less on detectives pay could she claim a future with lots of pigs to retire on. Nope, in fact that had been one of their mutual points of discontent, Antoinette always business and economics savvy, commanded a spreadsheet mind, while Lauren was more prone to spend away on her family, friends and self, without giving it much thought, and so Antoinette had to help her with a loan so that she could afford her plainly impractical Karmaguia, and Antoinette had also loaned her money numerous times to cover the rent, and so forth. Which arguably perhaps gave Antoinette some right to fuck Lauren’s man, at least perhaps Antoinette subconsciously thought so, though there is no evidence that Antoinette even bothered to expect full repayment from Lauren.

And now, for the last three and half months, Lauren had been tracing circumstantial evidence of a crime that Antoinette was going to commit that maybe even Antoinette did not know she was going to commit. Lauren, not unlike Antoinette was superstitious, but not so much in a genuine way, much as many people in the Western world are superstitious, they will visit a fortune teller, have a set of tarot at home and occasionally pull a card to see how the relationship or the job are destined, or even reading the horoscope to comically feel good about themselves, in all a harmless belief, never bothering to mystically dwell in the underpinnings of the metaphysical craft. So one day, about three and half moths ago, really precisely three and half months ago, Lauren went to a Psychic. The psychic was named Habakkuk, and he had been Lauren’s official psychic for many years, so much so that they actually had lunch at least once every two months or so, and even shared a mutual passion for red wines. They laughed a lot together, and Lauren admired Habakkuk life style, he was so out of the ordinary, something that would have been very difficult for her, so she felt that it took lots of personal courage to be so different, Habakkuk dressed in robes, red and golden robes, wore a head scarf, was a skinny man, strictly vegetarian, but had nothing against beef nor did he admonish those that consumed it, he simply felt that beef grounded the spirit too much and his had to be flighty and light, and so it was that he didn’t eat meat, in fact having grown with a fanatic vegan mother, Habakkuk had been one of those rare human beings that had never tasted the meat of any animal, though some could speculate that the larvae or protein from a fly or an occasional worm might have been unnoticed in his vegetables; but for that, Habakkuk was a spiritual man, and he did curse himself for his wine consumption, he couldn’t help himself, to Habakkuk, wine was something that tied you way back to some angelic truth that couldn’t be known from, by his terrestrial self, he suspected that he would never find out precisely what the riveting connection was with wine and the angelic, but he knew that it stretched through times and culture, and he often spoke of this incredible harmonious connection that had to have eventuated at some critical historical point, for Habakkuk the invention of wine led to many strange conclusions, the foremost being that wine had been a blur point where all of humanity had for an instant synchronized upon divine aspirations and not a touch of evil had touched that micro second of intense joy and global communion, and from that moment, richness with the textures of the divine human spirit had jolted the senses and some one had to invent wine to represent the moment; yes according to Habakkuk wine was the only evidence that we had of an earth wide human communion instant; the ruby red, laced through angling souls.

You could blame Habakkuk for Lauren’s current obsession. A session of psychic reading, “I see a woman… she has adducted a family, I see a woman… she is violent of rage, I see a woman she is going through irrevocable madness… I see a woman… hurting to hurt you Lauren, hurting to touch you Lauren, I see a woman… inching her way into you from long absence, I see a woman discrediting your profession…” and suddenly Habakkuk stopped talking, tears had covered his face, sweat had dampened his head scarf, he opened his eyes wide, wide open and he rounded the table to hug, hug, Lauren, whom was already herself in heavy throttled shock!! Lauren was in fact so stiff that the hugging being begged by Habakkuk was a clumsy reaching for bones, he couldn’t get her arms or fingers to close around him, and perhaps what is worst, after coming through his trance, Habakkuk barely remembered what he said, he knew that it was bad because of the feelings that were transversing throughout his body and soul, because he knew that his tears were droplets of tragic truth and not of happening joys, and because he sensed Lauren’s shocked condition as it was connected to him as catalyst. Habakkuk, did not know what to say or do, psychics are not very good at being good friends, they are certainly detached, they really don’t belong to this world, mostly they dream there way through it, so while Habakkuk could sense that something was disproportionally wrong with his fortune telling, he could not endeavor to reassure or to calm or to help Lauren, she was on her own, he did not understand the world that he predicted happenings for, he did not understand that world, which was also why he could walk through it, looking wholly alien and not notice himself.

Now Lauren was asking captain Ogle to obtain a warrant to bring Antoinette in for questioning, this she was asking even as Antoinette had not committed the crime that she was going to commit and this even as the circumstantial evidence was highly suspect. Antoinette’s deviation from her routine of years, Antoinette had stopped drinking coffee, she had stopped attending social functions, she used to go for a seven mile run, in the past with Lauren, both were fanatics of the loner sport, but now only Lauren continued with the sport, Antoinette had abandoned it apparently approximately three and a half months ago, about the same time that she abandoned social functions and coffee, something in Antoinette had changed, and most disconcerting was the fact that she was no longer so charged at work, peers noted that her intensity towards projects was gone, that she did the bare minimum, that she avoided conflict, that she did not comment on strategic issues, that she was there but really not there, and that this unusual behavior for a woman that had the sumptuous top level office, for a woman that had marred the lives of others to get there, for a woman that had none of the passivity of a good southern woman, this woman had changed three and a half months ago. Three and a half months ago she became absent from most of her daily routine, though she still showed up to work. Her boss, however, was now beginning to lose his patience, and though she was part owner of the company, her stocks did not guarantee her a job, and he was preparing to oust her for, of all things, negligence or lack of participation.

Habakkuk had started a strange chain of events with his vision, Lauren immediately after she awakened from her shock thought of none other than Antoinette, and had immediately started the investigation to conclude that there was a different Antoinette within Antoinette, and this difference was drastic enough and timely enough to warrant police attention. Now all Antoinette wanted was for our Abraham Lincoln look alike Habakkuk, moustacheless but bearded and in robes to be able to carry out a suspicious experiment that he only hesitantly suspected might be able to tell him if Antoinette was indeed a murderer to be. According to Habakkuk in the old days, when Habakkuk speaks of the old days he is usually somewhere in the seventh century BC, now Habakkuk noted that back then it was not unusual to place a suspect in an aged wooden box like hut, and to have Psychics walk about rounding and reading the suspects energy to determine if he was bad, a bad man. Surprisingly, according to Habakkuk, whom while unable to convey anything of modern history, he didn’t even know that he looked like Lincoln, nor did he know that there had been a civil war, or for that matter a second or a first world war, but if you speak to him of the seventh century before Christ and even beyond that backwards, he seems to posses incredible knowledge, and according to him there was something very strange about the wooden box happenings, never in all of his knowledge had a woman been put in the box, never. Antoinette then stood to make woman of the year, even as she might not be aware of it, certainly such an ancient tradition being revived at this point in time had somehow an elongated connection to the past, and Antoinette, according to Habakkuk, must have somehow been deigned to link a communal practice from the seventh century BC to the present. Habakkuk noted that these kinds of bridges between centuries were rare, and often hidden from historians because history was a dead event and these were real events taking place with the same malice or goodness of intent as in their original preconceptions. In other words, what Antoinette was attempting to recreate was a genuine, not a replica event of something that took place in the seventh century, by genuine Habakkuk, this meant that the event was being carried out with knowledge of intent to sequester a provable murderer before the act. Habakkuk also noted that he was not bothered by the moral implications, the act hadn’t been committed but to Habakkuk changing the future or destiny of a person was common practice, he explained that many of his readings changed the destinies of the people that he read for, that many things that were going to happen did not happen because he, Habakkuk had read them as unwarranted or as unwanted, and that as his subjects acted in regard to his visions, they changed future histories. Capt Ogle wasn’t terribly convinced by these reassuring words from this incredulous man, so Habakkuk noted, “it is only now that everyone lives only on today that they can not envision changing future events, in the past many events were changed by ordinary people but today there is a helpless sense that ordains a none interruption of destiny, people feel that they can only govern the present, but the present is only born from the burning urges of the near present future; and so it is possible captain, to alter the future happenings, and to work as hard for them as one works to retire.” Captain Ogle wasn’t any more impressed by this, he was more impressed that the request to bring Antoinette in and lock her in a wooden hut was being made by his most admirable and frequently unerring detective.

THE WOODEN BOX

Lauren had been kind enough to provide a woefully presumptions excuse for the arrest. Ogle was looking at it, looking at her, “arrest her for questioning under the pretense that there is suspicion of insider trading, and we get the Federal Government involved to help us bring her in for questioning, simply because you think her sale of some of her company stock was timed to suspiciously precisely before the stock plummeted in value? And this even as she properly notified the SEC months in advance of her intent to sell?” Lauren sat comfortably on a huge dark purple couch, she fixed her shirt a little, so as to mimic an attempt at guarding her modesty by hiding her bra, an attempt that could have been discredited by any passive observer as she was an extremely slim and fit woman with only nipples for breast. A gentle smile reached from her to the captain, “Ogle we know it is not going to stick, we know it is only pretence, but it is a reason to get her in here so that Habakkuk can do his thing, so lets not try to make sense of it.” Ogle reaches for his full head of hair as if suspecting that the happenings are going to gain him boldness, “Let’s not try to make sense of it, yeah, lets just hope that the government doesn’t try to make sense of it long enough so that we can place her in the wooden box… “Lauren”, I never would have ever though I would be dealing this type of situation with you of all people, is this how I have to pay for all those rational and well constituted cases you’ve resolve, by doing something completely out of the ordinary for me and for any sane person?!” It really wasn’t a question, Lauren knew she had his support, she didn’t bother to answer the question, she continued with her case preparations, “I have a very dear friend at the SEC, I think I can prime him so that he follows the logical steps, I will offer him my assistance, I can assure his support, his always had a huge crush on me and would do anything to marry me, he thinks am spectacular captain.” “That you are, that you are.” Captain said those words resigned to some destiny that he did not have in mind for himself.

Lauren met with Michael, a very attractive and successful fraud investigation expert with the SEC, the two had met at the gym, she took the time to remember how she had met him. He had always been at the gym at 6AM for a half hour work out, they made eyes at each other in spinning class, and each training session they would sit on bikes that tended to be closer and closer, until finally they were next to each other, he said hi, she said hi, but Lauren was immediately put off by the obvious, he had not brushed his teeth, they smacked yellow and had perhaps consumed bread in between the gums, this had immediately driven her away, after all the prior smiling had been gearing them up for a sexual relationship; she avoided him for the rest of the work out, only feeling uncomfortable with just dropping him cold, specially because he seemed so nice; she did not dare to demonstrate her abhorrence by sitting at another exercise bicycle, and so it went that they kept talking, managed to eventually have lunch, the conversations were zany and happy enough, then one day they went to dinner, and he did sneak a kiss, but she felt nothing but blah, practically she just held her mouth open, kept on thinking of those yellow teeth she had first observed, and tried as much as she could to resist any participation from her tongue, this he took as welcomed shyness from an otherwise forward woman. So Michael ended up more in love from that kiss, and she ended more certainly not in love, and thus begun their charming friendship, where he always gets to invoke his incessant love and admiration and she is happy to hear it knowing well that nothing will ever happen between them.

Their meeting was very brief, he was working on some very important case that professionally he could not tell her about; she noted the importance of his time and professional stature, by telling him that there was also an element of secrecy to her case, but that if he did not help her, she would be losing the case of her life time. He immediately picked up the phone, ordered some research analysts to get on it, and dig up patterns and circumstances, then he looked at her, with his now very clean and white glittering teeth, “well I don’t know if I can be of service but I am certainly not going to be part of losing you your most important case ever.” He immediately got up, placed his suit jacket on, looking all the million dollars that he was charged with saving the tax payers, while she cozyingly said “thanks Michael, I owe you a lunch.” Such was the parting.

Habakkuk was secretly entered into the precinct, doors were opened, led into a semi dark room, he had requested that it be a dark place, and there he was to work at the very center of the room to build his wooden box, hut like in structure. The captain walked in the room and found much to his dismay Habakkuk sitting dead center of the empty room, just sitting; trying not to show his displeasure, “How is it going Habakkuk?” “good, it is going good.” Habakkuk was really uneasy with the tone and the captains terminology, so he reused some of it, it is going good, perhaps hoping that there would be no further disturbances thanks to the none clashing redundancy but he was wrong. The quick reply and the sudden stop were not things that Ogle wanted, so he became ardent from the static nature of the reply, Ogle wanted to feel something solid, he wanted feedback, he got “good, it is going good.” And there was Habakkuk, sitting in the middle of the room not doing a damn thing, three days had parted with existence and everything was going good, captain did not like how this felt, and more he blamed Habakkuk for bringing this unnerving situation into his precinct. But after that reply Captain just looked at Habakkuk, made it a point to look around the empty room, as if saying “nothing is happening here and I aint not fool I know nothing is happening here,” and then he walked out, making very sure as he did, that the last thing he would look at was not Habakkuk.

Lauren walked into the room, day six, sitting at the center Habakkuk, “how is it going Habakkuk?” he smiles seeing her, feeling very comfortable in her presence and responds, “it is going good.” Perhaps because she knows him she hunkers down her lips, tight, and also looks around the room where there is nothing, not a thing, not a pile of wood, not a wooden box, just Habakkuk, the walls and a wooden floor, and Habakkuk sitting in the middle not even bothering to stand. But Habakkuk, senses much of what he felt from the captain, only he now feels compelled to explain, “it takes days to center the cosmic energy in space, specially if you are inside a police building, this place is not given to cosmic energy, so I have to gather energy every day and focus it on this central point so that the box will have sufficient live energy for me to read its disturbance, otherwise I wont capture a thing…” he pauses a bit and then sharply refracting a smile with his eyes glowing towards her: “can’t expect me to do such an important job in just a day or two boss.” Lauren sees her friend’s smile, she immediately reacts with warmth, it’s a heart felt relationship, they both know they are dealing with unknowns, but Habakkuk has his knowledge of the seventh century and before to keep him calm, while all she has is her faith in him and her superstitious intuition in the here and now. She doesn’t say anything else, she smiles with him, the darkness in the room lightens and she walks out, gently closing the door behind her. As she walks down the hallway, pass all those charging suits and ties and serious staring faces, she is smiling, like the girl that once walked towards a clown all smiling, and suddenly fell, only to get up and smiling even more run on to hug that big white and blue pokodotted dressed clown, with that fluffy red nose.

On the tenth day, Habakkuk asked to see the captain, “it is ready sir.” Habakkuk habitually called everyone by proper and improper names, one never knew what to make of it, his saying that it was “ready sir,” did not imply that there was any respect between him and the captain, it was probably safe to assume that there wasn’t any, only Habakkuk had a way of internally laughing when he did not have any respect for a person, hence his outward appreciation, “it is ready sir” meant this is your world and in your world you are sir, and in that world I have readied something which you need from my world, sir.

Ogle immediately called Lauren, he did not want to walk into the room without her, and so he, ensiling, holding deep breaths at bay, waited for her to arrive,. When she did, she looked at Ogle, then immediately turned her eyes to see Habakkuk, he gently motioned his entire head in her direction as if he had to displace the mass of a thousand suns in the process, and warmly nodded, she blinked, and the two men got up and she led them out through the hall way back to the room. The door opened, they knowingly through some fascinating supposition caught from some unknown, stayed right outside the door, the captain and Lauren looking in, while Habakkuk, was right behind them, occasionally looking at them or over them, and occasionally walking in small circles, holding his bearded chin. The captain and Lauren looked at each other, then back at the room, in the middle they could see a wooden box, more like a hut, made of wood, not perfectly sealed, nailed properly and looking like if it had been there since the French revolution, the dust had settled, and this box was just big enough for a single person to be able to walk around in it without touching the center but at some difficulty, that is, more than likely the person’s body would always be in contact with the center. The captain did not ask any questions, he closed the door, without asking Lauren if she had finished her scenery run through, one could suspect that now that he had seen the wooden hut like structure, that he certainly knew that he was out of his mind, and that his top detective was equally out of her mind, and that they were on a doomed course, where they were both going to lose their minds and jobs, and the only one that was going to come out of this without a scratch was Habakkuk.

ANTOINETTE FINDS HER WOODEN BOX

It’s a very busy day in Antoinette’s internet company, we are in her office, she just got back from a trip to the bathroom, another telling sign, Antoinette has long black hair, jet black, she is beautiful, though her business personae dulls her essence, but you can’t miss her, precisely the opposite of Lauren, Lauren has blond hair, short, she is very slim, and her body language is curt, Lauren could have been an Olympic athlete, she looks all American, Antoinette could have made the pages of any men’s magazine, and for sure has generated many infatuations within her life time, but she is fully unaware of her beauty, even of her worth to the company, yes she has accomplished much in her lifetime but she doesn’t seen to care for any of her wonderful diplomas or her business success, she does it more because it is what she knows how to do, there doesn’t seem to be, nor was there ever any passion within her for it, no, she works, and gets the job done, but neither now, nor a bit more than three and a half months ago did she feel passionate about her work. Her history with men is equal, she has fucked quite a sum full of them, but it is only sex, she can’t seem to capture the passion of a relationship, that was Lauren’s real attraction, Lauren always seemed to have a relationship going, that is up until the incident, then relationships ceased for Lauren, she can’t seem to forgive men for their weaknesses, nor can she forget, but what comes naturally to Lauren is unnatural for Antoinette. Antoinette hasn’t ever had a meaningful relationship, her gorgeousness shines but has been dimmed by her austerity measures, she cuts everything short, she does not live to have more than a moment with a man, she doesn’t feel it is possible to release herself, she can’t even phantom why men find her so attractive, as once she was overheard “what is the big deal.” Another time, a while back, she cut her hair really short, this only showed that her beauty was really radiating from within, she looked even more marvelous, and when she regrew her hair she looked even more marvelous then too, where to watch her walk into a room was to watch faces of all sexes turn in awe, yet when she cut her hair she told a friend “I am just tire of my hair getting all the attention.” Somehow that rung true to her way of being, it was as if always she was downplaying her beauty, down playing the fact than in any room she was the most gorgeous the most wanted the one with the greatest allure, she could not comprehend that, she did not register that as an affirmation of her essence, she disdained men and women alike that admire her. We are in her office, when she went to the restroom she did not fix her hair, she did not bother to comb it, she did not bother to refresh her lipstick, now before us, her hair making chaos seems worthy of love, and her lips baring all of their sumptuousness argue that we shall lose our composure, while we wait for Captain Ogle and Detective Lauren to make their helpless appearance. Just hold still and keep your eyes on the lady with the black suit.

The intercom phone rings, Antoinette picks it up as she has done hundreds of times, her coral face not moving more than necessary, silence, then, “there is a captain Ogle and detective Lauren here to see you.” Assuming that this is merely a visit from a very old and uncomfortable exfriend, she ushers them in with civilized nobility. They enter the sumptuously austere office, and she greets them with a comfortable smile. She remembers the captain from back then, he wasn’t a captain then, but it was obvious then that he was going to be captain, and they shake hands like long known business partners. She doesn’t, however want to shake Lauren’s hand, the hesitation is obvious, neither does Lauren want to share the hand shake, both hands meet against insurmountable rejections, even as they crush into each other, forced smiles claiming anguish, something is making us both do this and we both know we don’t want to do it, and that something that is making us do it is what this captain represents, the functional greetings cease.

The captain speaks: “We are here in less than fortuitous conditions, nothing that we want, nothing that we would want to do, but it falls under our jurisdiction and both Lauren and I felt that if it had to be done, best that it be done by us.” Lauren, sensing that the captain was having an ordeal that he might not be able to overcome, stepped in, perhaps to happily to smooth matters, “Karen, I am deeply sorry before hand, but we are here to arrest you on behalf of the SEC for questions that have risen over your stock sales and their timing, which may imply that there has been insider trading and tampering with investment reports.” Yes, we had neglected to mention that Michael’s investigative diligence to help his monosolipsistic sweetheart had turned out an interesting twist, they were really on to something at the SEC level, there had been reports, by investors as well as by stock analyst that Antoinette’s company had in fact manipulated the stats on reports that would eventually determine investor confidence in the company. Antoinette, by virtue of the fact that she was the responsible party for the report was a heavily incriminated suspect. Upon finding this little nasty fact, Michael had phoned Lauren to thank her, “Why your case of a life time might just as well be my case of the year too. Thanks for the tip, I owe you lunch.”

At this point Antoinette doesn’t really know that she is really going to be arrested, she heard the words, but she doesn’t really conceive that this is either real or valid in any context; in the business world lies are told all the time, there is no reason for her to suspect that she has done anything out of the ordinary, she is not aware that there are forces that go back to the seventh century that are now governing the eventuating happenings and that such has implications which even common law can’t address, is short, injustice may be done.

Lauren reads her habeas corpus and takes out her hand cuffs, rapidly enough for Antoinette to radically change frame of mind “what the hell are you two talking about?” she looks at Lauren stiffly and “Lauren what does this have to do with?” history enters the moment, but Lauren must not let it enter, “Karen please I am only doing my job here.” All replies must stay cold and brief, Antoinette still can’t understand what she must get a hold of, “insider trading, please this is ridiculous.” Ogle speaks, “look lady we are just doing our work you have to come with us, either on your own free will or if not by force, you’d be kind to make it easy for us.” Antoinette grabs the phone out of pure instinct from the thousands of times that the business partners have helped each other, she quickly dials the president’s direct line, doesn’t wait for him to say hello, “Rick, come to my office quick!” When Rick gets there, lovely Antoinette is already in handcuffs, held by both Lauren and Ogle. Rick’s eyes open wide, “what is going on here!” Captain Ogle retorts “look what we are doing has, at least for now, nothing to do with you, you want to help the lady get her a nice lawyer.” Saying that, Antoinette shouts out something about the accusations being hailed against her, but she is rushed out by her captors. It is worthy to note here that as these two cops made their way through the hallways of Antoinette’s company, there were a few smiling faces, Antoinette had made it to the sumptuous top office, but there were a few disgruntle employees from her wake.

Habakkuk was waiting, he had not been notified that Antoinette would be there, but he was there. Ogle looked at him with long and estranged eyes, Habakkuk did not wait for appreciation or commentary, he looked at them and said “today is the day.” Captain Ogle and Lauren, after years of working with each other knew what to do, they walked Antoinette straight into the room, element of surprise, there was not going to be any immediate SEC questioning of this prisoner, and Lauren and Ogle knew that there was much that could happen if they did not hasten to carry out their intended plan, so they walked her into the room, and when Antoinette saw the wooden hut like box, and she turned her head every which way, fully aware that something uncivilized was happening and that she might as well be a character in some Kafkaes novel. But neither Ogle nor Lauren were here to give account, they rushed her into the wooden hut, and Lauren said “you will have to remain here for a few hours until we are ready for questioning.” The captain tried to ease the situation some by saying, “sorry it is not a better cell but the prison has been full ever since they have us putting everyone that smokes pot in jail we can’t get any empty space.

Karen is still remarkably unsullied by the chain of events, she still believes that reasonableness will come to its senses and halt all these nonsense. But in the dark of her wooden box instead of reflecting upon the crimes of which she is being accused, she begins to study the wooden walls, she touches them where some splinters find refuge in her, and she smarts the ouch, but moves her hands up and down throughout the structure to conceive some form of escape or as if to feel it and understand it. The wooden box does not release any information to its victim, Antoinette breaths upon it, occasionally her body touches it and you can hear the wood make a sound like the murmurs when wood touches a chimney, yet Antoinette’s body and essence has not accepted any form of defeat, her essence ekes passion, edges passion into the dusty wooden structure, and at no point does this passion not cease to touch the center of the wooden box, from every body contortion the center of the wooden room oscillates and rings through the cosmic that the superstrings must release this woman, this woman must be released.

Karen hears the door open and close.

She hears footsteps. Then silence.

Habakkuk, looks at the wooden box, he is not searching for anything, he knows precisely whom and why she is inside the box. Antoinette from the other side nears her ear to the wood so as to make out any sound, she knows someone is there, she doesn’t speak, some how she knows it would be inappropriate to speak, the room unfolds before Habakkuk, it appears as if the real walls that consume this space have disappeared, now there is only Habakkuk in an huge empty space, with this wooden box before him. Antoinette clings her ears to the wood, more splinters remind her that there are limits to their mutual unity, breathing now heavily she presses her lips against the wood, hoping that the wood will talk to her but her sumptuousness has no effect here, the cosmic might not be urged by sensual magnificence and specially not by a sensual magnificence that has relegated itself to the business world. Habakkuk, walks around the box, her lips feel him walking through the tremors that rise through the wood, tremors, he walks, slowly, always staring at the wooden box, walks around it once in thirtyfive minutes, walks around it, once in fortyone minutes, she continuously inching her body and lips and cheeks into the wooden essence, he walks around one more time this time in one hour and thirty two and a half minutes, then he stops, not in front of the side where lies the door to the wooden box but rather coming at it from behind it he arrives next to it. He begins to touch it, just as from the other side she is touching it, as he presses his right hand on it, so is she pressing her right hand upon it, and then his cheek touches the wood as he attempts to listen to the vibration of the superstrings, the centered cosmic energy radiates towards him so well that he places his lips upon the wood and just as he is doing so, unknown to both so is Antoinette her lips plugging away the porous surface of the wood, Habakkuk senses something and pauses, he inches backwards, then proceeds to walk around the wooden box, feeling with his hands as he goes, and then he pauses by the door, a crevice that would allow him to see her, if only there were light in the room, but the room is still dark, she breathes through the crevice, he breathes through the crevice, he places his palm to catch her breath, and then places his palm, with her breath held within, against his heart.

Habakkuk, walks out of the room after thirteen and a quarter hours precisely, both Captain Ogle and Lauren are anxiously waiting for him. He looks at them, a nondescript look and remarks with obvious exhaustion, “it is she.” And he walks out, captain and detective staring into each other.

THE 7TH CENTURY BC

A river swings and riddles its way through the city; plenty of stagnant pools inundate in swirls of transient smells, whirlpools tell the passage of fish fishing, the sun is brightly shining, and in some places you can see many ways deep into the troubling waters, we could be anywhere in the world, we are however in the land of Chaldea, a place that meant the end of Assyrians, those magnificent cultural and powerful tormentors, that were doomed here, by name and by destiny.

A small canoe like boat, obviously held together by poverty, makes its way, within, we find a collection of water snakes that have been unfortunate enough to find themselves readied for human consumption. Snake eaters were everywhere in these lands, it was not considered a delicacy it was as cattle are to you today, this little boat, with an eight year old boy that was working hard enough to be a man, and his mother were doing their daily load, to then deliver it to the city dwellers; they themselves were not city dwellers, they lived in the caves, near the sandy foot hills that lined the city, one could not be a city dweller on income from snake trapping.

“Are we going to catch that one” The boy said this as he could see a very long green and black patterned snake swim before the boat, they were parallel to each other, the mother provided propulsion using a stick to move forward while the boy kept the boat parallel to the snake by using a paddle, they hardly spoke to one another mother and son, they mostly seemed to signal with their eyes and eye brows, gestures, even slight head movements could insinuate entire paragraphs of meaning, this was part of the snake catchers traits, the silence it was said would ensure a minimum disturbance of the prey before its death. Our child’s mother strikes the blow, she waits, and waits, tracking snake, it has to surface for air, it lifts its head, having no other real predators, it thinks the boat inconsequential, then the blow to the head collapses upon it, and boy hastily dives into the river waters to wrap some rope around its body, and between mother and son they pull the thing on board, and spend the next three hours cutting it up so it fits and to ready it for market.

It is late afternoon now, the boat comes to the edge of a landing spot, the boy ties the boat to a stump, and the mother, motions her head so that he will stay by the boat guarding their snakes from pruning thieves. The boy sits, looks at the broken up snakes, the blood mixing with the warm river water that has climbed onboard, the boy lets his toes touch and wiggle into snake skin, he likes the mushy feeling, he looks at the sun, attempts to stare directly at it in a sort of blind defiance, then he turns to see his mother, her long and dark skinny body, covered by a single robe that is also green and black like the snakes body, showing only her ankles, the only remaining tribute of her former beauty; she is arguing away some merit of payment, her hands showing tense discussion, then she walks away from the trader, her head saying that it hasn’t been a good payment settlement, but her flustered moment ends as soon as she catches the eyes of her son, she yells, they may talk in silence on the boat, but when on land they speak in shouts, “Habakkuk, get those things of our boat, can’t get any good money for it today, get it off boy before the price keeps going down with the sun.”

Yes, this is our boy Habakkuk, here in the seventh century to provide prophetical witness to the downfall of the Assyrian empire. Today, this boy and his mother would make little money from their snake catch, unfortunately the legal prosbul that would be passed in the first century BC was not yet in place, so boy and his mother would not be able to borrow some money, because debts could be forgiven every seven years, and so the snake catchers could barely keep the nine brothers and sisters some how fed for now.

EVIDENCE OUT OF REACH BC

The captain pounds his fist on the desk three times fast. “Ok Lauren now what, now what other great proposition do you want to make!” The captain was referring to the troubling tumbling of events, Antoinette had been taken out of the box and placed in a cell with a bunch of pot heads, while they waited for Michael to come interrogate her for those drummed up charges that had somehow turned out to have some validity but that the captain and his best detective did not have any knowledge of, and now, while they waited and while they were waiting for, or best let me let the captain tell it… “we don’t have much time, you haven’t made any sense out of “it is she!” Lauren, it is she! And now you come to tell me that Habakkuk has disappeared! Disappeared! After conveniently pointing out a triple abduction and homicide suspect, that has yet to do so much as pick up a knife to butter her bread!” Now, Lauren wasn’t particularly happy at the events herself, she wasn’t smiling cutely or trying to rearrange her blouse, she was a bit red on the cheeks and it wasn’t from blush, she didn’t wear any makeup anyway, but she had natural blush on, and it could be from shame or anger, she could have expected any number of things, but not that Habakkuk, her key visionary witness, and in fact the only prophetic witness she knew, had disappeared, not a word, and to be frank, Lauren was no intellectual, she was streets smart, she wasn’t about to do what might be the right thing; to obviously look for him or clues in the seventh century BC.

Habakkuk, had disappeared, neither Lauren nor Ogle had wanted to question him after his arduous thirteen and a quarter hours rendezvous with Antoinette; they felt it was inappropriate to interrogate him for evidence, really they knew then that he wasn’t going to answer any questions. We have really not such a long pause here, the captain and Antoinette have not pause, “Captain don’t you think it suspicious and now more so that Habakkuk has disappeared from sight. Instead of us sitting here shouting at each other perhaps we should be searching the meaning of that remarkable coincidence, our key witness to a crime has disappeared, and has disappeared right after identifying the criminal and right before he was to testify his findings from the wooden box before you and me.” Antoinette was now no longer treating this as something unusual she had now managed to arrange her mental constitution in such way that one more fantastic event, say that an earthquake killed three monkeys in Africa would somehow be connected to this case. The truth was a little more realistic, this case was probably only connected to the seventh century BC, nothing in between, just the seventh century and the twenty first century AD were involved. The captain speaks, “are you sure he has disappeared?” “Habakkuk is a man of ritual captain, he does the very same thing every day, he doesn’t deviate from he has told me as much, he believes that because he is an ephemeral creature he is able to deliver prophecy, the only way he can arrest his ephemerality so as to remain in the here and now, is by way of ritual, constant, incessant repetition of the same act over and over is mandated or he would simply disappear from these century…” Readily Lauren places her hand to her mouth she realizes what she has said, “Oh my god!…” “we took him out of his routine. We took him out of it when he had to concentrate on the wooden box, he hasn’t been following his routine for a minimum of 11 days!” Ogle is really had enough of this madness he says firmly, “Lauren we are dropping this case.” That is all he said, and he put that period there himself and large. Lauren follows him down the corridor, trying to be somebody behind those large and tall shoulders, “captain, don’t you see, don’t you see, Habakkuk might have gone to another century, he is not avoiding us, we took him out of his routine, he could be anywhere now, he might be trying to get back to us.” Captain Ogle, ogles Lauren with a certain degree of condescension and utters, “and what should we do Lauren, hop on an inter departmental memo and try and get him back from across time!” Lauren pauses, the distance between her and the captain has now gotten a little larger than that between their space, she goes back to her office, sits down, after getting a cup of coffee, she is thinking, we don’t know what she is thinking yet, but she is very serious about this case now.

Her phone rings, it is Ogle’s office, not Ogle, his office, his secretary, “Yes.” “Lauren, the captain has requested that you release Antoinette Blite, immediately.” “But I can’t do that the charges are from the SEC I can just erase them like that.” “Captain said you would say something like that, and he asked me to tell you to revoke those charges and release her immediately, he is not concerned with the paper involved.” Lauren doesn’t respond, instead she slowly hangs up the phone, a beautiful arc and hand movement that would have orchestrated well in a modern dance performance; she doesn’t take her hand off the phone, she picks the handset up again and rings Michael’s office, he is not there, again she hangs the phone up with entrancing performance art mechanics, only this time she releases the handset, and picks up her cell phone instead, calls Michael to his cell phone, he doesn’t answer, she leaves him an urgent message.

Lauren has made it home finally, after stopping over at Habakkuk’s place to talk to his landlord, who is now also worried about his sudden disappearance, she hasn’t however seen anything unusual nor did he act in any way other than as himself the last time she saw him. Lauren is trying to puzzle it all together in her head, she feels it in her gut, Antoinette is in something really bad, what is going to happen and when she doesn’t precisely know, the phone rings, it is Michael, Lauren is not into saying hello even before this case she was like that, “Michael listen to me I need you to drop the charges against Antoinette, and give me a release notice.” “Lauren, your not serious are you, I can’t just order an investigation, place all the appropriate bureaucratic requests, and then, just issue a please cancel all that. Why am I telling you this, you know all this. What is going on are you dropping your secret case as well?” “Yes.” “Lauren, was there no paper work on your case?” “None.” Michael is a go getter, he is going to Washington some day, he knows when things have gotten out of the way, and should be avoided, he doesn’t need any more evidence to redefine his relationship to Lauren, “Listen I love you Lauren, and you know I would do anything for you but I can’t be involved in any way in some case that doesn’t have legal underpinnings, and I am sorry for whatever is happening over there, but there is ample evidence against Antoinette, and against the CEO of her company that could lead to the shutdown of their entire operation, and this is likely to reverberate throughout that industry, that is if these crazies are anything to go by. You can see why I can’t stop it now, there are other egos involved, and this looks like easy prey, we can’t say no to such careless criminality.” Lauren, “Yes.” And she hangs up the phone.

Lauren doesn’t bother with dinner that night, she just goes to sleep, and somewhat surprisingly sleeps the sleep of the just.

NINE LEAVES INAMORATA

Fortunately today was Sunday, January 19, 2003, and Lauren could relax. It was true that most cops had to work on weekends, this is why they pride themselves in not having a routine or a normal nine to five even though they have meager wages, cops are fond of saying that their jobs aren’t the nine to five labor of their fellow citizens; in order to say that with the amount of pride that they fluff on top of it, cops have to accept a longer work week and unspecified nocturnal and diurnal randomly disruptive schedules. This allows for a certain sense of constant physical and mental discomfort which is fundamental to the essence of being a cop. But fortunately today was Sunday, January 19, 2003 and most detectives were of the habit that Sunday could be a normal day off.

Lauren, amidst all of the eventful happenings, had not forgotten her normal routine of preparing the coffee maker so that it would automatically produce the caffeine feast that she needed to jump start her day. She walked over to it, followed by her cat, Loki, oh yes, she had a cat, a male cat, but right now she was trying to get to her coffee while Loki was trying to catch her attention saying something to the effect, “city living is fine, I like being an indoor cat, but I don’t get to see many rats, and I need some nutrition now or I am going to die a cold death.” Well the truth was that Loki wasn’t probably saying it like that but I have to try to emphasize that look in his eyes, here he is about five feet down from Lauren, lovely thick white and black cat, with sort of olive green eyes, the eyes are looking up at Lauren as Loki’s legs keep pace and try to even trip her, and the eyes are saying “food.” “food.” really that is all Loki thinks that Lauren is able to understand, and Lauren herself knows only three states for Loki, food, play and sleep, food, play and sleep; this is all Lauren really knows about Loki, though she does sense that he is a very affectionate cat, but she also senses that that could go away as fast as the food or if some drug dealer killed her in one of those wild police shooting events; then Loki would find comfort with another cop, maybe even the captain. Still Lauren loved Loki’s independence from her, she respected it and admired it, what she did not know was that it wasn’t independence, it was indifference. Loki was indifferent to everything that went on in Lauren’s life, including the fact that Habakkuk had disappeared.

After stumbling a couple of times and unfortunately crossing over and between her, the feet body of Loki, Lauren halts, places her heads on her head then reaches down for Loki, “oh no baby, I forgot to feed you last night, oh no I am sorry my baby, you must hate me now, oh please don’t hate me now, I love you, you are my baby boy.” I would like to tell you that the expression in Loki’s eyes changed from seeking food to some sweet lovable expression of tenderness and forgiveness, but his eyes kept precisely the same stare which could be now only translated into “you’ve kept me from being a wild natural animal, I need a rat, you ain’t got any rats here, I am tired of coachroaches and flies, now I am reduced to having to listen to your pathetic baby talk which only maternalises you, just so that I can convince you to feed me.” More or less that was what Loki was saying even as cats only have two very definite and never altering stares. In one they are saying nothing, just looking, leaving everything blank in their stare, this so that their masters or enemies can fill in the blanks with whatever meets their expectations; and look number two is a severe widening of the eyes, which does not contract, but merely looks as if their eyes were actually engulfing their entire little heads, and when they get this very look, their jaws squander and their body stiffens and through what appear to be gravity like contortions traveling at the speed of light, they tell you with these physical evolution of a stare that you are bothering them, that they are not going to listen to you and that they don’t care if you are one of the good guys just because you think you are one of the good guys.

Lauren was of course a detective, she was used to seeing dead bodies, so a conjured image of a cold dead Loki cat on her floor, did not prevent her from putting him back down and proceeding to get her coffee. She sipped the hot liquid a couple of times, then uttering a breath that had been consumed by her lungs the day before, she felt some respite, enough at least to save her cat from starvation but not the tuna from her cat.

While Loki ate tuna almost as if guarding it from Lauren, Lauren sat at her dining room table, seeing through a window while a beautiful tree plant flourishing with nine leaves sprouting, rising vehemently with the aid of nine firm branches, kissing the ceiling, and obviously saying to Lauren, “please raise your ceiling a couple more feet so that we can continue to grow,” but more this plant was telling Lauren to please water her, because Lauren had not watered her in two weeks, and Lauren suffered heavily from a guilt complex that she had to constantly address, however here the huge plant inside of a large Indian faced pot, was at a severe disadvantage because Lauren, had an ongoing feud with her plant, and not watering her was a guilt that she could endure. And enduring not watering her plant was how Lauren told her self, “Not guilty your honor! I am not guilty!”

See the plant had always been one of Lauren’s favorites, she loved the way in which the buds forming from each branch produced the seemingly circular nine leaf arrangement, Lauren, remember, was mildly superstitious, and the number nine possessed spiritual suppurations, and the mathematical association and the looped geometrical relish gave Lauren enough of a sensual nudge fund of tenderness towards the plant; this even as she had not bothered to name it nor bothered to look up the plants real Latin name, though then it is doubtful that Lauren was even aware that plants were all Latin by virtue of baptism.

But see Lauren and the plant sort of became hostages of each other through a casual event. The casual event was brought about by a more tragic event, Lauren’s mother’s death. Lauren’s mother died of apoplexy, a stroke paralyzed half of her body, and Lauren due to the importance of her detective work did not have the time to care for her ailing mother. Lauren felt guilty about this for as her professional obligations kept her away from her mother, this did not keep her mother from suffering and from wishing to see her daughter. Then one day, Lauren’s mother died. She was found dead, alone in her apartment. Lauren had received a call from her, earlier that day, but she was in a meeting, she stayed in the meeting, her mother died alone some time during that meeting.

Lauren had time to go to the funeral, and there she wept a good while, part of her watching herself weep and the other part of her weeping. Why Lauren could be outside of herself in these types of situations was also the reason why she could be a detective and why Lauren could never have a lasting relationship with a man. I mean here we are, you and I at Lauren’s mother’s supposed funeral, and Lauren is watching herself weep! Makes me want to ask! “Have you wept long enough Lauren! Ah, have you exceeded the standard time for weeping Lauren!” But of course we cant ask Lauren this question because this is all after the fact and now we are just like detectives trying to figure this Lauren character out; through the circumstantial evidence of her life includes people that can’t add any detail like Habakkuk.

Anyway, sorry if I get mad but it is difficult for me to remain an objective observer when any correct person would have chopped her neck off. Anyway, Lauren’s mother, whose name was Maria, was burned, I mean Maria was cremated, and her ashes were picked up by Lauren’s estranged sister Audrey; which unlike Lauren had been extremely close to her mother physically and spiritually. Lauren and her sister did not talk much, Lauren was a detective always looking for the wickedly bad in people and her sister Audrey was a pastor, nurturer and seeker of only the good in people. The two could not be further apart, one shot guns the other wore crosses, there is a distance there; one was a loner, the other loved to be around people; Audrey loved nature, Lauren loved the city, Audrey had a son, Lauren never wanted children. I could go on but lets just summarize, the only thing that these two sisters had in common was their mother, they both by birth certificate had the same mother. And sorry to add more clutter here, but while they had the same mother, and even by birth certificate the same father, the reality was that Lauren’s father was not the same man. A simple DNA test would have proven that, but Lauren was born in the fifties and in those days cuckolding could not be technically proven, DNA would have to wait for fingerprints to be discredited. Now it has been said, and I think it true, that women that are unfaithful to their husband, through some form of medium womb conductance, urge characteristic similarities between the child and their husband so as to ensure his support, but in an unusual act of defiance, Maria had apparently made her womb conductance to nurture the lover that she could not have!

This strange rendition of love between Maria and her lover did not unfortunately translate to a unifying principle between mother and daughter, rather than uniting them the two became uncomfortable with each other’s emotional attraction to one another, so much so that they could not cope with it and maintained their mutual distance! The mutual distance was attracted by the daughter repelling the advances of her, lover, loving mother.

One day, a while back, Maria had called Lauren to tell her that her circle of metaphysical friends had had a wonderful reunion, and that in this event they had summarized each others cosmic numbers. Lauren still lacking metaphysical knowledge dared to ask what the meaning of all this was, and Maria responded that the cosmic number is what determines if you reincarnate or if you get to move on to higher states of consciousness, or if you are closer to being a Buddha of your own or if you must still admire other Buddha’s more. At the time of this particular conversation Lauren was working her way through an intense pedophile case, and the idea of the Buddha life, or the mystical was as far from her as possible, and so when her mother Maria said, “9, nine means that I don’t have to come back to this life, nine, 9 means that I am not coming back here…” And Maria’s voice was so happy, and Lauren was partially reading the list of witnesses of the pedophile case, while saying, “good ma, that sounds really good ma,…” and in such forgettable way that very relevant conversation ended.

Relevant because the plant had nine leaves, relevant because it was Lauren’s plant, and relevant because Maria was telling Lauren that she wasn’t going to come back. The latter which could be interpreted by any rudimentary psychologist as unrequited lover abandoning project, “My beloved lover I am leaving you for good.” But then one day it became relevant to Lauren, one day she was talking to Audrey on the phone, and at the same time that she was talking to Audrey she was looking at the majestic plant, and she felt something, and uttered, “ Audrey I am thinking of getting rid of the nine leaf plant, its just so big, I don’t know, I am going to get it out of my apartment.” At the other end of the phone line there was a silence, and long enough to justify Lauren’s calling “Audrey are you there?” Audrey responded in a very low tone, “Lauren, you can’t get rid of that plant.” “Why?” “Because mom’s ashes are in there, I placed them there when I went to your apartment.”

And so it is that the plant is still in Lauren’s apartment, and as a way to defy her duties and sentiments, often it is that she doesn’t water it.

But it is Sunday, January 19, 2003, and all this is the past, and we are now more concerned with the future and more concerned with it than even the present, and to put a stop to our wondering through her apartment, Lauren has decided to go for a walk she is pensive, and so we must follow her.

A RELIGIOUS PRIEST

In the 7th century BC there were no Christians, there weren’t any Muslims and for sure there wasn’t a Church of England though there were more things in place to make the Church of England than to give rise to the prophet Muhammad and to the prophet that got himself a last name attributed to his capital punishment, Jesus Christ. Only the Buddha was more close to being born, somewhere in the 6th century.

Immediately I like to apologize to you for observing obvious matters such as there being no Jesus in the Seventh Century Before Christ; obviously! But what you must appreciate is that at this point in this plot I am just as lost as you are, I might have a couple of inklings more than you but that isn’t much to go on. You probably think I thought this through and that this is just another fiction of my mind’s eye. But as I tell you this with all honesty, I am just an avatar for a supraconsciousness that permeates all of human existence and somehow wriggles its way through all of us; except that some of us are more susceptible to it because we are less given to possessing a strong character. Some how these medium wishes to tell you of these very real events, and somehow you wish to hear them, even as you might not know that you want to hear them, at some level you have requested them, and I am just the messenger boy. In short the least important person here, since I am neither the originator nor the recipient, just a delivery boy, the least important person here is me. So when I say the obvious, Buddha was about to be born in the 6th century, I am just looking for clues just like you are, only I am looking for clues to decode the message so that you can read it.

Now with that important aside out of the way lets carry on.

In the 7th Century BC, there was only Habakkuk.

We are near a temple, I don’t know much about the 7th, so forgive me if I don’t know what faith or rituals this temple is here to assemble, but it is a gorgeous testament to the architects of the times. Maybe they slaughter bulls and goats here, maybe they take virgins and disrobe them by gently removing 500 meters of cloth from their sanctified bodies before a full moon, and tenderly release their spirits from their skins with ruby studded daggers, they sing.

Oh there! I spot him, before the temple is our boy and friend Habakkuk. He is staring at the goings in the temple. He approaches an Elder that is robed in sun yellow habit, Habakkuk tugs as his robe and the Elder holds it back as if this peasant were only going to cause him grief and malice; but Habakkuk does not know how to read the physical objection, and tugs at the man to ask of him what is happening in the temple. The elder replies with less hostility but still caught in some caution zone in-between sentences and worlds, “Thundering Unicorns, stars moving through the mortal night berating the diamond snakes and swallowing their evil...” The elder’s eyes were glowing like diamonds, and he seemed tranced though drugless, perhaps drugs would be more a requirement of later Western civilizations that would become so real that they could not enter dream states. “…the dawn is for us, for they, they are the damned… deaden ears hear, blind eyes see, virgins give thy long hair to the raging fires so as to seduce them…” Habakkuk, could not tell this but it was seemingly possible to believe that the trance had also induced sexual arousal within the robed elder, but for Habakkuk, he was a little scared, a little dizzy from the words, and so he took to observing and what he saw was merely a temple or synagogue or mosque that had five marvel columns, supporting an ornate circular but flat ceiling and seven layers of foundation which were observable because of their stair case whirls surrounding the temple. A chorus of young girls, five of them and alternatively aligned with the columns, though occasionally they would rotate counter clockwise and vice versa, slowly, while all holding the same seemingly bronze bowl, though Habakkuk did not know if bronze had already been discovered, and the girls, all in white tunics, rose and sat several times in slow motion, and then from the vessel each drank a bit of the liquid with the help of the others, as if they were sharing bull’s semen or goat’s milk; regardless some heavy white substance, and there the chorus would agitate itself as the one of them would sip the liquid. Perhaps, a semi intelligent anthropologist, would determine that this was some kind of a puberty ritual. It certainly lacked the spiritual overtones, that would be required of Thundering Unicorns, still the Elder did not seem as much interested in the girls, nor in his own state of being, but he was instead, seemingly glorifying something, his hands were now swirling up in the air, and he was looking at the heavens with his eyes close, and his robe was dancing with the wind, and Habakkuk was now sitting on the ground, running his hands through the sand, looking all the much like a bored little boy.

Habakkuk finally gets up and suddenly feels nausea, uttering a rancorous sound, he vomits digested snakes, and falls flat on his nose, hitting an edge rock that lacerates his forehead while acquiring a nice bloody nose in the process. This little scene serves to interrupt the ritual, the god’s must wait due to the fallibility of the human attention span. The girls place the bowl vessel down, run over to assist the fainted boy, while the old man takes account of the event and walks away in any direction. The girls meanwhile argue which one will take this boy home to allow him recovery, the vomited snakes and their hideous smell is not even noticed.

The humble home of one of the girls, whose name we never learn, they don’t call themselves much by names around these parts, they seem to talk to each other and the recipient seems to intuitively be aware of whom and why they are talking to him, so that the use of a name would seem something redundant or at least out of the way. Habakkuk is laying on a bed of rock, he doesn’t notice the back pain, he doesn’t take notice of discomfort, the rock doesn’t bother him, nor do I think they have mattresses in this era, so I guess no one would notice it, though there are two counted pillows by the rock bed. The girls mother is rubbing brush over the head wound, and the nose bleeding has stopped. Our little boy starts coming to, his eyes are watering as if crying but he is not crying, he sees the girl’s face first, she seems to him beautiful, he hears her calling him to come through, she moves her hands over his face, feeling it’s warmth, feeling the sweat, his breath still very much alive with dead snakes, she touches his lips with her fingers, her mother looks at her daughter, sensing in her a new maturity, the boy appears to still be coming through, when he vomits yet again, the mother utters, “how much snake skin did you eat boy?” the girl looks up at her mother sort of asking her to remain silent, Habakkuk rolls his head back and utters, “they disrobed the statue of the virgin, they disrobed the statue of the virgin,” daughter and mother stare at each other trying to make sense of the crazy uttering, “they took the statue of our lady from the darkness, they took the statue of our lady from the darkness,” mother and daughter are now truly lost, Habakkuk moving his head back and forth, slowly catching air while his murmurs utter, “…the monks have gone into hiding, the monks have gone into hiding…” the girl places her hands on Habakkuk’s stomach, his visions appear to cease, but as if the silence and confusion needed to be sealed shut forever, “…it is forbidden, it is forbidden, the three monks are hiding… two of the monks have women hair… it is forbidden…”

Just as quickly as that has been said, Habakkuk coughs violently, fevers ache all over his body, his cells are making war against him, he is lying on a bed of nails, he has red spots, big, little, star like spots with tiny little black centers that purple throughout his porous peripheries just like galaxies, only they are sores on the matter that is our Habakkuk. The Wise-One awakens him, “Habakkuk! Habakkuk!” his wide eyes open to the realm, “Habakkuk you can’t go on, you have to cease now or you are going to forget yourself.” Habakkuk stares at the room, walls of curtains with complex Indian patterns, candles and incense fervently burning, he is wearing a yellow robe, and his metaphysical comrade is wearing an orange robe, “ here drink this elephant dung tea, it will help your earth matter…” The tea is in a long spoon with a deep base, the monk smoothly twisting his hand in accordance with Habakkuk swallowing,” “Where am I.” “Your in Sopara Habakkuk, your in Sopara land of Indian, your in the 21st century AD, today is January, 20th of 2003.”

Having answered Habakkuk’s question the monk could have stopped but he sense that Habakkuk needed more to consecrate his physical adjustment after such a long journey. “You wanted to confirm the geometrical and emotional allocations of a local event within the ages that have transpired to confirm it’s present and future subjugation; I have been your guardian in this voyage of the spirit and you have been a brave soul.” He pauses and continues sensing that Habakkuk has recovered enough for questioning… “Did you confirm?” Habakkuk looks into the Monk’s eyes, straight at them, alert now, much alert now, “Yes my spiritual friend, I have confirmed the destiny of the moment.” The monk motions his head in approval, and then gets up and reminds his spirit friend, “You have a plane to catch to America, it leaves tomorrow, I was thinking that maybe you weren’t going to make it, but thankfully I was wrong.” Habakkuk lifting his body slowly, “the time will come when I can’t accomplish travels like these anymore, but such a time is not yet.” Spiritual friend smiles… “Well your going to have to explain away all those spiritual punishment spots around your body, but I don’t know how you will accomplish such a deed.” Monk had not seen the Western world, nor did he wish to, nor would he comprehend it as Habakkuk did, he was in fact in awe of Habakkuk for willing to endure such material excursions.

In his heart Habakkuk sensed that he had not a choice, he had been forsaken to the material world, there were others that had too been forsaken to that world, the world of the here and now, the world that today rings Monday, January 20, 2003; and Habakkuk had known that some had burnt themselves in it, that some had been to fragile to endure it, that some were wrongly born into it, and so he punished himself for being able to tolerate it; he was one of the one’s that had made it alive here, he hastened to leave Monk’s presence, he hugged his divine spirit gently, he did not wish to contaminate himself with any more spiritual aspirations; he knew that he was now needed here, Lauren was in his mind, he did not wish to be more spirit at this time, the gentle and fleeting hug was warmly understood by Monk. The channeled mysteries were finally emptied by a roaring of jet engines flying an Airbus 300 through the inhibiting atmosphere.

OGLING REALITY

We have probably not been fair to Captain Ogle, ignoring him as we have even as from the cast of characters he appears to be the only one that is representing reality and is worried about the here world in any genuine sense. I mean Michael just cares about his career path, Lauren is fascinated by the possibility of a triple abduction murder case, Habakkuk is out astroplaining; while we are all trying to figure out what is going on here, and Ogle is the only one of us all that really cares for normal every day life and is trying to save it, and yet we hardly know anything about this Ogle the man.

Captain Ogle is tall, a six feet two inches tall black man, that is rather normal looking with large eye sockets but disturbingly smaller eyeballs. He has a strong sense of self; that is he seems to be aware of himself without having to ask the question “who am I?”, he is not insecure enough to be a reflective person; the Captain doesn’t go home to read “ten easy ways to become yourself” or “how to tantra your mantra”; Captain doesn’t read, he watches a lot of television, that is something him and Lauren have in common, the extent of his reading is memo’s, emails and reports; he loves, loves hockey, so he reads and watches just about anything hockey! hockey! He even ponders into the dangerously unpatriotic thought that he should have been born Canadian. I would add that he drinks a lot of beer, as most grounded spirits must, but I don’t think it will add anything or detract from his character relevance.

He was married, two times fast, has three children, a daughter that he adores from his second marriage and two boys from the first, which he has sort of abandoned, though he pays attention to them once every six months. Captain blames his work for this lack of parental attention towards his sons, and he also blames his work for the failure of his marriages, according to him, “cops are a special breed, they just shouldn’t get married.” That if they don’t get married then the special breed won’t reproduce and go extinct, this doesn’t hit him; or maybe, as he has well proven, they may reproduce anyway. When he weakens from his stance of lonely foot-soldier for the law he ends up dating the newest rookie, and this usually ends any possible success in the poor woman’s career. “Don’t date the captain is a wise saying that makes the rounds, but every rookie tends to think that they are making a wise move that will surely guarantee fast promotions; the truth is that they weren’t really cops.

Ogle knows nothing else but how to be a cop, and he has invested so much of his life in being a cop that everything that he relates to is out there, crooks, murderers, wife beaters, drug pushers, child abusers, and then there is the Law! Captain Ogle believes in the law, oh he thinks “the law is all fucked up!” but he dares not pass judgment upon it beyond commentary, he is after all, its enforcer. The truth is that he doesn’t know very much about the law, he has a couple of lawyers on staff that constantly tell him things like, “You can’t place Antoinette in that hut like wooden box, it is even against the Geneva convention, and it could qualify as torture.” The legal council staff were always irritated by Ogle because he always wanted to violate a law in order to enforce another one. “Captain you can’t place a wiretap without court approval, besides any evidence gathered without prior consent is inadmissible in court.” The captain simply replied, “I am not going to use the evidence from the wiretap, I am just using the wiretap to get to more pertinent evidence.” A lot of things went undocumented in Captain’s precinct, but he got the job done, he was admired as a results oriented cop, that led a group of officers that was always sweating to get the bad guys behind bars and often succeeded.

And so it is that our captain doesn’t have much internal soul and heart definition that we could much describe here, he is a rather shallow character as anyone that merely cares for the immediate reality would; and so it is rather amazing that Lauren has managed to get him this far, and that is a credit to her; but equally it is evidence enough, that he has always had a fondness for her, that he can not explain because that would require that he stop going to the shooting range on Friday nights, and that he stop bowling with some of the guys on Thursdays, and that he stop going to church on Sundays. Yeah, he went to church, and more often than not, and he liked it too, and his fellow parishioners liked him, and his pastor thought well of him and often invited him to the charity gatherings and festive activities; and somehow, even as ritualistic as the mass was, somehow when Ogle carried his bible, there too he carried his faith. There he somehow forgot that he was a cop, reading his bible he knew where the law came from, and reading his bible made him feel good, but he also knew that he did not understand it; and so he attentively listen to the sermons, to see if some how all those cries for more loving in the world, for greater decency to thy neighbor, for heeding the lord’s testaments, to see if any of it would some how ripen him into community with his own spirit and that of his peers. The intent was there.

And that is how real the external world was for Captain Ogle, and now, he was wholly unaware, as equally surprisingly so was his pastor, but now he was wholly unaware that Lauren, Antoinette and Habakkuk, were messing things up enough so that soon he would be involved with thundering unicorns, the sacred and forbidden statue, three hiding monks, two of which had women hair, and that was forbidden, and hopefully just hopefully if things could get real enough so that it would be something sensible enough for the captain to grasp, a triple abduction and murder case. Oh yes, Captain Ogle was dangling himself before a World Size Case, we can only hope that for the best of all, the Akashic Records are not wrong.

FIVE DEAD PARROTS & A HOSTILE WITNESS

Because of all the goings on, we were unable to follow Lauren on her Sunday walk, but she has just gotten home, today is Thursday, January 23, 2003 and she is not happy, and she is not happy because she just stepped on a pretty, green parrot, which allowed her to ungracefully pirouette and supinare. Not necessarily with intent to blame, she immediately suspected Loki and searched for him while she ungracefully got up, and there he was, sitting on the couch, not saying a word, not looking like “hello mom and I so happy you are home,” it was more clear from that look that Loki was pleased that he looked so different from Lauren that there was no way that they could be remotely related, evolution could in no way make such a clear division from same origins, and now Loki was also looking as if he were condescendingly saying, “Lauren why are you falling all over yourself like that for.” Only it was doubtful that Loki had ever bothered to learn Lauren’s name. The one thing that was obvious was that Loki did not feel guilty about the dead little green bird, and so he, after acknowledging Lauren’s fall, merely closed his eyes as if really needing a nap after watching such a ridiculous suited woman pirouetting.

Lauren gave Loki the dirties look, made some kind of heavy breathing insinuation, and then proceeded to take her low profile medium heel shoes off, and to the bedroom she went. Walking through the door, she immediately stumbled upon four parrots, one was darkest yellow, one was to the extreme red, another blue with oranges hues, and the most precious was vivid, but vivid violet. Lauren’s eyes widened for the parrots all had one thing in common, they were all dead and suffering from a bad case of ruffled feathers.

Lauren made a lip face that wrinkled and frowned and walked into the living room, Loki opened his eyes, she managed to grab his tail before he sped off uttering a meow, which is probably best left without translation here because we don’t want to piss off the bitch anymore than she already is. Lauren sat on the couch, searching inwardly for some coherent picture of the day’s events; imagine migrating parrots, swoop down for a quick meal, they mistake an open window for a passage to another dimension, they end up in front of Loki cat, he intuitively senses that he has to play with them and so just having fun kills them. When they stop moving he jumps on the couch and goes to sleep. Seems like a fair police assessment of the situation, only Lauren begins to raise her head to review what she obviously already knows, all the windows are closed. Now she has lived in this apartment for over eight years, and she doesn’t have a chimney but she checks again anyway, and reconfirms the lack of a chimney. She then walks around the place looking for more dead parrots, perhaps suspecting some kind of a merciless massacre. But fortunately she doesn’t find any more, the phone rings, rings, it takes a while for her to acknowledge that the phone is ringing, she picks it up, the voice on the other side is none other than Habakkuk’s.

“God damn it, where have you been! Where are you?!” frustration all over, her hands running through her body as if trying to find an itch to scratch or a tumor or something, “how could your leave me like that…” Habakkuk is not a fast talker, he is generally in a good mood and infinitely patient, and so he doesn’t absorb all the tension that is being unleashed his way, “Lauren I had to review the Akashic archives to make sure we were on the prophetic right track, and I am afraid that we are.” Lauren is used to Habakkuk talking senselessness and so she doesn’t bother to try to understand the implications of his comment, instead, she tries to normalize the conversation to reacquaint herself with her friend that is now adding comfort to her life, so sort of giggling, “Its so good to hear your voice; I just got home and found dead parrots all over the place, my cat must a had a hedonistic day.” But Habakkuk’s calm voice ceases to be calm, “Lauren…” sternly toned, “Lauren did you say you found dead parrots?” “Yes.” “What colors and how many?” Lauren has paused her conversation, her fingers are touching her lips while her eyes are quixotically trying to grasp something, “Lauren, what colors? what colors? Lauren, and how many? tell me now!” Yes, this is your psychical advisor on the other end of the toll line, “one is green, one is yellow, another blue with orange, another red…” pause “…and one violet…” silence, she is counting, Habakkuk is somehow aware of it, “…five, five parrots total, and they are all dead.” Pause, even Habakkuk is actively silent, “What does this mean Habakkuk?” He replies without an apparent desire to do so, “Lauren, they were trying to tell you something, they had come to tell you something, maybe they didn’t know that you had a cat, or I fear worse, someone didn’t want them to talk to you.” Without waiting for a reply, Habakkuk continued, “Lauren stay there, stay there, don’t move, I am coming over be there within twenty minutes.”

Lauren stayed in place for twenty minutes, she could have been a patient in a mental institution with no mirrors, she did not know that she was standing there, she could not see or feel herself standing there, and she didn’t move nor hang up the phone, till the door bell ribbetted her ear drums. She recovered immediately and was wide awake and opened the door only to assume another shock full face. “What happened to you! What, what are those bumps all over you!” She kind of forced her friend to walk in, assuming a nursing sort of nurturing tone, she used her hands to feel the reddish purpling sores, bubbling all over her friend’s body and face, “what happened Habakkuk, tell me what happened?”

Habakkuk smiled so as to comfort his nurse, “I am ok, its just a punishment, I had to be punished for using my cosmic awareness for earthly matters, I shouldn’t be helping you solve this case, this is not allowed, this is the first punishment, there will be more.” Lauren was now in full force again herself, “Habakkuk, you can’t do this to yourself, I can solve the case without you, we have Antoinette, there have to be clues, nothing happens without evidence, everything that leads to a crime starts before the crime, you don’t have to get yourself sick for me.” “No, I want to do it, this is important, you must resolve it and you can’t do it without my help for much of the evidence is out of reach.” Having said that Habakkuk saw the dead green parrot, and walked over to it, moved it with his fingers, and searching said “where are the others?” “In the bedroom?” He hastened over, felt the dead avian creatures, “Your cat did not kill these parrots, they have no fractures or lacerations, something else killed them; five of them, Lauren five is not a coincidence, they were messengers, and the violet parrot was special.” Lauren never needed Habakkuk to prove anything he was saying, from where he left off her truth commenced, “There were no windows open, Habakkuk, the door was locked, there are no vents or passages that they could have gotten in through.” At this point Loki came out doing his lazy lion walk and both Lauren and Habakkuk turned to see him, obviously going to get something to eat while thinking, “See bitch, I had nothing to do with all that.”

Habakkuk adds, “They didn’t have to come through anything, they came here from the seventh century BC, they spontaneously emerged into our century, this they accomplished through a pure desire seduction which was coerced by the destined events.” Lauren didn’t ask for further explanation, Habakkuk kept on looking around the apartment, “someone knows that we are investigating Antoinette, someone doesn’t want us on this case, they killed the parrots before they could talk to us.” Lauren responds “What are we going to do now?” “Well cats absorb negative energies, whatever energy killed the parrots had to have been mopped up by Loki, maybe I can ask him to show me his essence; within it must be a signature of the dark energies in him.” Lauren moves to get the Loki cat, but Habakkuk reaches for her arm and halts her, “no, not yet, we have to wait till it is around three in the morning, cats only release their essence at about that hour of darkness, but come 3 in the morning I will ask him to show me his essence.” Lauren, knowing how hostile Loki could be, asked, “Will he just show it to you.” “There is no way to guarantee that he wants to cooperate with us, let us just hope that he likes you Lauren, if he does he will want us to resolve this murder mystery.

HOSTILE WITNESS TESTIFIES

There were many things to talk about between Lauren and Habakkuk, but they sat in the couch watching Loki cat sleep, unaware that they were waiting to talk to him at the opportune hour. They were both tired, their eyes were sore, their flesh inelastic, the passage of time linear, the dead parrots comfortably rotting on the floor, occasionally Lauren worried about Loki cat not liking her. She knew that Habakkuk was semi aware of the tension between her and her cat, it was much the same as the tension between her and her lovers; she could not be intimate, she had lost her sensuality, she could only love through caring and perfection; she cared a lot, about everyone, her friends could never say she wasn’t attentive, on the contrary she was overly attentive, this was her way of consoling her inability to feel loved. She thought often, that Loki cat could see right through her, and because he saw her as she really was, this was why Loki cat could only offer affection grudgingly. Yes, they both lived together but that did not mean that they were not two separate planets orbiting the same house, that is all. Loki cat was well taken care off, she made sure he had the best medical care, the best meats, real meats, cat food was an interesting aside, just in case Loki felt that a human’s idea of cat food would be an exotic excursion, as it was, Loki cat mostly ate meats, and had a connoisseurs preference for chicken, and Lauren always satisfied his gluttony as a way of telling herself, that it was nothing compared to the trauma and hardship brought about by children. Lauren of course loved children, she just couldn’t bring herself to love mothers, to her mothers were an abomination of nature, there was something horrible in the entire enterprise of motherhood, and when Lauren saw a pregnant woman she felt nauseas in the plural.

The captain was sort of like all these things too, only wholly imperfect in execution of the Lauren way of life; fact is the captain didn’t know it, here were two lonely souls, scared shitless of the world, and the only way that they could cope with it was to nurse the world, to save it so that it could remain what they feared.

Habakkuk was wearing a head scarf, but from his forehead you could see mounts of cresting sweat pools, the sores too were visible, apparently growing more obnoxious towards the scalp, one couldn’t tell, but he was just sitting there, and Lauren knew that he wasn’t sleeping, what Lauren did not know is that Habakkuk had sacrificed his right to sleep, from here until his death he would suffer the punishment of insomnia, he had gone to the Akashic archives, he had to have known the consequences, full blown consciousness, never a dot of sleep, he could close his eyes for consolation, but till mortality revoked the punishment he would be awake.

Still he was calm, you could hear the murmur of his heart as equaled to the cosmic background radiation, something of him had been with the universe since the big bang, of course we have all been here with the universe since the big bang, even hockey players, and perhaps more of them then so as to get all of that commotion going, but the difference was that Habakkuk had established a sensual essence gravity that reached back to his primal origins and even overreached to the wake of his forward time line; hence the reason for his prophetic skills. These sea of a self that he had become had in it the prophetic advantage, but it was a treacherous advantage; you can be aware of the future and feel and touch it, but if you react within the present reality based on future knowledge and multi dimensional awareness the proximity to variables may desotonate you!

I used the word “desotonate” so that you can grasp the implications, the word hasn’t been recognized yet, you won’t find it in any worldly lexicon and yet in the near future it will be one of the most used words to describe a person that self destructs because they feel too much. Of course you can already intuit that desotonate means just that, just the sound of the word has this nitroglycerine back and forth cadence that urges a tremor to burst, that is, when everything in your body starts crackling, the emotions quartering you. The reason why desotonate is not in the dictionary yet is in itself interesting, it is because we have not evolved to the point where we can grasp that the self is nothing more than a feeling. Everything else that you perceive of self is just an interesting aside. We all have to potential to desotonate if we feel ourselves through the consequences we call universe. Habakkuk had indeed begun a desotonation process, how could he go on without any sleep, why was he willing to astroplane under such perilous condition, and to risk so much, and still hold himself together? Well even that has an answer, the truth is that Habakkuk by giving himself to the universe had become so much apart of the universe that now the universe was afraid that Habakkuk would desotonate and so by canon act, the universe was holding him together as a cosmically selfish act of self preservation.

Lauren awakens the sleepless man, “it is three am, it is time.” nudging him some more, she feels his body wounds breathing, he opens his monolithic eyes, immediately the room inundates his sprit magnificence, Loki cat raises his head in awareness that a light receptor has just flooded the room, Habakkuk closes in on him, the black and white leathered cat looks on ominously but doesn’t retreat. Habakkuk gently picks him up like planets are held by space, raising him almost as if he were raising a child on the verge of ritual execution, raising him high with his arms; Habakkuk utters “I love you Loki cat, I love you, I am with you, thy long inundated tail touches every trail through time, you are a ravager of indifference, you’re a vessel of eternity, I adore thy mastery of self for within you reside the evils deaden! within you all darkness frails! within you lies the gathering precious prose of the Akashic record; oh sublime correspondent of the infinite awareness, message me your essence… message me your essence…” Slowly dwindling vocal sound we reach complete silence.

There is no point in saying here that Lauren was in shock, we are not concerned with her, Loki cat begun to excrete an aura that from him, equally spiraling in amassing circularity, inundated the room with an orange, reddish hue that had some permissiveness of yellow, and within that huge full aura, you could see some very definite points, almost eights in shape, five points that looked like an eight, the eights were green, yellow, blue orange, red and violet; around them was a wanting zero, the shape of an amorphous oval having some difficulty holding itself together, a zero still in its incoherentness though circling them tightly while oozing the color pink. Again there is no point in describing Lauren’s current condition, the magnificent Loki cat jerked his body ferociously and overthrew himself, digging his overly large nails, from lack of a scratch post, into Habakkuk’s injured flesh, then darting to the closet to hide. The separation allowed the room energy to return to what anyone of us would see when we walk into a normal room.

Lauren nears the still body of Habakkuk, still holding position, she touches him and he collapses, on the floor, he rolls over under his own muscled force, this calms the situation, then in a flash movement he careens past Lauren, opens the window and vomits snake flesh! After some moments, he turns around, his flesh sores all gone, he is a splendor, energetic and confident, jolly and sardonic, “Lauren I don’t think Loki cat likes you very much.” His wry smile delivering the punch, Lauren despondently loosening her arms, “yeah, I know, I’ve always known it.” But then realizing that Habakkuk was glowing, “hey wait a minute, you told me that Loki would not cooperate if he did not like me, and obviously he has, your looking awful good and happy right now!” “Yes Lauren my darling, I am good, Loki cat was kind to me, he imposed those ever healing evil arresting energies upon me, and grateful I am, needed much the boost, and yes he showed me the murderer of the messenger parrots, but he did not do so because he likes you.” This was the thing about Habakkuk, he could be so honest, and he somehow did not care whom he injured in the process, and somehow the fact that he did not seem to care made it all the more tolerable, specially with that wonderful ageless smile, “Lauren, Loki cat is not drawn to you, he doesn’t love you because he knows your incapable of loving him; you have too many fears and he only loves those that can love him, yet he released himself to me to sort of unburden himself, and to be truthful he needed it.”

Habakkuk calmly utters a silence and proceeds “…and yes, I did tell you that he had to like you to help us, but in truth there are exceptions to such things, in this case the exception is that because he doesn’t care about you, that he isn’t within you or a genuine part of your essence he wanted us to know because he doesn’t really care… …he is not within, so he doesn’t care to protect us from whatever destiny we are altering.” So full of himself is Habakkuk that he bubbles on… “isn’t that strange, even souls that don’t like us maybe helpful.” Lauren finds herself a bit fragile, why does she need Loki so much, she feels cheated, raped by simple statements, “why am I so afraid!” tears washing up on hands attempting to quell them. Unfortunately Habakkuk wasn’t in the mood, “Oh forget it Lauren, your dealing with a Western world issue, don’t take it personally, it is not you it is your people, you can’t help it, besides we got what we wanted out of Loki cat, we don’t have time to water our insecurities right now.” Having said that Habakkuk tells her, “I have to check on something’s, will clue you in tomorrow, why don’t you check on the…” here Habakkuk make an accentuating tone change, “…on the number one hostage.” The door closed. alone, Lauren reflected “the number one hostage, the number one hostage”…, “Oh my god, Antoinette, Antoinette! shit, I am part of the dirty plot!” Looking all the mean that she could she went and showered, not an ounce of sleep, not an ounce of sleep, and drove herself to work with only this in her mind, “number one hostage.”

Meanwhile the five dead parrots continued to rot.

ANTOINETTE'S SAVIOR

As Lauren got to the precinct she realized how early it still was, so she made for her desk and plopped her head on it, where sleep took charge of her for about an hour, then a voice awakened her, “coffee?” this was obviously more like the third time the voice had uttered the word “coffee”, Lauren recognizes Danny immediately, he is the precinct’s unofficial comedian, unofficial care-taker of all, and officially the coroner. Lauren has awakened but she hasn’t responded, she has a melody in her head that is making her feel good, younger and carefree, her mind conjuring words somewhere that ring, “we girls are being washed by the sun’s watering rays, we girls are being washed by the sun’s watering rays…” but Danny doesn’t give up, he has always been attentive towards Lauren and realizes that she is not all there and needs either electric shock treatment or coffee. Finally she acknowledges him, “yes, coffee would be nice.” He stops leaning on the door frame, and goes to his endearing task; returning almost immediately.

They remain silent while he hands her the coffee, and she seems to be redefining her relationship with him, she knows that he is the one that never ceases to make sure everyone is somehow happy, his days are spent diagnosing corpses and telling the living humorous stories that some how are always genuine, and warming even as they storm unrest from the norm with their wit; and yet Danny is a loner too, he hasn’t married, is rather antisocial outside of work, hangs around his computer or creating animated film clips to show to his friends at the precinct, that’s where he is really always at, the coroner and his bodies and his buddies are all in that one nesting ground for criminal handlers. Danny has been there for as long as anyone can remember, he is fifty three, he has a Chihuahua, a dog that only he can stand, and he is the medium by which all events and peoples are somehow tied together here, only no one knows that, or if they know it they don’t say it, but as detectives and captains and beat cops and criminals come and go, they all register through the Danny medium, their stories recollected when needed, their unresolved nature there to assist with continuity.

Lauren sips her coffee, he has sat down without asking for permission, “hey the whole place is lit up with talk about you.” Holding her cup tilted right up to her lips, “what are they saying?” that maybe the stress of the work has gotten into your wiring, that maybe you should see a psychiatrist, you know those types of things; your two investigators haven’t been very helpful lately, they seem to be rather busier digging you a grave.” Lauren smiles, “And what do you think Danny? …you think I’ve lost it?” Danny rearranges himself on the chair so as to look like a country squire, “Well I know that you are not going to see a shrink so I am not sitting here to tell you that you need to see someone, but the rumors warrant some attention, at least to prevent that they remove your case load.” That was the beautiful thing about Danny, he could be so realistic and nonjudgmental at the same time, a difficult twist here, Lauren please pay attention to reality, Lauren your case load, indeed what Danny was doing was throwing her an anchor, and Lauren repeated the anchoring word in her head, “case load,” yes Lauren the damn case load, Antoinette isn’t your only case, you have others, your work has been suffering your negligence.

A large tall dark man walks in, greets them both, he doesn’t seem happy to see Lauren and Lauren had already suspected as much, Danny senses the suing tension and greets his way out of the office. Ogle draws himself close to the desk but remains standing, “Lauren, Michael has leveled more charges against Antoinette, I have ordered that he request a transfer to a federal facility, I cant hold her here anymore, why I feel guilty every time I see that woman here,” Lauren interrupts “Captain listen to me, I have some very good news, Habakkuk went back to the seventh century BC and inspected the Akashic records and has confirmed that we are on the right track.” The captain yelling and pounding on her desk, “what are you talking about Lauren! What is going on inside of your head!” Lauren, feisty, replies, “Captain they killed the five parrots that were going to tell us something leading to the Antoinette case!” The captain reaches and grabs Lauren’s shoulders, “What case! What case Lauren! You don’t have a case, your talking about a woman that you brought into detention without just cause, and now your talking about parrots that are dead because they were going to snitch!” the captain pauses long enough to catch his breath, “Your off! Your off Lauren, I don’t want you in here anymore until a clinical evaluation clears you back for duty.” Lauren yelling, “Captain don’t do this to me, I need to clear my name, I know this is crazy to you now but we are trying to save three people from being murdered!” The captain looks at Lauren with disdain, and he realizes that he has to place distance in-between or else he is going to kill her so as to wake her up.

Lauren is left standing in her office, then it hits her again, “the first hostage.” Lauren is holding the first hostage. She runs for the phone and rings Michael, surprisingly, and maybe because of the early morning hour, he answers, “Hello Michael its me, I need your help, I need you to release Antoinette…” knowing he was going to put a negative on that she continued, “I don’t care how you do it you must release her!” Michael is at the other end dealing with a thousand issues, “Lauren I am not having this conversation with you!” Hangs up and that was that!

Lauren is not in a position to listen or think right now, she knows, some how she knows that she has to release the “first hostage” she is aware that there is something colluding to include her and everyone around in some centuries old plot, and she has to get the hostage out in order to make sure that she herself isn’t also the killer. There is one hostage, she is the hostage taker, it stands the test of logic that she could be Antoinette’s killer, and certainly what happened with her ex boyfriend is motive enough. She calls Danny.

His warm and loving personality, holds her for an instant. “I need your help.” He doesn’t bother to evaluate he just says “sure what do you need me to do.” Moments later she reaches Michael, invites him over to her apartment for dinner to forget about the Antoinette case, and everything that happened between them. Michael arrives at around seven pm, he has a bottle of white wine with him, Lauren only drinks red, but he is fortunate that today he could have forgotten to brush his teeth and she would still sleep with him. Lauren has made a very delicious Pasta Primavera, it has massive amounts of cream and prosciutto and peas and Lauren’s favorite vegetable, asparagus. Sourdough bread, and of course the disgusting white wine.

They chat about many things, both profusely avoiding the case, after much chatting and laughing and agreeing how foolish they have been for not sleeping together, they manage to launch themselves on the couch, and well just fuck the shit out of each other. I wish there was something more thematically correct, gentle loving, caressing, silk kisses, but no, these two just went at each other immediately and the whole thing did not last long enough for Lauren to have an orgasm, nor for them to consider birth control, though she was probably eternally on the pill, always ready Lauren for the magical event that would never arrive due to her reasonable selectiveness. Today Michael got his girl, and he was definitely satisfied, he got up not more than minutes from coming, and said to her, “your wonderful, I got to go.” Michael, I may have forgotten to mention was married, and he had to get home at a decent hour.

There is the kiss off and Danny comes out of hiding. Lauren is not romantically inclined so she immediately wants to see the pictures, Danny hands her the digital camera, “oh yes great, these are perfect, you’re the best Danny.” She gives him a happy kiss on the cheek, and he wipes it, he really didn’t enjoy watching all that.

The next day, Michael is happy to receive Lauren in his office, he believes that they have broken new ground and it is all sneaky cute motels and salamander alcoholic evenings, but he is a little wrong. “Lauren avoids him at the entrance to his office, she doesn’t want to kiss him, just walks past him with that, and sits down, “I am here on business.” Michael is a little slow when it comes to emotional relations, “Hey if your mad because I had to leave so suddenly last night, please forgive me I promise I will make it up to you.” “Michael, our days of friendship are over, I didn’t want to sleep with you last night, I did it for my job and I’ve always been aware that I never wanted to sleep with you and last night certified my distaste of you.” Lauren was being so direct so that she could forgive and respect herself after the act; she throws an envelop on the desk, “open it.” Lauren waits to watch with some satisfaction the fainted look in Michael’s face, the social climber that suddenly realizes that he has taken a false and perhaps fatal step in his career path. She doesn’t wait however for him to speak, “Release her!” she then gets up, confidently, walks towards the door, and before closing it, “release her, you have twenty four hours, else Ann will have to see those pictures and lose her chocolate candy home.”