“Detective!” an officer shouted in the distance. Waving his arms wildly, the young man stood and hopped from his tippy-toes, desperate to gain the attention of the detective, who had just arrived on scene. "Over here!" he shouted, his face growing rapidly into a fan-boy smile. Black and gray streaked hair waved gently in the wind, as did the sand colored trench coat as the detective began his approach to the crime scene from his vehicle. He walked along slowly, his sneakers deliberately rolling from heel to toe with each step, as he eyed the witnesses and victims. Officers everywhere were taking statements, as reporters flooded the barricades that kept them clear of the scene. Fire and rescue crews were cleaning and bandaging wounds, wrapping victims in blankets all over and trying their best to calm and relax them.

“Detective!” shouted the officer again. The smell of destruction was thick. Burning scraps of metal and rubber lay scattered in the parking lot and street of a once densely inhabited apartment complex. The fire department had managed to snuff the flames of the complex enough to let the crowds close in more and open the street up for better handling of the situation. As the detective approached the murder scene, the officer that had called for his attention seemed to get more and more excited. CSI was scattered about, taking photos and measurements, laying out evidence markers all over. The detective crossed the police line, slowing his pace to a crawl at this point to survey the area. Blood was smeared through the grass, spent shells, a body...

“Well...”, the detective opened with. “What do we got here?” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat, waiting on the crowd around him to give him the breakdown of what they’d put together so far. The excited officer jumped in immediately, breaking every detail as fast as possible. “Sir, I’ve got the scoop! It appears our masked body here showed up very early this morning, around dawn. Residents woke up to the line of cars exploding outside the apartment complex here. It destroyed a good portion of the building immediately; the fire burned the rest down. We lost a few lives inside, but no way to tell if it was the fire or explosion that killed them until tests are done. At some point the masked man here did battle with another masked guy. Things were violent; blood is mashed into the ground just about everywhere in a nice trail. Residents say they saw most of it. They lost a man trying to intervene. The fight seemed to climax and come to a close when this guy mounted his victim and was apparently about to execute him, when another woman intervened and gave this guy a new way to eat and breathe through either side of his head.” He laughed, pleased with his joke, as he looked down at the corpse, covered at the moment with a sheet. The detective looked at the officer, stoic in nature, not pleased with his joke.

“Yeah, a guy blowing up a building, killing people, and then getting shot in the face – real comedic day, huh? Officer... ?” The apparent rookie sighed, lowering his head a bit. “We’ve met a few times already detective... but it’s Mack.” The detective turned his head and focused on the crime scene, crouching down now and moving the sheet to take a look at the body underneath. “We got an ID on this psycho?” A chunk of brain broke away and fell inside the gaping hole in the back of the masked body’s skull. A soft, wet squish sounded, bugs already gathering all over it. The detective pulled a pen, using it to shift some grass around the body for any loose evidence. “Not yet, but CSI was hesitant to remove the mask here with the GSR burns on the entry wound. Seared the fibers to the wounds.” Finding nothing on his cursory overview, he stood, putting the pen into his inner breast pocket, as he eyed Mack. ”Clear the scene. Get every statement. Get addresses, phone numbers... I want anyone in a 500 yard direction on the street to tell us what they know. We have a woman, armed and dangerous on the loose with an unknown masked man involved in a multiple homicide and terroristic attack on innocent people at daybreak. Get a sketch artist to sit with everyone who saw them, get it on the news by 5. I want those two by nightfall, and I want the whole story. Get me the coroners report as soon as it’s in.

Someone is going to pay for this.” The detective looked up at the billowing black smoke still pouring off the apartment complex and smoldering car wrecks and spilled oil and gasoline. The officer sprang into action immediately trying to impress his superior. Two men walked in, wheeling a stretcher up to the body and dropping it to the ground. They removed a stiff backboard, looking to the cops patrolling the crime scene tape. Mack and several other officers began pushing the crowds back, trying to hide the corpse as they loaded it up for removal finally. CSI took the last of their photos and gave their approval while the detective slowly began to walk by, surveying the rest of the scene the best he could without trampling the entire scene. As the men moved the body to the backboard and lifted it onto the stretcher, the detective noticed something from the corner of his eye. He thought about it a moment, shaking it off as a trick of the mind for a moment. But seconds later, the idea ate away at his head. He spun on his heels and stopped the men, moving the sheet they’d just covered the body with and looked at the masked body’s face. His eyes scanned the wound, the obvious exit wound. The woman would have approached from behind and shot downward into his skull. The obvious result is the explosion of the round from the front of the face and probably a good amount of shattered bone. In this case, the shot exploded from where the man’s nose would have been. The bone, though.. “Wait... the bones... these wounds. What...” It was then the two men removing the body backed up in terror. The detective pulled his Beretta from the holster, aiming it at the man – as he screamed bloody murder, snapping the restraints that simply secured him to the board and stretcher, then proceeded to sit up. Blood ran from the gaping hole in the dead man’s face. His hands clasped his head as he screamed louder, visibly shaking. The detective held his ground, the barrel trained on the chest of the screaming man, once presumed dead. Officers shouted and surrounded the man, the oozing crimson and black coagulated blood slowly sliding from both sides of the open gunshot wound. The man swung his legs from the stretcher, the screams intensifying as his feet touched the ground, slightly collapsing to the Earth beneath himself.

The quick and sudden jerking movement caused several officers to open fire. Citizens and victims were already fleeing in terror, having seen the man already cause mayhem. The weapons pierced the air with a deafening explosion. The man leaned back, collapsing over the stretcher as blood sprayed everywhere, his shirt slowly becoming more and more tattered from every round tearing through and ripping his flesh to pieces. “HOLD YOUR FIRE! HOLD YOUR FIRE!” As the area went silent, the Detective holstered his weapon, quickly approaching the masked suspect. The other officers slowly lowered their weapons, staring at the unbelievable sight. “MEDIC!” He could see the man’s chest rise and fall slowly, a wheezing escaping the mouth beneath that mask occasionally. An arm slowly shifted, weakly rising from the stretcher. Suddenly, the detective was flying through the air, a crushing force having hit him in the chest. That scream boomed through the air as he took flight. He smashed down no more than a few feet away, rolling from the momentum and inability to catch himself. As he picked his head up, he looked and saw that he wasn’t the only thing that had just been thrown like a ragdoll. Every officer and firefighter... anyone in a small radius had just been thrown through the air. Cars, equipment... everything had just been lifted from the ground, without anything physically touching it. His eyes drifted back to the stretcher at the man, who was standing up straight and breathing heavily. The masked head was bowed at first, but slowly rose, looking at the detective, though his eyes weren’t visible. The gaping hole, however, was. The curious part was that the detective wasn’t sure his eyes were seeing correctly. The wound... the entry wound at the back of his head...

It was closed.

The man turned and walked away, as if nothing had happened. The front of his face was still obliterated from blow out, his body was riddled with bullets, yet this...thing... it was as if nothing had ever happened. An outstretched arm waved and the street was clear of people, vehicles, debris...anything obstructing a walking path. What the hell had just happened!? The news crews raced to get shots of the action as several officers attempted to intervene. Much to their dismay, they were seemingly tossed aside with some invisible force, as everything else was. The detective stood slow, watching in even more disbelief as the man stopped and stood still... and then shot into the sky like a rocket, disappearing into thin air without a trace...


“What...the fuck?”