The children's choruses of the ever-present “are we there yet?” rang in the back my consciousness, while I was driving Morgan and Jacob to their favorite destination, Disney World. My wife Donna was in the passenger seat trying her best to control the chaos taking place in the rear seats of our Chevy Tahoe. Again, I found myself drift back to the haunting memories of the last case I would ever investigate, the failed search for one of the most notorious serial killers in Jacksonville's history, during which, my partner, Nelson, was killed. We were in a team of five raiding a house in pursuit of “The Comic” [his names given by the media, on account of his fascination with cartoon characters and comic books], at the apex of the stairs we split into two groups. I was paired with Nelson, the other three went to the left, we of course, went to the right. The first room we entered had nothing but a single wooden chair, with a Superman action figure sat.. a knife burned into it's hand. The next room offered little more, with bulletin boards on every wall, articles clipped from newspapers and attached in tandem to the walls, all featured one of The Comic's victims, and their gruesome fate. The third and final room was much thinner, the width of a normal hallway, at the end was an open window facing the wind and lightning raging through the area. As we got closer we could see a person sitting in a chair identical to the one in the first room, wet hair blowing in the wind, brightly illuminated randomly as lightning crashed. Nelson signaled he would go first, and yelled out “THIS IS THE POLICE, WE HAVE YOU CORNERED, SURRENDER NOW”... no response. Nelson walked a few steps closer still commanding The Comic to surrender, I happened to notice a lump on the ground running the width of the rug covering the floor! As soon as I saw it I screamed at the top of my lungs “NOOO”, but I was too late, Nelson stepped on the lump and looked back at me immediately, just in time for me to see dozens of arrows fly through the walls and impale him one after the other. Gasping for air, he dropped to his knees, his eyes glazed over, and he dropped fully onto the ground. His blood staining the ornamental rug. A sort of rage welled up inside of me, and with no regard for my own well being I ran to the figure sitting in the chair and grabbed the hair. The melon simply rolled away from a burlap sack. I fell to my knees, tearing up and screaming, only to see a red blinking light in the top corner of the room, he had been filming us the entire time.
“Daddy daddy! Are we there yet?!!” squealed morgan, jolting me out of my trance.
“No honey, not yet, and we won't be there for a good while” I said shakily.
My wife interjected with a certain sweetness “Dear, you might want to take a look around every once in a while”. I looked to my right to realize that we were running parallel to the monorail leading to Disney World!
Returning from my withdrawn state, I gave my annual Disney World pep talk. “Everybody ready for Disney World?!”
“Yep!”
“Got your maps marked?”
“You know it!” piped up Jacob
“uh oh.. I don't know if we will be able to go to Disney World this year, gang.” I said worriedly, and shot a sideways glance at Donna. Morgan and Jacob, on the edge of their seats were staring at me wide eyed with fear. Then a coy smile surfaced on Morgan's face, and soon after that Jacob soon caught on as well, and before long they were laughing uncontrollably at their forgetting my yearly saying I use to scare them.
By the way, this is a preview of a preview of a rough rough rough draft.