Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25383866-20141223201119

Looking for some feedback. I've been working on this story off and on for a couple months. Recently I've had some breakthroughs in it and have some idea of where it's going.

Detective Rick Morris had declared philosophical war on Tuesday. Tuesday was the worst day of the week. He used to think it was Monday, but Tuesday seemed to be a lightning rod in a shitstorm. Being on the police force in a big city, he had gotten a feel for which days would be bad, and those days were usually Tuesdays. He didn’t understand why; it was like people could only wait two days into the week before snapping, or dying, or killing each other. He silently cursed the collective ineptitude of man as he brewed his morning coffee, standing pajama’d and slippered in his tiny kitchen.

He used to put things in his coffee. Cream. Sugar. God forbid Splenda, when he was married. As time wore on, the morning consumption of coffee became a much more streamlined affair, and primping it up just seemed like a waste of time. Now, he brewed it black, tamping down the grounds like funeral dirt, so that what the pot yielded was more akin to caffeinated porridge. He found he didn’t mind the slightly sandy texture of the grounds that made their way into the brew. On the contrary, he rather enjoyed the gritty taste. It somehow invigorated him for the day. Even if it was Tuesday.

As the percolator bubbled away, he grabbed a mug out of the cupboard above the counter. He had three of them, each of which had been a gift. This one said “World’s Okayest Father” on it in a sneering, multicolored, all-caps font like you’d find on Cap’n Crunch’s grave. His son had given it to him on his 40th birthday; they had both laughed.

The coffee oozed out of the drip into the pot, making a thick splat sound as it hit the bottom. And then he got the call. He started as the phone rang, shaken from his reverie of post-sleep exhaustion. The ringer echoed through the apartment, in his ears. So loud in that small space.

“Morris? It’s Jacobson. We got something weird down here.”

Morris pressed the receiver of the phone against his chest and indulged in a long, angry sigh, then replied, “Where is “here,” Jake?”

“Public bathroom, down by the river. We got a body. I’ll give you the address.”

“One sec.” Morris fumbled around for his notebook and pen and tore a sheet from it. He wrote it down, and folded the paper in half. “You said it was weird. What kind of weird?”

On the other end of the line, Jacobson took in a shaky breath and said, “X-Files weird, sir.” “I’ll be there in twenty.”

Morris pounded down the silty coffee and hurried to get dressed. “Only on a fucking Tuesday,” he muttered before walking out the door.

It was a cold morning. He chased the ghostly puffs of his breath down the walkway to the street where his car was parked. It was covered in a thin skein of pre-winter frost that gave it an otherworldly aura, as if it were the ghost of an automobile; a four wheeled revenant.

He mulled over Jacobson’s words in his head as he started the engine. He let it idle, watching the ice melt and run down the windshield. “X-files weird.” What the hell could he have meant by that?

Morris pulled away from the curb and into the light early morning traffic. Not many people out on the streets this early. Above the City, the sky was an opaque gray wall behind which the sun hid its face. He drove through the City, making his way toward the west bank of the river.

He stopped at a stand and got another coffee, just a little white to-go cup. He didn’t really need it; his morning sludge had worked its way through the dried valleys of his middle-aged veins, thinning out his blood a bit and getting it moving through his tired body. It was more for the perpetuation of an in-joke that only he was aware of.

He’d found many years ago, even before he’d made detective, that people tended to defer to his judgment much more when he was carrying a cup of coffee. He found this hilarious. He thought he knew why; the answer was Hollywood. Eighties action movies had practically invented modern cops- the image of a grizzled veteran, trench-coated and unshaven, his constitution as hard as his fists. He chuckled, and took a sip from the cup as he changed lanes to go to the riverside. It was an image that was laughable, but credible. For now and the foreseeable future he would nurture it, feed into the façade until he no longer had fun with it.

There was already a bustle of activity at the scene when he got there. The building was a squat cinderblock structure, a gray rectangle of concrete with a steel awning erected over the two entrances.

He parked some distance away, and watched the chaos for a moment from the interior of his car. The waiting ambulance, its lights competing with those of a squad car parked near it; the inaudible chatter of the paramedics and the unies; it all reminded him of a high-tech colony of man-sized ants, crawling over and under each other, competing for space and favor. He smiled at that, and opened the door of his car.

The suspension squeaked as he climbed out. He sighed and slammed the door, and turned to make his way over to the police line, yellow tape strewn about like the web of some gigantic neon-colored spider. He ducked under, flashing his badge at a young officer who had stepped toward him with the intent of ushering him back across. “Sorry, sir,” the rook said, and Morris shrugged, moving past him toward the building itself.

He went in. Inside was a clusterfuck of activity. Forensics was there, taking pictures and sprinting around with evidence bags. He dodged between them. He found Jacobson in a group of analysts and photographers clustered around the end stall, his slender frame looking swollen and cancerous in a puffy winter jacket. Rick pulled him aside and said, “What have we got?”

The woolly tumor that was Aaron Jacobson turned toward him and said, “Alright, so basically we got a call about a body a couple hours ago at around six AM- caller was a morning jogger who stopped in to take a piss.”

“Where’s he at?” Morris asked, sipping from the cup.

Jake waved toward the entrance. “Out there somewhere. Probably near the ambulance. The unies who got here first had him wait.”

“I’m gonna want to talk to him,” Rick said. “But first let’s see the stiff.”

Jake nodded toward the stall and said, “Take a look for yourself, he’s in there.” Rick shouldered through the group and looked in the open door. Inside, slumped over on the toilet, sat a chunky, middle-aged, and very dead man. He held a folded piece of toilet paper in one hand and an iPhone in the other. Spattered on the seat between the meaty thighs were a cluster of minute blood droplets. Rick frowned.

“So, do we have any ideas?” He asked. “A heart attack, maybe?” Jake shook his head. “No,” he said. “This is the weird bit, Rick. It looks like most of his intestines are in the toilet bowl. This guy literally shit his guts out.” Rick closed his eyes and muttered, “Fuck me.” Only on a fucking Tuesday. 