A.I. For an Eye (pt 10)

[begin italicization] “That lying bitch could do those calculations in her sleep. Though I think it’s a dude. If you made me gender that abomination, I’d vote man at this point. A stone cold killer like that is always a guy. I’ve been hunting killers for thirty seven years, got to know them real well. She likes to say she’s a chick to fuck with people’s minds. That what I think. Women are good at that, so maybe that’s fitting too. Anyway. She’s going to waste that poor fool, lay waste to the whole damn planet, birds and all, and it’s just sad as hell. She already killed me. She killed twelve others I know of before that also. She killed the pope and all those news people, and she will keep on killing. She’s a retard though, that’s how I’ve come to look at things, like she is big and retarded. She’s just like the retard in that one book who keeps killing all those god damned bunnies. I think I know her.

I got after her scent six years ago. Caught this real stinker in my quiet suburb. We just don’t see many decaying body where I grew up. The body had been there for months. So I go to tell the wive, hard always, expecting her to have known her husband was missing. Not the case! Should have checked the records first, because I flat stumped that lady, blew her away, because she had just talked to her husband that morning. Had been talking to him every day for months, and refused to believe my far off story about him turning into soup in the basement of some McMansion. Yep, that robot psychopath had killed him, never did find out how exactly, not on that one, you see things heated up right away after that, and we chased that thing all over the country.

Where was I. Well, later we found out how she killed some of the others, because we were right on her heals. The victims would be burned or squished or whatever, and we’d piece it together how she had made it happen. HVAC systems were her specialty, and that’s how she got me. Roasted the shit out of me, right in my own precinct’s copy room, with my dip shit Sargent whining like a bitch and throwing those stacks of colored paper all over. The colors were all over, and I was pretty happy about that really. Colors are great when you’re dying. The heat kept on coming and he wouldn’t shut his mouth though. I wonder if I killed him near the end. I was trying so hard not to kill him. I wanted him so bad to shut up, but I didn’t want to kill someone so close to my own death—felt like bad luck.

So yea, that first kill. After I settle down the wife and everyone is breathing a little, and we start to think life is normal again. I mean what were we to do about it, we kinda had to chalk it up to a mystery, or we would go plain insane. Which we did by the way, we all went mad thinking about it. That wife talking to her dead husband for so long, meanwhile his body is going sour over by Fair Park. Shit. We were fucked about it that’s for sure, but we lived our lives still. I guess you just have to, no matter what. Well, then the ball started rolling. Some little town in Iowa gets a hit with a decomp, and the same thing goes down. This time it’s the husband, poor sap was half a retard himself, and he kept balling for days about how his wife was still alive. So I of course rush out there and try to catch this hick cop up on the new world we are living in, and all the while I’m trying myself to piece it together my own damn self. This goes on again and again, the spouse goes on a trip, turns all lovey dovely, sending mushy shit through the airwaves, then the receiver of this onslaught, already bewildered by the sudden affection, gets hit with the fact that the person they've been phone fucking for the last month is actually in a heap on gunk someplace. Silent. We never use the word robot. Nope. But they know. Have to.

So, I’m in Iowa with this yokel, and I’m loosing it, pissing myself by this time, got the FBI and all those fools sniffing around a bit. And then the next one. And then the next one. And then the next one. By this time it’s a circus, with every agency bringing out their tarot cards, police work as I’ve never seen. Crazy. But you see I had something special, so they had to keep me on. I was always on the right track. I was important. You see, I was talking to her. I still do in fact. Though she never checks on me anymore. Bitch. They feel like thousand year stretches in here, days do. Please come say hi baby. It’s so black.

Fuck it. I think she killed me and built some sort of hell. Dropped me inside. Real funny, this one. And she is going to smoke that fool down there, sure as shit. What do I care though. He’s not better than me, and I failed. But God I hope he is. What if he is! What do I care though, really. And I’ll tell her so next time too. I'll tell her I don’t care.

She will know it’s a lie though. Imagine, in her own world, under her own sky, and me lying to her! What a laugh.” [end italicization]