Day 656: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: contour

in #writing5 years ago (edited)

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The contour of things, felt along the arc of progress of a matter from beginning to an end ... behind his marble front, Henry Fitzhugh Lee was exquisitely sensitive to such contours.

The arc had begun on a Tuesday, when the late Commissioner Thomas had wished to fraternize with a junior officer – the newest captain, Lee himself. To Captain Lee's mind, the contour of the matter thus began with a barbed twist, a twist his mind began to feel its way around in light of what he already knew about the department. A second big barb soon came: the commissioner's desire to have him cover up so much of the reality of that big FOIA release. Dozens of twists and turns later, and three of five commissioners were dead and two others jailed.

Captain Lee had killed each of the three. Commissioner Thomas he had killed in a shootout the night he had gone to arrest him. The other two? They had each attempted to intimidate him, but he had flipped the script on them with such easy mastery that one had a heart attack and the other jumped through a plate glass window. Captain Lee had simply exceeded their human tolerances -- he knew that he could do it, and he did it as soon they tried him, on behalf of all the other people whose lives had been ruined and were being ruined by their corruption and wickedness.

Captain Lee had long before accepted his nickname: the Angel of Death. He was all too good at destroying people and systems that opposed those he was sworn to protect, and slept well and shed no tears about that. Yet, he mourned the tragedy of the affair, that it had needed to come to that, and the loss to the men's families and friends. The whole terrible tangle of events, the contours of which Captain Lee knew intimately, lodged in his mind, its barbed points cutting whatever in his soul was not already scar tissue.

Yet there was more left that was not scarred than he knew … more left that slowly began to feel more than just agony as the weeks passed and those assigned to work with him began to breathe easier, began to smile more, began to know they would survive and maybe, just maybe, thrive now that honest Chief Scott was in both the chief and commissioner's office...

A month after Acting Commissioner Scott was appointed to his new position, Captain Lee had a dream: he was dressed in a great suit of armor of the type his English ancestors would have worn during the days of Richard the Lionhearted, and King Richard, good king Richard, had finally come home to England. Captain Lee, on this occasion imagining himself as his ancestor Sir Henry, sheathed his sword at last as the people cheered the king … he could at last stand down, having vanquished all foes necessary to get the nation to the time when things at last could be set right.

Captain Lee woke up in tears, overcome by his emotions and conscious at last of what had aroused them. His intuitive knowledge about Acting Commissioner Scott had been backed with four weeks of good, hard evidence: the new man in charge was honest, and would do right. At last Captain Lee could accept those facts, and the feeling that came with them: hope, its contours like a flower bud just ready to burst into bloom.

Duty, and hope -- a potent combination! Captain Lee closed THREE cases that week, to the new commissioner's immense pleasure and amusement.

"I told y'all I could handle Lee -- but oops, y'all aren't here any more because I handled y'all first!" he said to the piece of paper in front of him that held a long, long list of corrupt folks that he had fired or allowed to resign...

(@owasco, @whatisnew, and @scribblingramma -- here you are!)

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Apology accepted -- I'm going to be even later writing to it, so, it's all good!

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