Intermission

  As the sound of two police cruisers faded into the night, a slurred, snorted laugh echoed through the mostly empty sheriff’s office. From in the cell on the right-hand side against the back wall, the slurred laughter continued, turning into a full-on choking, gagging fit of hilarity.

  After almost a full minute of this, the figure in stained and ripped clothing pushed himself up from the cot he’d been laying on pretending to be asleep for the past couple hours. He opened one eye and giggled again as he looked around the empty station, the room spinning around him. From within the filthy and tattered sweatshirt he wore, he produced a bottle of a brown liquid, one long and sharp fingernail digging into the metal of the cap on the bottle and peeling it back. He flicked the twisted apart cap over his shoulder, the little piece of metal carving a thin line in the cinderblock wall. Taking a long pull from the bottle, he glanced at the crudely drawn label as he bent down and retrieved the keys from the floor where the sheriff had thrown them earlier.

  Shuffling over to the door of his cell, his body bending to the spinning world around him with practiced ease, he stared down at it as he took another pull from a bottle of what was apparently “Uncle Rod’s Reserve”. Another fit of choked laughter spilled out of him, along with thick streams of the liquor he was drinking, squirting out from between yellowed and missing teeth in streams. That only made him laugh harder, and he gagged on the liquor he continued to pour down his throat throughout.

  After he settled somewhat, he regarded the ring of keys, bouncing it up and down in his palm a couple times. Instead of reaching through the bars and unlocking the door to his cell, he brought the keys up to his mouth and gave them a slow lick. He shuddered at the taste of the deputy’s fear and panic on them and quickly followed it with another swig of cheap liquor, alternating between licking the keys and chugging from the bottle faster and faster, until he was pouring the liquor directly onto the keys that he’d shoved fully into his mouth. He finished the bottle like that, an equal amount of the cheap liquor splashing over his upturned face and neck as made its way down his throat.

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  He sighed as he tossed the empty bottle behind him, the crash of it shattering sending broken glass all across the floor of the cell. Pulling the keys out of his mouth, he unlocked the door to his cell and stepped out. He quickly locked the cell door again, and then tossed the keys back onto the floor, now surrounded by broken glass.

  Giggling at the thought of the deputy bloodying himself crawling over broken glass to retrieve his keys, he turned back to the front of the station. Now that no one was here, he was quickly losing interest in being here, and he produced another bottle from his stained sweatshirt, this one bearing a fancy label of the vinery in Tuscany where the bottle had been aging when he’d grabbed it.

  Carving out the cork at the top with the same jagged, dirty fingernail, he drank the expensive wine just as carelessly as the bottle of rotgut, red liquid spilling down his cheeks and joining the myriad stains on his sweatshirt.

  Stepping out of the sheriff’s office, he looked in the direction that the deputy and the little burgeoning stories with him had gone. The Lawman, the Brawler, the Girl and her little tagalong. He started giggling again as he thought about them, making their way to the bowling alley and the other people hoping to find safety and sanctuary there. He laughed himself into another doubled over choking fit, eventually spitting a disgusting mix of brownish-red phlegm and wine next to the front doors of the sheriff’s office.

  Straightening back up with a final slurred chuckle, he stared in the direction of the bowling alley, and all the fear and desperation building there.

  “Tooooo late.”

  He grinned with a mouthful of yellow and missing teeth, the world spinning around him almost as fast as the way this whole world was already spinning out of control. His eyes, jet black throughout, save for a small silver spiral in the center of each of them, crinkled in amusement.

  “Too late. Too too late, and late too, late TO. Late to too, Too late too, too late! Too late.” Spiral mumbled to himself happily.