I'd gotten myself recruited into the LAPD. At that moment, the first thing I thought was “At last, a stable position!” Then they told me they'd fire me soon as I wasn't needed. Well, there wouldn't be much trouble then, right? After all, that suggested I'd be some desk caddy or something.

	Wasn't long before I got myself in heaps of it, though.

	I stared at my locker, feeling numb. There was a number engraved on it, in metal cheap as the city. Something was duct taped beneath it. Bending low to read it, I got a visual of “Emers Watt” etched on its flimsy fibrous surface. My name, huh? It's not like it was necessary to cut a tree down so I could skip going back to check the locker numbers for mine. Not like it mattered to me, anyway; the day wore me down to the point that I just don't care about anything right now. Other than a hot mug of coffee, anyways (which I admit to liking with a bit of cream and sugar).

	The morning was tip-top. My usual mug of coffee hovering below my lip, I collated paper after paper of reports, mostly to identify the dog that bit my client. Other papers, however, I looked at without the usual disdain I had for the kind of work I often received. Lowering my head so I could see the small print on it, the familiar scent of newspaper rescued from a trash bin wafted up to my nose. Not much to see, at first; the front page was the usual political strife and/or doomsaying. This day in particular's newspaper harbored the usual prophetic predictions of when we'd meet our end (this had been going on every week since 2012!): Six Days To 2030: What Does the New Decade Bring to Us?

	Skimming through it, I caught a few words proliferated by religious cults. It'd only been a few weeks since the official fall of Christianity and these cults were attempting to take advantage of the new gap in dominant religions, though I hoped the lack of hold by some sort of institution that wanted you to  donate for no reason other than to fund its lackluster experiments on superfluous herds of sheep (that is, the Sunday sermon) would stay. Finally reaching the bottom of this idiotic detour from actual news, though maybe just the preamble to papers filled with nothing, my eyes wandered to the side and caught a small heading and smaller print.

	… “Third In a Series of Deaths; Victims Eaten and Hacked Out”

	Well, I'd never read about this before. Third?

	The article, though short as it was, succinctly summarized the deaths. There was a specific M.O. each time, obviously characterized by the title. How this conclusion came about was due to three factors: most of the bodies were missing; the bits that stayed (the bones) were scored with bite marks; and upon examination, it seemed the bones were coated in saliva – enzymes similar to those found in dog spit were detected in the liquid. Reflecting over the case, I thought I'd be of some use, and it'd be less boring than helping some nitwit sue a poor dog's owner because he or she just happened to kick it, and it just happened to bite back. So when I heard the familiar sound of the door to my office creaking open and the mouthy pants of a canine, I thought I'd gotten another one of those jobs or was just hallucinating. I didn't bother to look up from my papers.

	“You're not going to show some respect to a sheriff?”

	Yes, well, hello, Mr. Policeman, would you like my cuppajoe? I swear I don't backwash. Huh, did I see so and so recently? Or maybe, you'd like to accuse me of a crime? Please do tell.

	“What?” I responded, mildly irritated at having to tear my eyeballs from various articles about luxurious arrangements that could be found in this ghetto called Los Angeles.

	The man standing at my desk, his eyelids drooping and his facial hair smelling of manly musk (shit, so to say), coughed with a tint of anger (which was, to no surprise, very satisfying), and handed me a stack of papers.

	“This, [i]sir[/i],” he began, “is a draft into the arbitration.”

	Which is to say, I was going to be forced to do police work.




	Turns out said work was to investigate the very article I'd been reading. Completely unexpected. Came out at me from the blue. Totally. In any case, the entire day was just familiarizing myself with protocol upon endless protocol, and by the end of it, I felt like I was going to collapse into my locker. Which brings us back to doe~! Yes, at that moment I'd just felt like getting coffee. I was, however, going home to sleep, and I'd need said sleep, and coffee would indeed disrupt it.