Snippet of the Day
Oct. 17th, 2010 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdFrom "On the Night Road." Unpublished (needs to be expanded a LOT)
Another rat-gnawed skeleton dumped in a deserted field was no way to start a Monday morning, Sheriff Gary Redhorse decided. Kissed awake by a twink bearing breakfast in bed, sometime around elevenish, would have been much preferable to tramping around a dew-soaked field at the ass-crack of dawn, staring at scattered bones with teeth marks on them.
Gary knelt and prodded one of the bones, an ulna he guessed. The animals had cracked this one open to eat the marrow. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Twinks at elevenish looked better all the time.
It was somewhere after eleven, but before midnight, when he managed to get home. The guy in the field had been dead when he'd been dumped about six months before, the examiner said. It looked a little like a case from about twenty years before and a lot like the last five skeletons that had been found in that same field. All eaten by wolves and rats and all decapitated.
No skulls had been found.
A killer picking his county as a dumping ground was a load of shit Gary didn't need. Especially one that took the heads with him. He tossed his hat on its hook and started stripping down for a shower.
He did some of his best thinking under the hot water. Tammy, the dispatcher, joked about installing a shower in his office so he could solve the crimes there. Gary liked his quiet county, with its population of about three thousand people and its low crime rate. A few boosted cars, some brawls, a lot of domestics, a couple rapes and usually less than three killings a year made up his blotter. Or they had, until these skeletons had started turning up out by Crow Lake.
Wasn't easy being gay in such a place, but he kept that to himself and indulged on the occasional trips up to Sioux Falls, where no one knew him. He let the hot water course over him. The examiner said all of the bones had been gnawed by wolves and rats. That wasn't normal behavior for wolves. They avoided humans, alive or dead, unless they had lost their natural fear. Rats would eat anything.
Something didn't track about this thing. Gary turned off the water, dried and went to bed, still twinkless.
***
Downshift. Stop. Lights out. Window down. The smell of cold dawn on the air told him he needed to get his hunting done quickly and be on his way. He sorted the scents that came on the black wind, diesel smoke, oil, piss, spilled soda, someone's illegal beer, reefer melt and most of all, blood. Blood pulsed through the humans who worked the night, making him salivate. It had been three days since he ate. He checked the air again, not wanting to have to lure a driver or a waitress aboard.
There, the smell he sought. Desperation, musty and thin, flavored the blood he smelled. Hunger spiking through the aroma, sharp and yellow, the smell of wildflowers trampled underfoot, and fear, purple and thick like spoiled grapes, adding the perfect tang. Dinner was served
Another rat-gnawed skeleton dumped in a deserted field was no way to start a Monday morning, Sheriff Gary Redhorse decided. Kissed awake by a twink bearing breakfast in bed, sometime around elevenish, would have been much preferable to tramping around a dew-soaked field at the ass-crack of dawn, staring at scattered bones with teeth marks on them.
Gary knelt and prodded one of the bones, an ulna he guessed. The animals had cracked this one open to eat the marrow. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Twinks at elevenish looked better all the time.
It was somewhere after eleven, but before midnight, when he managed to get home. The guy in the field had been dead when he'd been dumped about six months before, the examiner said. It looked a little like a case from about twenty years before and a lot like the last five skeletons that had been found in that same field. All eaten by wolves and rats and all decapitated.
No skulls had been found.
A killer picking his county as a dumping ground was a load of shit Gary didn't need. Especially one that took the heads with him. He tossed his hat on its hook and started stripping down for a shower.
He did some of his best thinking under the hot water. Tammy, the dispatcher, joked about installing a shower in his office so he could solve the crimes there. Gary liked his quiet county, with its population of about three thousand people and its low crime rate. A few boosted cars, some brawls, a lot of domestics, a couple rapes and usually less than three killings a year made up his blotter. Or they had, until these skeletons had started turning up out by Crow Lake.
Wasn't easy being gay in such a place, but he kept that to himself and indulged on the occasional trips up to Sioux Falls, where no one knew him. He let the hot water course over him. The examiner said all of the bones had been gnawed by wolves and rats. That wasn't normal behavior for wolves. They avoided humans, alive or dead, unless they had lost their natural fear. Rats would eat anything.
Something didn't track about this thing. Gary turned off the water, dried and went to bed, still twinkless.
***
Downshift. Stop. Lights out. Window down. The smell of cold dawn on the air told him he needed to get his hunting done quickly and be on his way. He sorted the scents that came on the black wind, diesel smoke, oil, piss, spilled soda, someone's illegal beer, reefer melt and most of all, blood. Blood pulsed through the humans who worked the night, making him salivate. It had been three days since he ate. He checked the air again, not wanting to have to lure a driver or a waitress aboard.
There, the smell he sought. Desperation, musty and thin, flavored the blood he smelled. Hunger spiking through the aroma, sharp and yellow, the smell of wildflowers trampled underfoot, and fear, purple and thick like spoiled grapes, adding the perfect tang. Dinner was served
