Write an interrogation where the interrogator gets his what-for by the end.  Fair warning, this is filled with an insane amount of in-jokes.

“I’ve been after him for months, the rat bastard,” he gasped, wondering how much longer he could hold on to life.  “Do you have a sketch artist?”

A rather large, bald yet bearded man in street clothes approached with a spiral book.  He flipped a page.  “Start.”

For the next six minutes and twenty-eight seconds, he described his assailant in every detail.  His last breaths were coming.

Detective Kautz approached the hospital bed.  “Do you know the rat bastard’s real name?”

The dying man shook his head.  “Just the name I gave you.”

“Do you have a real name?”

“Not for a long time, I haven’t.  They call me…”

He cocked his neck with his last ounce of strength.

“The Grey.”

Detective Kautz had seen men die before.  Heck, he’d even killed a couple himself.  But never before had he felt such a chill.  His body twitched.

He turned to officer Mitchell.  “Josh, I’m going downtown to see what I can get out of the twerp.”

Officer Mitchell nodded, continuing with his drawing.

“And please try to submit your sketch on time.”

Detective Kautz left the ER and headed towards the precinct.  The chill he had felt earlier wouldn’t go away.  This was the biggest case he’d ever been given.  And it scared the fuck out of him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You watched her die, you sick fuck!” detective Kautz bellowed, mere inches above the witness’s stoic face.  “And you did nothing!”

“Are you going to charge me with doing nothing?” said the twerp, apparently bored.  His name was Perry Baker.  Kautz assumed it was fake, but he ran his ID and it appeared legit.  Other than a possession charge when he was nineteen, the guy was clean.

Kautz was fuming.  “If you help me out I won’t charge you with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.”

Perry leaned back in his chair.  “You know I did no such thing.”  He yawned.

“Would you rather spend a night in jail before I realize that?”

Perry laughed.  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.  “You know what, detective?  I like you.  You don’t take no bullshit.  I’ll tell you what I know.”  He leaned back again.  “What you say the guy’s name was?  Rubbish?”

Kautz stood up and smirked.  “Nibbish.”

“Right, right.  And you think he killed the bimbo?”

“Ms. Ashley was not a bimbo.  And he didn’t just kill her.”  Kautz began pacing the room.  “He cut off her hair, raped her, gouged out her intestines, and…”

“Took a dump on her face?”  Perry grinned.

“What?  No!  And fuck you!”  Kautz wanted to slap this guy.  “He covered her with love poems.”

“Doesn’t sound like him,” Perry said, checking his fingernails.

“So you do know him!”

“Well,” Perry continued, satisfied his nails were clean.  “I know of him.  Never met him, though.  I’ve just done some favors for his posse.”

“His what?  Who?”

“Yeah.  They call themselves the Vogons.  Not very well organized, or bright for that matter.  They killed three of their own in just the past few months.”

Kautz’s anger was tempered a bit as it was slowly replaced by curiosity.  “How many are there now?”

“Just four.  Wreisner, Novak, Maki, and a guy they just call Beau.  He used to be a judge, I think.  I don’t know much about the rest.”

“And what kind of favors do you handle for them?”

Perry grinned, wider this time.  “Let’s just say I’ll still be alive tomorrow because I didn’t call the police.”

“Uh huh,” Kautz grunted.  “So even if I find these Vogons, they won’t squeal either?”

“Doubtful.  Novak’s kind of a weasel, but he’s too dumb not to be loyal.”

Kautz sat down again, trying to show an air of trust.  “So you’re the guy who can help me out.  Just tell me what he looks like, and where I might be able to find him, and I’ll let you go.”

“Heh,” Perry rebuked.  “I told you I’ve never met the guy.”

“But you were…”

“Nibbish didn’t kill your bimbo.”

“She was an aspiring actress.”

“What’s the difference?  Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if nibbish authorized the deal.  But he wasn’t there.  Just the Vogons.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“And I can go?”

“Maybe.”

Perry sighed.  “All right.  So I was supposed to meet up with the Vogons down by the docks.  For what, I don’t know.  I never got that far.  Anyway, when I got there, I saw two more people than I expected.  So to be safe, I ducked behind a corner and listened…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh Grey!  Does your wife know?”

“Of course she doesn’t.  I’ve convinced her I’m going to auditions.”

Shawn smiled.  “Care to audition my lips?”

“I’m ready.  I’ve memorize the script.”

She bit her lip.  “Just tell me I won’t always be your understudy.”

“Oh, baby.  You’ll always be the star of my show.”

As the necking commenced, Perry tasted bile.  He was about to choke when he heard four sets of voices talking low, not twenty feet from him.   They were barely illuminated by an overhead light.  Apparently, the happy couple hadn’t noticed.

“Lookie what we have here,” said Novak, cracking his knuckles.  He was the smallest of the group, but talked the most.  “A two-for-one night, eh boys?”

Maki replied.  “My one chance to feel like a winner again.”

Beau grunted, said nothing.  Wreisner calmly chewed on a piece of grass.

Novak continued.  “So, what do you guys think?”

“Beau can take care of the dude.  The rest of us will take her.”  Maki grinned as he pulled a stick of Odell’s margarine out of his pocket.

Beau grunted in approval, removing a pair of scissors from his jacket.

“What do you think, Wreisner?”

“I think,” he said, temporarily removing the blade of grass from between his teeth.  “I think that in this current evening, as we are watched over by the luminescent moon beneath an onyx sky, calmed unequivocally by the quiescent winds, and with our spirits fomented by the thrill of our venery, we shall henceforth partake in the cleansing ritual.”  He removed a small stack of papers from his shirt pocket.

Novak beamed, gripping tightly to a meat hook.  “I couldn’t have said it more long-windedly myself.  Okay boys, let’s go.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“…and you know the bitter end of that story,” said Perry.

“You know what I think?” said Kautz.

Perry stared at him dismissively.

“I think I believe you.  One man could have pulled this off, but it seemed like the work of several.  Unfortunately, I’m no closer to the truth.”

“I’m sorry,” Perry said, with a hint of earnestness.

“Maybe the evidence will lead us to one of these Vogons.  This shit is crazy.”

“I hope so, too,” said Perry.  “After what I saw, I’m thinking of taking a permanent vacation, somewhere nibbish can’t find me.”

Kautz chuckled.  “I think that’s a good idea.”

“So, can I go now?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Perry reached out his hand, and Kautz shook it.  As Perry left, Kautz slumped in his chair.  Grabbing a pencil, he tapped it twice, as if doing so would provide the next clue.  His eye caught a file on the desk.  It was a cold case he had been thumbing through on break.  Harry O’Dell was the name of the victim.

His eyes then darted to a paperweight.  It was onyx.  He then noticed his leftover meatball sub from lunch.  It was sitting atop the DVD that detective Wells had returned.  It was Hook.

“That son of a bitch!” Kautz yelled as he hurried out of the room.  As he did, a fax came through.  The picture looked not unlike a twerp.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the cabbie pulled away, he looked in the rear-view mirror.  “Where ya headed?”

“The airport.”

“Taking a trip, eh?”

“Mexico.”

“Lucky bastard.  You got a name?”

“Perry,” he said, looking out the window.  He saw a young boy walking his dog.  They were both grinning ear to ear, enjoying the day, and life.  He smiled, too.  “You can call me Pete.”

K: Yikes. Okay, I laughed a lot. This one had to know it wasn’t likely to snag my Immunity, but I did love the Wreisner soliloquy and the The Usual Suspects shot-for-shot recreation. This doesn’t get Immunity, but gets my undying love for being so amusing after a week (well, a season) of depressing endings.

DK: Those who were involved in Survivor VIII may not be surprised when I say NAHV-as-the-Usual-Suspects reminds me a lot of something I wrote back then using Internet names of people I and the judges knew. I laughed at this a lot, and I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of in-jokes here, although there are several references to things that would have particular meaning for Spookymilk Survivor participants, some of which (like Josh Mitchell not submitting or Wreisner’s dialogue) are things that someone totally independent of this game reading this story might not get the full impact of…I guess that means they might be in-jokes, actually. This probably isn’t something I’d like to see done week after week, but I enjoyed this a lot this time. Especially that half-baked Grey-Shawn dialogue.

I tossed away several bad ideas before settling on one I knew wouldn’t win immunity.  Sending up the plot of “The Usual Suspects” was a strike against me, but with no other good ideas on the table I went with it and just tried to make it as funny as possible.  I wish the ending would have made more of an impact, but there it is.

There’s one in-joke nobody playing will get.  But there was an incident when I was young with me, a pair of scissors, and a Smurfette doll.  Shawn, I’m sorry.

This week we had to write about the Machine of Death.  It’s a machine that prints out a card, foreshadowing one’s death.  It is never wrong.  The story must also have a title, and that title must be the words on the card someone receives.

YOU

Dave Nguyen took a slow drag from his cigarette, allowing himself to taste the smoke rolling around his cheeks.  He hated smoking.  But he endured it for two reasons.  The first was because he could.  His status afforded him the opportunity despite the world-wide ban on tobacco production.  The second reason was his intense dislike for living.  If smoking shaved seven years off his life, Dave welcomed it.

He inarguably had the most important job a human ever had.  When the fucking scientists figured out how to send a person through time, they also figured out this was a very bad idea.  Even the most minor of changes in the past would have unimaginable consequences, the saddest being erasing the life experiences of every generation affected henceforth.  And in this age of global government, that meant everybody.  Dave’s job was to prevent this from happening.  He was lead investigator of the TTP, the Terran Temporal Police.  If somebody managed to send themselves back in time, he was to follow and terminate their right of existence.

Thankfully, this didn’t happen very often.  There were only two time machines, one in Cape Town, the other in Zurich.  They were highly guarded and required at minimum three people for its operation, and anyone near it had already undergone multiple stages of psychological testing.  The machines were used regularly; international law only banned traveling to the past.  Every so often, a scientist (and one time a politician) couldn’t resist the temptation.  A bribe or two later and Dave had work to do.

Most who went back felt they were doing so for altruistic reasons.  At least that’s what most told him before termination.  The first went back to try and kill Gavrilo Princip.  Dave was at Moritz Shiller’s Café long before his target, thanks to a tip from one of the scientists who helped send him back.  No damage was done, unless you count the perp’s body in the bottom of the Adriatic.  The second who went back decided he wanted to be the first person to see a live dinosaur.  A very generous sarcosuchus did Dave’s work for him.

The Machine of Death—a prize brought back from the future–made Dave’s job a bit easier.  Anyone who worked in or around one of the time machines had to first register and receive their death card.  It helped Dave catch a guy last year whose card read ENOLA GAY.  He found him near the imperial palace in Tokyo.  An interrogation revealed he planned on warning Hirohito.  Dave tied him to a post in an abandoned Hiroshima cotton mill.

Four months ago, a lady who worked in Zurich received a card that said DAVE NGUYEN.  After two days of private deliberations at TTP headquarters, it was decided that Dave would make a preemptive strike.  When Dave confronted her at her home, she quickly resigned to her fate, but asked him if he’d make love to her before she ingested the poison he brought.  She was striking, and due to his work women were naturally afraid to sleep with him.  But he declined, knowing that emotional detachment was crucial to his future success.

Rubbing out the end of the cigarette, Dave’s attention turned to the card he kept taped to the monitor.  He was also required to visit the Machine of Death when he was awarded his current position.  He now wished he had asked never to see the results after they were printed.  He took the card and studied it, as if he thought hard enough about it he could change what it had told him.  One word stared back at him.

YOU

Dave thought he was signing up for an adventure of a lifetime.  But his life became smaller every day.  There were no other travelers in his department, so he was always on-call.  The pressure to prevent unauthorized jumps was enormous.  His brain rarely shut off as he studied each person who worked with the machines, having to assume each one was capable of defection.  But the terminations weighed heavy on his conscience.  Knowing that each termination saved over 13 billion lives did little to quell the guilt.

He thought about suicide every day.  The card forced him to.  But in all the years with the TTP, he never really considered it.  Depressed as he was, one thing motivated him.  He wanted to prove the Machine of Death wrong.

His phone rang, which is to say the device implanted in his ear sounded an alarm.

“Unauthorized jump.  Repeat, unauthorized jump.”

Dave was already heading for the door.

“Who is it?” Dave asked.

“Igor Khitrovo.”

“How far back?”

“Two days, sir.”

“Two days?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dave opened the door to the lab.  Due to the time sensitive nature of his work, living right next to the time machine was a forgone conclusion.  At least they had given him soundproof walls.

He found the director, who handed him his pistol–he refused to keep it in his home–as they walked to the machine.  “Any ideas?” Dave asked.

“None, sir.”

“What did his card, say?”

The director handed him a copy.  OLD AGE is all it said.

“That’s odd,” said Dave as he stepped into the machine.

“Agreed,” replied the director.  “It’s imperative that you bring him back alive.”

“But only one person can come back at a time.”

“New development.  It should work.”  The director attached the armband.

“Since when?”

“Since now.  Do it.”

The director turned around and nodded to the two scientists at the controls.  Dave closed his eyes.  It was easier that way.  He felt a mild electrical pulse run through his toes, heard the usual popping noise, then opened his eyes again.  He recognized his location from the personnel files.  It was Igor’s home.

Most perps traveled to a desolate location, hoping to avoid being noticed or leaving a trail for Dave to follow.  The scientists theorized that short jumps in time had less time variance.  The typical variance was twelve to sixteen hours, but a jump this short would likely have a variance of twenty to thirty seconds.  Perhaps that’s why Igor didn’t bother to cover his tracks.  He was standing just two feet away, leaning against the kitchen sink.

“Hey Dave,” he said casually.

Dave drew his gun.

“I know you won’t kill me.  You’ve seen my card.”

“I have orders to bring you back alive.  You’ll die in a prison cell I’m guessing.”

“Can I say something first?”

Dave stared at him, unflinching.

Igor sighed.  “Will you put that thing down?  You and I both know you’re not going to use it.”

Dave obliged.

“My wife and daughter are upstairs, sleeping.”  Igor approached Dave, obviously not concerned about him.  “In about two hours, they’re going to wake up.  Then they’re going to come down here to eat breakfast.  Marta will have coffee and a bagel with cream cheese and lox.  Yuliya will have waffles, sausage, and orange juice.  They’ll turn on the radio to a station that still plays songs from the fucking Beatles. “

Igor took a breath.  He seemed on the verge of crying or yelling; Dave wasn’t sure.

“And before breakfast is over, a man dressed as a priest will ring the doorbell and force his way in.  He’ll tie my wife to a chair, and make her watch as he rapes my daughter.  He’ll cut them up, hearing them scream in agony as they slowly bleed to death.”

Dave reached back, found a chair, and sat.

“I know you have a job, but I beg you to let me stop this.  Please!”  Igor wept.  “Even if it changes things, it will just be the next two days.  Nobody will know the difference except you.  We can stop this fucker and go back together.”

Dave shook his head.  “I’m sorry, Igor.  I can’t make judgments.”  Dave took a deep breath, but still felt he was suffocating.  “We don’t know what changing the past will do.  Killing this guy could have irrevocable repercussions that you and I can’t begin to imagine.  And if we don’t kill him, he might go next door and do the same thing.  Dammit, I’m sorry.  But you know I can’t let you do this.”

Igor’s body went limp as he lowered himself to the floor.

Dave approached and knelt beside him.  He grabbed Igor’s shoulder and leaned in.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, as he reached for the armband with his free hand.  He heard a loud pop.  Before he could turn around, he felt a pistol jam up against his neck.

“I’m sorry, too,” said the voice behind him.

Dave Nguyen recognized the voice.  It was his own.   In the second before the bullet scrambled his brain, his depression lifted.

Spooky: Oh, hot damn. Dave did the right thing. God help me, I didn’t see this ending coming, although given the circumstances, I possibly should have. In a week full of incredible concepts, this one still stands out.

DK: Another really cool idea, and Dave is another great, sharply drawn character here. I have to admit I didn’t fully understand what was meant to have happened to bring Dave into position to kill “himself”, but regardless, the time travel aspect fits together well with the premise of this challenge.

I had other ideas, including a minister bringing an MoD to prisoners on death row, and also a person that was the Machine of Death.  While none of my concepts were drawn out, it appears John and Brooks had somewhat similar thoughts.

I actually settled on the title of this story before the concept.  Then time travel.  Then I felt Dave might kill himself because he was forced to do things that were for the greater good but made his heart break.  But it wasn’t until I was halfway through the story that I had the idea of him having to back in time to kill himself, to save himself from allowing Igor’s family to die.  Of all the time travel stories I’ve seen, I’m not sure someone’s done that.  I would love to see it visually, too.  Dave shoots himself, and they both disappear immediately.

One mistake wasn’t caught by the judges.  I said Dave had to get a death card as part of the hiring process for his job, yet I already established he had been lead investigator of the TTP before the Machine of Death was found.  Whoops.

I didn’t win immunity, but the winner was very deserving.  This competition has made me a stronger writer, and a good deal of that is being able to watch other great writers do their work.