The Investigator

Originally posted February 18, 2009.

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It was another rainy night in Roswell. It�d been a long day and everything around me seemed to be in a dank and dismal state, with colors turning into grayscale before my very eyes. I sat at my desk, the sound of the ceiling fan whirring above me and the plinking of precipitation hitting the roof above that. As I slouch in my chair I tilt my fedora back on my head and contemplate what my next action should be. I ultimately decide that a drink would be appropriate for such an occasion and am then forced to think about whether whiskey or coffee would be more suited to pulling me out of my lackluster. As my mind wonders onto tangents regarding the consequences and benefits of mixing stimulants and relaxants, there is a soft knock at my office door. I pull out my pocket watch; �10:23 pm,� long past visiting hours by anyone�s calculations yet I remain here in my chair none the less. I should go home and sleep�yet that would require me to walk through the rain, I hate it when my socks get wet� My mental wonderings are again interrupted by a knock at the door, this time a little quicker, just a slight bit louder and with more desperation behind it. Curiosity fills my imagination and begins to overpower my tightly grasped desire to be left alone. Realizing that I had left a light on and the blinds on my window open, I decide that my visage was easily visible from the street below and I would not be able to hide in pretending I was not in. �Enter� I say with a slight rasp clothing the edges of the lonesome syllables. With a slow and arduous creak my office door swings open�I need to lubricate those hinges to prevent further auditory torture in the future, but I know as long as it�s on my time it will never be done.

My attention is then focused on my guest, a slender figure hidden beneath an overcoat dripping with rainwater. Turning back toward me after closing the door, the visitor confirmed my suspicions as her face shone in the light of my desk lamp, yes, she is a woman. My stomach churned inside me as she removed her hat and made plain the fact that she was indeed a girl of unquestionable beauty�the very thing I had been dreading. While most would consider this good fortune or at the very least a bonus to brighten my previous state of being, not I, for I know the implications of the situation. I had already played it over in my head�she would take a seat and begin telling me all about how the mob was after her and that she�s pretty sure they murdered her husband though she has no evidence. She�ll say she has no money and will eventually shed a few tears all with the hope that I will pity her and become her pro bono private investigator. Despite the fact that I know all this will happen I also know that there is no way I will be able to resist her. I will end up nearly getting myself killed, might lose my license and will then have the mob after me, all this just to be a hero for a beautiful girl. When it�s all over I�ll get a kiss on the cheek and she�ll say �you�re a great fella,� she�ll turn around and I�ll never see her again.

So there I sit, staring into her sparkling, frightened eyes, I can see the path that�s before me and I know it is the road I will take despite the less than favorable outcome. Playing along with what I already know she�s going to say, I offer her a chair. But then something happens that shakes up my entire decision making paradigm. Rather than taking a seat and telling me about all of her misfortunes and how she�s at the end of her rope, she walks around my desk, puts her hand on my shoulder and whispers in a low, mellow tone: �All your base are belong to us.� At that moment I hear the bang of the gun firing but do not feel the resulting pain until several seconds later. The last thing I remember was me lying on the floor looking under my desk toward the door. I watched as the woman walked through the door and the skin of her ankles changed to a scaly green color, then everything faded to blackness. �July 7, 1947