Driving home from work that evening was just like a chore he'd repeated over and over. His head was aching from the paperwork writings that had burned into his eyes, and his left hand was ramped from all the signatures he had to write off. Going home wasn't exactly going to ease his nerves-
Well, not until he dove into the refrigerator that is.
The road came and went under the tires of his white-and-red F-150 as he sped by. The speed limit was forty on this road, but Quentin was going well over sixty. Just so long as he could pop open a few beers and sit in his chair and watch his television, which hopefully contained anything interesting, he was alright. Today just felt very confining.

Pulling into his driveway, Quentin felt a sense of uneasiness. His house, his very own home, was a malignant place filled with malicious memories that clawed at his very being on a daily basis. He couldn't stand being in the place, but he had no place else to go. The memories of his ex-wife were pent up in this house, and drew on his despair, driving feelings of guilt and lonesomeness into his heart like hammers to a nail.
Slowly, he pulled the small metal handle of the door and gently pushed it open, grabbing the keys from the ignition as he began to exit the vehicle. As he stepped out, he allowed his left foot to hit the ground first, pausing with his right leg bent still inside the truck. He took a momentary look at his house: a humble two storied structure that jutted out of the atmosphere like a boulder in the ground. His ex-wife wanted it painted a faded yellow, so it was. The porch, however, had white railings and redwood floorboards by his design. He remembered how much they bickered over such trivialities that it sometimes made him smile, if only briefly. He sighed a very heavy breath and clambered the rest of the way out of his truck, shutting the door behind him.

Inside, he flopped down in his easy-chair, an old grey-colored piece of furniture that always served as a relaxing companion after his long-fought days at the Sheriff's Department. He had already turned on his TV, a small black box with black-and white picture. He decided on watching The Andy Griffith Show, as he really couldn't find much else.

Reclined in his chair with a cold Budweiser in his hand (his ninth at this point), Quentin began to doze off. His shows had all aired and were done with for the night, so he set his beer down next to his chair and let his drunken sleep encase him like a dark blanket.

Sophia sat on her bed, criss-cross applesauce as her teacher always said. Her blue eyes were fixed on the tree that could be seen from the single window of her room on the second floor of the house. The tree cast a dark shadow on her light blue bedroom walls, as well as her small frame. She wasn't sure why she was looking out the window when it was so late, much too late for a child her age. She should have fallen asleep a long time ago, but Tara wouldn't let her. Tara said stay awake, so Sophia did.

And now she was staring out her window. Why wouldn't Tara let her play with her dolls? Sophia would much rather be up late and playing games than wasting her time. It wasn't as though she spoke aloud when she played either. No, that's what Tara was for. The two girls could reply to each other whenever they wanted. But Tara used big words she did not understand. She also seemed to like killing Sophia's doll's character, causing the ten year old to have a fit.

Straightened her legs, the young blonde slid off of her bed and opened the door to her room. Much too late, much too late, she thought as she walked silently down the hall. Her parents were surely asleep and as if to prove it, her father's snoring could be heard as she passed by their room. She didn't understand how her mother could sleep next to him.

Wandering down the steps and out the front door, Sophia sat down on the small porch. The door was still open, letting the cool spring air drift into the home. It felt good out here, all alone in the dark. The breeze felt nice, as the summer days were approaching and then the heat would rise to an almost unbearable level.

Suddenly, an image flashed in her mind. It was a picture of Tara, who looked almost identical to Sophia herself. The seven year old had wavy blonde hair, longer than hers, but very similar. She was in a black and red plaid dress, though it looked nearly colorless. The picture in her mind was faded, but Tara's small lips were obviously in a frown. As quickly as the image had came, it left her, leaving Sophia to wonder what happened to Tara. She never got answers from the spirit girl, which highly annoyed her. It was all Tara's fault that Sophia had to go to that doctor. All her fault, all her fault.

As the satisfying crunch of a few ounces of cartilage ceasing to exist rang out across the nearly empty pool hall Thomas stood back for a moment to admire his handiwork. The mans nose was completely smashed giving his face a broad almost flattened look. After checking his pulse Thomas pulled him upward and shouted

"Not bad fer a choubby guy eh?"

As he chuckled he released his hold on the poor slobs shirt and gently sidestepped as the man slumped to the floor. Eyeing the waitress the man had previously been accosting Thomas gave her a rakish nod and smiled as she whispered a hurried thanks before descending back into the miasma of cigarette smoke, beer fumes and broken dreams that made up the atmosphere of Jim's Bar and Billiards. Locating the mans drink and swiftly downing the remainder of it's contents Thomas stood belched and tossed a few dollars on the bar. Turning Thomas stooped and picked up his battered newsboy cap, gazing at it fondly he lovingly smoothed it of wrinkles before mashing it down onto his stubbed scalp.

"Yah have yerself a goud one eh Jim? See yah next froiday."

As he made his way toward the parking lot he decided tonight would not be the night to drive home. After fruitlessly stabbing his Buick's keyhole and adding a few more keymarks to an impressive growing collection he finally managed to unlock his backseat and climbed in. While cramming his not inconsiderable bulk into the back Thomas reflected on the days precedings and shuddered at the prospect of having to work in the near future. After a while he drifted into an uneasy sleep armed with the knowledge that many other detectives ended they're day's like him. The foreboding dread of the Sheriff's department and the hangover he'd suffer in the morning ment nothing now that he was confident someone else would share the pain.

Waking in the dead of night, Quentin felt a sharp pain in his ears. At least, it was something like pain: There was a loud noise blaring into his right ear. He looked around the room, in vain trying to locate the source of the inconvenience. Suddenly, he realized it was his telephone ringing, and he gathered himself up and reached out for it.

"Y-ellow?" Quentin said with his southern drawl emanating from his lips. On the other end there was nothing but silence. Cold, dead silence. He put the phone down and sat in the almost dark for a while as he watched the lights of the TV flood the shadowy room. He then lowered the footrest of his recliner and strode heavily to his television, turning the device off. He then stumbled around in the dark until he found the stairs leading to the second story, to his bedroom.

Slowly, almost laboriously, he clomped up the dozen set of stairs, one at a time until he finally managed to reach the top. From there he turned left and headed down the hallway, took the second door on the right and found himself in his bathroom. Cutting on the lights, he had to shield his eyes for a brief but torturous minute. The room was plain white, with a yellow porcelain tub, sink and toilet. The floors were wooden and creaked to high heaven when someone walked on them, as Quentin did now. He walked over to the toilet to take a leak, a very relieving sixty seconds of his life. After completing his ritual of relief, he stood in front of the mirror over his sink, a rather large square of glass that reflected the wall behind him.

Staring at himself, most notably the scar, he began to ponder. He thought about his early life, his marriage, his divorce, and finally where he was now. The aching memories of the various arson cases, particularly the one that caused his facial scarring, made him feel rather furious. He kept drumming it into his head that he was hopeless, never going to be loved again, that everything he knows is either dead or a lie. He thought about Reggie Mort, that smooth-talking gambler who ran off with his ex-wife. I'll never forgive that sum bitch, Quentin thought, That. . . that damn traitor!

All of a sudden, he found himself in a rage, he gripped the sink with a killing choke hold of fingers, and suddenly found his fist colliding with the mirror, cracking and splintering the beautiful glass and smearing blood all over its shattered face. Quentin looked at the knuckles of his right hand, washed it off, and began removing his shirt. He wrapped the piece of clothing around his hand tightly so as to stop the bleeding. Turning off the lights, Quentin headed into the lonely bedroom and hit the bed like a stone, not even bothering to take in the scenery. He just gated the tears behind his eyelids and drifted off to sleep, his breath fluctuating in and out like a steady beat.

Sophia stood and hopped off of the white, wooden porch, landing on the grass. She spun in a circle and looked up at the moon and he thousands of stars surrounding it. Each of them was a little dot, something small in an entire universe. The moon only looked big because it was close to Earth, she knew that. When she was younger, Sophia believed that the moon always followed her around, like a guardian angel. This silly belief was shattered when they'd studied space briefly this year in fourth grade.

Fourth grade? That couldn't be right. It seemed as though just yesterday she'd hopped out onto the side walk at the local elementary school, scared and wanting to hide. She hadn't made any friends on the first day, the food was odd, and the teacher was young but too happy. Sophia never liked overly happy people. All she had wanted at that point was her mother of father.

Shaking the thought from her head, her eyes began to widen as she realized what she was doing. As he thoughts had consumed her, Tara seemed to have directed her down the street a few blocks. The public pool sat beyond a fence where the ten year old now stood. She gasped, looking at the empty pool. It wasn't time for it to be filled, was it? Sophia couldn't remember the days anymore, only the seasons and months.

Gripping the chain-link fence, the little girl peered in at the pool. She wasn't sure if it would even open this year, since that was where the body was found. Oh, the horrible body, bloody and bound with rope, eyes open, staring into the nothingness of death. How could somebody have done that to the man? His wrists tied behind his back, his hair half shaved off. His clothes, a shirt that had once been white was stained red. And his dark pants and shoes die not fare much better than the rest of the unfortunate John Caiman.

She could picture the body laying there in the pool, where it had been pushed in after he'd been bound and gagged, shot and stabbed. It was a horrible sight, one that had been burned into her mind. She was scared of pools now, not because of drowning, but because of this.

Sophia Davenport was starting to sweat despite the temperature and screamed loudly, shaking the fence with considerable strength. Her long night gown prevented her from climbing over the fence, stopping what had happened. "No! No!" she screamed in a horrified voice, sounding much older than she should have. Shaking uncontrollably and sobbing, she turned around and began to run home.

She was stopped halfway though, by an elderly woman who asked if she'd heard a banshee screaming. The blonde shook her head. "I didn't hear anything. Maybe it was just a homeless woman being raped. You know how it is these days, no good, only evil. It was a shame John died right?" she looked up, her blue eyes taking in the shock etched on the woman's face. Ten year olds typically didn't know what rape was, but Sophia did. She knew so much she shouldn't have.

Skipping away happily, she retreated to her home and closed the front door behind her. Well, slammed it really and walked upstairs. Her father emerged, weary from being woken up at one or two in the morning. "Sophia!" he whispered. "You need to go to bed. It isn't safe going outside at night." He was scolding her, oh why was he scolding the poor girl? Holding back tears, she fled to her room and locked the door.

Lying down on her bed and curling herself into a ball, she closed her eyes. "I don't wanna see him! I don't wanna see him!" she screamed repeatedly as her dad tried desperately to unlock the door. By the time he did though, Sophia had calmed down and lay perfectly still on her bed. She wasn't even under the sheets, just resting on top of the covers. The only way to tell she was alive was by her small chest going up and down.