raised by wolves

Speaking of my partner, I almost lose the bead on Dorsey’s forehead when I hear a low, pathetic gurgling, like the sound of someone desperately trying to breathe through the river of blood that works it’s way up your esophagus when most of your insides have been turned to table scraps. It’s my partner. Here I was thinking we wouldn’t get out of this.

My partner’s name is Dorian Montagne. He’s been working with me in the homicide division for the better part of fifteen years. In the time that I’ve known him, he’s gone through four wives, had eight kids, broken his back, both arms, both legs, developed and beat a five-thousand-dollar-a-week cocaine habit. He’s a vegetarian and he’s built like the most vicious sumo wrestler you’ve ever met. Forty three years old. Caucasian. A good fucking cop. It took almost every ounce of will power not to burn this place down when I heard the shot that took him out. I would gladly do the time for everyone left in this building if it would mean taking the lead out of his lungs. I have got to focus.

“Ha!” Dorsey gurgles and spits. “Still kicking, huh, Montagne?” he hollers over my shoulder, but it sounds more like “Sha! Shificking, guh, Mangang?” and the spittle dripping down his cheek mixing with the fluid leaking from his eye forms a big drippy ball that falls onto the collar of his dirty work jacket.

“Shut the fuck up, Dorsey, and drop your god damn gun.”

“You’d like that wouldn’t you, piece of shit cop,” he gurgles, but it sounds more like “Goudike ghatwoodinshou, feesashickop,”

I can’t take much more of this mutant talking. My finger itches. Really, seriously itches. It’s the way I know that it’s time to get some killing done. It feels like there are termites with razorblades stabbing away at my trigger finger, like a team of rabid lumberjacks let loose in a forest of flesh. I want to kill this motherfucker so badly, but before we arrived Montagne made me promise to be professional about it, to do things by the book.

Looking back on things now, I could really kick myself for agreeing.