P: What Lies Before

Spencer sat uncomfortably in the chair across from his counselor, his shoulders slightly hunched forward, hands clasped loosely in his lap, as if suffering from a sour stomach. The dark grey suit he wore, muted tie cinched up tight around his neck in a double-Windsor knot, was rumpled in the peculiar way earned only by long hours spent in the driver's seat of a car.

Why did I join? he scoffed at the nosy impertinence of the question, snapping out the response almost before the counselor had finished speaking. Why did I join? he thought to himself, his aquiline features and sharp, almost predatory eyes smoothing from a look of disdain to one of private reflection.

This will be hard for you to understand, seeing as how you're just a desk jockey with a comfortable office and chummy colleagues you can buddy up with at the water cooler, but it's lonely out there he said after a momentary pause, gesturing to the streets outside, invisible behind the curtains of grey office building walls. Lonely and violent, dripping with the pain of others. Cops out there, they gotta be a sponge. A pain sponge. And lady, I was all full. I needed to be wrung out and left to dry, to be allowed to forget, to be absolved of all the things I've seen and done. The church was a way to do that. To help relieve some of that weight and pressure. It was more than that too. It was a way for me to keep helping others while helping myself, you know? All working towards the same thing. Emptiness, he gestured vaguely in the air.

Spencer’s moment of waxing reflective vanished as suddenly as it had come on. Refocusing his eyes to the counselor he snapped, Now what the hell does any of this have to do with my pension?

Scars to be dealt with. Spencer did not like the sound of that ominously phrased statement. It sounded as if they wanted to toss him into a looney bin.

What, twenty-two years of rapes, murders, suicides and abuse cases aren't enough for you? But you know exactly what I'd like to forget, so lets not pretend otherwise. I get it, the LAPD is a big organization and you're a very important person, but it was only in half a dozen newspapers around the city, not to mention all the after-action debriefings at the station.

A high speed car chase on wet roads. A young recruit too hot-blooded and bulletproof to stop and a Field Training Officer too dumb to tell him over the radio to call it off. I don't know how a car catches fire like that, never made any sense to me. Almost seemed like magic. But he burned to death just the same, right there in front of me. Saw him melting like a fuckin' candle and all I could do was sit there and watch, listening to him scream. The door was fused shut, you see? Couldn't even get him out by the window. Turns out those vests, Spencer tapped his chest slowly, measured, forcefully, are good for stopping rounds from handguns, but they're mighty flammable. Thing was fused to his chest along with the seatbelt and the rest of his uniform. That contextual enough for you?

If you face a bull head on you get trampled. That's why those fellas in rodeos jump into barrels to hide, and sister that's all I am, just a rodeo clown. The church is helping me "process" just fine. Wonderfully, in fact.

"Come on, Harry." Amanda replies uncomfortably from the seat across the desk from her editor. "We both know this Emptiness malarkey is a sham to whitewash the sullied reputations of Hollywood's faces. If we can catch Verity Harrow red-handed in the lie of her sudden transformation to sobriety, via the Church of Sunyata, the people will finally have proof its all smoke and mirrors."

Besides, Amanda thinks to herself. If I can bring down that smirking facade of ultra-conservatism the church projects, all the better. Frick'n hypocrites.

"Sur-ah thing, Harry: A Boston Crème." Amanda acknowledges and stretches out a little in her seat. "I'll put that on order as soon as I get back with our story."

"Well, I was lost, like most of us were, just barely making it through the day, then I found a pamphlet for the church. It was not very good let me tell you, I instantly knew I could do better for them in the public relations department. So, I took the pamphlet and decided to go have a talk with the preacher, pastor or holy man about it and a possible job. Little did I know, he was going to save me that day. I did a little pick me up, just a quick snort before going in to talk, you know to give me the energy I thought I needed. It was as if he had been watching me, but it was impossible, I was in my car on the side of the church that there was no windows. I walked in and introduced myself, but he cut me off and told me the church could give me all the energy I needed and that I would never need to snort another line. I looked into his eyes and just knew he was telling me the truth."

"As Soon as I met him I knew, before that I was thinking it just a job, another item on my resume."