Falling Behind The Changing Times

Don’t you hate it when you sit in your favourite bar and just want a drink and some quiet and someone asks “what’s up?” Fred was just the type to do that to me, and yesterday she followed it up with “Are you still chewing on that self-defence overkill thing from last week?”

“Nah, that’s up to the courts now.” I would rather not have thought about that one again. Imagine you come to a scene with one person with several broken bones, and another calmly waiting for the police, that is, me. There’s way worse, sure, but it’s damn creepy when the person waiting is full of bullet holes. Did they have to fold up a human to suitcase-size, if they don’t mind being shot?

“So what’s new?”

“I’ll quit.” Hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that.

“What?”

“I just can’t take it anymore. There’s those freaks you can’t stop. How do you put handcuffs on a ghost? I saw one shove a person out of a window today. Right in front of me. Couldn’t do a thing.” And it knew exactly what it was doing, giving me a grin and a wave before floating through a wall.

“Shit.”

“Right.”

That at least shut her up for a short while, but she started up again. “Still, most cases are normal crimes, nothing but regular humans.”

“Doesn’t feel like it, lately.”

Fred shrugged. “A blip in the statistics. Don’t rush things.”

I snorted. “If at least there wasn’t that much up in the air with civil rights for those freaks. There’s your problem right there. Call them human rights like you should, and it all becomes easier.”

Fred pulled a face. Her problem, she’d started the conversation.

I picked up my half-empty glass of beer again, and she kept staring at me while I drank, which got on my nerves. “What’s up with you now?”

“Just wondering if it’d make sense for you to join that new unit for supernatural crimes.”

“And handle more of that shit? Are you crazy?”

“They are looking into ways to neutralise, ah, unusual threats, and are bound to be the best informed on the general topic of all of us.”

Put like that it wasn’t that far-fetched. Still disgusting. Fred raised her hands, “Just a thought.”

“I’ll think about it.”

I’m still thinking.

Inspired by the prompt "A cop who keeps encountering preternatural creatures and incidents that make it harder and harder for him to do things "by the book," which he wants to do." by Elizabeth Barette aka ysabetwordsmith.
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