The Smiling Man

I wondered if Parrs had suggested my resignation, knowing I couldn’t do it because of what he’d told me the previous day. He’d twisted the knife in my back so often that I could recognize the brand.

The nurse was a sick-looking man with grey, translucent teeth. He sucked them, audibly, as we walked. I wondered if he’d begun working here as a healthy person and then slowly absorbed the aura of madness and death surrounding him. I wondered what I was absorbing in my line of work.

Sutty and I were two different kinds of bad cop. Our being partnered together was a sort of punishment for us both, and we each tried to make things as difficult as possible for the other. It was the only thing we had in common.