Episode 5- in the cleansing rain

Well, some generators don't give you much. Others give you a lot. This one gave me more than I was hoping for, but we'll see what I can do with...

...All of this. Today's character and plot generators came from https://www.rangen.co.uk/writing/.

Alright, Ridge Garrison— if that is, in fact, your name— let's see what I can do with you.

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Quarter million people in the wild city, and this one had had the poor graces to die by the dumpster behind Molson’s Pub, squarely within Ridge’s juris-damn-diction. The corpse lay sprawled out like a beach vacationer with too little regard for skin cancer, though the driving rain that flooded the alleyway and washed away her blood and exposed grey matter had drowned any idea of a sunny day. Water ran down her ashen face, dripped off the petals of the single red rose she clutched, soaked her pink miniskirted waitress uniform. It was bad weather to die in.

Ridge Garrison let out a blue-smoke sigh. The exhaust from his cigarette pooled under the shelter of his umbrella, a swirling pall of heavy air surrounding his head and as if the smoke, too, knew it was a bad night to be outdoors. Copper hair spilled out from under his gunmetal gray pork pie hat, collecting into a sodden braid that laid against his long raincoat and draped to halfway down his five-foot-three-inch frame.

“Thanks for calling, Dan,” he said in his ten-year-old’s voice, flicking the coffin nail into the gutter from thumb and forefinger. Like he’d need to worry about the things killing him. “What’ve we got?”

Standing over the body was a pudgy officer in a dark rain poncho, badge pinned ludicrously to the nylon. The downpour ran in sheets off the ridge of his hat, the blocky silver numbers 7 3 2 hanging onto the uniform cap like survivors in a shipwreck.

“Looked like bad luck at first, Ridge,” said the man, Officer Dan Carlson. “Neighbors’ve been working on re-tarring their roof, one of the cans must’ve blown down in the storm at just the wrong moment.”

Carlson pointed, and Ridge followed. A metal paint can lay a few feet away, dented, its label split and threatening to sail away in the runoff. Ridge stepped over and stooped, using the eraser end of his pencil to flip the label back up. Bratton’s wet patch roof cement. Ridge grunted.

“Freak accident. Why’d you drag my ass out of bed?”

“She was carrying this,” Carlson said, and tossed something small and dark in Ridge’s direction.

Ridge didn’t look up to catch it. The flutter of the object, the sound of displaced rain, the rain’s reflected shadow of the tiny interruption in the light of the streetlamp at the mouth of the alley. These were enough to tell Ridge’s hand where to go. He seized the wallet case out of the air and turned to regard it in his hand.

Thin, not quite flat, black leather bifold. Bit of heft to it, like it held a brass medallion. Or badge. He had one just like it in his coat pocket right now.

“Don’t recognize her,” he said, studying the shield and statement of authority in the bottom flap, the picture, coat-of-arms and the three big blue letters in the top. “She might be downtown gang that I haven’t met before.” Un-fucking-likely, he thought. The badge identified her as Special Agent Paulette Winters. He knew Winters. This wasn’t her.

“Whatever,” said Carlson, turning back toward the mouth of the alley where his squad car waited, painting the glistening sidewalks and sodden bricks red and blue. “If she’s a fed, she’s your problem. If she’s pretending to be one, same deal. You didn’t see me.”

Ridge grunted, Carlson already gone from his awareness like a bad dream. What the hell was he supposed to do with a nasty head wound laying dead in an alley? This was the sort of thing real agents investigated, not immortal freak kids like him. Staring into the dead woman’s eyes, he suddenly felt small, the shadow of the terrified child he had once been clamoring into his mind.

He had lain just like that, once.

Bleeding, screaming, dying on the marble floor of the downtown FBI lobby.

A ten-year-old on the morning of his Change, forty years ago.

He shoved the memory aside and forced himself to evaluate the scene, but his gaze was interrupted by Vanessa’s lithe form, striding toward him from deeper down the alley. How she’d gotten there, he had no idea. He hadn’t heard her.

The rain seemed to bend around her in deference to her beauty, the smooth silk of her black hair, the warmth of her wine-stained lips. The fur that lined her wide-necked coat was dry and puffed, her side-slitted dress perfectly emphasizing long, glorious legs that strode on glittering, jewel-crusted pumps with the confidence of a runway model, unfazed by the pitted pavement of the alley that glided beneath her. Even her cigarette, a uniformly white stick on a short-stemmed holder, was dry, smoldering between the fingers of her left hand.

“Yours, darling?”, she asked with a subtle smile.

“Funny,” he said. “Jane Doe with a head wound. Wrong place at the wrong time, except she was carrying this.” He flashed Agent Winters’s badge at her.

Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “One of you?”

He shook his head. She leaned closer, studying the federal ID.

“Winters. Wasn’t she getting close to some big break?”

“You think this could be related?”, asked Ridge. “Witness she was protecting or something?”

Vanessa shrugged, the motion poetic between her slim, mink-adorned shoulders. “What do I care? Do you need to feed?” She reached out, tracing a finger up the arm of Ridge’s coat as she slunk behind him. He did his best to ignore her, but her next words came hot on the back of his neck, and he couldn’t suppress a tiny shudder. “You’re still a little short to be playing a grown-up, darling. Shall I take an inch from her?”

Her hand slithered in front of his face, one slender digit extended, fingernail warping and elongating, scalpel-sharp and cruel. He shook his head. “Not today, Nessa. If she’s connected to an ongoing case, there’ll be too much scrutiny. Even you aren’t that good.”

He heard her pout, felt her draw away from him. When she faded out of the alley again, he knew he was alone, and he sighed. He was hungry, and he wouldn’t mind stealing a little more adulthood from some unfortunate tramp.

But not this unfortunate tramp.

He lit a cigarette, turning toward the mouth of the alley. There was a pay phone a couple storefronts down, where he could call this in. He walked, raincoat flaring around his shins, umbrella letting off rain around his shoulders in big, constant drips, smoke curling around his head to dissipate into another bad night’s air.

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THAT WAS COOL! Turns out, writing Noir is really fun. I like this character, I'm sticking him in my Writing Ideas document. What's his whole supernatural deal, you might ask? I know what it is, but I'm not gonna tell you, neener neener neener.

We might learn more if he shows up again.

Until then!

Oh! Wait!

No story tomorrow. Real-life stuff getting in the way of my morning. I'll be back Wednesday.

Okay, Bye!