The Tale of One-Eyed Jack

Jack Corrigan was a cop with an eye for detail. He had a knack for spotting clues at crime scenes that others missed that was uncanny. Some of his colleagues swore he was psychic but he had no room in his worldview for magic and mumbo-jumbo, insisting it was just attention to detail and sharp eyes that let him notice things that lead to crimes being solved. Either way, everyone knew the young cop was on his way to becoming a detective in record time. Then, the one time he could not use those eagle eyes at a crime scene, he took a bullet to the head and everything changed…

It was a bad night to be a cop, what with a heat wave in October then a full moon on Halloween. Hollywood was never “normal”, but that night was weird even for Tinseltown. When Jack Corrigan and his partner Frank Gandolfini got a call just before midnight that naked people were riding horses and dancing in an alleyway off Vine Street, Jack knew it was going to be a long night.

Arriving at the scene, the officers could hear singing and what sounded like horses and dogs but found the alley socked in with a dense fog that defied the dry heat of the city and block visibility. Gandolfini muttered “Great, loonies with a fog machine…” as he called for backup and slowly stepped into the soft vapour. The fog was cool and had a scent that reminded Corrigan of heather growing wild on the side of the road in the English countryside where he had spent summers as a kid. Ethereal music seemed to come from all directions and an unseen figure laughed near him. He spun around but could not find the source. A hand tugged at his uniform and poked at him. Another tickled him. He growled “LAPD! Stop the music, this party is over!” But all he got was raucous laughing as a reply. He called out “Frank!” but got no response. Searching the fog Corrigan called out again to his partner to no avail. Trying to call for backup he heard nothing over his radio but the same music and laughter that echoed through the alley. He tried to retrace his steps but realised he could not even find a wall to guide him on his way out. Stranger still, Corrigan realised he was no longer on concrete, but felt thick, soft grass and loam under his feet.

Suddenly the music and laughter stopped. Corrigan heard a scream then shouting in a strange language followed by gunshots. He hit the ground to avoid being shot and heard the clashing of what could only be swords. He screamed into his radio for backup but got no response. A huge dog ran into him and tore the leg of his pants before scampering off. He fired a shot into the air. “LAPD! Everyone freeze!” he screamed, but the fighting continued unabated.

Out of the swirling mist he caught sight of fleeing figures rushing past him and leapt to grab at the nearest one. The soft white arm belonged to a woman with scarlet hair, her nude body barely visible in the fog. A shot rang out and struck her in the shoulder. Corrigan whirled and to return fire and shot at the same time as the unseen gunman in the fog. The two bullets collided in mid air, shattering. A piece of the other gunman’s bullet lodged in Corrigan’s eye. The pain was overwhelming. As Corrigan lost consciousness, the last thing he saw was the green face and pointed ears of a figure holding a gun moving towards him, baring a mouth full of bloody fangs…

Corrigan woke up in a hospital with a bandage over his eye and his partner Frank Gandolfini sleeping in a chair next to his bed. “Frank, what happened?” he groaned. Frank slowly woke up and said “Hey buddy, you made it through the surgery, you have been out for days…” Corrigan felt his bandages and remembered the terrible pain in his eye. “Yeah, you lost an eye. They found us in the alley passed out cold. I can’t remember shit. They pulled a piece of flint out of your eye. What was that about? Near as anyone can figure out, someone had an out of control smoke machine and some kind of sleep gas. They were gone by the time backup came.” Corrigan started to tell his partner about the naked girl and the green face with the fangs and the weird music then thought better of it. “Any witnesses?” he asked instead. Gandolfini just shook his head, “Just the drunk who called it in. Says he people were riding horses and dancing naked when he looked down into the alley from his fifth floor window. Apparently a naked woman on a broom also flew past his window and waved at him…” He rolled his eyes and sighed.

A nurse came in as they sat wondering what they hell had really happened. “Hi! I’m Lola. I need to change your bandages. How are you feeling?” she said happily. Neither cop said anything. She carefully pulled away the bandages and gauze from Corrigan’s eye socket. Cool air touched the inside, making him shiver. He looked up at the nurse and saw blood dripping down her face. Startled, he blurted out “You’re bleeding!” Putting a gauze pad over his eye, Lola looked down at her scrubs and saw nothing. “Huh?” she said. He looked again and saw nothing. “Um. Sorry, never mind…” he muttered.

Soon enough it was time for Corrigan to check out of the hospital. His doctor told him anything he saw through the empty socket was likely just a distorted memory, like phantom pain, and yet…

He stood by his hospital window and looked down into the staff parking lot. He spotted Nurse Lola unlocking her convertible. On a whim, he lifted his black eye-patch, which had replaced his bandages, and closed his good eye. Through a field of darkness he saw Lola, her face splattered with blood and the front of her Porsche streaked with gore. “She killed someone…” he thought to himself. “She ran someone over and kept driving.” He shivered and lowered his eye-patch. The image disappeared. She started her car. He looked through his good eye and made a note of her license plate number. One-eyed and crazy or not, he was still a cop. Looking closer, he saw her hood was dented, a headlight was broken, and her windshield was cracked. A hit and run could have caused all of that. “Christ, Corrigan, you are the one cracked, you’re making up mysteries to solve…” he muttered to himself as he gathered his things and left to take a cab home.

A week went by. Corrigan was on desk duty, he still had trouble driving with one eye. He did not want to think about staring at traffic through his empty socket, so at the end of his shift he took a cab to the alley where he had been shot. There was no grass, no heather, no fog, just concrete, trash, and graffiti. Tentatively, he lifted his eye-patch…