All The Tired Horses

Summary: The Jump Street team is on a mysterious case of exploiting a "director" of homemade snuff films in a high school setting… They hadn't thought it'd be so hard of a case, however, they hadn't expected to become the victims.


Chapter Eleven: Blood That Tastes of Lemonade

A few hours earlier…

Like a blood ritual, they set up the camera and painted the victim's sweaty forehead with a large, black crow's feather coated with dark, gooey blood from one of the rotting corpses that framed the windows of the shed. Another woman this time… she looked racially mixed. Probably black and white, as her hair was thick and curly, and strung out in a long, sweeping mess… like a wild bush over her head. Her skin was the shade of wet sand… though it was hard to tell in the dim lighting, and it was hard to see because she was already covered in bluish bruises from the beatings earlier.

The camera crew stood safely behind their large, black recording device and watched as one of their crewmen stood in front of the woman, holding up a knife tauntingly. The woman, however, did not scream… she did not blink, even. Her eyes held a long, vacant stare that seemed to fog up her pupils, making it seem as though she were already dead.

David growled distastefully at this… the lack of reaction causing him to over-react.

"Pull the chains tighter…" He commanded. The crew obeyed and pulled one of the many levers in the torture trap… pulling the woman's limbs forcefully back behind her back. She winced, and blood trickled down her already bruised wrists. The blood pooled beneath her feet as she stood.

Tom watched half-lidded from where he laid on the floor… still dizzy from the stench of the rotting corpses, and still sick from the horror of it. It pained him to see the woman tortured like that… and the resemblance she held of Judy as almost uncanny. Everything… her lips, her eyes… her skin. Tom found himself floating off to someplace else… someplace where he wasn't honestly afraid for his life, where he wasn't depending on his squad of cop cars to come and save his ass like some romantic fairytale.

He didn't see some random woman standing there, being whipped and threatened… no, he saw Judy. The thought stabbed his heart like a thousand knives and he could feel his love for her spewing out like a burst pipe. Tom's face lit up, and the thoughts of Judy relaxed him… He couldn't hear the screams that rang throughout the little shed, and he couldn't even hear the fatal gunshot, he was so wrapped up in his own fantasy.

The blood sprayed across the wood like thick paint, covering the camera lens and the equipment. The smell was god-awful and so thick you could almost taste the salt and iron. David chuckled softly and motioned for the cameraman to speak. The man nodded and he leaned in closely to the camera and whispered softly…

"We wanted to thank you for your little cop… he'll make a real good seller."

After this, the camera was turned off and the body… at least some of it, was scooped off the floor and left for David to play with.

Tom couldn't fathom it. The fascination with dead bodies that David seemed to display… did this man need to go to jail, or to the hospital? It tore Tom apart in thinking… what good would David do in jail other than to kill his cellmates and fuck with their dead bodies? After weakly shaking the thought from his mind, Tom rolled over onto his back and stared blankly at the ceiling… half-hoping for it to come crashing down on him and suffocating him with the weight. To his disappointment, the shed was not that weak. It was there that he fell asleep… next to the wooden crate labeled: 'Roast Beef: Parboiled and Steam Roasted'.

. . .

"This isn't some rebellious high schooler who thinks he's tough enough to kill a few people and get away with it… No… what we're dealing with here is a full-blooded serial killer." Fuller's voice haunted the rest of the room. "He's already taken out Hoffs, and if we don't work fast, he'll take out Hanson." He paused here to take a deep, shaky breath… "You know…"He paused to take in a shaky breath, struggling ever so slightly to keep his calm, collected composure. "… Every time one of my officers gets hurt, I sleep a little less… I drink a little more…"

The room fell silent, save for the telephone ringing outside of the office and the soft chatting that echoed off the walls of the chapel. Fuller pulled his head up from its hung position and he looked at each person individually in the eye. "Don't make me drink myself to death, or go insane with insomnia, guys…"

The group nodded and scattered, not one of them spoke to each other as the led themselves out of the door and began to separate into their own assigned jobs.

. . .

"Don't even try to yell for help, Tommy… we're too far away from any house or any city and this damn forest is so thick no one can track us… or you." David plucked the cigarette butt from his mouth and flung it onto the ground in a small pile of cigarette butts that have been piling at his feet since early that morning… This was Tom's first night sleeping in the stink hole… alive, and David wanted his temporary stay to feel as miserable as he could possibly make it.

At first, Tom did not respond… he just lay on his side on the wooden ground, sniffing and trying to control the tears that slid feeling from his face. David kicked his back… not too hard, but hard enough to make a point. Tom groaned back in response and spoke the only word that came to mind…

"Why…?" Tom whispered.

"Huh? What was that Tommy…? I didn't hear you."

"Why do you do this?"

"Why not?"

"This is sick, Dav-" another kick stopped Tom from speaking. This kick was much harder, causing Tom to curl into a protective fetal position. He could smell the cigarette smoke on David as the young teen leaned down to press his face almost against Tom's…

"Listen here, Babe… You don't ask me questions I don't like. If I don't like the question, I'll beat your scrawny little ass…" David stood tall once more, and he gazed down at the shivered cop… he chuckled a little, and then released a long, hard whole-hearted laugh. "I have no clue what I saw in you, man! No clue!"

Tom groaned a little, and attempted to speak again, regardless of consequences…

"What do you w-want with me…?" Tom paused to breath a little, "Killing a cop would be a high felony… You'd just go to jail. And no one in jail likes a cop killer…" Those last few words died on his tongue as he recalled his memories spent in prison, and he grew a little more frightened to realize that prison felt a lot like it did now, here, with David… if not safer.

"I've already been to jail. It ain't that bad… at least, it won't be as bad for me as it was for you… Fish." David virtually spat the name out, and it stung Tom with commemoration. David smiled wickedly as he noticed the young officer grow quiet and stiff from the recollection. He lit a cigarette and left… leaving Hanson to lie on the floor.

. . .

If there was anyone who was taking it harder than Tom Hanson… it had to be Doug Penhall. The guilt was tearing him to pieces. After all, had he stopped Hanson from leaving his apartment, hell, he may have been able to convince Hanson that he was not ready to go back into the force. Who knows? Hanson would probably still be there, with him… still flopping around on the couch and crunching on potato chips, not worrying about anything.

"… Penhall?" Dennis' voice sounded so close to Doug's ears, yet he could form no sign of response from his body, as he was too deep in thought. "Penhall. We're really gonna need you to focus up here." Doug's head snapped upwards, and he suddenly remembered where he was… and he was very disappointed when he discovered so.

"We're sending in a few squad cars, and we'll have the place surrounded…" Fuller pointed to several tiny dots on his map, which represented different areas and locations that led to where they had found Tom Hanson and their criminal. Doug only stared at it blankly… a dangerous though creeping into his mind, and he began to worry about whether or not Tom was actually still alive. The image of a dead Tom, his eyes drooling from their sockets… blood seeping from his mouth, and bruises scattered across his pale flesh had frightened Doug, and he tried to blow it away as quickly as he could… He couldn't bear to have his friend turned into some twisted documentary. After all… despite the fact that the school was shut down temporarily, this creep continued to send principals and teachers these snuff films. Though he is still yet to kill a student…

"… and Doug, I'm going to have you stay behind." Penhall found that he'd been dozing off again, drowning in his miserable thoughts over his partner. It took a while for Fuller's words to actually process through his brain, however… but when the message did communicate, though, he found himself growing more upset than usual, and it frightened him a little.

"What..? No! You can't go in there without me!" He stood up and threw his palms onto the cherry shaded wood of Fuller's desk in front of him. Both Booker and Harry glanced at Doug… "He is my partner! I'm the one that kicked him out, now I should be the one to go get him back!" As soon as the words rolled off his tongue, he wished he could have sucked them from the air and swallowed them back down. Booker sighed heavily and he, too, stood up and pounded his fist on Fuller's desk.

"Shut the hell up, Penhall. Look, me and Harry feel bad for you, man. We know you were close to Tom and all, but this goddamn moodiness isn't helping him, or anyone!" He chewed on his bottom lip, and continued to send piercing gazes at Doug's unruly visage. "For weeks now, Harry and I have put up with your shit because we felt sorry for you… and now, I can't speak for Harry… but me, I'm not gonna eat your shit anymore, Doug! Now I want to rescue Hanson just as much as you do, but we're going to go in there and do this right!"

The outburst created an awkward silence that rang throughout the small office. Doug took in a sharp breath, having not realized that he had stopped breathing.

"Doug… just sit down." Fuller lifted a hand and gestured towards the chair in front of his desk… but Doug was much too upset to sit back down. This point, he realized he was an emotional wrecking ball not knowing how Tom was doing. The guilt overpowered his judgment, his reaction to time and his environment around him… He closed his eyes, took in a long, deep breath, and left the office without a word to anyone.

Doug wasn't usually one for revenge… but he couldn't live like that… knowing that someone had hurt Tom, his best friend, in such ways unimaginable, and that he had done nothing. Well… if Tom was to die that night, Doug was about to make sure his friend's death would not be in vain.


Author's Note:

I fixed Fuller's character a bit, made him more like himself.

I changed some dialogue and actions.