I woke up to the sound of my phone singing "Howlin' For You." My eyes still blurry, possibly from a night of staving off sleep with a suicidal round of YouTube Roulette and cocaine, I threw my arm onto the night stand to shut the damn thing off. I had a hangover like you wouldn't believe, like, a whole-bottle-of-Jameson-and-sixteen-rolled-tacos hangover, man. Since the damn thing had failed to cease making my brain want to burst out of my eye sockets, like two geysers of red and chunky manifested hate, my first coherent thought upon waking was to chuck that fucking phone across the room. That is, until, I had seen the caller ID. It was James Maddox, the scruffy and rule-breaking new Detective, who was making my phone howl at, wh-what time is it? Four AM? Oh this better be fucking good.
"Maddox! What the dog-dammit are you calling me this early for? You know I don't do shit until at least noon."
"Can it, McCarthy," James dryly stated, "we have a situation down at the Westley 8, down on seventh and central."
"I know where it is, I'll be there in twenty. Oh, and Maddox?"
"Yeah, McCarthy?"
"Are you fucking serious? 4 AM?!"
I arrived on the scene to find a score of police officers and cruisers, lights glaring and cutting into the still darkness. Men and women in uniform, rushing about and sectioning off the immediate area with that yellow "caution" tape, or plastic, or - what is that stuff, exactly?
"Blood, and a shit-ton of it, McCarthy. I thought by now a seasoned professional, like yourself, would know what it looks like."
"Shit, have I been talking aloud this whole time?" I wondered to myself ... Wait, or did I say it?
"Can it, Maddox. Tell me whats going on here, what is the situation?"
"We've got about twenty five people dead, some of whom made it out onto the sidewalk or street before they died. As you can see, the ones who did make it outside for help were dragging themselves. But it's like they had no will to live beyond that point, we have no survivors in this one. Even the pimply-faced ticket guy is dead."
"Well, shit. Lets go take a look, shall we?"
Passing under the police tape/wrap/magically enchanted rope, I passed into my element. Outside of this environment I was a train wreck, a mess. But in here I was something better, more complete: like John Wayne, or Obi Wan Kenobi, or Samuel L Jackson.
Perfection.
Looking down at one the mangled victims, I noticed something in he had in common with everyone else that had been in theater six earlier that evening. Bending down to get a close look at his hand, I saw that he had been gripping a movie ticket. After slipping on a pair of those awesome white crime scene gloves, as to not defile the evidence, I went to prying it loose. It felt like trying to get a huge ass explosion out of a Michael Bay flick, but I got it eventually.
"Maddox! Get one of the boys from the lab on this, we need it analyzed as soon as possible."
"It's a ticket for a showing of Avatar: The Last Airbender, McCarthy. Jesus, are you still drunk?"
"Irrelevant. O-K, so we know they all went to see Avatar. What the hell happened in there? I don't see any bullet holes, stab wounds, nothing. Maddox, what do you think?"
"I've got fuck-all as well. This shit just doesn't make any sense to me."
"Oh shit, Maddox, look at this guys hands."
I motioned to one of the victims hands covered in what looked like expired raspberry jam, oh wait yeah it's blood, but it was chunkier than usual. It looked like he had ripped open his own face, like in that fucking awesome Poltergeist movie.
I had to. Seriously, it's fucking awesome.
Another victim was, by all appearances, strangling themselves. Some strange and crazy shit was afoot, and Maddox and I had to get to the bottom of it.
"Maddox, I don't think these people were murdered. They all appear to be committing some type of horrific ritualistic suicide."
"But what the hell would make them all do ... "
It appeared Maddox and I had the same idea popping into our heads. To test this theory out, we had to sit down and watch M Night Shyamalans' Avatar. It was a bold and risky move on our part, but we couldn't let this case beat us. Not with all of these poor, innocent deaths tallying up in our case files. So Maddox and I strolled into the Westley 8, grabbed us a bucket-O-popcorn and some of that blue Powerade stuff, and got ready to meet our maker.
"That mother fucker Shyamalan did it!" I said, storming out of the movie theater. "Maddox, get an APB out on this guy, NOW."
"Sure, McCarthy. What are you going to do?"
"I'm gonna find out what the hell's going on, Maddox. That's what I'm gonna do."
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