The Crow

I: the pain

People once believed that, when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.

Devil's Night. October 30th.

He could smell the fires burning from here, the restless blazes taking down nearby buildings only blocks away, as if the fires had come straight from Hell itself. Yet even those seemed to be nothing compared to the scene Sergeant Daryl Albrecht was standing in right now.
He was quickly approaching middle age, his short hair and trimmed mustache a shade darker than his skin, and his form that of a well-exercised man gone slightly to seed. Beneath the dark blues of his police uniform, which made him looked authoritative and relaxed, he was sweating. That perspiration had nothing to do with the hundred-plus fires that were spreading quickly across the inner city, however. Instead, it all had to do with the horrible scene unfolding all around him.

Nervously taking quick drags of his cigarette, he looked down upon the scene unfolding six stories below where he stood, merely an extension of what was going on behind him – a young man dead on the ground as curious bystanders gathered around the man's body, even while paramedics covered the body up before taking it away. Turning back to the loft apartment, Albrecht couldn't help but take everything in here as well. Cops were dusting for fingerprints on whatever they could find among the mess the once-beautiful and spacious apartment now was, more cops starting to cradle a woman, her form and face bloody and bruised and only barely managing to breathe steadily.
Among the flotsam and jetsam of destroyed furniture, Albrecht came across one of the only things that survived relatively unscathed: a wedding invitation on engraved white paper for the two people that had suffered through this horrific scene.

"Hey, Sarge?"
"Yeah", Albrecht answered, turning to the beat cop that had called for him as said cop pointed to a beautiful, ivory wedding dress that cloaked a dressmaker's mannequin. "Shelly Webster and Eric Draven. Their wedding was tomorrow night."
"Who the fuck gets married on Halloween anyhow?"
"Nobody", Albrecht stated regretfully, focusing his attention to the woman – Shelly – as she was being lifted onto a stretcher, an oxygen mask being fitted onto her as two more cops looked on in fear. One of them, a pale young man, looked up at Albrecht to say, "Sir, we've gotta move her."

With a nod, and knowing he'd have to face hell for it later, Albrecht simply stated, "Do it." At his words, the paramedics lifted the stretcher on which Shelly laid and slowly escorted it downstairs to the ambulance.
"Devil's fuckin' Night", Albrecht heard one of the officers mutter. "What's the count so far?"
"143 fires", he answered begrudgingly.
"They're slackin' off from last year."
"Well, only three hours to go; they're probably just slow starters." Even as he said these words, Albrecht knew that it wouldn't take long for the gang responsible for these blazes to make up for their lost time. It seemed everyone in the inner city knew who they were, what they were notorious for.

Tin Tin, for his affinity with knives.
Funboy, from his addictions to sex and drugs.
T-Bird, the main ringleader who always drove the car his nickname came from.
And Skank, T-Bird's friend who looked as though he'd suffered the worst from all the drugs Albrecht was sure he'd gotten into.

As horrible as they were, Albrecht knew that simply dwelling on what they had done would get no one anywhere fast right now. Following the stretcher downstairs and outside, his want to see Shelly be relatively safe became swept to the side when he heard his supervising detective, a perpetually angered rat-faced man in a trenchcoat and suit just out on the street.
"...weren't supposed to move her yet. There are rules for this sort of thing!" Finally the man, Detective Ark Torres, noticed Albrecht standing by the head of the stretcher. "This the victim?"
"No, Detective, it's Amelia Earhart. We found her and you missed it", Albrecht fired back, very much annoyed. Ever since they had first been put together, Torres and Albrecht had not gotten along in any sense – where Albrecht not only wanted to do his job, but live and work by the moral code that came with it, Torres only wanted to do what would turn out best for him, and either refused to see what was past his short sight or simply didn't want to know. It was because of that moral conscience that he applied to his job that Albrecht had been demoted back to being a beat cop just a few weeks prior.
"I don't give a good goddamn what her name is! You should've waited for my orders, Albrecht. I can see why they took away your gold badge", he finished, referencing the recent demotion.
"Yeah, because I wasn't a big enough asshole", Albrecht sarcastically responded before turning back to Shelly, just as he noticed a blond teenage girl dressed in dark skater's clothing – t-shirt, red jacket, dark jacket, and black boots – glide up to the scene on her skateboard. "Come on, guys, let's go", he told the medics.