[2Roads 2014] The Interrogation of James Locke

On October 7th, 1999, two American detectives were sent to an undisclosed correctional facility in eastern Bulgaria to interrogate one of its inmates. The man they were sent to interrogate was James Locke, an exceptionally dangerous master of the dark arts that was once employed by a secret branch of the United States government as a paranormal investigator and exorcist.

The following is a transcript of this interrogation.


DETECTIVE SAGAN
Let’s talk about your former partner, Logan Cain.

LOCKE
What about Logan?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
You worked with him for what? Nine years?

LOCKE
Sounds about right. Two years for the Bureau of Unnatural Affairs and seven for the Shadowchaser Service in New York.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Extraordinary Crimes Division.

LOCKE
I wouldn’t really call it a Division. It was me, Logan and two other assholes. And one of those two other assholes was a drunken werewolf, so he spent most of his time licking his balls.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
But you were the elite, right?

LOCKE
What makes you say that?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
You don’t get to be a shadowchaser without a few good busts under your belt. Plus, you two were assigned to a unit that specialized in hard cases.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Besides, why else would the Commissioner himself personally request that you two lead the investigation on the Brooklyn murders?

LOCKE
He didn’t request us both. He requested that Logan be put on the case. I just tagged along.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Kind of a mysterious guy, that Logan, huh?

LOCKE
Mysterious? Shit, man, the guy was a fucking cipher. No one knew jack or shit about him. Even his background files were classified. And he wasn’t exactly the talkative type.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
But you knew him pretty well, right? I mean, you were partners for nine years.

LOCKE
Aside from how he liked his coffee, I didn’t even know if Logan was his real name.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
You said something about his background files being classified.

LOCKE
Yes. They sealed those puppies tighter than a nun’s cunt. The man was a ghost. As far as we knew, prior to working for Unnatural Affairs, he didn’t even exist. But you heard stories.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
What kind of stories?

LOCKE
That he used to be some kind of a witch hunter for a shadow faction of the Bureau. That he spent five years in Lithuania, tracking down necromancers and rogue wizards, killing them on-site with forbidden magic. Really heavy shit.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Did you believe in these stories?

LOCKE
At the beginning? Fuck no. But then Manhattan happened.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
What happened in Manhattan?

LOCKE
Kind of an odd job. We were sent to investigate a series of “weird happenings” in Harlem. Strange noises at night. People disappearing out of the blue. We figured someone was dabbling with old ritual magic. Either that or drugs. This was about three months before the Brooklyn murders, on our first year as shadowchasers. It didn’t take long for us to find the source. It was this old children’s hospital that had been abandoned for forty years. I was pretty shaky going in. Had a bad feeling in my gut. Something about the air didn’t feel right. Turned out, it wasn’t just a bad vibe: the moment we bust in the place, these two blood crazed ghouls lunge at us like fucking hounds. But Logan? He didn’t even break a sweat. Turned them both to ash with a single gesture. It was the first time I ever saw nonverbal magic of that caliber.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Nonverbal magic?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Cut the bullshit, Locke. Nonverbal magic is a myth.

LOCKE
Well, then I must have been tripping on some really good shit, because that’s what I saw.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Whatever. We’re getting off-track here. Tell us about Morgana Moroii.

LOCKE
Shit. That’s what you two assholes dragged me out of my cell for? To talk about the fucking vampire queen of Jersey?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Answer the damn question, Locke.

LOCKE
Well, I can tell you that Logan had a real hard-on for her. Then again, so did I. So did everyone, as a matter of fact.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
She was one of your main suspects for the Brooklyn murders, correct?

LOCKE
Main suspects? She was THE main suspect. Hell, if Logan had had his way, she would’ve been put inside a black cell and thrown into the Atlantic on day one.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
You brought her in for questioning multiple times.

LOCKE
Officially, we only brought her in for questioning twice. We did plan to bring her in for a third time, but it got... complicated.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
And Logan was the one handling the interrogations?

LOCKE
No. The first time around, the Commissioner wanted this French prick, Jacques Louis-Saint, to question her. Real pretentious motherfucker. Thought he was hot shit; a bona fide master inquisitor. In reality, all he did was use illusion magic to trick suspects into confessing, but for some reason that gave him a sense of entitlement. It didn’t do him much good with Morgana, though. All he got from questioning her was a raging boner.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
He got aroused from interrogating her?

LOCKE
You can bet your ass. Morgana was crafty like that. Then again, you don’t get to be a 900-year-old vampire without a couple of tricks up your sleeve. See, Elder Moroii vampires like her, they have this ability called enticing. Basically, they can make you horny as fuck with just a look or a certain combination of words. It doesn’t matter if you’re into pussy or dick either. You get so turned on, you can’t thick straight. The fucking master inquisitor almost dropped his pants and started jacking it in the middle of the questioning room.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
What about the next time you brought her in?

LOCKE
Logan handled it. Shit was intense. You could tell she tried to entice him a couple of times, but Logan wasn’t having it. I’m not sure how he did it, though. Watching the interrogation, even I got a sizable boner. There was something about the way her tits moved when she talked. She had really nice tits.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
But he never got her to confess to anything.

LOCKE
No, but then again, he didn’t want her to confess. He had something different in mind for her.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
What do you mean?

LOCKE
Psychological warfare. Logan Cain style. See, he wasn’t interested in just getting a confession out of her. Even if he did, convicting the bloodsucking bitch would be a political nightmare. The Moroii had a strong grip on the States back then. They’d have thrown a fucking uprising if one of their queens got jail time. Even if she did butcher fifty people for no good reason.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
So his plan was just to screw with her head?

LOCKE
That was the first stage. The second was to undermine her authority in Jersey.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
And how did he intend do that?

LOCKE
With a couple of shady jobs. Completely off-book. The kind of shit you couldn’t get away with, even if you were a shadowchaser.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Like contaminating the Moroii artificial blood supplies with Hep C and framing the Mohawk River alchemists for it.

LOCKE
You’ve done your homework well, detectives.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
But what was the point of starting a feud between the vampires and the alchemists?

LOCKE
To stir shit up. Force Morgana’s hand. Make her go to war, then bring her in for questioning again just to keep her in a locked room for a couple of days. It was all about compromising her leadership and making her look weak, so that when it came to an arrest, the Moroii wouldn’t be so pissed off.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Sounds like a lot of dirty work just to get a conviction.

LOCKE
Fuckin’ A. But we screwed up. We underestimated her.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
What happened?

LOCKE
The clever cunt invited us for dinner.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
And you didn’t refuse?

LOCKE
We couldn’t refuse. It was too damn tempting. See, the thing you got to realize is that we got off on this kind of shit. Being a shadowchaser was all about staring death square in the face and whipping out your dick. And Morgana knew that. The moment we arrived at her McMansion, I knew we were fucked.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
You walked into an ambush.

LOCKE
Damn right it was an ambush. An ambush of sex, drugs, excess and debauchery the likes no mortal man should ever endure. The vampire queen had a whole harem of horny bloodsucking sluts waiting for us. I don’t even remember having dinner. It was straight up obscene. We must have stayed there for weeks. Next thing I know, I wake up inside a trash bin in New Orleans.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Wait a minute. Back up. So, you arrive at her estate and decide to have an orgy?

LOCKE
It wasn’t voluntary. The bitch drugged us. Acapulco Velvet. Ever heard of it? It’s one of the world’s most mind-numbing aphrodisiacs. She knew her charms didn’t work on Logan, so she decided to step up her game with narcotics.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
But how did she manage to get the drug into your systems?

LOCKE
All it takes is a sniff of the stuff for you to feel like ass fucking your own sister. Morgana had her whole place decked with censers burning the dope. We started tripping the minute we got inside.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
And a couple of weeks later you wake up thirteen hundred miles away from home?

LOCKE
Inside a trash bin.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Was Logan with you?

LOCKE
No, I woke up alone. I didn’t see Logan for a month after that.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
He was still with Morgana?

LOCKE
Most definitely.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
What makes you so sure?

LOCKE
The bitch wasn’t through with him. She wanted to break him. Both sexually and mentally.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
And did she?

LOCKE
To an extent.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
What the hell does that mean?

LOCKE
They madly fell in love.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
Be serious now.

LOCKE
I wish I wasn't. After a month of being M.I.A., he shows up in my house one night, completely out of fucking nowhere, pale as an English kid, telling me that he’s no longer sure Morgana did it. That there must have been someone else involved in the murders. That something wasn’t right. It was all bullshit. The man was obviously pussy whipped. Morgana had sucked all the sense out of him. Among other things.

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Let me see if I got this straight: you’re telling us that the leading investigator for the Brooklyn murders got involved in a drug-fueled, vampire sex orgy that lasted for a month and that after that he fell in love with the main suspect?

LOCKE
Oldest cliché in the book, I know.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
How long did this go on for?

LOCKE
You know what detectives? Let’s cut to the chase. I’m getting tired of all this dicking around. What are you really after?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
We’re the ones asking the questions here, Locke.

LOCKE
You barge in here, asking about Logan Cain and old murder cases, shit no one’s talked about for a decade at least. I’ve been in this hellhole for a while now, but I know for a fact that you dipshits haven’t managed to track him down ever since he quit the Service. So what’s this all about, detectives?

DETECTIVE DELGROSSO
Oh, we found him all right.

LOCKE
Bull. Shit.

DETECTIVE SAGAN
His corpse was found last night drifting in the Hudson. He had multiple bite marks all over his torso, legs and genitals. There wasn’t a single drop of blood left in him.

This reminds me a fair bit of Blood and Absinthe, what with the whole supernatural element mixed with a property of hedonism.

I think it's fairly good, the pure dialogue and interrogation style was handled pretty well. It was disappointing, however, that this is only one small central tidbit of a much larger piece, a piece I think needs more detail and extrapolating on, but then again I prefer stories with more description.

If this is part of a larger series, I'd be interested. The background does seem well thought out, after all.

Anyway, included in this quote are mistakes I've caught since we are permitted to reveal them for the contest. Well done.

You got a lot of bang for your buck with the worldbuilding in this, and you managed to do it with what is essentially only dialog. That's not easy.



My thought exactly. You hung a lampshade over it at least, but it's not enough to make up for what is in my opinion an extremely over-the-top turn of events.

Although I would prefer stories that would go far into detail along with written narratives compared to it being strictly dialogue, this was fairly good.

Now for the negatives.

To me personally, this felt more like a script to a movie or play to say the least. In a story I would want to look for character actions; what faces they are making, what they are thinking, what they're doing. Are they reaching for something? Are they smoking? What do they look like?

It's questions like these that make details essential. However, I would prefer this type of writing.

You were spot on with the dialogue, I could picture different voices for each of the characters rather than making them so bland that they would sound like robots, so kudos on that.

Also, the premise of the story was interesting, I liked the law drama merged with a supernatural type setting.

Overall, good on you for this mate, I would love to see this make it for the contest.

I for one love the style and the writing. It's all dialogue, but the scene runs as smooth as silk in my head. It's fluid and engaging, and holy moly it's fun to read.

I'm with Xenon here in that it looks like a piece to a bigger puzzle. It's so good! How can you not want more?