“What do you want to do, sir ?”

The police car was parked in an empty parking lot in front of a rundown drugstore. A few years ago, this street had been one of the busiest in town; but with the opening of the mall in the next town, all the businesses had closed and people had deserted it. It was slowly falling apart with time as misery boarded the building’s windows and let public properties decay in silence. People still drove by the street, but none of them stopped. There was nothing left to see anyway : the road was the only thing that looked new here.

The oldest officer of the two was smoking outside a few meters away from the car, turning his back to it as he stared at the ground. He didn't want to look at whatever was inside, no matter how inoffensive and almost ordinary looking it was being at the moment. The other officer wasn’t as repulsed by the creature as he was : he kept glancing at it curiously through the windshield.

Inside the car, the creature was sitting silently while staring at them. It was still wearing the blanket, still tangled in the rope someone had tied around it. It had cuffs on, but they didn’t make anybody feel safer around it. They were just a mark of habit for the two officers talking.

“We’re not taking it back.” The oldest one finally answered.

“What ?”

“This thing isn’t going to the station. It’s not staying here either.”

“Aren’t we supposed to call the mustache guy ?”

“He can go fuck himself. If we call him, he’s going to ask us to keep it in captivity until his guys come over to study it. I’m not having it.”

“You’re scared, sir ?”

“I’m fucking grossed out.”

The youngest looked at the creature sitting there covered in dried blood and scratched the back of his head. He didn’t quite know what to do either.

“Your house isn’t far from here, isn’t it ?” asked the older officer.

The other frowned.

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to keep it. We just need a hose and a change of clothes.”

“What are you thinking about ?”

“Dropping it at the train depot and fuck off.”

The young officer wasn’t comfortable with that idea.

“But what about the higher ups ?”

“Not a word to anyone until this thing is on its way.”

“Pete might disagree.”

“He won’t, his son is fucked in the head. He’s the first to want everyone to forget.”

“I don’t think it’ll happen, sir ?”

“Of course not, people can’t wait to shit on other people’s heads whenever they can. They’re going to talk about his son’s accident until the end of the world.”

”Still, don’t you think it’s a bit pitiful ?”

“What ?”

The young officer glanced at the car again.

“Well, it did nothing wrong.”

The oldest threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. He started walking back to the car. The other followed him.

“It did nothing right either. Get in the car. The quicker we get rid of this thing, the faster we can go back.”

“I don’t think it works like that, sir.”

“Like what ?”

The young officer opened the driver’s door and slid into the seat, while the other took the passenger seat, his expression sullen as the distance between him and the creature shortened again. Ignoring his companion’s mood, the young officer took his time adjusting the rear view mirror, enjoying catching the creature’s sight follow his every move. The words went past his lips in a rather naive tone.

“I don’t think I can go back. I mean, it’s kinda game changing, you know ?”

**

They parked again in front of the young officer’s house, and the creature heard the dog before seeing it. It was barking at the gate with all his might, but as soon as his owner pushed the gate open, it immediately stopped and wagged its tails vigorously. The creature watched it all happen without moving, while the old officer was trying to guess its mood, back in the car. There was no way to tell what the creature was thinking about; and to be fair, it wasn’t thinking much.

It thought that articulating thoughts expressing its feelings was rather daunting, so it didn’t try to express itself. It just waited there until the young officer came back with a smile on his face. His wife was okay with letting the creature in the garden for a bit, as long as they didn’t take too long doing their business. She was scared the thing might carry diseases.

Having the house master’s permission, as the young officer told with a laugh, they got the creature out of the car and pushed it in the direction of the garden. The creature walked forward without really understanding any of this. It was smart enough to recognize speech and identify the language they were speaking ― it even knew theoretical knowledge about it as the main body held that knowledge and the creature was originally a part of it. No, maybe it was more accurate to say that it was still a part of the main body. Either way, the creature should have been able to speak the language perfectly and so, it should have known that it was about to take a cold shower before the young officer even aimed the water hose at its body. But knowing and understanding something were two different things, and the creature let out a shrill cry as the water hit its chest. The officers had taken the blanket and the rope off, but they had left the cuffs in place, as it still felt relatively safer this way.

Not a lot safer, but you know ― whatever works.

The young officer’s wife watched the strange scene happen from the living room. Sliding transparent doors connected the garden to the living room, so she had a perfect view of what was happening; and so did the dog as it looked ahead. To be honest, she didn’t really like this but she had heard about what happened to Pete’s son and she felt like the creature had done god’s work on this case. In this small town, news travelled very fast; it didn’t help that it was the day of the weekly market either.

When they were done with all of this, she would ask her husband to follow her to the market. She was supposed to go earlier, but a quite informative phone call had delayed her departure. The same one probably a lot of people in town were currently having.

The officers were quickly done with the washing part of the process. Except for making small panicked sounds from time to time, very much like a wet cat, the creature didn’t resist the shower nor did it run away from it. It stood still from beginning to end, so much so that the young officer had to move around to wash its back. The creature had even thought of rinsing the inside of its mouth, probably bothered by the taste of blood it couldn’t shake off.

Anyway, it was clean. Now was the more difficult part of the hassle.

The young officer put down the hose and made a gesture towards the window. His wife told the dog to stay and opened it. She was carrying old clothes that belonged to her in her arms as she walked towards them. Those were clothes she had planned to give to some association as she had no use for them anymore, and she was actually glad she hadn’t had the time to do it before as it was coming in handy. The dog watched as she gave the clothes to her husband and immediately took a step back. Naturally excited by the water hose, the dog ignored the woman’s order and followed a few steps behind her ― before she saw it and ordered the dog to sit. She then walked back towards the dog and held its collar, but she didn’t get back inside the house. She was actually quite curious about the next step.

Two men trying to dress up a monster like a doll was bound to be interesting to watch ― especially since both the monster's arms were invalid.

But the reality of what happened was quite anticlimactic, because after drying itself following the motions the old officer was mimicking - meaning up-down, up-down with the towel - the creature took a look at the clothes and seemed to develop an interest in them. It wanted this and because it did, it instinctively regenerated both of its arms in a second to be able to get its hands on it. Which was freaky as fuck, and badly frightened the older officer, but apart from taking the underwear the young officer was handing over, the creature did nothing and they slowly calmed down shortly after, as a new problem arose : now, the creature wouldn't move. It just kept staring at the briefs it was holding. The wife had agreed to give the creature her old clothes, but she had refused to share her lingerie with it so the young officer had to take one for the team.

Still, it was a bit weird to watch something stare at one of his briefs so intently.

So he decided to call out the creature softly. The creature finally looked up from the piece of cloth and met his eyes. And suddenly, the guy didn’t know what to do anymore. How could it make the creature understand how it needed to put it on ? He promptly had an idea, a rather dumb one, but as the creature was watching him, he felt he couldn’t waste time or he would lose its attention. So he unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. As soon as he did, the creature took a step back and showed signs of wariness. The officer immediately went still, and with a rather panicked look, pointed down at his own briefs.

Then the creature stared at it.

And it was even worse than when it was just looking at his briefs without his junk in it.

The tension built up long enough for the young officer to start blushing out of shame, but when his wife was about to curse, the creature moved its eyes away and raised a leg to put on the given underwear. It did so clumsily but correctly, and they all let out a sigh of relief as they slowly understood the task was going to be much simpler than they thought. The creature didn’t need to watch them put on the clothes to understand how to wear it itself; it just needed to understand where the cloth was supposed to go on its body. The rest of this dressing up session was like a breeze. When the young officer gave the creature the pants, the creature didn’t look at any of them; it just raised a leg and put it on with no hesitation. They uncuffed the creature just long enough for it to put on a shirt, and it was done.

A moment later, the creature was dressed up with a green t-shirt that said “Joy” in big yellow letters and badly fitting jeans. They dropped a pair of thongs on the grass in front of the creature and the creature changed the size of its feet to put them on. It turned out that the wife of the officer had rather small feet.

Anyway, all was good.

To tell the truth, the creature should have been able to dress itself without any instruction ― the same way it should have known how to speak their language and communicate with them. But for such a young being, as the creature was still very much an infant, connecting its theoretical knowledge and the reality it was experiencing was incredibly hard. It was also difficult for the creature to realize that it had an impact on the world as an independent unit as for so long, it didn’t exist by itself. The main body was an entity, an individual of sort, and it was just a part of it. And it was still just a part of it, but now, it could move on its own ― and it needed to. The only intelligence manipulating this new body was its own.

And it was both liberating and vexing as it implied so much responsibility.

“We’re good ?” asked the older officer, smoking as he waited for his colleague to finish his discussion with his wife.

“Wait a second.” said the woman and she went back inside, dragging the dog behind her. She was scared that the creature would eat the dog if she left them alone together. She left for a few seconds and came back with enough money to pay for a cheap meal and put it in one of her man’s pockets.

“Give it to her before leaving.” She whispered to him.

“Her ? You think it’s a woman ?” He asked while glancing at the creature struggling to take a steady step in thongs.

“Don’t know and don’t care, but now it’s dressed like one, so a woman it is.”

The man laughed.

“Sure, why not. Hey lady !”

Hearing his shout, the creature raised its head to look at him. Seeing it react to that name made the man giddy. He made a gesture towards the car with the hand that was holding his keys and the creature shifted its line of sight to it. The old officer pushed the creature’s shoulder towards the gate of the house, very lightly because he still wasn’t reassured despite the surprisingly docile character of that thing, and the creature followed him to the car without resistance.

In a similar fashion, the dog followed his owner to the gate and waved its tail a few times. The man promised to come back soon and kissed his wife. He got in the car in a fuzzy but great mood, and turned on the engine. On his right, his colleague seemed less happy, but it had stopped frowning. He was starting to feel tired of this whole thing and just hoped it would stay as peaceful as it was until the end.

His prayers were probably heard because until the end, the creature never showed any aggression towards them. They spent quite a lot of time with the staff of the train station, negotiating the best way to ship this thing to the capital without risking injuring anyone. After a rather tense back and forth, the creature was to be shipped on the next train leaving for the capital and the key to the creature's cuffs was given to someone that would board the train - but nobody counted on the staff uncuffing the creature once the trip was over. The cuffs were bound to stay on until the arrival of the local police; the staff that had the key was the one responsible for checking with them and giving them every every detail he knew of. He would give them the key too. After a bit of hesitation, they decided to let the creature keep the money the officer’s wife had given in one of its pockets as it was its personal property. It was a ridiculous startup fund, but it was still something and many people had nothing at all when they first took a step in the capital, so the creature could consider itself rich.

Once picked up by the police, the creature would probably be sent to a government office specialized in taking care of lost otherworldly creatures like it; creatures that crashed into this world randomly, and whose level of danger needed to be evaluated before the question of their integration in this world’s society was even one. Some creatures judged docile would start a new life in this world, as travelling between worlds wasn’t a feat achievable by beings that didn’t reach divinity. The others were probably eliminated before they could break the balance of the world, but there wasn’t much said about them in the papers or anywhere really. People didn’t have much empathy for the fate of something so different from themselves.

Anyway, the whole operation would fall back into its feet as the same would have happened if they had asked the expert team to come and visit the creature in captivity ― except they were getting rid of the creature quicker this way and they didn’t need to deal with pretentious assholes invading their office and taunting the creature into action. The old officer wasn’t wrong for wanting to deal with this immediately as often in the past, the supposedly expert team had put them in danger by exciting creatures they caught by invading the cell they were in instead of leaving them alone. Creatures that crossed worlds often did so accidentally and they were the most confused. That vulnerability induced mainly two reactions : submission or aggression. But even the most aggressive ones wouldn’t attack until cornered, as they were usually beasts of instinct and they were dependent on patterns. Crossing worlds meant that their patterns weren’t worth shit anymore, and they didn’t know how strong the enemy was as it was a new one. Dealing with a new enemy asked for caution.

Well, there were exceptions to the rule as always ― but the present creature wasn’t one. This one had chosen submission, and Pete’s son’s accident didn’t change that fact. Pete’s son had chosen to hurt himself; the creature hadn’t raised a finger to carry the torture itself. That’s why the old officer had chosen this plan of action. It was still quite risky on his part to make such a call, as the creature could turn unpredictable, but to be honest, he didn't have the heart to care.

Business is business, you always take a risk no matter what you do.

In the end, the two officers watched the train leave the platform in silence as the station’s big clock read 8 o’clock. The old officer was the first to move to leave as he fetched a cigarette in his uniform’s pocket. He threw some words to wake the other up, who seemed a little dispirited as novelty faded away in the distance and they went back to a much more ordinary day.

“Let’s go fetch your wife, she’s waiting. You’ll go with her, I’ll go check where all that blood it was covering in came from.”

The other hummed with fresh nostalgia before following. That day could seemingly revert back to normal, but he knew in his heart that nobody would forget the events of the morning anyway.

It was still game changing.

“You’re sure you want to know, sir ?”

“There’s no point in running away from it.”

“But what if it came from someone ?”

The old officer let out a chuckle.

“Hardly a chance. If that thing knew how to kill someone, it would have killed Pete’s son before he dropped his pants.”

The other mused about it, before finally letting the thought go.

“Guess you’re right, sir."

They left the train station, but they didn't go back to the car right away; the old officer stopped on the steps of the station as he lit up a cigarette and the young officer stopped beside him, accompanying him in his habit. The sky was slowly opening up above them, and a sunray gently bathed the tip of their shoes. The young officer's thoughts became muddled as tiredness from the bizarre events of the morning caught up. He let out a yawn and stretched lazily. Then he asked that same old question he asked the other every time, the words falling off his mouth by habit.

"You want me to catch something for you at the market ?”

And all was good again.