“What the fuck is that smell?” Hal Locke asked his partner as he waved a hand in front of his face, scrunching his nose.

“Something we ‘gotta see’, apparently.” His partner, Ellen Ace, said with a shrug and a frown.

They’d gotten a call from a distressed cop, telling them he’d found something nobody would believe he’d found until they saw it with their own eyes, saying come down to Apple Avenue, this body is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Of course, they’d dismissed it at first. That was by no means standard procedure. You’re supposed to case the place first, take evidence, all that good stuff, then call up the detectives to figure out what the hell went wrong. This guy had skipped this all and just thrown a call straight to Hal Locke’s phone, destroying the standard way of operating, and he’d had to wait in confusion with his partner until they got an official call from the chief, asking them to come down in person.

Hal and Ellen were private, but they were friends with the chief and Alcove City was full of crime and not enough policemen, so sometimes they got called down to help. But this was definitely not normal. Getting a call straight from the chief, saying only they could deal with this?

It rubbed him the wrong way.

The smell was awful, like burnt plastic. It was coming from the house in front of them, a two story house made of simple brown brick with dusty windows, a white porch with a rocking chair on it so the local old lady or gentleman could quietly watch their neighbors and knit or whatever.

Simple house, peculiar scent.

The story they’d got was someone had heard a scream from inside, then that awful, awful smell had started coming out, so bad and so strong four different houses on the same street were calling the cops to deal with it. One Tobias Jenson, who was nearby, had been sent to investigate. He’d left that call and hung up, and nobody else heard from him since.

His car was still out front, but it was the only one, sitting empty.

“This is all sorts of scuffed.” Ellen muttered, shaking her head. She was holding on to the leash of Kain, the police dog they’d adopted after his partner had died in action and he’d gone so quiet with grief and unwilling to do anything they had to get rid of him. The chief had pawned him off to Hal and Ellen, and he’d perked right up after.

Right now he was quiet like when they’d first got him, staring with one good eye at the house. He seemed off. Wasn’t even barking, just staring, vaguely trembling.

“You tell me.” Hal sighed. “Let’s get this over with. After this is done with I think I might have to call up chief Haden and ask him what the fuck he was thinking.”

They began to approach the house.

“Don’t go in there!” A young voice called.

Hal startled, frowned, and slowly turned towards the source of the voice. Ellen did the same, and they saw a boy in a baseball cap carrying a bat approaching them. He blew a gum bubble, popping and chewing it in front of them, the perfect picture of a little league mascot.

“Why?” Hal asked, bluntly. If he’s got info, I need it. Information was a detective’s weapon, especially when it came to cases that felt as off as this one.

The boy just stared at him. Hal realized his tone had been wrong, annoyed and confrontational. The boy visibly second guessed speaking further.

“What’s wrong, kid?” Ellen asked in a soothing voice. “Know anything that can help? We’re detectives.”

And that’s why I have her around.

The boy tilted his head, then pointed at the house with his bat. “The smell.”

“What about it?” Hal grated. He didn’t need a kid to tell him the whole block smelled like shit.

“It… The guy there, he was weird.”

Hal sighed. “Just give it to us straight-”

Ellen interrupted him. “What do you mean?” She shot Hal a look. Kain went up to the boy and sniffed him. The dog smelled something it didn’t like, and whimpered, moving back.

Hal made a mental note of that as the kid swallowed and spoke up. “He was the uncle of a friend of mine. Lived alone. Started shutting himself off recently.” The kid sniffed, rubbing the back of his hand against his nose. “Always smelled like plastic.”

“Plastic?” Hal raised his brows.

“Yeah. I dunno, like a melted toy or something.” The boy shrugged. “My friend, he came back one day from his uncle’s, and I didn’t see him anymore. His ma and pa started keeping him hidden. It’s… I dunno, it’s weird. I think his uncle’s up to something.”

Ellen frowned hard, her soft face fading away. Hal would match the look, could make some guesses, but the first things that came to mind didn’t feel like they applied here.

Plastic…

“Thanks, kid.” Ellen said, smiling at the boy, before she started moving Kain towards the house. The dog was reluctant.

“Come on.” Ellen called when Hal didn’t follow.

He shook himself from his thoughts and went after her.

The wooden steps of the house creaked as they went up them, Kain giving a low whine as he was practically dragged up all four. Ellen was whispering sweet nothings to him, trying to get him to calm down, they needed him, while Hal peeked into the window.

“What the fuck?”

Hal liked to think he was a composed man, but the sight he saw through the window shocked him.

Every inch of the walls was covered in plastic. Burned plastic. The furniture was left untouched.

“What-” Ellen peered in, and she paled almost immediately. She began chewing on a lock of blonde hair near her face, a sign of nerves. “...What am I looking at?”

“I-”

“Hal.”

“Huh?”

Ellen looked at him. “I said, what are we looking-”

“Hal Locke.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hal?” Ellen started sounding concerned. Kain gave a little whine.

Hal shook his head, pressing a finger to his temples. “I’m fine. Just a… Headache, I guess.” He muttered.

Ellen didn’t look like she believed him. He ignored the look and reached for the handle of the door. It wasn’t locked.

“We’re actually going in?”

“It’s our job.” Hal grunted.

“This isn’t normal.”

“It’s probably just some crazy bastard decorating. Guy might’ve killed a cop, so he’s probably unhinged.” It wasn’t a very sympathetic point of view and he knew damn well he was grasping at straws to justify it, but he felt he was right on one thing: it was their job, and if they just backed out of a job from the chief cause of some freaky decorating they’d lose clout.

Ellen sighed and followed him in.

Hal cased the place. He moved through the building, starting with the entrance hall and ending with the kitchen, and found that everything was normal. Aside from the burned plastic all over the walls, which he was starting to notice was so well-placed it was like the house had skin on the inside. He should’ve knocked, really, before entering this stranger’s home, but god knows he had a feeling he wouldn’t get an answer.

“There’s no one here.” Ellen said, hopeful, obviously thinking it’d be enough to get Hal to leave.

She was wrong. “On the first floor. You take the second. I’m going to check the basement.” The door to the basement was right there in the kitchen, covered in that same burned plastic. The smell was somehow worse, like it originated beyond it.

Kain whined. Hal glanced at him. “...Maybe put him back in the car. I have a feeling he’s not gonna be much help. Doubt he can sniff anything for us with this… Scent about.”

Ellen sighed, but she obeyed, knowing there was no point in arguing. It was their job indeed.

Swallowing as she disappeared outside the house, Hal reached for the knob of the basement door. There was no plastic on it, as if it was trying to say, ‘come on in, we’ve got a surprise for you’.

He was suddenly distinctly aware of the fact he didn’t carry a gun. Some privates did, but they weren’t exactly state officials despite sometimes working with the police, so he didn’t automatically get a license. Life events he’d rather not dwell on had led him to forego carrying, even if Ellen did. Concealed, of course.

Maybe he shouldn’t have had her put the dog away.

The door didn’t open easily. That stupid plastic covering was keeping it shut tight, and he had to grunt and strain at it before it finally peeled away from the wall it was half-glued to and let him see the staircase.

The walls were all plastic-ified, but the stairs? Same as the knob.

Composing himself, finding himself surprisingly quick to tremble, Hal made his way down the stairs.

Each step creaked, and he imagined himself falling through them into a hell of plastic, like a toy getting shoved into its box for sale at the local supermarket. As the walls to either side vanished, letting him see the actual basement, he did not like what he saw.

“...This isn’t right.” He breathed out.

There was some kind of machinery running through the room. There were tubes, a computer, and glass cylinders containing some kind of strange, white fluid. All of it was connected to, of all things, a coffin. White fluid was flowing from the cylinders into the coffin. Lastly was something Hal almost missed for all the strangeness about: a simple shower curtain hanging in a corner of the room.

The sound of quiet pumping filled the basement, like a thrumming heartbeat.

Hal was startled when he heard a door open upstairs, then he realized it was Ellen. He took a deep breath. Stay calm, Hal. This isn’t you. Aren’t all the detectives in stories supposed to be grim types?

He almost laughed at his stupid thought, but spoke instead when Ellen called for him from above.

“You alright? Not dead?” She asked.

“Not dead.” He called back. Yet.

“I’m heading up.” And her footsteps echoed above as she thudded up.

Hal turned his eyes to the coffin, then the curtain. “What kind of sick bastard lived here…?” He briefly thought that he wished it had been what had crossed his mind earlier, it’d be simpler, but he mentally cussed himself out for even thinking that.

He reached for the coffin lid.

“Don’t touch that!” A voice screamed out.

A man emerged from behind the curtains. Or at least, what was once a man.

His body was covered in burned plastic. No, not covered. Hal realized. It is.

His face was melted in on itself, eyes and jaw caved in, half-fluid, dripping white onto the ground. His hands and feet had elongated from whatever had happened to him. His stomach openly dripped entrails, like he’d been disemboweled. He smelled like he was burning, and it clicked in Hal’s head.

Did he do that to himself? All the machinery made sense now.

Hal wanted to vomit. “This isn’t… How…?” He started.

“Bastard. You’re here. I knew you’d come.” The plastic man took steps towards him, and Hal backed against the wall.

His voice is familiar. Hal realized, but he was too terrified, too caught off-guard, to place it.

“Life stealing bastard.” He reached out and touched Hal. His deformed face moved, and how it formed words was anyone’s guess. He ran his melting hands across Hal’s face like he was trying to comfort him, and his face contorted, like he was trying to smile.

Hal saw half an orbit, the only part still human, half-crushed to pulp in the concave of his eye socket.

“Let me give you a gift.” The man continued. “You’ll love it. You’ll last forever. It will hurt. I’ll show you what happens to corrupt cop-”

A shot echoed out. What was left of the man’s face was destroyed in an instant. Burned plastic, white fluid, what was barely identifiable as human all scattered across the room. Some of it covered Hal’s face, body.

He doubled over. Threw up.

“Jesus christ, Mary, and Joseph! What the hell was that?!” Ellen started hurrying down the stairs, and Hal reached up a hand, half in a haze, trying to stop her.

“Don’t… Don’t come down…” He started, then almost vomited again.

She frowned at his touch, white on his hands leaving white on her uniform. “What the fuck is all this…?”

Hal swallowed, breathed. All he could think about was how this isn’t right. He couldn’t begin to understand what this could possibly be.

“What… What was he saying about a corrupt cop…?” Ellen swallowed herself, visibly paling as she tried to make sense of everything.

Hal saw the body of the cop who’d come here to die in the corner, now revealed with the shower curtain moved out of the way. His eyes had been pushed in, and he had a gun in one hand, a bullet he’d tried to load on the ground, his other holding a phone.

He was smiling. His body had calcified with plastic, the same burned look to it as the dead man’s.

No, not a man. Not anymore.

Hal tried to focus on reality. On logic. But that wasn’t here. It’d long left this place behind.

The scream. That must have been this… Plastic freak. He’d done something here. Killed the cop, changed him somehow.

Gift? Eternal life? Hal furrowed his brows, choked on his thoughts. “Biodegradables…?”

“What?” Ellen looked at him, pursed her lips, like he’d gone insane.

Maybe he had.

“I…” It clicked.

He remembered the night clearly. A call he’d gotten on the job, back when he was a real cop. Going in, finding a hostage situation from a robbery gone wrong. Getting scared, panicked, despite his training.

He’d fired, and killed an innocent woman instead of a mad robber.

When backup arrived, he’d been safely taken in, and it had been for nothing. The media roared with hate, and he had left the force of his own volition, too ashamed to stay. Moved cities, even changed his name.

He remembered the husband stomping out of his house, screaming obscenities, tears running down his face.

He had the same voice.

“That was ten years ago…” He muttered to himself.

Ellen put a hand on his shoulder. “I… I think we should leave.”

Hal nodded, looked to the stairs, but then he saw the coffin.

He had to know.

He walked over, reached out for it, and slowly pushed off the lid with a grunt as Ellen stared at him disbelieving.

Inside was a body turned to plastic, tubes embedded into its sides, pumping white fluid inside of them. But unlike the rest of the room, unlike the madman and the cop, it wasn’t burned. It was unmarked, pure white, and the victim’s organs were visible inside, though they weren’t flesh and blood anymore.

She was like a mannequin, and Hal recognized her face.

He’d shot her ten years ago. He could never forget.