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This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

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By Plot Roach

Leslie scanned the front of the paper quickly, looking for any new prospects for the night. Between the fire at the abandoned warehouse on Sixth street (three corpses unidentified as of yet) and the mayor promising the formation of a new police squad specifically hired to handle “the recent outbreak of vigilantes”, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the city’s streets ran red with blood. If only I could get in on some of that action, Leslie thought.

He sighed and flipped to the personals, past the dating section and onto the “Alternative Lifestyle” page. His eyes passed over the obvious civilian ads and locked onto the more promising “coded” messages.

Female, into green and plants seeks hetero male to be my match. Hand to hand a must, some weapons OK. Nonsmoker preferred. Auditions to be held 2am at the old church tower on Smith and Seventh.

It seemed that the Stinging Nettle, a sexy villainess with the power to manipulate plants, was looking for a new superhero to battle. Her last nemesis, the Crimson Claw Hammer, was found nailed to a warehouse wall by a jealous former lover of Nettle. Hammer was currently in a coma with little or no hope of returning to his former career.

He was tempted to answer the ad himself, if it was not for the fact that the superhero gig was never really his thing. He was more the type to help a damsel in distress from an armed thug. And when she was all weepy with gratitude, he would bed her and then ransack her home while she slept. It was not that he was bad at being good, it was that he saw no point in it. As soon as you start to clean up one end of the city, he thought, then the half you just cleaned up gets mucked up again. He had tried to apprentice with the Golden Glove, a retired prize fighter who chose to take on the mob. But when his mentor was found in the deep end of the river wearing only concrete shoes, Leslie decided that the “goody two shoes” thing was more trouble than it was worth.

He tried working for the Mafia of Mayhem, a crime syndicate that was rumored to have their fingers in every business (clean and otherwise). But things went south when “Big Man” Malone was caught red-handed by the police on an undercover sex slave sting. The men under him snitched to saved their skins. It saved them from jail, but not from the morgue. The Mafia took care of its own in house cleaning and deemed the stool pigeons good for an example of urban squab, served cold. Leslie got out when he could, being a “low man” in the syndicate meant that he could walk away -provided he told no one of any of the exploits he had witnessed. Which, until he was part of the Malone hit, was nothing more than hitting local businesses up for protection money.

With no place in either world, he had no other option but to get a job on the up and up. With his penchant for weapons and strong physical stamina, it made him an excellent candidate for bodyguard or security guard. But those positions left him little in the way of power he so craved.

“Time to get ready for work“, he sighed to himself. He folded the paper and put in under one arm. If things got slow that night he might peruse more of the ads for promises of a change of career. In the meantime, I’ve got to pay the bills, he thought. He pulled his uniform off the hander in his closet, gave himself a quick shave and nodded to his reflection. One at the Downtown Station, he crossed through the automatic doors and into the air-conditioned halls of his second home. He nodded to the men around him, some he knew from his past who gave him sly winks which he returned. Others were straight laced and thought him the same. He flashed his badge at the evidence locker and was admitted by a new recruit still fresh from training. While his gun rested at his side, he yearned for the cold metal grip of the semiautomatic weapons bagged, tagged and catalogued according to crime scene. There was a bazooka in a wooden crate in the corner of the evidence cage. And so many knives that it would take a thousand teenage cutters to dull them all.

He ran his fingers up and down the wire bookcases that contained all the toys he would just love to unleash on the unsuspecting of the city. With a deep sigh he exited the room and walked back to the break room to meet up with his partner for the night, until the moment presented itself and he could take his toys out of storage. Not hero. Not a villain. But definitely not disappointed as a cop.