Detectives Surian and Thurston were sitting in her car on a street near the apartment building where the blue-haired stripper was with her boyfriend. They’d been waiting there for hours; it was about 2:30 in the morning.
“I told you nothing was going to come of this,” he said, sipping his coffee.
“What if she was the wrong girl?” Surian asked. “Another girl with her hair dyed blue?”
“I saw only one stripper in The Gold Star with blue hair,” Thurston said. “This must be her. I don’t see an animal anywhere, though.”
“Let’s just wait another hour or so, OK? We’ve already invested enough time in this.”
“She and that man who entered her apartment are probably just asleep after a fuck…as we should be.”
“Shut up, Andy. You’re not getting me that easily. Anyway, maybe–“
Her cellphone rang. She fumbled in her purse for it.
“Hello? Surian here.” Her eyes and mouth widened at the words heard from the other end. “OK, we’re on our way.” She hung up and started the car.
“Someone spotted the beast?” he asked.
“Yes, in a neighbourhood on the other side of town.” Her tires screeched on the road as she tore down it.
“I told you we were wasting our time here, Agnes.”
“Shut up.”
*************
They were about halfway to the point where Surian’s caller told her where he saw the beast when he called her again.
“Hello?” she said into her cellphone.
“The beast has just been spotted on Yonge Street,” the caller said. “It’s running towards the intersection at Bloor.”
It’s near Yonge and Bloor?” she said. “We just drove past that intersection, didn’t we, Andy? I forget.”
“Yes, we did,” Thurston said. “Do a U-ie and go back.”
Her tires screeched on the road again as she swung the car around. On the way back to that intersection, though, she hadn’t driven past two buildings before hairy, clawed Callie landed on the roof of her car, denting it with her weight so far as to push a deep crater on it between the heads of Surian and Thurston.
“What the fuck?!” he yelled. He and Surian rocked in their seats as the car stopped.
They swung open their doors and got out with their pistols already in their hands. He spun around and looked up at Callie on the depressed car roof.
“My fucking car!” Surian shouted. “C’mon, Andy, shoot ‘er!”
But he just froze at the sight of the furry creature with her wild, yellow-toothed grin.
“Jesus Chri–,” he began, raising his gun at Callie.
She swatted him before he could pull the trigger. He lay on the road, knocked out. She’d bent down to hit him just in time to dodge a bullet Surian fired at her back.
Callie looked back at the detective with a smile. Kluh caused a fog to obscure Surian’s vision. She smelled a familiar, intoxicating smell, too. In her daze, she allowed Callie to jump on her.
Her gun fell out of her hand, then the fog cleared. She looked up at the grinning face of the hairy beast. Callie held her right hand over the cop’s face, the claws an inch or so above her nose. She moved her fingers in a slow dance, as if trying to decide whether to gouge out Surian’s eyes or slice off her nose. The detective could only wince and hope for mercy.
Callie moved her hand away and brought her face down to meet Surian’s. Their noses touched. Their eyes were locked on each other’s. That ‘sex pheromone’ smell was overwhelming.
Callie heard a grunt from Thurston as he’d come to and was getting up. She jumped off of Surian and flew high in the air and out of sight. Surian just lay there, trembling.
“Are you OK?” he asked, offering a hand to help her up.
“I don’t think I pissed my panties, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t smell that, but I do smell the smell of that stripper.”
“That’s right,” she said, now on her feet. “I told you we weren’t wasting our time.”
************
Kluh’s powers threw a fog over the air that ensured that all the other police lost Callie; but Surian and Thurston were given clear enough air to follow her well enough to find, by around 5:30 in the morning, more long, brown hairs. These were found on the dewy grass of a park across the road from Callie’s apartment building. More and more groupings of hairs made a path across the road.
Picking up some hairs on the sidewalk between the park and the road, Surian said, “Andy, take my car to 22 Division and show them these hairs. Tell Detective Hicks what happened two and a half hours ago, then come back to pick me up.”
“Nobody will believe what we saw,” Thurston said.
“I know. Do it anyway. We’ll prove it later.”
“You wanna go find her over there all alone, right?”
“Of course. Now, go on.”
“I don’t like the idea of you facing her all alone, Agnes.”
“A naked hottie hiding in an alley? I think my gun and I can handle her. Don’t be jealous; I won’t get horny.”
“How do you know she isn’t still in her monster state?”
“Well, she isn’t rampaging anymore, she only comes out at night, and we never start seeing hairs until her rampages are all over.”
“Well, OK,” he said, turning towards the dented car. “The split second you feel in danger, call me and I’ll race back here.”
“Thank you, honey. Now, get going.”
He got in the car and drove off, in all reluctance. She crept across the road, her eyes locked on that alley. Was a naked stripper lying behind the pile of wooden crates standing against the wall of the building on the left, opposite to Callie’s apartment? Surian took out her gun.
A man living on the ground floor of Callie’s apartment looked out his window and, indeed, saw naked Callie lying asleep, from his point of view, to the right of those crates. Unlike during those previous times, she now didn’t look dirty or sweaty; her hair wasn’t disheveled, either. She lay there as flawlessly photogenic as a Playboy model, all thanks to Kluh’s growing powers.
“Is this my lucky day, or what?” the man whispered.
He went out the side door to get a closer look.
Surian, absent-minded as she stood in the middle of the road, watched the scene with growing interest.
Callie woke up and saw him standing there, ogling her body. She and Kluh also sensed, through the vibrations between her body and the road, Surian’s presence. On her back, Callie spread her legs.
The man grinned at the sight of her immaculately hairless vulva.
“Well?” she said, impatient and almost annoyed with him.
“Well, what?” he asked in his lustful stupor.
“Are you gonna take me in your home and fuck me, or what?”
“Oh, uh, yeah,” he said, snapping out of it. He put out his hand to help her up. She took it and stood.
A car horn beeped Surian out of the way as Callie emerged from the crates. As Surian stumbled closer to the alley, Callie looked over to her. Instantly, those sex pheromones emanated from her, the smell entrancing both Surian and the man. He led Callie into his apartment.
The cop went over to the window, walking in a daze and trying to regain her self-control. The gun fell out of her hand. She looked through the window to see him and Callie in his kitchen. Callie lay on the floor on her back with her legs spread. He was so distracted by his lust that he never bothered to look at the window and see Surian. He unzipped his pants and entered her.
Surian just stood there, stupefied by the smell of the pheromones as she watched the sex. Her will melted away; she felt as if she were in the middle of a dream. She rubbed her hand against her crotch.
You want us, Detective, Callie and Kluh communicated psychically to her. But you can’t have us now. We’ll be together, in time. For now, though, goodbye.
Surian was made to turn around and walk back to the sidewalk, forgetting her gun and leaving it there in the alley. She stood on the sidewalk and stayed there in her daze for a half hour before Thurston returned in her car. She got in.
“Well?” he asked. “Was she there?”
“No,” she said in the oblivion of her daze, from which she was slowly coming out. “But I do think she lives in that apartment, or at least in the area.”
“Hicks doesn’t believe our story about the dent on your car. He asked if we were high when it happened.”
“That’s OK. We’ll prove it later. We’re getting close to her. I can feel it.”
“So, what do we do for now? Stake out that apartment?”
“We’ll go back to The Gold Star,” she said, “and see if we can find her. That aphrodisiac smell is definitely coming from her, though she’s tricky with how she uses it to manipulate people.”
“Yeah, she hypnotizes us with lust…though you’re still my favourite.”
“Shut up, Andy. I want to see if any research is out there, on Google or in the library, about the…phenomenon…we saw last night. Though I don’t know what to look up. No name for the beast, so far as I know.”
Don’t worry, Agnes, Kluh and Callie mused as they borrowed some of the man’s clothes, left his apartment in them, and went up the elevator to her apartment. You’ll find out all about the spirit world in due time. She used her powers to unlock her apartment door, went in, and waited for a neighbour of the dead photographer’s, under her mind control, to come to her apartment with her clothes and purse.
Infinite Ocean 