"She's back, that pro with the kooky stories. Maybe try giving her a cup, a Sharpie and a piece of cardboard this time. She can make a sign and take donations," Marty says the morning I'm back to work. He grins through the steam of a hot cup of coffee as he lingers in my office near the crutches on the wall. How he can slurp down coffee in this heat is beyond me. Even my eyelids are sweating.

"What?" I say, trying to ignore him. He gives me rides to and from work, and pissing him off this early won't help pay the rent. How many police officers do you see taking the bus to work? I'd ask someone else, but he's the only one who lives near me.

"Don't look at it as welfare. It's giving her the bootstraps to lift herself up with. Now she can finally break free of that human trafficking bullshit you bleeding hearts like to talk about," Marty says. He pulls a permanent marker out of pocket and twirls it between his fingers. "Face it, that's the best she's going to do. Some people can't be helped."

I fire up the computer and get ready to take in the day's reports, wondering if Marty's trolling me or Penny or both. He knows my background, what it took to wrench myself out of that cycle. Figured the farthest away from that life I could get was police work. It took a stint in the military to pay for the college, but I did it.

It means a lifetime of loneliness, though. I'm a cop. No one in my family calls. No one visits. When the accident happened, I thought someone would swing by to check in. I thought wrong. Then I thought about how much easier it is to visit someone in jail. Brief. No commitments. Lots of rules to keep emotions at a distance. No wonder my brothers stayed in that life, 'til death do them part. Literally. One of them broke my leg. I shot the other one. Drug bust. Dumb bastards.

The police union, my first point of contact after the shooting, called it justifiable and gave me time to rest my body and mind. I called it an accident, and got myself a temporary desk job. No big deal. I pulled a gun on my own family. It can't be anything other than an accident. Yep. Just one, big misunderstanding.

Marty never told me his story. He just grins and shaves his head closer and closer to the scalp. His translucent skin, with dry seams tearing along red lines, barely keeps his skull inside.

"You're not serious, are you?" I say and eye the permanent marker.

Marty scoffs, nearly spilling the coffee. "It's a joke. We all know Sharpies don't write well in the rain."

"It's supposed to rain today?" I say, although I already know the forecast.

"Yeah, which is why she's probably here, to wait it out. You ask me, a little rain could help someone in her profession. It'll keep certain parts from drying up, not that I'm an expert or anything," Marty says and slaps me on the back. It's hard. It's supposed to hurt.

"Alright, send her in," I say.

Marty disappears down the hallway. Penny replaces him in my office a few minutes later, holding a hot cup of coffee. Marty's way of playing a cruel joke? I can't tell. She doesn't drink it. Just sets it on the desk.

She looks the same as the last time I saw her. The only thing fresh on her is the layer of sweat distorting her thick makeup into a warped pantomime of her face. There's a cut on her knee patched with a crust of dry blood.

"What can I do for you today, Penny?" I say.

"I got a look at him. At it. Wantin' to get it on record," Penny says. She leans back to brush her matted hair out of her face, and I catch a glimpse at her neck. There's no mistaking the two sets of red dots on either side of her throat. Someone strangled her since we last spoke.

There's something else, too. It's a purple and red line that wraps around horizontally where her neck meets her shoulders.

I don't hesitate. I pick up the phone and start dialing. She needs medical attention.

"Stop," Penny says. "I'm fine."

"It's policy," I say, not fibbing this time.

"It ain't nothin'," Penny says. "But it is why I'm here."

I keep dialing. No way I'm catching hell for not following policy. Penny cuts me off again with, "Stop or I'll leave," so I do and promise myself I'll redial once she's done.

My fingers instinctually take to the home row on the keyboard, but I lose my focus to type once Penny starts talking. Something in the way she talks brings me back to the home I left. The gritty honesty. The desperation. No need for pleasantries or an introduction, because life is short. Too short. She jumps right into it.

Penny says, "He come walkin' up out of nowhere last night. Usually the dates drive cars so no one can see their faces, but this guy didn't care. Called me over to an alley where he was standing. I could see in the streetlight. It was bad."

"What was bad?" I say.

"His face. It was all messed up," Penny says.

I'm surprised by her lucidity. "How so?"

Penny pauses to clutch her stomach and wince. I offer her water, but she refuses and says, "It's like his face didn't fit his face. I don't know how else to say it."

"Like he was injured?" I say.

"Nah, nah, like his face was too loose for the bones underneath. It flapped around when he talked," Penny says.

"Like a mask."

"Yeah, yeah, like a mask, but it was his real face. Everything shook when he moved or when he talked. The eyes. The nose. The mouth. The cheeks. Everything," Penny says. "But I know it was his real face 'cause I seen it up close when I asked him about us goin' on a date."

It wouldn't be the first time a john wore a mask to pick up a prostitute. People get paranoid, especially if they're on drugs. And when that happens, wearing a mask while paying for illegal sex seems perfectly logical.

"What about his clothes? What was he wearing?" I say.

"A long ass trench coat. It was weird because of the heat, but sometimes my dates wear them to keep it quick. They all naked underneath," Penny says.

"So was he naked underneath?" I say, pushing a little harder than I should.

"I don't know, but I remember what he smelled like. It was like when you leave somethin' in the toaster too long, you know? Like what is that called?" Penny says.

"Burnt toast?"

"Yeah, yeah, like burnt toast. He was there doin' his thing, and I'm there doing my thing, gettin' ready to go on this date and we just chillin', but I can barely make out what he's sayin'. I see his face moving, but it's like his lips barely go up and down, just hangin' there loose off his damn skull. Like, I gotta lean in real close to hear him. That's why I remember the smell," Penny says and changes her mind about that bottle of water. I notice how the hot coffee remains untouched.

"Go on," I say after handing her the bottle.

"Just as I tell him where we'll go on our date, there's this flash of light. I think it's 5-0 pullin' up on us, but where we was there ain't no cars 'cause there's no street. Next thing I know, that guy is gone and I got this thing wrapped around my neck. It's like a cord or somethin', and it's tight as fuck, chokin' me out," Penny says.

"Do you mean he attacked you?" I say, glancing once again at the scabs on her arms. She's well along in her drug use. Smoking comes first, then snorting, then injecting, then death. Somewhere in there is the hallucination phase. Or, phases.

"Nah, nah, I'd've seen the guy. I could still see all around. I just couldn't breathe," Penny says and points to her neck. "These finger marks right here, that's from me, I think. I was tryin' to get this cord thing off of me. I kept thinking about what happened to Dollar, and I didn't want it to happen to me. So I was kickin' and screamin', but this cord thing kept draggin' me down one alley after another toward that bakery that burned up."

The jarring way each shattered word spills from her mouth takes the breath out of my lungs. I find it again and say, "What happened next?"

"I get all twisted around so that I can see this cord thing, and I find out there's no one on the other end. It just keeps going and going right into that door at the burnt ass bakery place. But it's not really a cord, neither. It's like a snake or a tent cycle thing," Penny says.

"A tentacle," I say.

"Yeah, yeah, like that," Penny says.

"What's on the other end of this tentacle?"

"See, here's where it gets more fucked up. That door to the bakery is open, and just like I seen when Dollar went there, there's a bunch of dead bodies inside. Some of 'em I know, too. And this tentacle thing is draggin' me faster and faster, and I'm a second away from going into that room. I pulled this piece of busted glass outta my knee that got in there from being dragged around. I reached up and cut that tentacle, and it let me go," Penny says.

I've been out of the loop with the regular patrols, but it's a safe bet no one called in a tentacle attacking people recently. If what she says is true, someone else heard or saw something. They would've called the police.

Or maybe they wouldn't. The part of town she's talking about isn't known to take kindly to the shine in my badge. Their first instincts wouldn't be to dial 911. It'd be to stay the hell out of it.

Still, a tentacle? Really? This sounds like one of the johns attacked her while she was high. It's tragic on several levels, yes, but still rather mundane in a city like this one. The heat makes everyone go a little nutty, even by the standards of the world Penny occupies. That's all it takes.

Regardless of the truthfulness of her story, I say, "You must've been terrified."

"Yeah, yeah, it was bad. But I went back and had four more dates, so it was a good night," Penny says. "Hey, you got anything to eat?"

Marty walks by my office's window, watching me pass a granola bar from my lunch to Penny.

"So now what?" Penny says after she finishes with the bar.

"As I mentioned before, you'll receive medical attention and...," I start to say.

Penny cuts me off. "Nah, nah, I don't mean about me. I'm talking about this guy and this tentacle and that bakery and all that shit. You gonna go check it out?"

I clear my throat and say, "It's not my job to...."

"Aw, fuck you. You said that last time. Why you even takin' reports if you don't do shit about it?" Penny says.

Her raised voice catches the attention of a couple uniformed officers in the hallway. They've had their eyes on her since she got here.

Penny shakes her head and says, "But I gave you a description of the guy just like you asked."

I pretend to click something with the computer's mouse and say, "You did, and I appreciate that, but your story sounds more like an attack by one of your dates. Again, it's not my role to make that determination, but I can tell you that the detectives take these things seriously. I'll make every effort to prioritize a review of your statement. Sound good?"

"How? He gonna call the payphone on the corner that doesn't work? I ain't got a cell phone or nothing," Penny says, her voice louder.

Marty's face appears at the window once again.

"You didn't give me an address. Would you like to?" I say, trying to salvage this crumbling conversation. I wonder if she's on drugs right now.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll give you somethin'. How about a little advice? Get this shit off the streets before it kills everyone," Penny says and slams her hand on the desk.

She's blown through what little patience the department had for her in the first place. Marty and a pair of officers enter the office. They let her know it's time to leave.

"Thank you for your statement, miss," Marty says as the officers escort her away. When they leave, he says to me, "Hey, Juan, you alright? There're some real psychos coming in here lately. It's this heat, man."

I finish logging Penny's statement and sigh. "Yeah. Must be the heat."

Marty strolls over behind my desk and leans down to read the statement still plastered on the screen. He chuckles when he reaches the tentacle part.

"It's still not the weirdest thing I've heard," I say, saving face for the sake of the words I typed.

"So a pro got a little dope crazy during a 10-dollar fuck, and the john tries settling her down with some choking action until he can finish. No, can't say that's weird at all. That's just another day," Marty says.

"Still, someone committed a crime here. It's worth that, isn't it?" I say.

Marty rests a hand on my shoulder and looks down at me. "Buddy, I love you like a brother. You've covered my ass and I've covered yours. But take a deep breath. This accident you had is getting to your head. Maybe you need some real time off instead of this deskwork. You're starting to sound like one of the animals instead of the zookeeper."

He might be right. My head's not been the same since. A few weeks ago I wouldn't have given Penny more than 60 seconds. But I can't tell if I was less hinged then or now.

"I hear you, but what about all the missing people she mentions? They're apparently dead and in some burned down bakery," I say. "Could be something there even if she imagined the rest."

"Maybe, but try making that case when we're under the budget gun again. Detectives, good ones anyway, are about to be in short supply," Marty says. He helps himself to a bottle of water from inside my desk. "All things being equal with the same type of crime, who do you think should get our attention? Should it be some dope-shooting prostitute making shit up about tentacles or the wife of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Because that call just came in, and we're going to nail the prick that did it to the wall. Think about what makes the news, and where we can score points. You do like being employed, don't you?"

I rub my jaw. He's got a point, but I can't shake the way Penny told her story. Police officers put a lot of stock in their gut feelings. Mine are screaming for me to dig further, or whatever happens to Penny is on me.

"I like employment just fine, but humor me. You mind swinging by that bakery with me after work? Supper is on me for your trouble," I say.

"That's rich coming from the guy who picks the drive-through every time," Marty says. He shrugs. "What the hell? I'd do anything for you, buddy, you know that. We'll check it out and put this bullshit to bed."