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"lights are on but nobody's home" -lights are on, tom rosenthal
song to listen to: enemy by imagine dragons
warnings: absolute denial of all the feelings he's ever had, swearing, breaking down, physical & verbal fights, degrading (not in that 'fun' way, in that rude way), screaming
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cameron peters's point of view
"Nick, hey, how'd the interrogations go?" I jogged over to my boss as the kids left, doing the most to ignore all feelings in my life and focus on my job.
"Cameron, we talked about this, you don't have to be here right now. Didn't you say you were taking a couple of personal days?" He asked, pulling me over to the side.
"No, no I didn't uh-I didn't say that. I'm all good, Nick, I'm all good. I'm fine, alright?" I shrugged off his reasonable concerns, starting to walk over to my desk. "I'm fine!"
I let out the world's biggest sigh, as did Nick, but both of us went our separate ways for the day. Nothing was laid out on my desk-no new cases, not even a single sticky note. As weird as I found that to be, I shrugged it off and went on with my day. Be it five hours of five minutes that had passed, I don't care about that, but I couldn't stand sitting at my desk with no work to do. So I stood up and went over to the coffee machine, made myself a coffee, and started to just walk around. Nobody waved. Nobody smiled. Do they even notice me?
"Hey, Peters!" A scratchy voice that I've come to recognize as my least favorite voice sounded from behind me, and I wanted to die.
"Kapinski, hey," my voice could not be more monotone; I didn't even try to sound happy. "What's up?"
"How's it feel, all of this-your daughter's boyfriend is a murderer." He chuckled casually, and I tilted my head to the side.
"Excuse me?" My voice was low and steady; it took everything I had in me to not punch him in the throat right now.
"That Kalivoda kid was a junkie, and he killed that Schmidt girl while your 'brave little girl' hid behind a counter with her friends. She's pretty brave, ain't she? Aren't you proud to be her daddy?"
I punched him square in the face; "Don't fucking talk about my daughter like that! I don't wanna hear another word-" Another punch in his ribs. "-Come out of your mouth! You stay the fuck away from me, and you stay the fuck away from my family. Do you understand?!"
A couple officers pulled my away from a now fuming Kapinski, but he knew better than to try anything. If he tried anything again, getting a black eye would be the least of his worries. All I saw was a blurry red, and I didn't register anything until I felt the October winds blow their chilly air into my face. I looked around confused, realizing they'd gotten me outside. Deep breaths, that's what Emily always told me whenever I got upset or was angry-just take deep breaths. So I did the practice exercise I'd taught Jen: two seconds in through the nose, four seconds out through the mouth.
I kept on doing that for ten minutes at the most, not saying a single word as I tried to calm down. But the second my panic was set to a normal rate, I saw Nick walking out-probably to talk to me-and it all inwardly went to shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I'm so done. This is the day my life ends. This is the day I'm fired. He's gonna murder me. Why are you the way you are, Cameron? Consider be six feet under the ground, dead, buried, rotting. Nick didn't say a word, all he did was shove me against the hood of my cruiser.
"What the hell?!" I shouted as I sat back up, but all he did was shove me back down again.
"What's wrong with you, Cameron? You can't just-"
"What's wrong with me?!" I shoved Nick away, then grabbing him by his shirt collar and holding him inches away from my own face. "What the hell is wrong with you?! What sort of fuckin' cover up story is that?! It's bullshit! You and I both know what's been going on, and what the fuck are you doing about it, huh?! NOTHING! You aren't doing anything but making some innocent kids be looked at as murderers when they're the only ones fucking DEAD!"
"Alright, no no no! No, listen to me Cameron! Go home, kid, go home! Go home, get yourself set straight, and if you won't leave here willingly, I'll put you in cuffs."
"That's not legal, buddy." I backed away from him despite my confident demeanor.
"Kapinski could press charges, then when I put you in cuffs you bet your ass it would be legal." He crossed his arms and put on a tough guy act of his own.
"You know what? Fuck you, fuck this job, fuck every other person in this damned department, and fuck this town." I never knew I was capable of having such rage fill my body at moments like this, but here I was.
You learn something new every day.
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I couldn't tell you how long I drove aimlessly around both Shadyside and Sunnyvale, but all I know is that I took an unhealthy amount of time out of my day by doing so. It wasn't even my cruiser-I'd driven Emily's old Ford to work that day. If I crashed, who would miss me? If I screamed as loudly as possible, would anybody even hear me? Would anybody see me if I ran around the town screaming? And if they saw me, if they heard me, would they have really done either of those things?
"C'mon, man, what the hell are you doing?" I mumbled to myself, hitting the wheel hard a couple of times. "Go home, go home, just fucking go home!"
And all of a sudden, I couldn't see.
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i am preemptively sitting here & writing this author's note to let you all know that cameron is not dead and will not die
what is currently happening to him has extreme ties to 1666
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