The Strange Story of...

The Strange Story of Leonard Hart

           The restraints looked tight, and Officer Leonard Hart noticed the pained look on the offender's face. The tighter the better, he thought.

           After ten years in the NYPD, Officer Leonard Hart had lost his sense of pity for the criminals that plagued the city streets like rats. Petty thieves, murders, kidnappers, drug dealers, he'd seen them all and dealt with them all. Sometimes he testified in court, sometimes he didn't.  He saw criminals as just that: criminals. If he'd gotten the promotion he deserved, which he'd lost to a skinny, athletic recent graduate from the police academy three years earlier, he would've made sure that they were all placed in prison, where they belonged.

          "Hey," the delinquent said, bringing Leonard out of his thoughts, "could you maybe loosen these a little?"

         "No," he gruffly replied, "and if you don't want to be here, than you shouldn't have broken the law." The criminal he was currently in charge of was an eighteen-year-old he'd caught DUI, despite the kid's claims that he was sober. He clearly hadn't been, as he couldn't walk in a straight line, his speech was slurred, and there were several empty beer cans in the back seat. The kid had tried to talk his way out of it, saying that he'd recently injured his knee, had dental work done recently, and that he'd borrowed the rusty pick up truck he'd been driving from his alcoholic uncle. As if Leonard hadn't heard those explanations hundreds of times before.

      Not only was the kid almost definitely DUI, but he was one of the juveniles he called "questionable"; he had dyed his hair a loud, neon green, he had a nose piercing, and a strange symbol was tattooed on his left bicep. Kids like him were always doing things like this to themselves to get back at their parents, prove to their friends that they were cool, or look tough in front of the opposite gender.

      "But I'm telling you," the kid was practically pleading, "I wasn't drunk! I--"

     "What's your name?" Leonard asked, not caring that he was interrupting the lying little dirtbag.

    "Eddie Thompson."

   "Well, Mr. Thompson," Officer Hart sneered, "it isn't going to matter what you have to say, because tonight you will be incarcerated, tested for alcohol, and your parents will be contacted. In the morning, your parents will have to pay your fine for driving under the influence, your car will be impounded, and your driver's license will be revoked. So maybe next time you'll think twice before you drink, period." By that time they had reached Thompson's cell. Leonard opened the door, unlocked the delinquent's handcuffs, practically shoved him in, and locked the cell door, not even bothering to hide his satisfied grin. Another rat off the streets.

   With his shift over, Leonard left the station and began his walk home. He didn't like the subway; too many of New York's rats set up shop there, selling and doing various crap. He refused taxies as well. Most of the cab drivers he encountered were either high school drop outs or half-crazed ex-felons. e was above speaking to both, let alone riding in their vehicles. So he chose to walk to his apartment complex every night. It wasn't much of a walk, and when the weather was nice it wasn't unpleasant. If only there weren't so many people.

   On that night, he seemed to have gotten his wish. There wasn't anyone around; not on the sidewalks, driving down the street, or even a light coming from a random window. Any other person would've been curious, but Leonard simply enjoyed the peace. Peace that ended when his phone buzzed. He looked at the screen. It was Esther, another officer he worked with on occasion. He answered.

    "Officer Hart?"

    "Hello, Officer Reele. Is something wrong?"

    "Yes. The underage drinker you arrested for DUI?"

    "Yes? What about him?"

    "The lab boys didn't find any traces of alcohol in him. He was completely drug free."

    Leonard's mouth dropped open. He'd been...wrong?

    "There's more," Esther continued. "When we were going to release him, he was gone."

    His shock doubled. "What?"

    "It was shocking for us, too. There was no sign of tampering with the locks, no sign of forced entry or exit. He was just...gone."

    Leonard regained his professional demeanor. "I'll be right there."

 He hung up, turned around, and began briskly walking back towards the station. He learned long ago that running while not in pursuit only increased an officer's chances of unwanted attention. Not that there was much chance of anyone seeing him running, as there still wasn't anyone around.

 He couldn't help the fact that the unusual quiet was starting to make him uncomfortable. Oh, toughen up, he told himself. There was nothing to worry about. He would just have to deal with some teenage kid who would be arrested again for resisting arrest. Also, it was a pleasant night. It was warm, there was a delightful breeze, there was a full moon...

   A full moon? He did a double take. Hadn't the moon been a crescent only a minute ago? He turned around. In front of him, the moon was, indeed, a crescent, with a few stars around it. But just above him, there was another moon, big, round, and impossibly white. And was it...getting bigger?

   As he stood there, staring at the sky, it became clear that the moon, or whatever it was, was getting bigger. And brighter. After only a minute he was forced to look away, but by that point it was making a noise. A low-pitched but strong humming sound, like the sound of a fan at full blast.

   The object was now close enough that its light illuminated the entire street. All Leonard could do was stare in disbelief. Why was no one else around to see this? And what the h was going on?

   "This must be very hard for you to process, Officer Hart." He turned around. Behind him was Eddie Thompson. In a state of complete shock, Leonard tried to find his words.

   "How did you--? What is that--? Who are --?"

  The teenager just laughed. "You humans. When you see something you don't understand, you're completely struck dumb. Or," he continued, wearing the smirk Leonard had been wearing less than an hour ago, "you refuse to believe someone speaking the truth in plain simple English."

  Leonard tried to get a grip on the moment. "What are you talking about?"

  He was still grinning. He pointed at the bright circular object. "That is a UFO, as you would call it. And I am not human." At that moment, he quickly transformed into a creature Leonard Hart couldn't describe. But he thought he saw tentacles, something like a beak, and eyes. Lots of eyes staring at him.

  Suddenly, it was as if gravity disappeared, and Leonard felt the sensation of falling, inertia, acceleration, and numbness at the same time. He heard the voice of the teenager saying something in a language he'd never heard. He screamed, but couldn't hear a thing. He found himself staring at the whiteness as it filled his vision. And everything went dark.

  The next day, when Officer Hart didn't show up for work, the NYPD filed him as a missing person, along with the green-haired teenager. Weeks went by, with no one having information about the whereabouts of either. By the end of the month, the investigators gave up on the case, and the chief hired Officer Hart's replacement, an African American woman named Carrie Gould, who was everything Leonard was, minus his overall cynical and condescending attitude.

   It was three months after Leonard's disappearance that a fight broke out between two motorcyclists on the highway, with one ending up in the hospital and the other ending up in the same cell that Eddie Thompson had been placed in. As Carrie was unlocking the cell for its latest occupant, she noticed something on the floor of the cell. She had the offender hand it to her, locked him in, then took it back to her office.

   After a few minutes, she realized that it was a nose ring, with tiny symbols etched into the metal. She found a magnifying glass, and used it to make out what the ring said:

                                   Hart was heartless.