The Waiting Room.

2-doing the right thing.

Galen Rush clutched the Mayor's hand as he lead him across the lone bridge above Stillgrave River. He was Monroe's best friend and most trusted officer, and through his lens, everything Officer Rush did held merit. Crime was more or less absent from The Gully, and regardless, Galen remained employed under Monroe's means. The pair planted on solid ground, and huffed a frigid breath. After a few paces forward, they began to understand the texture: pulpous. The earth had seemingly absorbed all the glacier water that streamed down the mountain. Thank god we're all equipped with winter boots, Galen thought. Monroe did not think this. He merely complained to himself, as one might at the sight of a beloved pet in pain or income taxes. The mayor yanked a foot out of the earth, his counterweight only sinking the opposite farther in, and so it went. Officer Rush abandoned his friend to further explore the terrain. Fierce boulders nested near mile-high pines and oaks with thousands of years of heritage. The grass and clovers tilled into unrecoverable soil, all with a drowned, yellow hue. The wintry air cackled at him as he traversed through its unrelenting murk. Rush thought briefly about how unsurvivable this side of the valley looked. How even he couldn't build a home here.

"You doing okay there, buddy," He called back. There was no sight of Monroe by now, but that didn't suggest much distance.

"Yea-yea, I'm good." The mayor audibly struggled to balance his footing. "I'm just gonna stay here, is that alright?" Even if it wasn't, it would have to do, Galen thought. He continued to trudge the forest, a solo departure now. Four feet in front of Rush, a pine approached his sight. Under the surface, its roots transmogrified into the foundation of the whole right side of Grimesmere. Some parts had been hollowed out and used by burrowing animals to retreat. Skeletal tissue fertilized this pine, allowing every branch to prosper. His head jousted with the trunk, losing instantly to a feature feeding off the history of thousands of animals. As the officer fell, a few needles joined him. They landed with exemplary grace amongst a man denting the earth with his form. He gasped a cuss, wiping ooze off his cheeks. He shook his head, as to brush off the embarrassment he felt alone, and maneuvered observably around the thick of the pine.

Often, the officer felt as though he was indestructible, being the only figure to carry a gun within a fifteen mile radius. Although now, having defeated this monstrous shrub, he felt as if he had never had power. He pondered it, and concluded that the top of the tree was impossible. Impossible that he couldn't see such a beast from the town; impossible that his nose would bruise the next day. It had been five minutes now.

Galen left his memories of the dreaded pine where it grew, and continued plodding along. He grazed the cliff side with his gloved fingers, and, only for a moment, gave up. Much like a tree with the persistence to grow through a thousand winters, Rush would ensure a safe land for the new resident. He headed north. For a lengthy moment, it was not dissimilar from the quagmire holding the Gully captive, and he wondered if he had gone too far. The ground remained fragile until it was solid. He bent down to find a few nails strung through a two-by-four, and attempted to pick it up, unsuccessfully. As the Officer returned his gaze onward, wondrously carved wooden posts revealed themselves. They were ridden with cracks and aging bugs, staring at him. Architecture materialized before his eyes, a matured cabin. He felt the weathered wood upon his now bare hands. It was soft and fragile, tremendously disparate from the foraging he found the Gully could produce. Most of the planks fusing the porch had sunk below the ground, concaving in where it had once be hollow. Galen stared at the obvious centrepiece: a mossed-over lounge chair. It had become settled in its posture early on, and looked immovable by now. He traced the moss, causing dirt to sprinkle over the seat. He cursed the unstable flooring, bending down in search of a carved name or sentiment. In a surge of luck, he found two: an ulna and a radius. He fastened gloves once more as everything began to howl a history unknowable by his brain. In his thirty years enforcing law, he remained new to the sight of a drained body. Officer Rush felt urges to both run and throw up, yet acted up neither. The fog eliminating the possibility of the former at any rate.

As he steadily navigated a return to the Mayor, Galen felt a mixture of emotions he would not experience again for the rest of his life. It was a brand new powerless, divergent from the pine. A person had died here, he thought, because he knew. He declined all thoughts about the rest of the bones, but they intruded nonetheless. The pads of his fingers felt nothing but the texture of a decomposed person, so he curled them into fists and hid them under his arms. Galen felt aware of his own skeleton, then. Mock-ups presented in his head, running around like harmless children, twisting him backwards and forwards. In the calendar of Galen's mind, the walk to Stillgrave took months. As he saw Monroe in the distance, he ran. As he looked the Mayor in the eyes, he threw up.

Two days before the twentieth of April, a man celebrated his last day of contrition. He toasted with an elder, and spoke about self-care. In this particular moment, and non proceeding for many, many years, he felt like he was doing the right thing. As the city slept under neon and pollution, Irwin wedged a leather suitcase in the trunk of a nineteen-ninety-six Toyota Camry, and drove.
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