FROM THE DESK
OF
Diane Morris
Special Agent
Federal
Bureau of Investigation
Department of
Intangible Assets, Southeast Division
June 10,
[REDACTED]
Attn: Director Jermaine LaFleur
I am writing today to follow up on my
previous unanswered correspondence and to once again formally request a
transfer from Field Operations to the relative safety of Logistics. As you are
well aware, I have served as a field agent within the DIA for more than [REDACTED],
and I feel my talents would be put to better use behind a desk, far away from
any [REDACTED] who may, yet again, attempt to eat me. I might add that this is
the [REDACTED] time within the past fiscal year I have been forced to request
reimbursement for a personal firearm lost in the execution of my duties. I
still have not received a check for last year’s debacle, despite assurances
that the Department would cover the cost of a new [REDACTED]. I keep a running
log of my ongoing out of pocket expenses, and currently it sits at $1,831.69.
If I were assigned to Logistics, I
could make sure that field personnel receive not only the proper reimbursement,
but also the appropriate equipment for use on their assignments. Our current
Logistics liaison, Mr. [REDACTED], issued me copper-core rather than
mercurial-core ammunition on this last assignment, and it was only after the
[REDACTED] began laughing that I realized the joke was on me. It was just dumb
luck that a train was passing by and I had time to [DATA EXPUNGED PENDING
DISCIPLINARY REVIEW]. I realize that funding has been tight this year, but
there’s no excuse for this kind of lapse in judgment. As far as I’m concerned,
Mr. [REDACTED] can go ahead and shove his [REDACTED] right up that pinched
little [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] himself until he [REDACTED] [REDACTED]
[REDACTED].
On a personal note, you know that I am
not giving out any ultimatums. I stand by my oath. When I was just a patrol
officer, you pulled me out of that thing in [REDACTED]. I’m never going to
forget what that means. I enjoy having the opportunity to make a difference by
being a part of the Department. I will continue to safeguard the public against
these anomalous threats until I am relieved of my position. As you are aware, I
have outlived most of my peers, and I would very much like to see my own
retirement from this side of the cemetery lawn.
With all of that in mind, bear me in
mind the next time a position in Logistics becomes available.
Judging by Mr. [REDACTED] blood pressure, I’m optimistic this may be very soon.
Respectfully,
Diane Morris
Senior Field Agent - Jacksonville
Excerpt
I guess there’s always been a Department of Intangible Assets, in some way or another, since humanity first banded together against the dark. Ancient orders of knights, sects of religions, monasteries and their like had been the first real organizations determined to hold off the things that bled into our world from other realities. Great and epic individuals did a lot of work in the past, though more often than not mere pawns as one ultra-powerful being played against another. Gilgamesh. Solomon. Miyamoto Musashi for a while even worked as a kind of Japanese defender against the supernatural. Things must have been easier back then. If somebody had a problem with a corpse rising from the ground and eating people, or with creatures slinking out of the mountains and taking children, they could talk openly about it, and people would fit it neatly into whatever cultural narrative they had. No press releases concerning carbon monoxide leaks, no awkward local police trying to stutter their way through an ogre rampage by blaming gang violence and drugs. If you were a 17th Century farmer in the Tajima Province of Japan and tengu started picking off your village one by one, Musashi would come by one day, cut down all those dark spirits, and then leave. You’d replant your fields, mourn your losses, and tell warning stories about warding off evil. And, probably, pay him whatever he wanted.
Modern times gave way to a general idea that reason and logic were enough to stop something from dragging you into the sewers and wearing your skin to protect itself from daylight. It’s easy to see why: it doesn’t happen to a lot of people, therefore it must not happen. I see it all the time, people who say things like “I’ve never seen a ghost, so they must not exist.”
Oh yeah? Because if spirits did exist, they’d all be tripping over their ghost dicks to haunt you? Do you understand the preternatural forces that conspire, the circumstances that line up, to create any kind of ghost? Let alone one that shows up in your room at night and moans about revenge or betrayal or rattles some chains and teaches you a valuable lesson about being selfish?“Well, there’s no such thing as Bigfoot. All those pictures are super blurry and grainy,” they say, their voices nasally and snobby, like all the knowledge of the world is pumped directly into their tiny brains through their tiny phones. I don’t care to get into whether or not any of the literally thousands of kinds of entities that flit in and out of forests would like to be called “Bigfoot,” but just because you haven’t left your couch in twenty years doesn’t mean there’s not something out there you don’t understand. Go stand out in a remote Colorado forest one night.
Turn off your phone, open your eyes and ears, and wait. When you feel those eyes watching, and when you know, deep in that primitive monkey brain, way, way down inside, that there’s more than just the animals you have names for sharing that clearing with you, then you can call me to tell me that there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.
That is, if you live to turn your phone back on again.
