Geoffrey Tennant

[visitation]

GEOFFREY TENNANT。
"A theatre is an empty space and as per the four-hundred-year-old stage direction, we begin with a "tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning". It is a storm of color and sound-- A dense, unnatural storm. And we see it in glimpses, and flashes, as Miranda would have seen it. We see fragments of the horror, and our minds provide the details. The lights churn and swell like the sea--Ah nuts."	NEW READ JOURNAL CREDIT

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[visitation]

Detective Vecchio. This is Officer Matthews down at the 2-7.

[ Working the drunk tank was an unappreciated task; a responsibility that fell to a cop named Matthews who'd been doing the job for three years and desperately wanted to get out so that he had half a chance of earning his shield before he hit 35. There just wasn't any glory in it, just a whole lot of vomit, lots of shoe laces and belts, and the nightly trial of directing a paramedic unit through the building. Other cops brought in rowdy, slurring, singing idiots, deposited them on Matthews, who had to fingerprint and identify them, fight with them, put up with 'I'm not drunk officer, really', flirting and fictional names of varying obviousness - the usual nightly highlights - and then he'd stumble home to bed at 11am and sleep through to nighttime again.

Policework really wasn't as glamorous as he thought it would be. It was no fun. Nothing out of the ordinary happened any more. Except for tonight. Tonight stood out. He'd had the arresting officer tell him the story three times, simply because he didn't believe it, and varying other people who had the graveyard shift with him had clamored in to hear it. He'd retold it, then, at least a dozen more times, and frankly it still sounded crazy. He'd been hoping it wouldn't - really hoping - by the time he picked up the phone and dialed Ray Vecchio's home number. He'd be waking him up with this, after all. At a quarter to three in the morning. It'd be good if it sounded even vaguely real. ]

I'm sorry for disturbing you this late, it's just--well, he doesn't have any next of kin. His emergency number is Re. The Government of Canada, and well...it turns out Canada doesn't open again until 9am Monday morning. We feel given...well, given the particular circumstances...

God, Ray. If it were anyone else we'd have had to call the shrink, just in case. They found him naked in the park shouting at the moon. He looked like he'd been swimming. He had a mouthful of feathers, blood under his fingernails. He swears it's all his own. But there's also--look, noone else knows this, it's not in the write-up: he doesn't even know where he is. Doesn't recognize the station.

Just... Just get down here, okay? It'd be better for him if he's out before the day shift comes in.

[ Geoffrey sat crosslegged on the bunk, as far in the corner of the room as he could get. He stared quietly across the room, counting again, scowling at all the other people. Solitary - solitary confinement - what was so wrong with solitary confinement? He'd begged them to put him somewhere alone, but here he was. There were eleven of them, including himself: a homeless man raving to himself in a foreign language, two grizzly looking thugs who were chatting in the other corner under their breath, three green looking frat boys who were cowering nearer to the bars together, two bikers, a man in a suit fretting anxiously, a drag queen with her head in her hands, and--and Him, watching them all, smelling of lake and wet birds, his hair still stuck with feathers and mostly dry, redressed in drab grey flannel with a - now unnecessary - grubby towel slung across his shoulders.

God, he thought, despairingly, even in Chicago he was still the craziest one here.

They'd told him they were calling someone to come get him. Since Geoffrey had introduced himself as 'Hi, I'm Geoff, The Mad Hatter's Brother-in-Law, you may have heard of me', he had a powerful suspicion that 'Someone' was probably 'Some Men in White Coats', but since he honestly couldn't remember his own last name it was probably for the best. He just needed to sleep it off, couldn't they see that? Although how anyone could sleep in here he didn't know.

One of the policemen from earlier - Matthews, he thought his name was - came back in looking tired. He was a weird one, this one; slightly unhinged. Too many night shifts could do that to a person, he'd heard. ]

Fraser, you're up. [ Wait, was that him? Weird name. Like the river? Okay, well, why question it, right? But into which jaws of hell was he walking this time, exactly? He stood, dodging a frat boy as he tried to vomit on his bare feet, and made it to the bars unscathed, then padded out beyond them, following Matthews out of holding with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next, where he was going, or why. Geoffrey Fraser. He could work that.

Out into the waiting room now.

Okay, so if Geoffrey Fraser was who he was...who the hell was this guy? ]