Marcia cocked her head to one side and squinted, brushing aside a little bit of hair from the dead man’s face. She had never seen anything like it—his ears were… pointed. Not like a birth defect, where the shape was irregular; these ears had definite symmetry. Not just pointed… they were… long? Yes, it was slight, but they were definitely longer than most ears, at least half an inch bigger than one expected human ears to be. Marcia stared—she had been a detective for seven years, and a cop even longer, and she had never seen anything like it. There must be a logical... prosthetics. The man must have killed himself wearing Halloween prosthetics.
Marcia shook off any shock and scolded herself for being so silly. “Don’t jump to conclusions” she thought, “You don’t even know who this guy is yet.”
Pulling her eyes off the man’s head, she dragged her gaze to his pants, looking for the outline of a wallet in his pocket or some other form of ID. Lucky for her, there was one, but, unlucky for her, it was close to the lump where the man had… it was odd. She was sure that he had lost control of his bowels when he died, but there was no stain, and come to think of it, no smell; just a lump, pushing against the man’s pants, creating a bulge that could easily be mistaken for an erection if it weren’t in the back. Marcia lifted the man’s shirt and went for the wallet, but pulled back in shock—the man had… what looked like… but it couldn’t be…
A sudden pain distracted her. A piece of glass from the shattered mirror had cut through her glove as she pulled away. She was cut, not deep, but enough to make her bleed. She pulled off her glove and stood up, leaning over the sink to wash her hands. She rinsed her palms, wincing as the water ran over the cut.