Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1344


Under what circumstances, if any, is it ok to break the law?


The laws of the United States broadly cover the government of action in many situations. There are regulations for who can own dangerous weapons, where they can operate them and when they may be able to use them. The same goes, widely speaking, for other circumstances, such as driving a car or defending one’s self against grievous bodily harm or the threatening of death. There are terms, some coined by law makers and some by lawyers, such as probable cause, and reasonable doubt, beyond all reason and circumstantial evidence, that are used to assess the guilt of the accused. There is a lot of lingo and jargon, some unnecessary and some much necessary, that I use and have used for many decades so that I may adequately and supremely fill my job as a public servant.

It is the nature of many accused people who wish to deny the wrongdoing that they have obviously done, to misconstrue the laws that keep most people safe from harm. The first, second and fourth amendments to the constitution come to mind, the rules of American society that help govern religion, expression, bearing arms, searches and seizures. Even at the level of mere descriptive titles, it is easy for anyone from around the world, to see how these can be pulled away from their true meaning. To most people, the right to bear arms does not equate to the stockpiling of weapons inside a person’s home, and freedom of speech does not mean burning effigies representing the topic of hatred in the street. To some, it does, and, to some, if it is deemed that through their actions they are breaking the law, they will be punished as people who have the power to punish, see fit. It is these people, who misconstrue, and the murderers I normally deal with, who down and outright flout the law, that I have a problem with, and therefore, here I am, in law enforcement, as it were.

If the law is looked at strictly speaking, without any room for leeway or otherwise interpretation, then perhaps I have broken the law occasionally. I have injured, I have sped, but that is to the extent where any snooping reporter could go to try and undermine my good character. To be honest, I have only sped when in pursuit of a suspect, and even then, it is not normal fare of my job to do so, and I was in the lines of what was expected of me in the situation. The same goes for injuring another person, which I have been forced to do a handful of times over the years, as it was a probable thing, at the time, that they may have otherwise killed me in a fit of accusatory rage or drug fuelled anger.

Under normal circumstances there is no reason to break the law, as it serves and protects the very people it is designated to serve and protect. I am one such person who uses their knowledge of the law to their best ability in order to perform with a high level of excellence in their job. I am however, aware of the certain periods and circumstances where normal conventions of law can be stretched, but not to any adverse situation, in the end. Police cars speed, but they speed in pursuit of a suspect who is evading arrest. There is always an explanation for anything that I do that could be considered law breaking.

But without reason though, without any proper circumstances such as those concessions given to the police, no, there is no excuse for breaking the law. A man who speeds to get his pregnant wife to the delivery room before she gives birth in the car may usually be let off, as far as the news is concerned. All very well, but what if the same man crashed his car and killed his pregnant wife? The media would not be very forgiving then; at least, I hope they would not be. The reason goes, that the laws of the United States serve to protect American citizens and all people living or visiting within our borders. When I come to a murder scene, I do not only have a murder, I have a criminal act which has resulted in the death or injury of one or more people. I have a direct example of how people can severely disregard the laws that have been well crafted and honed over years of political inquiry and procedure, to function together as a well oiled machine does. I have displayed before me in all the grisly appearance of death, one more person who has passed on, one more life that no longer exists and has been extinguished, in most if not all cases, before its due time.

Looking at a robbery case even, and it is obvious why laws exist to protect and to serve people. I dealt with several consecutive Robin Hood styled robberies several years ago, the final one, which as any interesting story goes, ended in a murder. Oh yes, the criminal may have been doing good deeds in some eyes, by stealing from rich gated estates, and giving the proceeds of the crime to the poor. However, he still broke the law. Doing things for noble reasons that break the law, there is no excuse for it. It got that person not very far, because in the end they ended up killing someone. By mistake, admittedly, but it was the breaking of several laws that lead them to the accident in the first place.

No, there is no excuse for breaking the law. There is no excuse for dismissing the laws, the rules of modern society, as something which does not apply to this person or that person, that woman or that man. There is no excuse for breaking the law and it is grossly inappropriate for the criminal to be holding the thought that such laws apply to everyone but themselves, but one single individual who deserves punishment. In a just society, people who commit criminal acts are punished, whether through fines, jail sentences, tied in with arrest and a possible trial if it is warranted. While I think that the breaking of laws is one of the most severe and brutally ugly acts a person can commit, while I may work very hard to ensure that criminals are caught and duly convicted, there are still horrible people out there. While I may think and feel that there is no excuse for breaking the law, while I hardly ever, while I never could condone it, the world is, unfortunately for this case, not perfect. For every rapist I help put in jail, there is another one there, bred through indifference and the learning of respect for human life and individuality, rendering it an indistinguishable thing that can be warped for any particular person’s advantage.

A man breaks a window in a house on fire to rescue a woman, a baby, a cat, something. By normal circumstances, he has broken the property of someone else, and should be punished. But he will not be, because he has reasonable reason to go through with such an act, and the law makes room for that. By some definitions, a person may indeed appear to break the law, but by looking closer, they have not done so. The thing about the breaking of laws is that, just as they can be misconstrued by the obviously guilty, the laws can also be interpreted in many different beneficial ways. That is the essential factor, the knowledge of and ability to, interpret the law. By interpreting the law, there may be several different ways one law, one act, governs society. A person could do one act in several different variations, and the law still protects them. It is when the law is ignored or misconstrued to a point of clear disregard, that people begin to get hurt, that people are killed and begin to die in the dozens, or more.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 787


What have you done to make ends meet when you were broke?


In circumstances some might describe as fortunate, I have never been very poor, very broke, none of those terms used to describe monetary lower class living. In their deaths, my parents both had life insurance, so I went to a good school and lived in a comfortable house with enough food to eat and clothing on my back. I was not a child who wanted many toys, nor an adult, as I am now, fond of every new shiny gadget. I have a computer, which I update every few years, and a laptop, which follows much the same tradition. As my aunt no longer works, I help to support her, just as she worked to make our household functional when I was young. I have a house, the ownership of which has long since passed into my hands, and I have a car, which I care for well and keep running, even though it is getting old. I am quite a thing and tall man, so I by way of habit I eat very little. I live by myself to I use very little water for washing, and not as much electricity as some larger families might. My bills are small and my work does not require large amounts of travel at my expense.

Contrary to so many inhabitants of Las Vegas, I have not succumbed to the temptation to become a gambling addict. I do not gamble for pleasure, and in fact I never gamble except for a few charity poker games that I participate in every now and then for the sake of the lab. I have never been a big believer in the need to spend money in order to obtain happiness, which is, after all, something else I do not indulge in the same way as other people do. I do not feel happiness as the result of the things that most other people seem to find the cause of such emotions, and therefore, to spend money in excess is for me, pointless, and a circumstance that never happens. It never happens unless it is for a good reason for it, and aside from minor things like tire replacements and replacing minor household appliances when they cease to work, the amount of money I spend in one go is rarely significant.

Oh yes, I do indulge sometimes. I do eat on the job when I do not make myself lunch to take to work, but those are simple almost necessities. I buy books and sometimes magazines, I maintain several journal subscriptions, but while these may not be a matter of life or death, they are simple, unselfish things in life, not things that cause great pleasure, that I obtain so I can learn more, or so I may be more efficient in getting back to my job or my household duties. Yes, maybe my monetary circumstances are fortunate in that I work hard and earn a highly moderate wage, I may be fortunate in that I spend little and save much, but that is only money. Introduce the rest of life, and the fact that I sit on a bank account with a satisfyingly reassuring sum in it, fades away into almost inconsequential insignificance. I am a widower, I am an orphan, I may have money but that damn well doesn’t make up for an inch or a nose tip of everything, every single fucking thing that life has taken away from me.

Money does not buy happiness, it only, for those it can bring happiness to, provides a simple, temporary high. Not even having as much money as I do, makes me happy, because it seems worthless, absolutely fucking worthless in the face of everything I do not have, that I once have, and have lost forever. No, if we are talking about money, I have never been broke, but if we are talking about everything else, I have long since been broken and have long since been past repair. I make ends meet, I always make ends meet, but that is a mere function of life, spending money to keep the wellbeing of my person, my house, my objects, my possessions, high and settled. I manage my money efficiently, as I do every other thing in my life, and that is all there is to it. Working as long as I have, working as hard as I do, I earn money, I do not have to worry about being broke, and I have never been broke, so yes, I lead a comfortable life. While I may never have gone hungry or without shoes, I am still aware, I still know, that there are far worse things. That is the absolute truth.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1586


You’re fired! Talk about a time you were forced out of something.


“You’re leaving.”

The tone of voice was blank, uninflected, uncaring even, but the way his pronunciation put emphasis on the last word betrayed any attempt at being completely uncaring, at ignoring the totality of the matter and the invisible burden it seemed to create. The invisible weight between them, which had so long been a viciously swinging pendulum of vehement dislike and audacious displays of disregard, now teetered almost motionless on the end of a near to snap string. While the displays and the dislike had been mostly Ecklie’s animosity towards Grissom, mostly his way of defending himself against a near equal, Grissom too had his own victories against the Assistant Director. Where Ecklie stood to defend his own pride, his own reputation, his own work, over the years the Nightshift had frequently put his reputation, his whole career, on the line for the greater good of the victim or the co-worker. He was ultimately liked more because of that, because he was a likable person, who had faults, whereas Conrad Julius Ecklie, was the stern authoritarian voice of utter control replete with icy tones and steel like grips. With the entire exception of his aunt, Grissom was one of the only people who chose of their own free will not to wish him untimely death or gruesome injury.

As happened so often in their select single meetings with each other, silence consumed the attempt at conversation and Grissom cocked his head curiously, tiredly also, lids creating docile half closed eyes. While the pendulum was no longer swinging, the weight of their work was still there, different cases with similar themes they had all experienced. Blood, gore, rape, murder, pillage, homicide, attempted murder, disembowelment, decomposition, between them they had seen all that and so much more. Together, yet always separated by their own shifts and schedules, they had seen so many unspeakable tragedies that no human should have to describe, but which they assigned themselves to speak about, their job entailing it to be so.

Eventually the Nightshift just nodded, opening his eyes fully and righting his head to stare at the other man, the one behind the desk, straight backed in his chair, stiff as always. He tried to read emotions off the balding man, off the person he had worked with for so long, but Ecklie betrayed close to nothing, almost nothing at all.

“Do you envy me Conrad?” the Nightshift said suddenly, aware already of how almost familiar these conversations felt. How almost familiar this situation felt, the way they were seated across from each other, totally alone with the weight of accumulated misery thundering over their heads, threatening to drown out their civilised attempts at conversation.

Ecklie grinned then, shattering the stilted silence with a mockery of happiness, the edges of his lips twisting upwards like the outreaching tendrils of a poisonous vine.

“No, I don’t Gil.” he said, quickly interrupted as Grissom, more awake, jumped into the conversation.

“Why not?”

It was a question that under any other circumstances none of them would have asked or answered, but this was one of the final showdowns, one of the final conversations they would have as Nightshift and ultimate superior, as co-workers.

“If I envied you Gil, I’d have to show it. Under my rules, I’ve always been the better man, because let’s face it, the rate of kidnappings, murders and injuries to my team was almost nonexistent. The number of complaints directed towards myself is of a different degree to yours, and hell, I follow the guidebook more than you ever have. I file my paperwork immediately, I follow up immediately, my desk is always free of clutter.” the old Dayshift began, conveying across the old habit he had formed over the years of summoning lectures out of thin air. Once more, the familiar silence resumed residence, and the invisible weight of years and accumulated pain pounded at their ears.

“Damn, Gil, if I envied you, if I wanted exactly what you had, do you think I’d be this man? No, I’d do what the rest of your team has done, I’d lose whoever I loved, and moved on, what you’re doing right now. However, even you know, I have not got anything left to go to, no one out there I want to seek after. I’m a realist, Grissom, I can’t envy what others have when it is not possible for me to have anything like it.”

More silence, shorter this time as the Assistant Director nodded his head slightly forwards on razor edges shoulders, and drew in breath.

“You’re going free, you’re escaping this often unimaginable hell hole. Even if I wanted to leave, where would I leave to? You have Sara and her worries to go to, you get to leave and go find the same damned girl who has been lusting after you since before she first got here. Even if I left, it’s not like Michelle is waiting somewhere, because she isn’t, so the best chance I have of achieving what you are about to do is to die, and I find no ability to hold envy towards you over that. I don’t dream like that.” the man said, ending the sheer assault of words as suddenly as it had started, and into silence the air once more fell.


Opting for the quicker answers, Grissom tilted his own head forward, a perfect display of his usual intense curiosity, and quirked a smile at Ecklie.

“Really Conrad? Is all that honestly true?” he said, interlacing fingers completing the picture as they both tried a hand at attempting one last battle of wits.

Out of character, Ecklie rolled his eyes, a childlike action unusual on a face largely accustomed to stoic displays of nothing.

“You’re leaving. You asked if I envy you, and I’ve explained that I don’t. Gil, to me, you have always been inadequate, because your weakness is that out of depravity, you have found not only exhaustion, but happiness. Out of all the murders we see, you speak for the victim, and I speak for the victim, but we are still two different people. You’re leaving because you have a chance to do so, the will to do so. You have realised that you have something worth fighting for, as the adage goes, and you’re going off to do that. If you want honesty, yes, maybe I do hate that you are leaving, maybe I do hate that you have a relationship with Sara, that you have a better life to lead than just staying here to wait out the days until burial.”

More breathing this time, deep breaths, one two, as the old flicker of flame burned within him, the old flicker of something not quite envy, but not quite nothingness either.

“All these years, you have known that you are doing good work here, but you also knew that if the time came that you could break the ties and leave. Any chance I had of leaving started to die with the murder of my parents, and was finished off completely with the violent raping and murder of my wife. I don’t envy you in the way you may want. I don’t hate you because you have something I could obtain, because I can’t get it. I dislike you because you stand for everything I have spent a lifetime accomplishing without happiness. You get your job, but you get solace in it. I do my job, and I still go home, falsified. But my unreality, what I am, what I have become, this thing...”

His voice trebled for a split micro second, and was fixed when he began to raised it into a raised impertinent almost shout.

“It is the only thing I have left. Don’t you get it Gil? All these years and you can still leave. I was born into this place and I was never even given the chance because the nature of our job consumed me long before I had the chance to decide otherwise.”

Ecklie’s lips twitched just then, and he quietened, breathing slightly more rapid than usual, heart a dull but slightly quicker thud in his ears, his ribs burning not with any real physical pain, but with the banging of that pendulum weight. The weight that now just rocked silently, sullenly, and would soon quieten forever, mostly, as the Nightshift left and moved further away. The venomous grin reached across his face, spread like wildfire and settled into a grimace.

Reaching forward, the two men shook hands briefly, but nothing changed. It was true, they would see each other again a couple of times before Grissom departed, and more words would be exchanged, but not of such a confidential kind. There would be a time, probably, certainly, definitely, where Grissom would give Ecklie a very similar exchange of confidence, and then they would be over and done with. Grissom would leave and Ecklie would stay and in this finality his hatred of the man would be absolutely vilified and ascertained as true. Grissom could leave, Grissom could escape and Ecklie could not, he would never, and as he rose from his desk and swiftly exited his very own office, leaving the Nightshift behind, that was part of the reason he moved in such a way. It would be, had always been, part of the reason he hated the man so very, very much, why in some way, he envied him, and in other ways, he could not.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1052


What languages do you speak?


I am fluent in speaking, reading and writing English, Greek and Spanish. English is a given, considering I live in America, and work as a public servant, in a position were language fluency is essential. I know Greek because it is part of my heritage, part of the culture I grew up with, that surrounded me in my childhood and beyond. It is a language that I feel deeply to be my own, even though I am a Las Vegas native, because my aunt made an especial effort after the death of my parents, to enforce on me the importance of knowing it. It remains one of the few contacts I have back to the family I know very little about. Knowing Spanish is the result of the same basic reasons as knowing English, except of course, it was more voluntarily my choice to obtain knowledge about. It is very helpful to know many languages, because the ignorance of people who believe that English will always triumph when spoken, is large and profound in its ineptitude.

In the course of dealing with crime, I meet many living people, whether they are victims themselves, people who are witnesses to a crime, or those who simply happen to be relations of the person who has been affected by such an occurrence. Many people constantly move in and out of Las Vegas, at an astounding rate that the lax and the unobservant barely notice as long as their basic needs and wants are met. There are the short staying kinds of people such as tourists and visiting relatives, people who come and stay and then move on just as quickly, leaving almost no trace behind. Then there are the other people who move here for longer periods, or who have even been here from the beginning. Those people are those such as the workers of many variations who run the backbone of the city, including but not limited to public servants such as myself, and the other more easily recognisable and more numerous kinds. People like hotel employees and sex workers, the very later operating both within and outside of the confines of the law, providing the city with a different reputation than what it might have otherwise. Just as more costal locations do, we get our fair share of illegal immigrants and transitory migrants of a more unidentifiable kind.

Summing these kinds of people all together, not all of them come from backgrounds of great education and wealth, and even if they do, it does not always mean that communication with them will occur in English. Being that many people do speak English, usually it is not much trouble finding a way to get the word across, to converse and ask enquiries of this living victim or that specific witness. However, if English can not be used, there is still a good chance that Spanish has a relevance or potential ability to get the act of talking underway. As for Greek, well, if I put aside heritage and culture, it is still an important thing to know. Just as Spanish fails, I know of many employees of the lab who speak different dialects, and they can sometimes take the place of a translator. If, for instance, a murder occurs within the strictly Greek speaking section of Las Vegas society, I am generally more available and easier to find than a Greek translator may be. Being that I have grown up here in Las Vegas and know, so very much of the Greek community, both young and old, it makes it simply easier to call me instead, to get me converse with that past generation who didn’t care as much for the language of English that is my original tongue, and which I would have needed to embrace fully, even if it were not.

If I lived in a community that spoke only one language, and if the chance of my leaving such a community was very small, then I would probably only speak one language. However, I was born into and raised in a multicultural community, I was born of parents who spoke both Greek and English, who had lived here for so long that they also saw the point of passing on such knowledge to me in my infancy. I was not the child of parents who only wished to enforce one side of my heritage, who wished to force on me only my life here or a life that they would have liked me to have lead if we had lived back in the old country of generations passed by. My parents were not like that, and while my aunt was probably a good measure stricter than my mother, she was not a backwards person either. In my youth, she encouraged me to be educated well, and to speak well in many languages. Greek held a soft spot in her heart, and she passed the same liking of it onto me. I find no trouble in fluently speaking three languages, and knowing the rudimentary basics of many others.

I live in a city that moves, it feels, sometimes faster than time should really move. With this rapid shifting of life and society, it is needed of me, in the important public servant role that I am in, to try and help the public I serve as best I possibly can. As I can serve, as myself, better speaking three languages than I could just concentrating on one, I keep up my fluency in Greek and Spanish as best I possibly can. Las Vegas is no longer exactly the society my parents lived in, nor even the one I grew up in, and as crime continues, as I am still needed in my particular job role, it is still required that I try and do the best job that I can. If I am required to change with the times, then change I must, but even as life becomes faster, and so much more different, I will maintain what I know until death welcomes me with outstretched arms. Just because so much of Las Vegas moves in and out of the city in rapid motion, it does not require of me to become ignorant and minimalised in my obtained knowledge in the process.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 673


Cremation or burial? Talk about funeral arrangements.


In the graveyard of the small Greek orthodox oriented church I have been to all my life, there are three graves bearing my last name. The grave of my mother Martha, the grave of my father David and the grave of my wife, Michelle. They each have a headstone designed by the same man, and there is one by him stored away in the funeral home that directed the cremations of my parents and wife, already bearing my name and my date of birth. That man is already dead, so by the time I die, his protégée, or the apprentice of stonework that follows after him, will chisel in the date of my death and thus the stone will be erected to sit at the head of my grave. My aunt already has a gravestone for herself, and there is a plot next to my parents for her. When we all die, there we all will be, cremated and buried underground in urns of something similar. My aunt, my mother, my father, my wife, myself. All dead, all cremated, all buried, taking up such reduced space than the amount we occupied while living.

The bodies of Egyptian pharaohs were once preserved with all manners of substances and mummified. Their organs were cut out and put into jars, and they were buried with the most holy reverence of their servants and followers so that they may lead a good afterlife. When I die, when my parents died, when my wife died, the body is placed into a coffin, a service is held, and then it is burnt at a high temperature in a large chamber, fuelled by a roaring fire. What doesn’t burn may be ground down into dust, and what remains thereafter is placed in a container. All the life and worth of a person once they are cremated, equals only so much weight, and that eventually is buried or set free, wherever. In death, people are given to the Earth and left to rot in the dirt that creates around them, their new and most eternal hiding place.

My parents were perhaps ahead of their time in wanting to be cremated, but that is of no concern. The fact was, they were reduced to ashes and they were buried with their own headstones left to watch over them. Instead of their bodies being followed many years later by that of my aunt, and then myself and whomever I chose to marry, it was followed to soon, for my liking, by my wife. What lies now in the ground are the burnt remains of the three people in life who I loved, the three people in my life who I loved and who were murdered for who they were, what they had done, and who they might have been associated with, or what they might have seen. If I am not murdered at the hands of the many criminals I have helped be sent to jail, if my aunt is not murdered by one of the many enemies and ill wishers I have, then we will be the only people in my relevant and known family to die not by the injuries caused by some horrible and cruel external force. While it makes very little difference to me, and to the way I lead my life, even I am aware that the lives of my parents and wife should not have ended as they did. They were not bad people, and while it was their choice to be burnt to ashes in death, as it will be the choice of myself and my aunt to be cremated and buried, it was not their choice to be murdered.

I will be cremated, my aunt will be cremated, and my mother, father and wife were cremated because it will be, and was, our choice. The way I see it, it is efficient, rapidly decomposing the body via fire, and reducing its entire mass down to a very compact weight of dust and dry, brittle remains.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 975


In the event of a zombie apocalypse, what would you do?


By all the laws of science and reality zombies do not exist. It is impossible to bring the dead back alive when they are truly dead and buried, gone and never to be anymore, anyway, anyhow, anywhere. There is literally no point and no relevant sense in trying to create discussion about such a topic that has no use and no real purpose in real life. A zombie apocalypse is not going to happen anytime soon, and neither will it happen for many years to come, nor ever, in fact, so really, there is no option for discourse on the topic. I don’t deal in the imaginary. In the process of my job, I deal with the real, with real evidence and real dead people who will forevermore stay really dead, and I draw my real conclusions by using real hypotheses based on really possible situations. I may imagine how a bullet entered the skull of a victim, I may recreate the circumstances and events leading up to how it happened, but these situation recreations are made out of the evidence I have collected, that other people have collected. I do not create evidence that wasn’t there in the first place, as that would be a gross use of my powers to misconduct the course of justice. No, if I have to deal with the imagined, it is only brought about by the absolute adherence to the real, and to the reality of what was most likely to have happened under the particular circumstances, given such particular conditions.

Looking at the zombies taken purely out of science fiction and horror genres, there is no explanation based in real life, in absolute science without contrary imaginative speculation, for the possibility of such a thing existing. Once a person is dead, they can not be brought back to life again, and certainly not with walking capabilities and the potential to bring about destruction. Oh yes, medical professionals are sometimes lucky to jolt back a person to life after their heart has stopped and they have been without oxygen for several minutes, but even then there are the almost inherent risks of brain damage and the risk to the ability to function and think normally afterwards, which can be impaired. After hours of no movement, of no flow of blood and oxygen throughout the body, there is no chance that any life breathed into a dead body would bring about in it any high level of functioning. This is ignoring the fact, of course, that it is impossible in the first place.

This notion of a zombie is furthermore increasingly unlikely if thought is given to the stereotypical movie scenario of mad scientists digging up dead bodies to create a legion of un-dead servants. Oh yes, for creative purposes they destined for the length of their existence to be absolutely willing and ignorant of pain or disagreement, but it is likely, is it not, that they would be full of preservatives from funeral homes? That rules out any normal functioning, it rules out any ability to work or move like a normal human being, even more so than just zapping recently dead cadavers back into some sort of semi living existence. No, the idea of zombies is foolish, and always will be. Contrary to the imagined arguments of people who find satisfaction in make believe, or contentment in the creation of pretend scientific arguments, the bases of which are entirely made of whim and fancy, the idea of the living walking dead is not the best one to waste time and effort on.

In my life, in my job, I sometimes deal with the imaginary as a way of recreating the circumstances and events of a crime. I know for a fact that most bullets are shot out of guns, excusing the odd circumstance where they may fire of randomly under the endurance of some other external force. Knowing that most bullets come out of guns, it can be safely known that if I find a victim who has a bullet wound, that such a victim was shot by a gun. Taking all the collective knowledge of ballistics, I myself, or a ballistics specialist would look at all the relevant signs and evidence of a bullet having entered the victim’s body, and conclude what gun it may have been. If we find the bullet, we can be even surer of our conclusions and early assumptions.

Furthermore, if we conclude that the victim was shot with a bullet from a gun, if I can find out what kind of bullet or gun it may have been, then this helps. If I can ascertain at what angle and distance this bullet was shot from, it helps me move towards seeing how it might it have entered the body, and all these tiny bits of information contribute towards recreating the scene itself, if such a thing must be done. Therefore, while I may use by imagination in some way, I am not creating the impossible, I am instead working off the evidence of what has happened, and using such evidence to bring about a conclusion that is as close as possible to the reality of what actually took place. While I may not be able to say who breathed when or who moved their finger joints in the moments before death, I can, as a scientist rely on the facts and evidence to help me hold certain conclusions. Using such information, I can give an accurate portrayal and description of what events and what other actions contributed towards the death of a victim. That is a hell of a lot more worthy, the use of actual science to hold actual thoughts, than the use of imaginary scientific possibilities to bring about the highly unreal and impossible situation of a zombie apocalypse.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 930


What do you think?


What do I think? It is not any business of anyone in particular to try and grasp what I think. The human race gets great joy out of trying to understand one individual from another, it gets blindingly giddy trying to paint auspicious properties onto parts of the personality, tacking them where they obviously don’t belong. When I do my job, when I perform my duty as a public servant, when I process evidence to aid in the solving of horrendous criminal acts, I think, of course I think, that is quite and clearly obvious. These thoughts, while they may come from within myself, they themselves are the product of years of training, of following rules, of knowing the rules and the processes to the most minute detail possible. Part of my inherent nature or not, part of my preference of order, or divided from it, my thoughts, what I think, in terms of my job, are part of my education, my history, what has developed what I was into what I now am.

To be a CSI, a person needs to possess large amounts of intelligence, and even more copious stores of problem solving abilities. They need to receive the proper training and understand all the facts that they have learned. Good training, however, getting through all the required training even, does not always equate to a person being a good CSI, and if they are not, they generally fail also in areas of their service to the public. In the process of being both a trained CSI and one who is able to use all the particular learned abilities with significant success, I think my way through many problems. I examined and work my way through various scenes and evidence trails, and it is my duty to piece these together in a matter that is both coherent and true. What I think, when working, are thoughts related to my job, to the cases I am working on, the people I control, the various implicit and obvious duties I have to perform on any certain day, at any particular moment. It wouldn’t matter if I thought the sky was purple when the evidence says it is blue. I do not disagree with the story the evidence provides me with, the angle of an entrance wound, the type of bullet used, because there is no point in trying to argue with real, concrete hard facts. While I do not argue with what is true, part of my job is finding out what is true, first, and then assigning to it, a degree of certainty and relevance to the case being moved through.

When I was a small child, I was under the guidance of my parents, they would care for me and direct me towards how I was meant to function in life. They would provide me with the necessary abilities, equipment and knowledge to furnish my future life in splendid increments of maturity and responsibility. But they died, they were murdered, and life, being not all fair, or all forgiving, showed me that I can not have everything. I learned that day, that the concept of not wanting to think certain things, is more reliable an idea than a continual state of being mislead by putrid thoughts and irrelevant fears, or even by other people. Life continued on, as all lives do, and as I learned to think for myself, I gained my own kind of thoughtful independence. Love, the brief touch I had with it however, served to gain my downfall. It weakened me, and then I was reminded once more, that nothing is entirely fair, nothing lasts forever, and I certainly can not have everything or even a glimmer closer to it than I have always had.

What do I think? Of course you want to know what I think. I have shown you what I think. I think that life is not entirely fair, I think that human beings, the entirety of the human race, is made up at large of groups of people, either educated and useless, or uneducated and more useless still. Each person can query their ideas, their thoughts, even their troubles, until the world turns upside down and pigs fly, but in the end, life is still not equal, it is still not all forgiving or all giving. A long time ago, I learnt to think for myself and myself only. I think the thoughts I do, and I am responsible for the actions and consequential ramifications these thoughts lead me to doing or seeing. I am not privy to the blinding emotions of humanity because I killed out my soul, my happiness, my chance at normality, during a very, very distant moment in the past. I continue, however, to think, to breathe and to live, because I am one of the few educated and useful people who know how to think without the influences of emotion, who can be rational and acute with their ideas and their actions. What do I think? I think many things, but most of all, I am alive only because I think as I do. If I were any weaker kind of person, I should have shot myself when I was young and orphaned, and yet to be a future widower.

Are you happy now that you know what I think? How better has this made your life, your own thoughts, your own depths and squalid darkness? If you’re happy, then so be it. If you’re not, let me state this. I, simply, do not care.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 476


Schadenfreude.


A sad Nat King Cole tune wafted out of a crackling radio as the old man sat on his porch watching a glaring Las Vegas sunset. He liked the old songs because they reminded him of days passed by, of women gone by, of sources used and beaten until they were dry and dead, of things the way they used to be, the way they ought to be now. This particular man was not someone who found joy and satisfaction in all the rules and regulations that threatened to strangle and permanently exterminate the good law breaking way of life. The rifle that sat snake like quiet and snake like dangerous in his hands, laid across his lap like a sash of honor, silently agreed with him.

The heart attack struck quite suddenly, too many years of women, of cigarettes, of late night takeout orders culminating all of a sudden in throbbing pain and a massive thundering build up somewhere in his chest, like he was being flattened by a stampede of horses. The dots danced across his eyes like the stars he had intended to watch that night, and the snaky shotgun slipped to the floor, the very thing he had intended to shoot the cops with, the ones he knew were coming.


As the sun rose over Las Vegas the next morning, Conrad Ecklie had what an emotionally dead man might liken to an inner emotional smile. In this case, it was much easier to serve the search warrant when the person in hand was already dead. The missing parts of his face indicated, so far as the coroner was babbling on, some sort of animal having gotten at him during the night. As for the shotgun, well, it was all very good that the victim was dead then. It was also very lucky that the dead man’s switch he had been sitting on had been poorly made, and the cache of explosives inside the house had not blown up.

There was something very nice about the way it all had worked out, and having the guy dead would make it all that easier to rip apart his belongings and see into all the secrets he had indicated that he had hid away in special files, folders, secret hidey away places. It was nice he hadn’t shot anyone, it was nice that the explosive hadn’t blown up, it was, in a way, nice that the animals had chewed at his face, a kind of justified end for someone who was rumoured to have had a lifetime full of tying people to chairs and shooting them in the face. All in all, it was nice, and somewhere, deep down, an emotion existed, empty, largely blank emotion that was the closest the Dayshift would get to happy on that day, let alone any day at all.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 814


What are you wearing?


Bright Ecklie.

The hat said it all, the single feathered plumed sticking out of the band around the head. The dark colours, the snappy ironed pants, the gaudy tie, all angles and smooth fabric pressed into more corners yet. The face, painted serious but eyes sparkling in false ambition and merriment. He took the young woman by the hand and danced to a quick jazz number, saxophone blaring, piano tip tapping across the notes, the beat hectic and hurrying away, elusive and slightly melodramatic. The singer sung and they took their turn on the dance floor, moving to depression era steps that were secretly hopeful and remembering of a time, in the past, when they had been needed to fill the dancers with hope that there was a better day ahead. Being that there was no better day ahead for him, he had simply learnt them, practiced them, and put on the show. A competition was a competition and he thrived on competing, so whatever was needed was given, and whatever required function, was made to work.


Professional Ecklie.

Is tie was a mute blue, his suit an unimposing black or possibly very dark grey, his shirt a crisp white. Nothing was threatening, nothing gave away the impression that he was making any secretive jokes by dressing in a certain way, appearing with a certain manner intended. His face was clean, his hair was neat, and when he rose and launched into one variation of several previously prepared answers to the defence’s inquiry, his voice was impeccably smooth. It was not droll enough to be boring, but just like his clothing, it was not exciting enough that he was poking fun at the matter of homicide or criminal acts, or any of the serious matters he was being prompted to discuss and illustrate for the jury’s understanding.


Vicious Ecklie.

After all the years spent at the helm of people who inevitably made mistakes, who inevitable tripped up and found their way to his office, he had the art of inducing guilt rubbed down to a fine and imposing sheen. Leaning forward, he moved enough to slightly crease the front of his shirt, at enough of an awkward position that his coat started to strain at his shoulders and the end of his tie hung dangling in midair. His arms rested on his desk, fingers curled conspiratorially around paperwork, as if he had just been interrupted from something of great and vital importance. The man looked, for all intensive intents and proliferated purposes like a vulture waiting for the lost and unguarded child of prey to die of dehydration so he could rip out the guts and gobble the liver. He let the air hang, let it grow senescent while he waited for the nerves to build, and then launched into his tirade, letting his tie loosen a little as he gesticulated with hands and spat out with flaming words, the ineptitude of whatever mistake it was that had happened now, that should not ever happen again.

At home Ecklie.

For those few people who visited his home, he would usually arrive at the door looking as if he were about to go out to a business meeting. The pants weren’t as expensive as his work clothes, and he didn’t wear a tie, but the effect was the same. His shirts were ironed, his shoes polished, his socks never seemed to move further up or down his legs than they should have. He reserved only his least professional looking attire for gardening, for weeding and mowing the lawn where it was annoying to get grass stains in dress shirts and light coloured fabrics. When he dressed for bed, it was very much the same, no extravagant arrangements of colours, some stripes, some spots, maybe some paisley, but nothing chosen from desire. Everything was chosen from sensible colours and reliable brands that weren’t expensive because of who or where they came from, and that were mostly made of cotton, or a variation thereof.


Usual Ecklie.

Most of his clothes were chosen, bought and worn this way, so they weren’t offensive, so they didn’t have any other purpose than to look professional and orderly. What he wore wasn’t chosen for preference, it was chosen for intent, for what role he had to fill in that particular hour, or on that particular day. Never worn enough to look like he was wearing the same set of things day after day, but he never had more items than needed. Apart from those rare sets kept for his dancing competitions, from a life once lived, his clothes were much like him. Just like him they were rarely changing, and just like him they always existed with the same common sensibility that seemed to drive everything in his life, from personality to his unshakable need to hate everything and almost everyone.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 721


Customer service.


The life of a public servant is very much about customer service. I serve the public, I am at their service, to answer the beckons of the evil doers of society in order that their actions do not go away unnoticed, and hopefully, unpunished. In taking the evidence from the crime scene, I provide a service to the dead and to the still living public out there, the family, the work friends, the customers, the school friends and whoever else notices the absence of any particular murdered person. If I act angrily towards a victim’s family, if I do not do my job properly, and lose evidence, then I have no fulfilled my role as a public servant, as the provider of a service to the customers who would never be at the lab otherwise.

That is it, though, the very thing that all these sorry visitors don’t quite grasp. I get to hear the grievances and the sad weeping tales of hundreds of customers, of fathers who have lost daughters, mothers who have lost husbands, lover who has lost lover, it goes on and on and on, all this ceaseless woe. The public come here wish they didn’t have to come, wish they didn’t have to experience loss and grievance, but they don’t realise that if society tried to fix the various ills it contains, then they would not be here. If some cruel violence didn’t take place, then a particular person, some particular people, wouldn’t die, and the people left behind, oh well, they wouldn’t become my customers. If violence was removed, I would not have a profession left, because without violence, without the anger associated with it, there would be no murder, no killing, no friends, family, loved ones left behind for me to serve, for me to listen to their cries and their woes.

Life is not that easy, no, it never is that easy. When I wake up tomorrow, I will be the same man I have always been since I was a very young boy. There is no reversing the terror already struck across my life. I am an orphan, I am a widower, and when my wife died, I was my own customer service because otherwise, who would have pursued the case relentlessly, who else would have been as knowing as I was of every intricate detail of her life? One of the reasons I became a CSI in the first place was because I thought I could do a better job than half the witless runabouts who worked on the murder of my parents. I continue my job because I am a public servant, and the public, the unwilling customers who step onto the threshold of the lab, into our world of depravation and pain, well, they need my service. I am in a job that can not be removed from society unless we all become mindless imbeciles, so therefore, yes, I do think customer service is important. Of course it is. If I mess up, if I don’t do as I should, then things are affected, they don’t go as well as they should. At least, if I am here, doing my job, then someone is there, doing what needs to be done. Unlike some people, I go home and sleep at night only because my body necessitates it, and even then, after all these years, the nightmares still come.

When my customers, when the families and the parents, the husbands, wives, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, so on and so forth, when they come into my work domain, I give them a service and they go away. They move on, they don’t continually touch death all the time afterwards. Most of them aren’t completely broken, most of them fix themselves up and move on with their lives. No, they get to move on, but I don’t. I’ll be here, doing this job, providing customer service to people who shouldn’t need it if society was some sort of idealised normal, until I am forced out of it. The world is imperfect, and it is people like me, who are left to deal with the imperfections. All the vile sludge and evil of the world, people in my profession get to deal with it, and a majority of everyone else, well, they just forget.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 718


Are you an only child? Write about your siblings or lack thereof.


I am not a man for children. Never have been, and I never will be. As a child, I was a responsible, clear headed person, my own present self in miniature, as some of the lax headed receptionists at the lab may say. Thinking it through thoughtfully, however, I was, in every possible way, neat, tidy and well behaved. I saw the world through different eyes than of my peers, whose need to play infantile ball games far outstripped their desire to read books, or acquire knowledge about the big bad world which, in some years time, all of them would be thrown into, head first. Therefore it is perhaps, quite fortunate that the normality of my childhood ended so early as it did. Playing the role of suffering orphan, it gave me a lot of time to myself, a lot of time to get on with life and to learn about the future I was headed towards.

Suffice to say, I never had siblings. No brothers or sisters to play with, or to annoy, or to wheedle at for favours. My father was a good man, he loved me, but parenthood had not been an idea he had spent a whole lifetime wanting. He merely warmed to it in the years preceding my birth, seeing during those times of hardship and fighting, how valuable life really was. Perhaps, like so many men of his age, he had always wanted an heir to carry on his legacy, but I will never be sure of this, never having gotten to know him longer than the eight and a bit years I was conscious in his presence. Even then, a person such as myself can readily admit that the thoughts of a boy still possess some minor differences to those of a man. If not many, I had no desire for parenthood, that errant whim played out in dollhouse fantasies, and many decades later I still desire nothing of the sort.

As it is, I have never known my parents in any more an intimate way than I could gather from eight years of experiences, as well as from the possessions they left behind after they were murdered. Even with all the evidence of their existence laid bare before me, I have never been able to tell whether I was destined in those early years, to have a little brother or a sister. It is certain, however, from what my aunt explains to me, that I was the first child. In my family, we are simple and honest, and there weren’t any children that didn’t live, or were conceived and never made it to birth. Having never lived closely with a child of any sorts, in a family or friendly setting, I have never known what it is like, that experience, but to be boldly honest, I don’t regret it.

When I was a child, I thought with the mental acuity of someone far beyond my years. Oh, yes, I had my moments, playing with model planes, and running races, but, that was life. Once normality ended during those Christmas time festivities, things changed, life changed, I changed, and thus ended the possibility of siblings. Speaking more broadly, of children at general, mine or not, I was even married, I did even, briefly, contend the idea of having my own child. Michelle and I, we even discussed it once or twice, we even, contended the idea as something that could be a reality. Yet, life doesn’t go like that, it never does.

I have handled some cases involving children during the course of my job, I have seen freshly made orphans, all because of the vicious hands of some jilted ex-lover, or some crack head high on some new concoction splashed out on the streets. Most of them have people left, most of them will go on to be something more vibrant than what I am, and somewhere, in another time, I might be happy for them, instead of merely satisfied that my job was done and dusted with. I am not happy for them though, I do not feel happy anymore. Just like I do not have any siblings, or any children of my own, I do not feel happiness, and for any of these things, I never will.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 758


"That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version." - Chuck Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories)


There is a lot to life that is unexpected, and it does not surprise me that after all the years I have spent as a public servant that people still question the basic facts I tell them. If there is a driver’s licence, if there is some sort of identification on the body, that does positively identify the victim, then it’s so simple. Eventually, the next of kin is told, someone, somewhere is told, yet when it comes time to discuss the dirty deed of coming over to the morgue, people still question. You tell them their loved one is dead, and all they do is question. Oh yes, I know what it’s like to have people die, I know what it is like to lose the bottom of the world in a single, minute, moment, but the interrupted judgement of people mourning is more often than not, a hindrance to how quickly my work my go.

The problem is that people do not want to accept death when it personally affects them. If their mother, their brother, their aunt, niece, daughter, whoever, is killed, or commits suicide, or is slain in an accident, all they would dearly love to do is turn back time and prevent it from happening. The thing about sorrow is that it clouds a person’s judgement, it makes their thought processes unnecessarily long winded, and eventually, they come full circle and end up where they began. Death distracts people from getting on with life, from getting the job done of simply continuing onwards with their lives. Subsequently, it is left up to people like me to deal with people suffering the ramifications of loss, because the people themselves, usually, can not handle it, they can not process with enough speed, what has occurred.

If I were a more artistic type of person, I would liken the way people deal with death to how people deal with scary stories. Even I have watched a few horror movies in my time, heard a few scary stories. It doesn’t matter how unnatural or disturbing the actual content is, most of the horror comes from the build up. What happens in a scary story, in a film filled with blood and guts and gore, is that the terror builds up, it grows and it fed by all these literary devices I couldn’t care less about, and then come the moment of climax, it is just that, a moment, perhaps one that appears more shocking than the rest, but is a moment nonetheless.

What I have gathered about death, what other do not in the moments following the notification of the death of their loved one, or dear one or appreciated one, is that death is final. An accident, a shooting, a suicide, a jilted lover acting out their rage with a gun; once the person is dead, then they are dead, and they are never going to be anything else, ever. Oh, how I would have liked to grow up with parents, to have my wife still by me, all these years later, but it doesn’t work like that. I’ve had a handful of psychologists attempt to contact me, to council the long living, marred denizen of this wretched city, because they conclude I must, by now, be a nutcase, or quite close to it. No, I don’t speak to them. What is in the past is happened, and now it is irreversible. Damage can be fixed, effects can be mitigated in an attempt to patch over relationships or hurt feelings, but death does not get undone.

It does not surprise me how people react to the notification of the death of a loved one. All these years I have spent working around death, breathing it in and out like oxygen, the things it causes to happen, do not surprise me. I may not like the reaction much, but denial is a typical coping factor when the matter concerned is the murder or suicide of someone a person may have actually loved or appreciated on a level above friendship and below romance. People die, and people mourn, as unnecessary as it may feel, to me, to spend so much time concerned with memories and the past which can not be reversed, people do it all the same. I long since realised that what had happened to me, has happened to me, and can not be undone. I have long since realised that the only thing I can control is my own future, and, as such, I continue.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 596


What question do you most dread?


“Are you married yet?”

The question was never that explicit, but the old Greek ladies who liked to crowd around him when he made a particular point of standing alone after church, which was often, would always find a way of hinting at it. While his aunt could offer no such pretence of having forgotten his marred past in concerns to affairs of a marital nature, these women, these harpies of social inquest, had a firm grasp of such a luxury. He was the prodigal son after all, the man who had survived such tragedy that they so often conveniently forgot, one of the only men of his generation left in the church who had not married himself off to some beauty queen and embarked about producing legions of children. Or so the antiquated thought process of rabidly interested, aging, Greek female senior citizens went.


“Where did you learn all this?”

This question was often directly asked, because friends of friends would want him, desire him, to lead their younger dance students in private lessons when they themselves were too busy. Or they might want him to briefly fill in the role of a missing dancer, an ill dancer, an injured dancer, the list went on and on. Inevitably, he would sometimes end up leading inexperienced dancers in a salsa, a merengue, a waltz, and they would inquire, desiring to know where and how they could learn what he had spent an entire lifetime crafting into existence. The answer he gave, if he could be bothered to do so, was always short, and always indicated that they needed to apply themselves, that they needed to practice more, preferably without him.


“Why don’t you move on?”

This question was never asked, it was never spoken, because Grissom himself already knew the answer. Ecklie and Grissom had known each other long enough, Ecklie had hated Grissom long enough, had put up with him for so long that they both knew why the other, at that precise moment in their shared lives, was not moving on with things. Grissom was too attached to what he had in Las Vegas, and the Dayshift himself, had been swallowed by it all at the age of eight, never to escape, never to move on or leave. He was destined to die in the very city he had been born in, without ever having had the chance to be free from it, or to change himself for the better. It wasn’t like he ever bothered to answer the question, because he had long since stopped caring about such things, and Grissom, although Conrad saw the inquiry flash occasionally in his eyes, knew better to pry into areas that would never be resolved within any imaginable lifetime.


“Why don’t you just die?”

The viciousness of his mind would run itself around the inside of his head, only to be silenced under the weight of too many years of resolve not to feel anything, no happiness, no survivor’s guilt, no pleading desire to fix all the issues of un-repenting anger. It was not a question he did dread, none of them were questions he dreaded, because Conrad Julius Ecklie felt no fear, not anymore, not ever to come, never ever. This question though, it had an answer that he never acknowledged, but which sung itself to the heavens all the same, or at least what was left of his darkened, blackened, numbed heart. He lived, because Michelle had lived, and because Michelle had lived, he would continue to undergo life as long as humanly possible.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 669


"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (Who watches the watchmen?)


Crouching on the top of the wall, he watched the procession of men below him, the careful organisation of their footfalls and their guarded faces, the way their guns were held high, flags raised against the upcoming battle. He had seen this before, and it wasn’t unusual, some drug fuelled man, his paranoia hyped by some new concoction on the street. The suspect had guns, people like this always had guns, they believed in their twisted fundamental rights after all.

The bottom of his coat fluttered in an empty wind as the man leapt down from his perch. The wall was not built that high and he landed soundly on his feet before blending in with the rest of the living shadows that stood watch nearby. There was nothing incredulous about the situation, nothing that surprised him, not after all these years, not after all the time he had spent watching and studying the stupidity of humanity. It was a simple thing, that situation, it was not new, it was familiar, it was, not a regular happening, but it happened enough that he knew of it and remembered the style of what was to come. The shouting, the negotiation, the touch and go persuasion of words against shouts, hands against guns, all of it simple procedure, the orderly absence of normal order and function.

The back door came tumbling down and bouncing lights illuminated a horrid inner cityscape constructed out of dirty dishes and piles of clothing, or rubbish, it could have been either. Heavy boots crunched over unidentifiable refuse on the floor, and the Dayshift briefly wondered if he would ever get the smell out of his shoes, the all pervading stench of rotten food, of waste and ignorance. The men ahead of him spread out, clearing rooms and stamping up stairs with him following close behind, not near enough to be the first one in, but the person who would follow soon after, able to relish in the action nonetheless.

They came across the individual of the hour in an upstairs room, his arms flailing themselves around rapidly as he worked some large metal construct that rested in the middle of time worn floorboards. Completely naked, he stood there, tool in one hand, gun clasped in the other, two women huddled in the corner, waiting, watching, hoping perhaps, for an imminent salvation. As long as they didn’t interrupt him, the suspect seemed content to continue work on his monstrosity, but the moment one of the living shadows moved forward, the second he made to touch the man’s arm, the addict lashed out. A whip quick fist containing a wrench launched itself into rapid motion, yet it was over in seconds, all the action, the fighting, the disarming, the handcuffing.

It was all so simple. For all the build up, as long as they got access to the person at hand, as long as they were able to corner whoever it turned out to be, the wait to move on with the process, it never took that long. The Dayshift finished his shift some hours later and went home, got on with doing his regular life, his daily schedule, and nothing changed. The criminals who were criminals today would be criminals tomorrow, except tomorrow, there may be, probably would be, just a handful more or a handful less, who knew. No one would watch him though, no one would shift against him, the ever watching man, because he was only one of hundreds of public servants, ever moving to restrain crime, to try and halt it and always, always, failing to snuff it out completely. In the grand scheme of things, he was only one part. He could do his own best, but his own best would never be enough to stop everything, it would only ever contribute to how it was managed. One man against many, one team of people, his team, against all that there was in their domain, and it would never, ever, be enough.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 724


Do you have any pets? Would you like some (more)? Why/why not?


I have never had any pets. My aunt was not one for animals, having grown up largely in a period, within a family, who considered them a waste of money. My mother liked animals, and so did my father, but they probably had wanted to wait until I was a little older, I suppose, so they could have married in my first pet with learning my own responsibilities and important life skills. I simply do not like animals in great and special lengths, so finding no use or desire for one of them, once I had the ability to, I never did get one, or more. I actually find nothing at all endearing or actively purposeful about a cat, a dog, or any other thing, any other animal, which requires feeding, care, love, attention and all the other relevant things required of pet ownership. I don’t find cleaning up an animal’s food dishes, backyard or litter trays a significantly good use of a time that could otherwise, without animal, spent doing something more useful, elsewhere.

I do not deny that some people derive useful moderations of happiness and contentment out of owning a pet, or pets. I have read studies and articles that have perfectly made clear that animals can be of a great therapeutic, emotional and even physical benefit to those who chose to own them, or in the case of service animals, actually require their assistance. However, because I am not disabled, and because I have no desire or other need to own one, I am perfectly content with having no pets at all. I am not a person who would be able to derive happiness and satisfaction from something I consider, for myself, to essentially be a big waste of my precious time. Working as long and as hard as I do, it is the least of my internal desires to have one more living thing, with which to occupy my already busy schedule.

Perhaps I am being misunderstood. I do not like animals, as far as me owning an animal is concerned. I, myself, find them useless and a waste of good time and resources, needing food and vet bills, creating pointless conversations, competitions and clutter. This being so, I do not hate animals, I have certain beliefs pertaining to the conservation of the wilderness, to breeding programs and the preservation of species, but it still does not mean I am going to go out and attend all the tree hugging animal sympathising rallies that there are. As far as I am concerned, Grissom and his team are enough havoc for me, and if owning an animal, even a small one, is anything even comparable to having to clean up their disasters, then I’d very much prefer to just get on with my own life.

When I was young, I knew a street mutt named Scrappy. Not named by myself, I would see it wondering around the neighborhood as I walked, explored, climbed trees, doing all the things I normal boy of my age could do. Scrappy, in due course, as a result of having no home or owner, was run over by a speeding car. There was the detritus of death all over the road that day, blood and innards, jaggedly ripped flesh and an eyeball hanging out of its socket. People came, people collected the body, people went, the mess was cleaned up by whoever or whatever cared or was assigned to the task. As it is with many pets, even those who aren’t run over, there was no modicum of dignity or responsibility in that dog’s death. Pets are pets, once they are too injured or too sick to go on, they are put down or done away with, and life moves on, even after so much time and effort has been put into their ownership.

To be honest, I am not God, nor do I intend to play God for something, an animal, that will never know how small or insignificant it is, whose destiny is simply to die and leave me behind to clean up the mess of a life it did nothing with. By all means, people can own pets, they will love and adore pets, and find use of them, but I am not one of those people, and I never will be.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1079


Talk about a time you were sick.


The human body is susceptible to physical sickness and injury, just as it is to the waxing and waning of a fine mental state. From unblemished skin to a rising fever, from happiness to sadness, whether we admit it or not, like it or not, we are all open to injury, some, of course, more so than others. Some people like myself, however, are rarely ill and rarely marred by mental change, namely because we have good immune systems and have actually realised that half the mental angst that people get in knots over, is not worth the trouble. Naturally, because I have kept myself in good stead during my life, through a good diet and regular exercise, it comes rarely that I become sick with a virus or some other physical or mental malady. If and when, I rest, briefly at that, take medication, only if needed, and soon I am better again. It could be fair to say that I am never ill, towards the lenience of never really, because becoming sick, suffering through the flu or something similar, such a thing just does not occur to me on a scale of regularity as it does with other people.

While the strength of my immune system is a truth, there are still some times in my life that I have come down with something, and like other periods of time I have experienced, I remember a few of these circumstances in minute detail. I have a comprehensive, photographic memory, so to remember life like this, every groove, nook and cranny, it is not an unusual state of being for me. Just as some can’t recollect their last birthday, or their first puppy, I can visualise and draw information from my own past experiences, using what knowledge I retrieve, to gain advantage or explain away some period in my past that I am prompt being questioned about.

There was a time, some months after my parents died, when we were well into the new year that proceeded onwards after that fateful Christmas period, moving on with life as best we could. It was not yet my birthday, so it was not an entirely late period where the calendar was concerned, but things still changed, as they always did, moving onwards, always onwards. Like an aunt and nephew should when they are forced together by unfortunate circumstances, my aunt and I were growing accustomed to one another and the roles we had to play, because our shared livelihood depended on it. I suppose, to avoid unfortunate circumstances and a separation of selves that threatened us if she became an unfit caregiver, we were both working hard with the rigid determinedness that is prevalent in my family, to make things function correctly. This was not actually the hard part of it, because my aunt is my aunt, and we both loved each other, and had both fully realised the scope of what had been undertaken by forces we had not a large pull on. No, I suppose it was the fact that we moved onwards, striving forward at such a rate so as to continue with life, that saw us fall ill, each within a short time of the other.

Sickness, like true romance, rises quickly once it has a hold of a person’s body, causing previously unimaginable changes in their being, both mental and physical effects. As my temperature rose and my nose sniffled I remember a few translucent days where I simply spent most of it resting with my aunt nearby. Like two people upon the deck of deeply pitching ship, we were rocked about from side to side by the headaches of our illness, the accompanying raised temperatures, the chilled shivering and blocked noses. Eyelids hooded our eyes in the warm depths of our home, we hid beneath blankets and slept a fitful but warranted rest, for we were suffering, physically because we had a bad case of what I presume was the flu, and mentally, slightly mentally, because it hadn’t yet been a year. No twelve months worth of moments yet separated us collectively from the death of my parents, her relatives, one through blood and one through marriage.

Just as quickly as the illness surfaced and wrought itself upon us, it was gone from my aunt and me. Both of relatively the same stock, we recovered quickly and were back at our lives after a few days, steaming ahead as we usually were tempted to do, through inherent natures and an implicit, unquestionable directive to pull ourselves together and make our life together work for both our mutual benefits. I do not question this moment of sickness, now long in the past, covered upon by the years into decades since, but it was one of the first moments were our reliance upon one another was tested.

My aunt had a life beyond the meagre offering of family that was left through the mire and circumstance that brought my living relations down to the very small amount that there was, back at the time shortly before my parents died. She had a job and had carved out her own niche in her own particular step of society. I am aware that she was, from an early age, not one inclined towards ever having a family of significant largeness, seemingly preferring mostly adult company and the friendship of relevant intelligences, wherever she could find them. It was not my intention either, to have my parents die and wind up in her lap, changing her status from single, easily moveable woman, to the single adoptive parent of her orphaned nephew. However, as tragedy begets adaptation of those who are to survive its dark influences, so she changed and I changed, and together, we became a family.

That brief period though, the first time we danced with illness together, not as one relative visiting the sick other relative, but as a family under the same roof, I already knew we would work out our lives with one another, sufficiently so. Moving through those days as we did until we recovered, there was an understanding between us, evident through the simplistic actions and words of people who could not push themselves to do more, that we had already suffered through the biggest hurdle. In the death of my parents and the accompanying tumult and upheaval it caused through our lives, anything after that period, that illness included, was relatively easy.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 832


Thirteen.


Thirteen years old and he was already growing into an impressive young man, tall, thin and just enough athletic to be nimble and quickly turning. Not the most muscled boy, but he could run like anything, disappearing in the blink of an eye down the race track as he counted the rapid falling of his feet, the rat-tat pop of the starting gun still echoing through the air. It was five years, coming up to it anyway, so there were still people around who felt that they needed to be near him in order to ensure his continued survival. Not yet old enough to quietly slip from their minds as he methodically drew away all forms of contact, there were old family friends and past co-workers of his parents who still had the inkling desire to make sure that he was growing up as he should have.

At thirteen, some of these self styled hangers on even said such a thing. When they spoke, they said that he was going to grow up as he “should” have grown up, but they never said “would”, because that implied that more focus had to be put on the actual event that had brought him to such a state, and they were all trying to put it behind him. No one actually put thought into the fact that it was something he would never forget, accepting the dual parental murder as a tragic occasion doomed to fall into the past, into honeyed memories of the brief years his mother and father had spent together with him by their side.

Conrad Ecklie was thirteen years old, mind far older and more mature than his body. As he had started to grow and sprout, he moved on continually, wilfully ignorant of the play of hormones that other boys suffered through, because nothing of that nature interested him. Girls were girls, and unless he could gain information from them, unless they could impart the answer to a question to him, then they were of little use, as was everyone else. He already knew where he wanted to end up, and as he rode to the local library and searched through the books for those on crimes and professions, methods and history makers, he began to build a repertoire of knowledge. The dance had long since begun when he had been orphaned, and now it continued onwards, his forceful will already evident in his style and grace, his acute wit and eye for detail, for poise, for completeness. A master of battle, he had long began arming himself for a future that he would obtain, no matter what, drawing powerful swords of information from the world, collecting all that he would need to get towards his goal.

Having turned thirteen years old, thirteen year old fingers busied themselves tidying the house, tending the garden, washing the dishes. Hands and fingers united practiced manners, eyes continued to practice a learned art of changing momentarily, flickering from repulsed anger to calm, benign understanding. By the time he greeted the world as a customarily titled teenager, Ecklie already had more awareness and cleverness about him than most adults, and he had so surely already began constructing a pathway for his life, laying it brick by brick, arranging things around him, for his benefit, that would lead him to somewhere where he, himself, could change things.

Five years had passed and he still despised the murderers of his parents, was still somewhat revolted at the men who had investigated this situation, and who could sleep at night when he could not, at least without escaping dreadful nightmares and recreations of the past. As thirteen years would no doubt pass into fifteen and then twenty and onwards, Conrad Ecklie was precisely ready to face the world, and unleash upon the people that would wrong him, so many vengeful words. As hate and fury drove him onwards, so did it wrap his heart and chill it, making him knowing and understanding of implicit sacrifices and possible future woes.

Three years after passing the verge of turning ten, the young boy knew what he was going to be, where he was going to end up, and how he would get there. For all that he knew, he could have never imagined how he would willingly choose to divulge off that path into another area of emotional enlightenment, to sacrifice the bastions and walls of his pathway for ardour and romance. As he grew up, a boy in his father and mother’s own images, all the glitter that lay ahead of him was constructed of public servitude and the exaction of criminal punishment as a result of his work. No hope or happiness glittered ahead of him at this ripe age, for all the hope and happiness that his life had ever contained, had long since been squashed out, eradicated and gotten rid of in the hope it would never return to trip him up, ever again.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1240


The End.


It is now common for people, in this modern day, to change professions anywhere from once to several times in their lives. Such a lacking of dedication is explained away by the fact that people, perhaps, should be allowed to find something that they truly enjoy, and that this search can only be completed later in life, when someone has been allowed to see what truly hits their personal enjoyment buttons. Of course, given a few spare and odd jobs in my younger years, and some work to get myself through my tertiary education, ever since then I have been in the same job as I am in now. Planning ahead for a solid future, whatever it held, I saw what interests I had, and went in that direction to obtain a profession in which I would be able to excel in because of my particular knowledge about it.

At the end of my teenage years, as a young adult, I never dreamed of being so wishy washy, so I set myself in a direction I wanted, and obtained it hands down. Now I earn a solid income, I am in a position of power, and I am doing good, honest, beneficial work for society. I actually have a purpose and a direction life, as opposed to taking whatever interests my fancy at the time and running with it for a couple of years before deciding, eventually, that it is actually an unsuitable thing to be doing with myself. I find it ridiculous that the whole of younger society can be so arbitrary with what they do; flitting from one thing to another as if that is the right thing to do, because it is not.

To get anywhere in life, it is not a race to see who can gain the most varied knowledge, the widest range of occupations and employers, no, it is not. To be successful in life, it is about specialising in some area that interests you, that you can excel at, and then finding a job that uses this knowledge that you have gained, one that can support the style you seek to lead your life in. Naturally, in choosing a profession, a person must also be realistic about their hopes and goals for how they will be able to lead their life. They have to imagine what problems, or other people, that might get in the way of that plan, and they must adjust accordingly. If people complain about not being happy in their work, then it is only themselves that they have to blame, because they did not chose something that they wanted to go after and that could satisfy what they need.


In the end, people may do whatever they want with their lives; because at large it has long since been proved that the method of communism employed by some ruling powers and countries is an outdated mode of operation. We have started wars and international disagreements simply because politics has prevented some people from doing the wrong that they would like to wreck against whatever part of the world that they desire to harm. Similarly, trying to impose a forceful direction and coercion onto another person’s life can hardly ever, if ever, be beneficial. It is not external force and persuasion that leads many people to change their jobs nowadays, I do not think, it is actually just a simple matter of indecision.

A significant proportion of the human race appears to be an easily malleable group of beings. Most of us follow trends and activities favoured by our part of society at time. We watch what people recommend on television and we take our opinions from those offered forwards from the daily newspaper. We are moulded and shaped over the years of our lives to try and constantly be individual when many of one mass can not be discerned from those in another group. We are flighty with our lifestyles, our choices, many people nowadays seem to act on pure whimsical imaginings, and thus, here society is, indecisive and repulsive.


What many people do not realise is that every moment of our lives, every major decision we make, leads towards an inevitable end. Life may be beautiful; it may be out there to be grabbed for those people in the world who are rich and without worries. However, for those of us who are normal, middle or lower class individuals who will start off our lives as youngsters with no promised money or exalting heritage, it is up to us to find our own way in the world. To make a difference, a person needs to do something, but to really be good at it, they need to do something meaningful to them, in the long term. I will never see the point in the argument of people changing jobs half a dozen times within their short life spans, just for fun and interest. It is pointless, as far as I am concerned.


We all constantly move towards a final end, and we always will, no matter how any person tries to extend their life or sacrifice others for the sake of some godforsaken progress. In terms of the end, a final end in life, it is one that is set in stone. As such, while we are alive, it is right that we make ourselves useful, and stick in one place so we have something to show for it when we retire, when we die. I find nothing useful about having six or seven different sets of co-workers throughout a person’s lifetime, and having six or seven different professions to go along with it.

There is a movement in ballet called a tour en l’air, and I perform it as well as anybody, and I am better than the majority because of one single thing. I have worked hard to be good at what I desire to be good at, always throughout my life, I have always worked hard. That is what is needed of these flighty people nowadays. They need to see that to reap any success in life, any professional fulfilment or achievement, they must work at one thing, long and hard, for only then will they see the good end of things, only then, will their end be anything like something positive. People can change all they want, and sure, many change to be happier, more successful, but when it comes to the finishing of a certain period of life, the finality of all that was for some length of minutes, hours, days, years, only hard work and perseverance shine through.

If I didn’t have the job that I have right now, I would never have met my wife and while she may not have died, I would not have been there to suffer through it. However, my parents were murdered when I was young, and I saw in that a need, a strong desire to do better by them, to do better than the men who caught the people who caused me to become an orphan. Now, because I have worked long and hard at it, I am better, I am powerful, and I am successful. I may wish for death sometimes, but at least I have lead a good life, at least I have been successful, at least I have persevered during the course of my life, always, always, towards my inevitable end.

Name: Conrad Ecklie

Fandom:
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Word Count: 1858


In medias res.


“Why don’t you wear the ring?” the man asked, and his voice was innocent enough, unknowing enough that Ecklie turned and looked at him from his position across the empty room where he stood, one leg raised and stretched out, doing up his shoes. It was a professional relationship they had, one of dancing and art, but otherwise their worlds were so far removed from each other. One orphaned and widowed and one, from what the CSI could tell, was a man with some money behind him, but who still chose to dance where the floors had been rubbed bare of their gloss with years of use, where everything was old but not yet to the point of falling down. They had known each other surely for more than half a decade and yet the wealth of information they knew about each other could be stretched thin across two spread hands.

Finished doing up his shoes, the balding man motioned for the other person to begin, so the music was set to play and they began to dance. It was a nice set of movements, the lifting of bodies and twirling of legs all synchronised in time to the music, all displayed openly for a future audience to eventually see. It was a performance that was only gained access because they could judge each other quickly enough and react sufficiently.

While they danced, the CSI began to speak, forming a set of facts into a story that was so rarely spoken of that he had to search for a short while, where to begin.

“When I was much younger I met a woman who worked on the Nightshift. When we first met we argued a lot. In fact, one time she almost hit me with a...”

The woman glared at him from across the hallway, her thick blazing stare penetrating the walls and the glass windows through which they could just see each other, separated by not only floor space but machines and laboratory equipment. She seemed to finish her business in the other room before him, and exiting the area, she was suddenly in the doorway where he stood bent over a magnifying glass, examining fingerprints.

“You’re an amazing fucking prick, you know, stealing my case from me like that, when I arrived there first.” the woman said and he could almost feel the hair on the back of her neck beginning to bristle. However, this didn’t bother him in the slightest and the CSI merely glared back, a sneer lifting his lips as he presented a force equal to her own, willingly pushing fuel into the already lit fire with rabid determination.

“It was almost our shift anyway; someone with enough capability to handle the situation had to make a decision as to who was going to continue it. A fairly easy choice seeing as you hadn’t started processing yet, hadn’t even entered the crime scene itself.” Ecklie hissed, his voice low and calm, authoritative, but with that underlying sense of threatening with which he regularly held himself.

Within a split second the woman had picked up a heavy reference book from a nearby bench, hefting it easily upwards into the air, so that it hovered right above his head. The threat was obvious, do it again and he would pay dearly, but Ecklie didn’t listen. He annoyed her and riveted her the wrong way over and over again until finally, all the rivalry fell down and there they were, lovers and enemies united, no matter how cliché and at odds such a thing sounded.


He had the other man in the air now, a graceful lift that dipped into a sweeping of his legs, a turnaround and that final lowering of the other body towards the floor. The music continued to tell its story and they acted out an interpretation largely of the other man’s devising, because it was his performance, not Ecklie’s, his own personal showcase in which the balding, slightly older CSI was all too happy to take a part. He knew what it was like to have lost the thing that made the most sense, to lose the one person who could fill in all the spots and give forth a show of flawless creativity.

“Eventually I proposed to her and we set up a wedding. We didn’t have many family members so there were not a large number of people there. Just what family we had, some friends, mutual and individual, and some co-workers. Actually, there were still a few empty seats I think, and my...”

His aunt was the only person from his family there, because whoever else had existed were gone, and even if there was anybody left, he didn’t know of them. He was unaware of them and they were probably too far away to be available for such a trivial and small affair for someone they barely knew or cared anything about. She was beautiful on that day, all lovely and perfect in her wedding dress, her hair silky and smooth like it always was, her smell of flowers so familiar and rich, yet everything seemed new. He was happy, an unfamiliar motion at large, but it felt right, it made him feel content, satisfied, fulfilled.

The way they touched each other on that day, celebrated their union, their marriage, together, on that day, it was a good answer to a life he had previously considered only able to hold pain and retribution for grievances that he had never committed against any other living human being.


“You didn’t have sex?” the other man questioned, responding to the intricate detail of Ecklie’s words as if he had suspected it for some time before it had even been alluded to. The CSI, uncaring and uncaring bent backwards, his heels lifting up in the air as he arched his spine in mimic of a tree waving in the wind. He bent forward suddenly, snapping almost in half, fingers almost, just almost, touching the floor in front of him.

“What does it matter to you that we didn’t?” he retorted, pausing briefly to switch the song on the record player that sat in the corner of the room on a small rickety coffee table made out of old supply crate boards and chair legs. A surprisingly well constructed piece of furniture, but dubious all the same in its ability to withhold any greater weight than what was already on it. He went back to dancing as soon as the music crackled into life, and another set of previously arranged movements was put into practice.


“One day, not all that long after we were married, I went to work and Michelle slept at home, in preparation for her shift later on in the day. I went home though, when I had a moment, to see how she was...”

He found his way into their room and his nose wrinkled slightly, but he didn’t suspect anything. Their room was near the bathroom, and perhaps she was trying a new perfume or shampoo and the tangy smell lingered in the air. He saw her lying there, half hidden by bedclothes, her face slightly shaded by her hair, chest down, face to one side. He moved across the floor and stooped to move her, and all of a sudden, everything shattered into a million, thousand tiny pieces. He had touched dead bodies often enough, examined their punctured skin with gloves fingers, their bruises with cautious hands, to know, to know what he was feeling. He drew away, as if death itself could warrant a reflex action such as that, and looked down at her. Quickly, going into the mode rarely used by a CSI such as himself, for his work was more often than not, dead, her flipped her over. The man saw it then, the bulging wounds, the strands of white woven bandages, the artistry of it all, the cause of her murder and his undoing. There was no need to feel for a pulse, but he tried, and there was nothing except her violated body, her pure, almost untouched face, her eyes closed as if to mimic the eternal sleep which she now actually had suffered. Was there any art in her death, her murder? The way it was carried out could be called artistic, but, there wasn’t anything beautiful about it, nothing to be admired by the normal, everyday, sane person.

He had the same reaction as he had had decades before, so slipping on some gloves, he went and called his aunt.


“You’re an orphan?” the dancer queried, interrupting the CSI’s tale, now being so expertly woven that it seemed like the change from being unprepared to tell it, and easing into the rapid repetition of it, had been an intentional thing. To this question, Ecklie merely shrugged, now too invested in giving forth what he had been asked of, to stop and explain all the minor details, too long in the past yet still harmful and fresh feeling.

“I called my aunt and then...”

He made short work of that, and then called the police, and while they took their sweet time in coming, he called all the higher ups he knew and was making friends with, and told them in explicit, meaningful words, how it would go down and how he would save the day. He did save the day, they didn’t have enough staff, so he took a hold of the reigns, and who better than himself to do so? He solved the case, he captured the rapist bastard and saw that he would spend the rest of his tainted, wretched life in jail. Once he had command back of his house, once all the affairs of his wife were in order, he settled back to life, and continued on his way. The only benefit about having been tainted by murder before, was that he had been so briefly rescued that he could still, with great ease, fling himself back into cruelty and uncaring. This suited him fine, because he didn’t really care about the fools that stepped their way around his workplace. He still had a future ahead of him, and he was going to make it great.


Conrad Ecklie shrugged as he finished the story, returning to the present as he himself was lowered towards the floor, and the second dance came to an end. The two men stared at each other, faces slick with sweat, hearts individually thudding inside caged chests. He had come full circle in giving his answer in such a winding, particular story. The CSI had started in the middle, wound his way back to the beginning and made his way towards the end of it all, ending up, in a way, with where he was at that precise moment. He was not exactly at the end, but neither had the story been one to explain a start to a finish, it was one to explain how a middle had come from a start, why he was who he was then, with what he had been before and up to that point.