Empire

I had the opportunity to work with all types of people in my time. From the super violent and vicious to the super weird. The weird were always the most fun. Once in a while The Green Mile and I would work with the unit specializing in the mentally ill.

Before we got to our last house, we were warned to what we might see. This one probationer was a “little off, just don’t ask questions.” In this environment that was saying something. It was deep in February, and even though it was in Southern California it was quite chili. By the time we got to the house it was pitch black. We were to contact our guy, count his meds to be sure he was up to date and leave. A simple stop. He lived in a small one bedroom house/shack in the back of a trailer park. After a few knocks our guy came to the door. 

The door swung open and there he was, 5’8” disheveled and completely naked. Not a thread of clothes on his body. His giant gas tank of a belly sagged down past his waist and he had what looked like mustard caught in his attempt at a goatee. The mustard had broken loose from the thin, straggly chin hairs but trapped again in his chest hair. A wave of heat from the inside of the house hit us in the face, along with the funk.  The inside of the house smelled like the Devil’s armpit after a basketball game. I peered over at the Green Mile with a look that he recognized instantly, what did we get ourselves into?

“Come on in,” said Corey, spinning on his back foot and waddling toward the living room.  The house opened into a small kitchen. All the lights in the house were on, and the TV couldn’t have been louder.  As Corey walked past the stove I noticed all four of the gas burners were on full blast. The flames reached up inches past the iron grid into the space above, looking like four mini bonfires. I broke the first rule.

“Ummm… why are all the burners on?”

Corey looked at me like I just asked if the sky was blue, “Because Empire is on.”

Of course, Empire is on. (This was a while ago, but you remember the show, right?)

While the specialized officer sat with Corey, I did a quick sweep of the house. Standard procedure to make sure no one else was there. In the bathroom, the tub was filled with filth, reminding me of the tub at the end of Silence of the Lambs. The smell was unbearable and I was ready to get out. Walking back into the living room, the TV was still at max volume and Corey was sitting in the one chair in the room, an old ratty lazy boy recliner, inches from the TV. He was still completely naked and didn’t care.  

While the meds were being counted, I started to make my way to the exit in the kitchen. I couldn’t leave yet so I kept myself busy looking around. I thought I’d make this whole experience even more odd by looking in his refrigerator. In the freezer there was an old tub of Napoleon ice cream, next to that a half eaten key lime pie… and then two frozen kittens. 

Yeah. Frozen kittens.  

I alerted The Green Mile who was just as freaked out and then the specialized officer. As it turns out, Corey has a stray cat stay with him from time to time, she had a litter of kittens and two were stillborns. I guess that’s a real thing. Corey loved them so much he didn’t just want to throw them away so he stored them in his freezer. Makes sense I guess.  

We contacted animal control and they removed the dead kittens from the freezer. Corey was sad but wasn’t in any real trouble. He was ordered to not do that again. Thankfully that was the last stop of the night, The Green Mile and I had enough, and we wanted to catch the end of Empire.  Season finale.