Heated

Horrible fucking day.

Lizzie and I got into a fight. I mean, really fought. We've had arguments and stuff before, plenty of times, but this time we were full-out screaming at each other. Thank God there was no one else in the room with us, or I'd never hear the end of it.

I've never been so angry at her. I'm never seen her so angry with me either, but then again, I'm me, and she gets exasperated with me easily sometimes. Still, this time...Jesus Christ. I can't believe that happened...

I came into the office this morning to find it completely empty. I guess everyone was either eating or on call. It was weird not seeing Lizzie there, but when I walked to her desk and saw her computer on, I knew she was around somewhere. Just another day in the office.

Those fucking drawings were all over her desk. I shook my head as I started clearing them off, because I figured, better to give her a fresh start for the day. And then I happened to glance at her computer, which normally I don't care about because she'll usually tell me whatever she finds...

She had websites up...websites on that fucking Slender Man. All sorts of blogs, pictures, sites that were supposedly studies of the guy...she had maybe eight or nine browsers up, all of them on that fucking son of a bitch urban legend...

And I lost it. I just fucking snapped. I grabbed her mouse and just started clicking all of them off. I don't know if she saved anything, I don't care, she's not pulling that bullshit up when I'm here, I'm not putting up with it...

And of course, she comes in the room just as I'm turning this shit off, and she flips her shit, and I flip my shit back. She's pissed at me because I'm going through her stuff behind her back, and partners don't do that, and I'm livid because she's pulling that myth bullshit up, when she already knows full well how I feel on the overused and overtalked about subject. And how I feel is what I've already said before; it's a crock of shit.

She says to me, “Strahm, you can't honestly tell me you don't see the connection. Never mind the camera and the blood, how about the fact that he's drawing the fucking symbol all over the place! The drawings are of him, isn't it obvious? The guy is using the Slender Man story to scare his victims, to get them nervous, and then he gets them, see, he's mimicking-”

But I don't hear it. I full out scream at her that there was no Slender Man, it was a myth, and...well, then I said that she should start actually doing her job instead of goofing off and looking up ghost stories. That maybe if she did her job, we would have found the kids already.

Yeah, I fucked up. I was mad, do you blame me? But that wasn't even the worst thing I said.

Her eyes started getting watery right after I yelled that. Now, Lizzie doesn't cry, at least, not often. Usually she'll cry when her dad calls her (don't ask), but that's it. She's tough, but at the same time, she's also pretty fragile. She's thirty-two, but she doesn't LOOK thirty-two, you know? And sometimes she doesn't act it either. And right then, seeing her tear up, it looked like I had just screamed at a six-year-old.

“Look, Lizzie, I'm sorry. I'm just mad. Come on, let's grab a bite to eat and look over the evidence again. Maybe we can come up with something we missed before.”

Does that sound nice? Yeah, I think so too.

That's what I SHOULD have said.

And...well...here's what I actually said:

“Oh, what, you're gonna cry now? You're gonna cry over your little fairy tale being bullshit? Jesus Christ, grow the fuck up and start acting like a fucking cop. I'm not dealing with this bullshit.”

The end. Of course, I also got pissed enough to throw some shit off my desk, but for all intents and purposes it was over. Lizzie stood there, looking like I had just kicked her puppy, and then she grabbed the pictures that I had just cleared off her desk and stormed out of the room without giving me so much as a second's glance.

I didn't see her for the rest of the day. I didn't exactly go to find her either.

God, I feel like shit...