Last Patrol

Officer Daniel Kessler had been a fixture in the quiet town of Lin for over a decade. To the townsfolk, he was a stern but fair enforcer of the law—always patrolling the streets in his faded cruiser, eyes sharp for any sign of trouble. But behind the badge, something had been rotting away for years. It started with the whispers. At first, they were just murmurs in the back of his mind. Half heard voices when he was alone on night shifts, shadows moving where there shouldn’t be any. He blamed it on exhaustion, on the stress of the job. But then the whispers grew louder, more insistent.  

"They’re laughing at you, Danny. They know what you did.You’re not a real cop. Never were."

Daniel’s grip on reality began to slip. He started seeing things, figures darting between houses, faces pressed against windows and vanishing when he turned his flashlight toward them. Dispatch logs showed him calling in suspicious activity at empty lots, abandoned buildings, places where no one could possibly be. His fellow officers exchanged uneasy glances but said nothing. Then came the incidents. A speeding ticket issued to a car that didn’t exist. A frantic arrest of a burglar who turned out to be a mannequin in a department store window. Reports of gunfire that only Kessler heard. One night, things escalated. Dispatch received a garbled transmission from Daniel.

"Shots fired! Suspect down! Requesting immediate backup!"

When officers arrived, they found him standing over the body of a local mechanic, Jacob Riley. Riley had been walking home from work when Daniel, eyes wild and gun trembling in his hands, ordered him to freeze. When Riley turned in confusion, Kessler fired.  

"He was reaching for a weapon!"

Kessler screamed, but Riley’s hands were empty. The department suspended him. The whispers in his head became screams.  

"They’re coming for you. You’re finished. End it before they do."

On his last night as a free man, Daniel put on his uniform, loaded his service pistol, and stepped into his cruiser one final time. He drove through Hollowbrook’s empty streets, muttering to himself, laughing at jokes only he could hear. At dawn, a farmer found the cruiser idling in a cornfield. Kessler was slumped in the driver’s seat, a single bullet through his temple. His dashboard cam showed hours of him arguing with someone who wasn’t there before finally raising the gun to his head.