Doors

[Someone's gotten hold of Nicholas' journal and a box of crayons, it seems. The drawings are childish and colorful, people-shaped figures and bright suns and rainbows and all sorts of coloured masterpieces from a four-year-old hand. The drawings carry on for most of the morning, a child at play with her father unaware.]

[Public]

Does the holiday season permit celebration between the reminiscing of pestilence and the later gift-giving, or do you deny yourselves prior to the orgy, renewed virginity for gluttony to come?

[Dexter]

Did you track down whoever it was who thought to compose a fiction from my accounting? I expect him no longer in my employ - or anyone else's.

[The box appears in Dean's hotel room in the early morning hours of Tuesday. It is wrapped in newsprint and twine and has no tag indicating who it is to or who it is from. Inside, a blast from the proverbial past. Horrendously coloured and jabbering away in something that is distinctly not it's normal language, the thing sits and watches Dean once it is opened.]

[There's a serial killer loose in New York, though police haven't yet tied the murders, which occurred randomly in adjacent counties, to each other. The victims are impaled, smothered and drained. There are no witnesses at the actual crime scenes, but passersby recall a red-haired stranger in the area on the day of the murders. In crime-filled New York, these reports get filed with other murders that are equally as gruesome, to await time and resources for investigation.]

[After heading home from the Thanksgiving gathering, still somewhat tipsy.]

Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.