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The landmark 1981 US Court of Appeals case Warren V. District of Columbia ruled that police had no specific obligation to serve and protect the people.
Institutions of law enforcement—at their very core—exist solely to serve and protect the interests of the state.
PCP, known by its pharmaceutical name: Phenylcyclohexyl Piperidine, was first synthesized in 1956 as a medical anesthetic. Mainstream medical application on humans was dropped almost a full decade later due to the successful synthetization and mass-production of ketamine. The drug exists in pill, intravenous, powder, and oral liquid form.
The Tower is classified as an Major Arcana Card, preceded by The Devil. In divination, the Tower represents crisis. Upheaval. Destruction.
An abrupt and total change.
PCP is classified as a dissociative anesthetic.
PCP is highly addictive.
PCP triggers delirious hallucinations.
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Nobody bothered to cordon it off. As her feet dangled loose from the tiger-striped body bag, the rest of the beats and union opportunists were congregating in the kitchen—rifling through the junk drawers, the liquor cabinet padded with miniature bottles of Irish cream and chardonnay, fiberglass nightsticks swinging low. The antique rotary phone perched above the oven had been used for target practice, its disemboweled receiver tied to the blade of a ceiling fan. You sit on an overturned milk crate in the den, the half-finished report on your lap, sorting through the remains of her music collection as their shadows lumbered back and forth, back and forth—across the tiki wallpaper.
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The Plymouth Volare is a compact car manufactured by the Chrysler Corporation from 1976–1980 (sales flyer) for its Plymouth and Dodge divisions, the latter being simply rebranded under a different moniker and sold under the Dodge Aspen. The law enforcement package of the Plymouth Volare, along with its counterparts from Ford and GM—would go on to participate in the numerous shootouts, homicides, and street chases that characterized Reagan’s War On Drugs.
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This wasn’t the first instance of Chrysler rebranding its consumer-grade cars for police service—the company had been manufacturing beat cop cars since its very inception in the 1920s, but struck gold at the beginning of the 1960s with the Chrysler Enforcer—the police package of the Chrysler Newport (back) the first generation of which (1959-1961) signified the final hurrah for slick, BOAC Comet and Roswell style design before cars rounded out into matchboxes and grew afterburners with the world's attention gripped fast on the Apollo missions. No-knock tetraethyl leaded gasoline, the fumes spit directly out with no middleman with an screen. Terrible mileage. No airbags. Ineffective seatbelts, if any at all. You had to shell out extra for power steering. Crash protection? Nonexistent. But the tailfins sure look gorgeous.
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Heya.
For those of you just coming in, hello. I'm lzhoudidion, and I'm an WL fiction author and prose poet with interests in history, railroads, classic automobiles and the aesthetic of suburbs lighting up with phosphor streetlights and the glow of VHS cartoons at dusk.
Whereas much of the pieces I've posted before on the WL were the equivalent of taking an short drive at 3AM to the McDonalds in the next town over for an couple cheeseburgers and several glasses of Coca-Cola, the time behind this one was long. Exceptionally long. Like taking an road trip across state and international lines with nothing but an ferry ticket, several changes of clothes and an copper statue of Sun-Yat-Sen strapped on the ski-rack. It was originally written in December of 2022, in one flashpoint of an weekend wracked with dry-cut visions of sweater weather klaxons and lead sleds skimming around tight corners and revised continuously while in storage over the course of 2023. Mental health issues and college burnout since, for a lack of a better term, consumed the better of me, but I'm incredibly happy with the end result. I do hope you enjoy.
Thank you so much to 
Tyumen for graciously hosting and coordinating Anthology 2023, 
Stygian Blue, Tyumen, 
FleshMaddAvalon and my offsite friend Vince for crit. On the artistic front: many thanks to 
syuzhet for her beautiful reimagining of the 'ol Tower tarot card, my IRL friend A.A for the end art, 
daviiid for illustrating the backs, and 
EstrellaYoshte for devising the CSS theme. All the best.
