 Gryphon said, pointing towards the silhouette of the store. There were streetlights in the parking lot, but all but one of them had been broken out, and the one that was working flickered constantly, like it had a short.
Varner swung the car into the cracked, sloping lot, and drove very carefully, as there was a lot of trash and various detritus scattered about the lot. Broken glass glittered like diamonds, and char marks from fireworks and impromptu bonfires made the asphalt look diseased. “This is the old Packer’s,” he said. “It’s been closed down since the parent company went bankrupt three years ago. I was always kinda surprised it didn’t get accidentally burned down.”
“They can’t sell the land?”
He grunted in a smothered, sarcastic laugh. “They can’t sell shit down here besides eight balls and ass. Everything from West 224th to Aspen Boulevard has been bled pretty much dry. It’s not so much a depressed area as a bludgeoned one.”
“So there wouldn’t be any witnesses willing to report anything suspicious,” Gryphon said, thinking aloud.
“Oh sure, the guy buying a vial of crack is gonna report a gunshot,” Varner agreed bleakly. He reached across to the glove compartment, where he took out a heavy LED flashlight, and a smaller MagLite, which he offered to him. Gryphon initially shook his head, but Varner continued holding it out, so he reluctantly took it. As soon as he got out of the car, he spit out his gum on the blacktop, because it was starting to taste disgusting and it wasn’t going to dirty up the parking lot much more than it already was.
Varner turned on his flashlight and started to sweep the surprisingly bright blue-white beam along the ground. “You said in your vision you saw a shell casing roll down?”
“It wasn’t a vision,” he argued, but in all honesty he had no idea what the fuck it had been; vision was as good a word for it as any. “But yeah.”
He joined Varner at the bottom of the sloped parking lot, where litter had gathered in rather large amounts. There were lots of fast food detritus, mostly from McDonalds, and roaches scurried as they kicked the trash and shone lights on it. There were the shattered remains of beer bottles and crushed cans, giving the trash a yeasty scent, shattered crack vials and pipes, used condoms, used syringes tinged with blood, even the remains of an exploded sports drink bottle. But after a minute, Varner muttered, “Son of a bitch.”
Gryphon joined him as he crouched down and pulled a pen out of his pocket, sifting through litter until Gryphon saw the glint of metal. Using the pen, Varner expertly picked up a hollow shell casing. They exchanged a look of surprise, as Gryphon didn’t honestly think the casing would still be at the scene. Of course it could be a different casing entirely, but that would be for the cops to figure out.
Varner gently put the casing back down and once he stood up, kicked a Big Mac wrapper over it to hide it. “You definitely need to work for us,” he said, turning towards the store.
“Somehow I don’t see any police department wanting to justify the expense of me,” Gryphon replied, following him up the lot towards the abandoned store.
“Yeah, well, maybe I can find a way to sneak you on the payroll. I honestly think you’ve just broken this case, Gryph.”
“Don’t count your eggs yet, or whatever the fuck that expression is. That could be anybody’s shell casing.”
“But this is the store, right?”
‘Yes, it is.” Even the bloated letters from the gang tag graffiti on the plywood nailed over the broken main window was precisely the same as he saw it in his “vision“. They approached a front entrance that was not only chained with heavy cables but boarded up, and Gryphon surprised himself by blurting out, “He goes in a back way, so nobody driving by on the street can see him.” Since when did he know that?
But Varner just nodded and started around the side, Gryphon following him like an obedient dog. Somewhere in the middle distance, a car alarm was whooping and hollering into an indifferent night, and Gryphon couldn’t quite shake the scent of stale beer out of his nose.
The back lit up in trails, caused by Varner’s super bright flashlight beam. It struck him that he would have known he was a cop simply by that flashlight - cops always wanted to see what was going on, and it was a weapon as much as it was a tool of illumination. He could blind someone with the light, or simply clip them on the head with the butt end, but either way it gave him an immediate advantage.
There was a loading access door, wide enough to unload palettes of goods into, but because it was a metal door it wasn’t boarded up; there was simply a very heavy industrial padlock and chain on the door. But oddly enough, the chain and lock looked newer than anything else here.
Varner grabbed the chain and tested it by pulling, but it was solid. “Think he picks the lock?”
“He has a key,” a woman’s voice said, and Gryphon turned to see a young Hispanic woman standing on the loading riser with them. She was wearing a half shirt and miniskirt, inappropriate for this time of night, but then Gryphon noticed the neat hole in the middle of her forehead and the blood trickling down to bifurcate her face. Her ink black eyes settled on him, and told him crossly, “It was about time you pendejos got here.”
Yes, it probably was.Mental disorders have gained Brazilian’s media space for discussion and, currently, there is a lot being said on the subject. This paper has dealt with a group of professionals’ concepts of a higher education institution on mental disorder, in order to verify the existing stigma and to produce debates on its reduction. This is a qualitative, action research study, developed with eighteen technical-administrative professionals of a public institution of higher education in Piauí, in 2009. The declarations revealed no clear definition of mental disorder. We have verified that the connection between prejudice and psychological distress remains within society, requiring that the subject continue to be discussed in social groups.
Descriptors: Mental Health; Knowledge; Cognition Disorders; Concept Formation.
Los trastornos mentales ganaron escena de discusión en medios de comunicación de Brasil y, actualmente, mucho se tiene oído hablar sobre el tema. El presente trabajo trató de las concepciones de un grupo de servidores de una institución de enseñanza superiora sobre trastorno mental, a fin de verificar el estigma existente y suscitar debates en torno a su reducción. Estudio cualitativo, del tipo investigación-acción, fue desarrollado con dieciocho servidores técnico-administrativos de una institución pública de enseñanza superiora de Piauí, en el año de 2009. Las declaraciones evidenciaron no haber definición clara sobre trastorno mental. Se verificó que la relación entre preconcepto y sufrimiento psíquico permanece embutida en la sociedad, requiriendo que el tema continúe a ser discutido en los grupos sociales.
Descriptores: Salud Mental; Conocimiento; Transtornos del Conocimiento; Formación de Concepto.
All through history of madness people with mental disorders were considered ‘dangerous’, ‘sick’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘special’. These concepts were and still are attributed to these people, which contribute to the production of ambiguous thoughts about this subject. Contrary from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, in which the madness concept went from natural to pathological (1), debates in the twentieth first century discuss nodular hinder issues for the need for social/cultural reinterpretation, under the approach of the new object: the person with disorder and instead of the illness and the mentally ill person.
During the history of madness (2), it is noted that the society has used different names regarding this phenomenon, according to the needs and interests of members of the ruling classes, when the terms "madness" and "insanity" had different connotations over the years. Besides the changes in their meanings, there were also changes in the practice of health care for those who attended the psychiatric institution, the hospital and, later, mental hospital.
Insanity, which was initially considered a human nature phenomenon, would later take over the role of causing harm to the society by those affected by it. The insane (crazy people) were dangerous beings, aggressive, so they were put into cells and enchained by health professionals, under the pretext that the isolation itself had the healing power (3).
In Brazil, with countless deaths occurring in these psychiatric institutions, and considering useless this type of practice towards the insane treatment, the mental health professionals have organized themselves through intense mobilization in several Brazilian cities. This movement, known as the Movement of Mental Health Professionals led to a very complex process called Psychiatric Reform (4) and with the enactment of Law No. 10216, April