"That's impossible..." said the wool-coated, white shirt-buttoned-up-to-his-neck, frowning man as he stared down at the sight on the floor. He, along with his assistant Natalie, were there with the police and medical personnel clustered around a body...or what was left of a body...floating in mid-air, with its upper half still visible and its lower half...gone? The upper half was protruding from what appeared to be a strange, huge circle of light that pulsed and glowed at regular intervals, but made no sound and when one walked behind it, showed no sign of the rest of the man. The medics put on heavy gloves and pulled the corpse by its arms out of the "light" and set it on the concrete floor.
Which made the situation all the more strange.
For the body wasn't bisected; it just wasn't there! There was no blood, no...organs spilling out, there was only a glow that matched the glow of the light covering the waist...
The medics set the body down and stepped back, looking just as lost as everyone else in the room.
The "crime scene," if that's what it was, was a large laboratory in a building that was thought to be deserted. It was in the low-rent section of the CIty, with no indication from the outside as to its actual purpose. The body was that of the former head of Quantum Physics at Arkham University, one Doctor Julius Feynman, a distant relative of the famous Richard Feynman.
"I know it's impossible, that's why we called you, Monk," said the police chief. Captain Stottlemeyer spared a glance at his assistant Lt. Disher and added, "...if anyone can get to the bottom of this, it's you."
Monk wrung his hands. "I deal with facts, Leland, science..." He nodded to the body. "This makes no sense..."
Lt. Disher checked his notes. "It makes perfect sense once you know who he was!" He looked up expectantly and smiled as he paused for dramatic effect. Leland fought to keep from rolling his eyes.
"Randy, we know who he was...do you have anything else?" He inwardly kicked himself for asking that, but it was already too late. Randy grinned.
"As a matter of fact, I do!" He looked around, still smiling, then drew a breath, raised his hands, and spread his fingers theatrically as he said in an awestruck voice, "MAGIC..." You could hear a pin drop as everyone in the room simply stared at him. Mistaking their silence for "admiration," he continued. "I know, right? But, it's the only thing that makes sense!" He pointed to the body. "This guy was a scientist, but he was into some really weird, secret stuff before he went missing! He must have discovered something that somebody in the government didn't want the rest of us to know! And what would that be?" He shrugged as he made his final point. "Magic."
Captain Stottlemeyer closed his eyes for a moment, then repeated, "Magic...?" Before his lieutenant could (enthusiastically) respond, he raised a hand and said in a weary voice, "Randy...let's...shelve that idea for now, and let Monk check out the area."
Monk threw up his hands and looked around. "What exactly is it I'm looking for?" He pointed. "We have a dead scientist in a "spooky" (making the air quotes with his fingers) lab. His lower half is nowhere to be found, and the only clue we have is this...wait..."
Leland stepped forward. "What?! What do you see?" He looked where Monk was looking, but saw nothing unusual. Adrian kept silent and raised his hands, spread his fingers, and stared through them as he looked down at the body, then began walking slowly all around it. He then held out his hand to his assistant. "Wipe." Natalie reached into her purse and quickly gave him a Wet Wipe®, which he wrapped around the first two fingers of his right hand, then slowly bent down.
Just as he was about to touch the side of the body's neck to check the pulse, the body opened its eyes and screamed, "It WORKED!!"
"Are you okay, Mr. Monk?" asked Natalie, as she stood by her quivering boss, who sat wrapped in a police blanket on the far side of the room and was still staring out into Nothingness. When the bisected body had spoken, Monk had let out a blood-curdling scream and had fled the room; it had taken the better part of an hour to coax him back in, but he had refused to come any nearer than across the room, and also wouldn't make eye contact with it.
Natalie stood beside him tapping her foot, torn between trying to calm him down and trying to listen to the scientist, but she knew her place was here. To anyone else, she would have offered a hug, or at least a pat on the back, but she knew he was such a germaphobe that her offer of comfort would have been rejected. Not for the first time, she wondered how life had been for him growing up laden as he was with all his phobias: haphephobia, Acrophobia, claustrophobia, gymnophobia, MILK, among a myriad of others...it was a wonder he could get out of bed each morning...
He sat with his back to the former "body," whom they'd lain on a gurney, and which was still speaking in an animated fashion about "space portals," "distant worlds," "alien life," "time travel," and other such nonsense, with no signs of distress at being "visually" bisected.
His left eye twitched as he said, "I can still hear it...talking...it's not possible..." Natalie glanced over at the animated scientist, the Captain, and Randy standing next to him, the portal, and then back down at her employer.
"Sometimes...sometimes you just have to accept that not everything has a rational explanation, Mr. Monk," she offered delicately. He deigned to look up at her.
"I wish you could hear yourself. EVERYTHING has a rational explanation; all one has to do is find it..."
Natalie scowled, and was just about to make a retort when Dr. Feynman suddenly announced, "Did anyone happen to see my assistant? If he's stolen the device that controls my portals, it could be bad...for all of us." At this, even Monk turned around and started paying attention.
The Captain frowned and asked, "What do you mean, 'it could be bad?' How bad?" The Doctor smiled and waved a hand.
"Don't worry." He pointed to the glowing circle of light. "The portal is still functioning, which means it hasn't been compromised, which also means the device is probably still in my lab somewhere." Then he frowned. "But, my assistant was supposed to have been monitoring my progress, to make sure something like this did not occur," he said, indicating his missing lower half.
Monk mustered his courage and approached the scientist (while Natalie followed him) as he'd been speaking, then asked (without looking at him) "Is it possible he followed you into that...whatever it is...without your knowledge?"
Doctor Feynman looked up at Monk, then turned to the Captain. "Who are these persons?"
"This is Adrian Monk, our best investigator, and his assistant, Natalie Teeger. Monk is here to help."
The Doctor nodded to the blonde. "Charmed, Ms. Teeger." Then he frowned at Monk. "Hmm. Adrian Monk. I believe I have heard of you...compulsive, riddled with phobias...weren't you catatonic for almost four years after your wife's unfortunate accident?"
At this, Monk turned and looked him straight in the eyes. "It wasn't an accident; Trudy was murdered by a car bomb. And it wasn't four years, it was three." He stepped closer. "You haven't answered my question: 'Is it possible he followed you into that portal?'"
The Doctor scowled back. "Weren't you listening? I said the portal is still intact and functioning, which means the device is still in here somewhere. One of us had the device that controls the portals at all times; if he had the device and went through the portal, it would be gone." Then he turned his attention back to the Captain.
"So to answer your question, Officer, that device in the hands of the wrong person would be bad for all of us because he could travel anywhere, steal anything, DO anything, leave no trace, and no one could stop him."
Stottlemeyer stared at him, then asked, "Tell me about this assistant of yours. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say you don't completely trust him."
The Doctor had the grace to look away and blush. "I...shouldn't have hired him, I admit." But then he raised his head and gestured around him. "You see what I've been reduced to! I didn't have the resources to vet every person I needed...I was on the verge of a breakthrough, the culmination of my life's work; there wasn't time!" He pointed at the portal. "And I succeeded! Through there, and any like it, Man can travel anywhere in the Multiverse! The possibilities are limitless!
The Captain raised his hand. "Slow down, Doc...you still haven't told me about your assistant. What's his name, where does he live, what's his description?"
The Doctor sighed, and answered, "His name is James Tennyson, and he's tall, about six feet, with long, black, stringy hair and practically no chin. As far as I know he lives here in the city, but I don't have his address."
Stottlemeyer scowled. "No address? Then, where do you send his W-2s?" From the guilty look on the scientist's face, the Captain already had his answer. "You've...been paying him under the table, haven't you? You do know that's a crime, Doc?"
"I needed to complete my work!" Feynman cried desperately. Then he smiled. "Besides, I didn't completely trust him; I didn't tell him everything about the device. He still needs this to know how to properly work it," he added as he tapped the side of his head.
"'Practically no chin'...? repeated Monk, as he slowly turned and centered his focus on one of the police officers standing near Natalie. He pointed. "Leland, how long has that one been on the force?"
Before Stottlemeyer could answer, the "police officer" pulled off his cap, revealing a head of long, stringy, black hair, grabbed Natalie, then shouted, "And you're gonna tell me everything!" He held her in front of him like a human shield as Stottlemeyer and Lt. Disher drew their weapons. He backed with her towards the portal, took a gadget out of his pocket and held it up. "You have three days to make up your mind, or you'll never see this woman again!"
With that, he pulled her with him into the portal, as she held out her arms and screamed, "Mister Monk!!"
And Adrian Monk, the obsessive, compulsive, phobia-ridden, practically scared of his own shadow husk of a man did the only thing he could do.
He leaped in after them.
"Monk!" screamed Leland as he ran to catch him, but the portal winked out of existence the moment Monk passed through, so Stottlemeyer landed on the floor. He immediately got to his feet, rounded on the Doctor, grabbed him by his lapels, and shook him!
"Where?! Where did my friends go?!" he roared.
The Doctor dropped his eyes and whispered, "I...don't know..."
Monk groaned as he opened his eyes, and then that groan turned into a shriek of disgust once he realized he was lying on the ground. He scrambled to his feet, or rather, he tried to, and found he had two more feet than he normally did!
Only they weren't feet, exactly, but hooves!
He kept perfectly still and looked down at himself. He was still wearing his wool coat, shirt, and trousers, but his shoes and socks were gone, and his hands and feet had been replaced by these...these...things. He immediately sat on his haunches, pulled both front hooves off the ground, and stared at them. There were bits of grass clinging to the bottoms, so he felt his stomach turn over. He tried wiping them against one another to get the filth off but only succeeded in transferring grass from one "hoof" to the other. Giving up on that, he finally took a good look at his surroundings. He was in a forest, in Nature, far from a city by the sounds of it, as the twitter of birds filled his ears and the sweet smell of flowers and other plants filled his nose.
In short, he was in HELL.